Aaron Mitchell (part 1)

ID 0:02

This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Kate Cooper 0:18

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations with emerging and experienced creative voices in our community. I'm Kate Cooper, and our guest on today's program is Dr Aaron Mitchell. Aaron is a spoken word poet who performs at open mic events and poetry slams around Adelaide. Aaron holds a PhD in molecular biology and genetics, and also a master's degree in intellectual property law. Welcome to the program, Aaron. You're a spoken word poet who performs at poetry events around Adelaide. What is it about poetry that led you to choose this form of creative expression, and when did you first start writing?

Aaron Mitchell 1:01

So what I like about poetry is its accessibility. In these days of, I don't know, shortened attention spans, we don't want to read things that are too long. We don't have time to listen to too many things. TikTok causes us to, you know, have an attention span of no more than 20 seconds. And so the way I see spoken word poetry is, it's like poetry in a Twitter format, where you have this short number of phrases and things that you say in a time constraint. And the constraints are what actually make it. Having a time frame to work with means that you can work on, you know, purifying the writing and the expression to try and get your point across in a way that turns out to be poetic, but it's just a it's almost a side effect of of trying to get a point across in a short time. 

Kate Cooper 1:54

And it's that interaction between expression and interpretation, isn't it? And through poetry, you're inviting your reader or your listener to interpret what you say by using those words effectively as you explain. 

Aaron Mitchell 2:10

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it's not just the... I write to perform. So it's a How will this sound? As I'm evolving on my journey, I think about what kind of thing will cause an effect. I'm trying to learn how to use my hands, which you won't be able to see what I'm doing with them, but it's How do I kind of catch the person? I make percussive sounds, and I try and elaborate on my phrasing using my hands. And so when I rehearse, I think about what people will want to see and how I can use my physicality to appropriately emphasise the words.

Kate Cooper 2:51

And Aaron, have you've been writing for a long time, or is this fairly new for you? 

Aaron Mitchell 1 2:55

So I did do rostrum for a few years, just as a way of improving my spoken word in, let's just say, stressful situations, and I was asked to assist with a funeral eulogy, and I did such a good job, if that's something that you could say about reading words at a funeral, that then for the next two family members, I was the person who was asked to come along and do the same thing. I brought the house down as far as emotional reactions and things like that. But I really love the exercise, the way that it connected with people, and people got a lot of meaning out of it, and I felt that I could do good things and just sort of get out what's inside of me, I guess, and share it with others.

Kate Cooper 3:48

That's quite a skill to be able to speak at a funeral. As it happens, I've been to one this morning, and I went to another one just the other day, and you listen to how well the people leading the celebration of someone's life actually do that, but there's a real skill involved in being able to capture people's emotions and and make those present feel that they are celebrating a life that's wonderful. Are you going to explore that further?

Aaron Mitchell 4:18

I don't know. I have a friend who's recently just trained as a celebrant, and as part of being a celebrant, she also is looking at celebrating people's lives at funerals as well. And I thought that would be a interesting thing to try and do, but it may well be one of those things where when you have to do it for a living, it ceases to be as fun, and then when you actually choose to do something yourself for your own joy. So I'm wary of harnessing that little beast, I think.

Kate Cooper 4:53

in our interaction before coming on air, you mentioned being attracted to the overlooked everyday aspects of the human condition. Would you tell us about which poets particularly inspired you to explore everyday aspects of the human condition?

Aaron Mitchell 5:11

Yeah, so it's a completely awesome question. And I think about the works of Bruce Dawe, who, when you're in high school, people might moan about having to do these boring poets when you know that doesn't have any meaning to their everyday life, but I found Bruce Dawe was really excellent. So he wrote two very influential poems for me. The first one is called The Cornflake, and he talks about how it's this thing that the only time that people sing about it is advertising jingles when it datedly falls out of the packet into bowls. And he talks about how it has this cousin called the snowflake, and it's so much prettier and that's... people treat it like it's special. 

And the poem ends with how joyful infants spoon the cornflake mush onto walls or ceilings of houses and how it outlasts, it is said successive families when it's stuck to a wall or a ceiling, and I like the durability of the common. And another poem that he wrote about was titled Homo Suburbiansis, and it was just about a man in an evening. He's out in his back garden, and he's surveying all that is his up to his fence palings, and you know, he's smelling the burning of some rubbish, because that was back when that was permitted, and he's just kind of plotting his life. 

