Caroline Reid Writes

NOTE: This post is a bit longer than usual & contains a 10 minute presentation.   I recently had the enormous privilege of presenting poetry at the 2024 Palliative Care Summit: 'Navigating the Crossroads: Building the intersection between Palliative Care & Neurodegenerative Disease'. The summit was hosted by Palliative Care WA in the Pan Pacific hotel in Perth. I mention this because it's the place I was held in quarantine while my mother died in a nursing home just a few kilometres away. Perth's hard border control at the time was brutal. While many people have understandably just wanted to move on and forget about the pandemic, it's taken me a bit longer to do that. For a long time, the sorrow and grief seemed knitted into my skin.    Of course, I could have said no to the summit. But I sensed that this occassion was bigger than me, that these poems might serve others, that performing them might also help me work through residual grief, resentment, and an...

  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. ...

Between 2018-2021 I worked with 3 emerging film makers to create 6 video poems.  To Touch and Taste a Comet was the second of those video poems. SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT: The poem To Touch & Taste a Comet speaks to being a late bloomer & not giving up on your dreams/ambition despite living in a world that values youth, early (visible) success and a particular kind of beauty (perfect/smooth). It's a world that values & rewards a particular kind of filming making too... not too complex, clear narrative, crisp focus with a young, pretty, sexy, cool protagonist. Much of what I love about this video poem is how film maker Patrick Zoerner weaves imagery that emphasises texture, pattern & mood with images of the not-so-young/not-so-cool poet (me).  When I first re-visited the video so that I could write this blog, I have to admit I cringed a little. It's tempting to apologise for my double-chin & jowls, thick torso, my awkwardness and kind of arty-posiness. But...

The recent Australian Poetry Slam has me dipping into the vault again. This time it's not a video poem but a live performance. 'Stars' was recorded on stage at the Sydney Opera House in the APS National Final, 2018.     SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT: Reflecting on my own time in the APS scene, I'm proud of the performances and the poems, but also wondering what was it that drove me to compete in slams. I was first introduced to them in Adelaide 2016 when I was asked to be a 'sacrificial' poet at the SA State Slam Final. I loved  being the 'warm-up' poet but it was safe. It took me a couple more years to find the courage (was it courage?) to perform as a competitor. Ironically, I was working on a novel at the time and was writing in residence at Writers SA where I saw the poster advertising the national poetry slam every. single. day. Was it desire to win that made me compete, or something else?   It was 2016. I was 48 years old and peri-menopausal. It might see...

To celebrate Poetry Month in Australia, I am dipping into the archives to share a series of video poems & recorded performances of my poetry. Here's the second in the series, Murder Girl gets wired.   SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT Writing really is a long game. I wrote Murder Gets gets wired in 2007 after I'd relocated from Perth to Adelaide and was still elbow-deep in writing for theatre. I didn't know about prose poems. I thought I was just writing little sketches (were they poems? were they stories?) with a view to heightening ordinary fuckd-up urban and suburban folk to a kind-of mythological status. I didn't really know what I was doing. I'd give my characters names like Murder Girl, Violet Sweets, Beef Boy and they'd always drink too much & have low self-esteem. Auto-bio much? Now I can hear rhythms & a smattering of rhyme in this poem, which were the precursors to me writing and performing my first spoken word poem in 2016.   In 2020, when I receive...

I recently delivered a writing workshop at The Adelaide City Library aimed at generating new material and drafting a piece of writing using an object or piece of clothing as a prompt. I really love presenting this workshop, and am always amazed at the diversity of work produced. Afterwards, someone asked me how they might develop their work and get better at writing poetry. They were new to poetry, didn't plan on going to university to study but wanted to work at writing and editing poetry. I realised that I didn't have a clear answer, so went away, thought about it and emailed them my suggestions few days later: READ POETRY - there are many websites where you can read free online. Here are a few examples, but there are plenty more: Red Room Poetry (AUS), Cordite Poetry (AUS), Overland (AUS), Poetry Foundation (USA) & Quartet (US). Buying anthologies (or borrowing from the library) is also a good way of getting an overview. Try The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry , Co...

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...

SIARAD won 2nd prize in the International Poetry Book Awards! I feel so much love for the team that created this book: Bronwyn Mehan at Spineless Wonders (ES-Press), Bettina Kaiser, designer and illustrator, and Matilda Gould who provided editorial assistance.   Thanks so much to judge of the award, John Evans, and administrator Dave Lewis.  And big congratulations to Rufus Mufasa for her collection Flashbacks and Flowers .  To celebrate this success, we're making SIARAD the Audiobook available for $1.99 . But only until November 18, so you'll need to get in quick! CLICK HERE FOR LINK ORIGINAL POST: SIARAD has been shortlisted for the International Poetry Book Awards 2022, a Welsh-based international poetry awards programme open to all indie authors, self-published poets and those published by small independent publishers. You can check out all shortlisted authors HERE.        

 The Poetry Book Awards is an annual, international book award given to the best poetry book awards produced by indie writers, self published authors or books published by small, truly independent presses. I received news last week that SIARAD has been long listed for this year's award. The Poetry Book Award - long list SIARAD is published by ES-Press , an imprint of Spineless Wonders Publishing,  which truly is a small, independent press. The advantage of being published by small presses like SWP is that authors get to work closely with the publishing team. I worked alongside graphic designer BKAD (Betttina Kaiser) , and had input in all the decision making including style of book, (I love square books!) front cover, graphics and font type, as well as working closely with editor Matilda Gould. The process was invigorating and exciting, a real artistic pleasure. I didn't write and publish this book to win awards. As a team we made the book we wanted to make, a book that gave ...

December 29, 2023: I've updated the original post so that my poem is now available to read and download. The poem recounts my lived experience of being a daughter whose mother is living interstate in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease during a global pandemic.     In January 2022 I received an unexpected phone call from the  the UK. I was in Perth staying with my brother and sister-in-law after having been released from hotel quarantine just a few days prior. The call was from the editor of Mslexia magazine. She told me that my poem 'A Poem To My Mother That She Will Never Read' was the winner of the 2021 International Mslexia Poetry Competition.  It was the day before my mother's funeral. It was the first time I'd won an international literary prize. It's an understatement to say that is was one of the most magically bitter-sweet moments of my life. In the original post I'd linked to Mslexia, where you could read the poem. However, since Mslex...