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

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 ....

Earlier this year I was invited to present my spoken word theatre show SIARAD in Mt Gambier as part of the Mt Gambier Fringe Festival, presented by Writes SA as an Arts Industry Collaboration with Adelaide Fringe. The Mt Gambier community were so welcoming. Many folk stayed behind to have a chat after the show, which was just brilliant.   Taking SIARAD on the road to Mt Gambier made me realise how much I want to present this show to audiences outside of an urban setting. The experience resonated with me on a deep level. Perhaps it was the drive, the quiet, the space to think and be. Time stretches on the the road. There's more space for contemplation. And because my mother had died just 2 months prior to doing the show in Mt Gambier, I still very much needed time, for contemplation and grieving. And because I was able to honour the memory of my mother in the show, this performance in Mt Gambier has become a part of my healing. Plus, I was born in a small town and grew up in re...

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...

"Reid's delivery is masterful. This is poetry of the best kind."  Alice Gorman, Adelaide Fringe Review I am so freaking pleased to announce that SIARAD, my one-woman spoken word theatre event, will enjoy a Comeback Season in September at Studio 166, Goodwood Theatre & Studios. With the brilliant assistance and support of theatre-maker Emma Beech, Goodwood Theatre & Studios, Spineless Wonders and Andy Hunt, I'll present 5 shows across 3 days: Friday, September 17th - Sunday, September 19th 2021. Tickets have just been made available through Try Booking. SIARAD pulses with images of stars and stray dogs, highways with no horizon and mothers with fading memories, a blend of poetry and storytelling with a consistent element of humour and surprise.  Here are some responses from those who came to SIARAD at Adelaide Fringe Festival: Such a brilliant show! I loved it!!  I forgot I was even in the theatre. Thank you. If you love words and writing, this is just the pe...

  Junk Journals - covers A whole month of poetry! How sweet is that? An initiative of Red Room Poetry, you can head over to their website and check out all the wonderfully poetic things that are happening between August 1-31.   I'll also be releasing details very soon of how you can sign up for my newsletter. Yeah, I've been dreaming about setting up a newsletter for loyal followers for quite some time now, and Poetry Month is just the right motivation to make it happen. The first newsletter will offer discounts to my upcoming (return) season of SIARAD in September, plus specials on the print and audio book. I'll also have more information about my hand-made Poetry Prompt Journals.     Junk Journal - interior I learnt how to make Junk Journals recently, at a great place called The Adelaide Remakery. What fun! So, I've added my twist to them, and have been busy making Punk As Fuq Poetry Prompt Junk Journals (I know, it's a mouthful) - a fun resource to help inspire ...

 Heeeey, thanks for dropping by. Things have been rumbling along since March. My Adelaide Fringe show came and went. The audiences were lovely and the studio space was so intimate it felt like I was performing to friends in my lounge room. I did 3 shows, with a splash of heckling on opening night, which I loved! The wonderful Alice Gorman (otherwise knows as Dr Space Junk ) had this to say in her review: "Reid's delivery of her words is masterful It's no wonder she has twice been a finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam. She blends cadence with a conversational style that hits just the right balance. Music, sound effects and props augment the words and emotions as Reid moves from verse to verse. This is not a chronological narrative, but you feel you have taken a journey with Reid to some place of stillness and acceptance at the end ... This is poetry of the best kind, that engages you and makes you want to be BFFs with the poet."  If you didn't get to the show, ...

When I was planning SIARAD, my debut collection of poetry and prose , I wanted two things: a book that crossed boundaries and a beautiful work of art. Luckily for me, I found the people who made that happen. Bettina Kaiser art+design and the Spineless Wonders crew created a gorgeous work of art with a beautiful aesthetic. Kerryn Goldsworthy noted in the Sydney Morning Herald that "the design and illustrations are a precise fit with both the form and content of Reid's text."   And what of crossing boundaries? When the book went to print I had a vague notion that I’d like to record SIARAD as an Audiobook , and ‘wouldn’t mind’ doing it as a show. Possibly at Adelaide Fringe in 2022, I thought. Then Covid-19 invaded our world. A stressful time, to say the least. However, during lockdown I was able to use a Covid Support Grant from the South Australian government to make the Audiobook I’d been dreaming of. This is great! I thought. My book has crossed over from print into au...

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...

it's a strange time, this time of corona. language, for me, has broken down. often when i speak i'm struggling to find the words, or nouns wind up in the wrong place. and increased hours in front of a screen is making my brain feel overheated. it's exhausting. last week i watched a couple of short videos of my mum that i shot on my phone in February. she is swimming in the deep waters of dementia. i listened to the way she used language, the misplacement of identifiers and objects, the mis-interpretation of words like 'wave' which has more than one meaning. i noticed how she was seeing things that, arguably, weren't there. like little girls in the pattern of a blanket. i wrote down her sentences, weaving two conversations together. here's the poem: a message home from all that place of getting i don't find it dirty but you can get that red coming you can get that red coming that nearly redding redding red when it's been properly red type of th...

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 ...

photo: Trentino Priori A few weeks ago I went to Goolwa for a crack at the Goolwa Poetry Cup, my 3rd year competing in this event. I always feel kinda awkward posting about this stuff because I come from a family/generation/culture that didn't go in for talking up personal achievements. It was perceived as bragging rather than celebrating. But I'm older now and see things differently. I won, dear reader. I am the 2019 Goolwa Poetry Cup Champion. Hazaar! I've never won a trophy cup before, unless you count the little one I was awarded by the swimming club in Kalgoorlie back in the 80s for being most consistent (or something) which means I didn't get better nor did I get worse, I just kept turning up. Wait, maybe writing and performing is the same except I give more of a shit about writing and performing so getting better is something I strive for.  I figure a win for a middle~aged woman who only recently discovered the power and pleasure of spoken word...

I have a new video poem out in the world.  You can catch it here on Vimeo : To Touch and Taste a Comet

photo credit: Rose Mackenzie 2019 has a been a big year on many levels, so I dunno about you but I forgive myself for the scant blogging. Here's a brief rundown: I secured some funding to work with the incredible Toni Jordan as a writing mentor. But as luck would have it, the very first month I began working with Toni a spot came up in an Aged Care home for my mum. She'd been on a waitlist with two care homes for almost a year and I'd made phone calls a few weeks prior to see if there was anything available only to be told my mum's appplication had been lost and I'd need to reapply.  I panicked (#understatement) because I knew my mum's ability to live independently was fast deteriorating  due to Alzheimer's Disease and I didn't know how much longer I'd be able to manage her life while living 2700kms away. Long story short, the lost application seemed to work in our favour (#agedcareguilt) because Mum was offered a placement within weeks. This...