Caroline Reid Writes

HOME-MADE SOUND BOOTH The South Australian government may have been the first state government in Australia to come to the financial aid of artists by providing quick response grants for Innovating Practice. What a privilege to be the recipient of one of these grants. With the funds granted to me I bought sound and video recording equipment, paid for the hire of a sound studio, paid other creative artists for their services and had some funds left over for living costs. My primary project has been recording SIARAD as Audiobook. I decided to record the longer (prose) pieces in a professional studio. A local radio station PBA FM offered a very reasonable hourly rate and over 4 sessions I came away some very clean, crisp recordings. Perfect for the prose. At first I was disheartened that I didn’t have the funds to record the whole book in a professional setting but, as things turned out, it was actually a good thing.   By researching on the internet, and with the help of my partner,...

Oh yeah, a second print run! It’s been almost six months since the release of my first book of poetry and prose, SIARAD, and it’s an understatement to say that since then there has been a lot of uncertainty and sorrow in the world. For many authors, the resultant cancellation of book launches, tours and presentations has been a big disappointment. But disappointment is not the end of the story. Human creativity and invention has come to the fore, yet again, in troubled times. As a performance poet, my world has been opened up by online events in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Queensland. I know of many other poets who have participated in international poetry events too. Last night I competed in a Slam Final hosted by The Bunker Spoken Word that took place in Queensland . As well as live performers, there was a bunch of us performing via Zoom in W.A., N.S.W., Victoria, S.A. And in the Zoom room with us for the whole event was Holly McNish, drinking tea and eating toast on a Saturday mo...

SIARAD was released last month. My longtime friend, the artist, illustrator , writer and art historian Georgina Coburn has penned a review: " Having seen her performances as a finalist in the 2018 and 2019 Australian Poetry Slam competitions online, I was looking forward to reading Caroline Reid’s debut collection of poetry and prose, Siarad . Based in Adelaide, Australia, Reid’s work has been published in literary journals such as Verity La, Red Room Poetry, Cordite and her poem Lost was shortlisted for the 2019 Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film competition. In Siarad, Reid’s ferocious honesty, sensitivity and acuity leaps off the page as it does on stage, fuelled by personal experience and acute social observation. Siarad, a Welsh word meaning to talk or speak, reflects Reid’s family history and this collection, drawn from over a decade’s work, is testament to finding your voice as an artist. In form and content this is a gift of a book, raw, lyrical and ...

Sometimes reading nice things about me and my work can be challenging. I often blush when receiving compliments, do a foot shuffle, stare at a spot on the floor. It's taken me a week to be able to revisit the SIARAD launch speech that Rachael Mead delivered in Adelaide. I cried a little while listening to Rachael, partly because I didn't quite recognise myself in her words, and partly because I did. Rachael is such a brilliant, generous writer and I'd like to share a slice of what she articu lated so well, echoing my feelings of what the team at Spineless Wonder/ES-Press publishing achieved in the making of this book, SIARAD. "Look at this book. It may not be a garlic press but it is a metaphor. (You’ll get that when you read the first poem). This book is a piece of art in the way that Caroline Reid is an artist. The art resides not just in the poetry and prose. There is art in every detail of its being. The cover, the dimensions, the visual art...

There are boxes in my hallway where there shouldn't be boxes. I sleep with my bedroom door open and the cardboard boxes are the first thing I see when I wake up. Sometimes, before I am fully awake, I mistake them for my dog or a statue. But no, they are definitely boxes and inside them are books. My books. All with the same title, SIARAD; published by ES-Press, an imprint of Spineless Wonders . This part of the process of book writing and publishing feels strange. It's the part where ownership of what's inside the books, the poems and stories, no longer feel like they belong to me. Perhaps they never did. It's a little strange and also a little nice. It helps with the slight worry over what people will think of the book. I'm pretty sure this worry is normal and I'm trying to pay it no mind. A debut collection of prose and poetry is not exactly The Da Vinci Code so there aren't hundreds of boxes in my hallway. There are three boxes, actually. It's ...

book cover design and illustration by Bettina Kaiser I've been consumed by a new project these past few months. It's long been a goal of mine to gather together some of the shorter works I've written over the past decade or so and put them in a collection; and finally, it's happened. The name of the collection is SIARAD, a Welsh word meaning to talk, to speak. It was the first word I chose. Then I went off on a tangent of worry about how non-Welsh speakers might pronounce the word and if it might put them off reading the thing. So I set myself a deadline and trod a long journey to find a different word. Turned out to be a circular loop that took me back to the start: SIARAD. None of the English words I found were as satisfying in sound or look; nor did they have the weight of Welsh culture behind them and that was important to me (my Mum is Welsh and the book is dedicated to her). The 's' is pronounced 'sh', the same as Sinead or Seana. I really l...