And there's some line in there about What can he offer? No more than any man can... but I like the special things that are seen in the ordinary, and so I try to bring that to my poem. And I've mentioned, I've got a poem about there's nothing wrong with being average, and how there's strength and durability in that. And that was partly influenced by the notion of snowflakes and cornflakes.

Kate Cooper 7:01

Are you happy to read that poem for us now?

Aaron Mitchell 7:04

I could give that a go, absolutely brilliant. So this poem is called Vanilla Chocolate... 

The average anthem over the great crime of vanilla, the whitest white bread of bread, not chocolate like the starfish or black like the whip, the fear of being bland, oh, the ordinary stuck in the middle of the bell curve to be an average person, deluded in considerations of being above average. If we are all special and gifted, none of us can truly be. We must strive to lead from the middle embrace the plane the normal, the average of the weird be like the humble cornflake, not the snowflake. After all, many snowflakes just become snow. Ordinary is strong and durable, collectivist, not individual. Vanilla is only beaten by saffron in price. 

Why have standards at all? Why not just be Why live the quantified life where everything that matters must be measured, what is not measured is not done, or so they say, why not be free of external judgment and assessment. Surely it will quiet the inner critic, the loudest voice of all, the one that pours you down from all the heights you reach for, like the unstable stool as you reach for the hidden chocolate on the top shelf. Why not take the risk of the fall? Go on you know, you want to. 

So part of where I mentioned vanilla in here comes from a Seinfeld episode where they try to buy a babka. I think they're trying to buy a chocolate babka, and the only one they can get is actually the cinnamon Bubka. And Jerry Seinfeld talks about how cinnamon is the king of spices, and so I've sort of used that as an influence here. Also, again, talking about scientific concepts. Here I talk about, you know, being stuck in the middle of the bell curve. Being in the middle of the bell curve is so good in so many ways. The closer you are to the middle of the bell curve, the more average you are, the more durable and survivable you are as a human being. It's just one of those things. 

And there's this whole belief that if I'm an average person, but I have this belief that I'm above average, the fact that the way the word average works means that you can't possibly be but yet, many people go around in the world where they just happily hold this concept about themselves as true, which I just find that quite entertaining. This poem mentions the cornflake versus the snowflake. That's sort of reference to the Bruce Dawe poem. But then I take it further and say that, well, many snowflakes become just snow. So you can have all these special people, but collectively, they're just the same as anybody else, just as exciting as plain snow in a bank, just covering the landscape. 

But then I go to a childhood memory of my mother used to hide chocolate in the linen closet and in a shelf high above where the children would not be able to reach that. So that was me and my brother, and we used to get this rickety stool and try and reach for the top. And it always felt like we were doing a very risky thing to try and find the hidden chocolate. But that sort of goes to the sometimes you've got to stretch yourself and take a risk to to do things that take you out of yourself and sometimes perhaps propel you above your average self that you normally self regulate to.

Kate Cooper 10:47

I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about what makes you happy, and that really is what it comes down to, is what makes you happy and how you can make other people happy around you, Aaron, you're a spoken word poet who performs at open mic events and poetry slams. What or who inspired you to first start performing your poetry at these events?

Aaron Mitchell 11:12

So I had a good friend who I used to run with, and he's been doing these sorts of poetry events for a very long time, and last year, there was a South Australian Poetry Slam finals, which were then leading up to a national event that concluded with the winner reading poetry at the Opera House. And I don't know, I like the idea of it. It had a two minute constraint, which means that I didn't have to put too much work into writing the thing. And it was sort of to, like it was low stakes, so I could go up and sort of slightly scare myself. But there was a room of 20 to 50 other poets, and they've all been on the same journey, so it was kind of like other people who had enjoyed the same kinds of struggles. So it was a very safe and open environment. 

And so yeah, I went with this friend to a few different poetry finals that were at a variety of public libraries. Many times, the scorers that run these scorings for the events were librarians that had come in on their Saturday evenings to do these things. And so the way it works with poetry slam is it's a two minute poem that you read in front of an audience. A little bell goes off when there's like, I don't know 15 seconds to go or something, but then there are five people that give you scores, so the top score and the bottom score removed, but they're out of 10, and then they make an average of the existing scores. And so it sort of weeds out influence in either way, and provides a kind of a fair system of, sort of lower bias scoring, so you kind of feel that you're being assessed appropriately against your peers. 

