Caroline Reid Writes

  Poetica Petit: A night of poetry and music I’m super-pleased  to announce that on April 11th I'll be performing poetry (feature poet) at Poetic Petit at the Woollhara Gallery in Redleaf, Sydney.  In 2022 I won the Woollhara Digital Literary Award for Poetry but wasn't able to get to Sydney. So, belatedly, I'll be reading the poem that won that award, A Poem To My Mother That She Will Never Read plus some new work. I'm grateful to Miriam Hechtman for the opportunity. Ilan Kidron will be performing some music on the night & there is also an open mic section. Poetica Petit is presented in partnership with Woollahra Council and held at the Cultural Hub, in the newly refurbished Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf.  READ MORE HERE     POETICA PETIT POETRY NIGHT Thursday, April 11, 6-8pm Woollahra Gallery, Redleaf TIX HERE $20 including some refreshments

Meeting Nick Drake, published in *82Review, 21.1 Lately, I've been thinking about what it means to submit work to literary journals, and my process of doing that. At the beginning of 2024, I had grand plans for my submitting my poetry to journals across the world. I would write and submit every single month , update my submission spreadsheet regularly, not delay in resubmitting work when the inevitable rejections came through. etc. etc. How's that going for me? Well, I did submit work to 4 journals in January then wrote a submission for an arts grant in February, and haven't submitted anything since! I planned to get back into this month and was all set to submit to Westerly Mag but I didn't bcs I wrote the wrong date in my diary & missed the deadline LOL. Truth is, I suck at these kinds of plans, and I know I suck at them, so why do I persist in the planning? I think it has to do with intention and process. Firstly, intention. It's a little trick of the mind. ...

I'm super-pleased to be a part of this excellent line-up of spoken word performers in this year's Adelaide Fringe! Fandango is a showcase of spoken word artists and their fandoms and obsessions. WHAT: FANDANGO, spoken word poetry WHERE: Laneway Garden Stage at Mixed Creative, Port Adelaide WHEN: Friday, March 1st, 8pm TIX: $10 Click Here to Book Fringe Tix   Hosted by Pam Makin and Tracey O’Callaghan Featuring Aubrey, Avalanche, Jazz, Caroline Reid, Tegan Sabine, Kerryn Tredrea, and Todd Alan Wight I'm performing a set Breaking Up With Bob Dylan: “When I listened to Dylan all through the nineties, he was already as old as my parents. I didn’t care. It was his 1960s stuff I was listening to, that became the lyrical soundtrack to my fuqd-up 20s. I lined up for concert tix, read the books, learned the lyrics & played his songs with gusto on the guitar. Thirty years later, when he played Bonython Park, I tried to break up with him. But he wasn’t having a bar of it ....

To celebrate Poetry Month in Australia, I am sharing video poems and performances of some of my poems. I'll also include a synopsis, a bit of history about how the poem came about, and the full text of the poem. Here's the first one: LOST, a video poem. Enjoy!   In 2017, I won my first poetry slam hosted by Draw Your (S)words. As part of that prize I got to work with emerging film-maker Pamela Boutros to make short film or video poem of one of my poems. We spent a day shooting in Port Adelaide (Yertabulti) and made LOST. SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT: LOST is a fusion of poetry, visual art, humour; it's a blend of the personal, political, cultural, spiritual, & performative confessional. I'd written a few terrible poems, and thought I'd never write a good poem again. Not being able to write became my starting point: 'Most days   I am not a poet'. Instead of pushing away my thoughts, I began paying attention to them, my worries and regrets. I wrote them all down...

Rabbit is an Australian journal that publishes nonfiction poetry, and their most recent issue #37 COLLABORATIONS is out in the world. It's full of juicy work, including a piece by myself and visual artist Donna Gordge. 'Tips for Dealing with Grief' is a tongue-in-cheek guide for how you might 'deal' with grief. Let me be clear: I don't believe that grief is something we deal with but rather something that we must go through. Grief turns everything on its head; the reason and logic of language can fall short. This poem doesn't make logical sense because grief doesn't make sense. It has to be felt, not reasoned with, and we need to make adjustments to include loss & grief in our lives. Hence the repetition of the word 'adjust' in the poem.   I approached the making of this work by Googling 'tips for dealing with grief' and included some words from my searches. I also reference the ritual of tea making, punning on the phrase 'adjus...