And I don't know, I kind of my, my true thing that I'm really looking for is the the magic source, the every person poem, the thing that everyone is going to love and and maximize my scores. But I still am trying to find that, and I don't mind. And maybe the joy the pursuit is, the happiness is in the pursuit of that rather than the goal.

Kate Cooper 13:34

So you get a real buzz out of taking part in these slams. 

Aaron Mitchell 13:38

Absolutely. Yeah, it's funny, because even having like a deadline, like a date to work to, provides me with enough internal momentum that I can consolidate my resources and try and sort of keep working on honing this poem and getting it done and, you know, rehearsing it in the shower and drafting on the bus and things like that.

Kate Cooper 13:57

I'm interested to hear that you enjoy it so much because there's a question I want to ask that I have asked a number of spoken word poets, and to which I've had a range of answers. And it's about preparation for a performance, and the strategies that poets use to manage any feelings of nervousness. I'm sounding like your enjoyment might be outweighing any feelings of nervousness, but talk us through the preparation that you do and what works really well for you.

Aaron Mitchell 14:25

So it starts with at least having work that you feel is settled. I didn't say finished. Finished just comes with time, but settled is where you feel that it's got to a reasonable state where it can suffer public exposure, so to speak. And then I have moments of nervousness before I know about to go up on the stage, but then I say that no one can see what is inside of you. And so when. You are standing up on the stage. No one knows the feelings that are within and so if I stand there with feet firmly planted making direct eye contact with one of the audience members, appropriately positioned behind the microphone, pull out my poem and I pause, 123, and then I start, and I don't make any apologies beforehand. I find people might, on occasion, over explain things before and whatever. 

And it's like people want to hear the poem. Nothing else matters unless it's something that provides context for the poem. These are wasted words. And so I just get up and I just do it. And there are moments sometimes during the poem where I lose my way, maybe, or I jump a line, or I say one word wrong, and I'm just sort of slightly cringing on the inside and thinking the whole poem is broken. And I pause, and I'm very aware that my internal clock, the time stretches out to infinity, whilst the audience it might be half a second or two seconds at most. 

And I've got a tenancy to rush. And so having forced pausing where I'm scrambling to find my way to find the next word is just it works, and I tell myself that I don't need to worry about it. And then I just breathe, and then I find the words, and then I'm back again, and it's just getting it back under control. The more often you do it, the better it gets. Quite often I have disposable kind of events where I will have a poem, I'll read it at an event, and I just won't be caring for how I do it. And if I get things wrong, sometimes I discover better ways of phrasing things, less clumsy ways of phrasing things. And so any mistake I make is actually opportunities for improvement. 

And sometimes, then people will come up to me afterwards, and we'll talk about the poem a bit more, and I'll get a new insight that I've missed the first time. And so I'll actually continue to edit the poem through two to three performances till I'm even happier with with what it was before I started the first performance.

Kate Cooper 17:16

That's great, and I guess to your audience doesn't actually know if you've missed or changed a word, you're in control of all that. So in a way, your mistake isn't going to be a mistake to them at all.

Aaron Mitchell 17:28

My goodness, thank you. That's actually quite gold. I probably have to have that in mind the next time I mess up. It's like Kate says they don't know. I'll keep going.

Kate Cooper 17:46

On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program, Emerging Writers. Our guest today is spoken word poet Dr Aaron Mitchell. Aaron, are there differences in how you prepare for a poetry slam competition compared to how you would prepare for, say, the open mic event, where I've seen you a couple of times, at Ellipsis Poetry at Arthur Art Bar?

Aaron Mitchell 18:10

Yeah, I find the open mic events are just less constrained, and I just tend to write till the poem kind of runs out. And so I think that I give myself space to be a bit more experimental, and I guess tolerate phrasing that I'm not perfectly happy with, but I still kind of like the way it sounds, and it's an opportunity to write longer work. A two minute poem is very different from, say, a five minute and there's a different kind of story arc that you can fit in those two different time formats. But I think I like both aspects for their differences.

Kate Cooper 18:54

And I've noticed at open mics a number of times people will say, Look, I've just drafted this. I'm still working on it, and the audience is very warm and receptive to that. People go there because they expect to hear a work in progress at times, as well as completed works. And as you say, it gives that opportunity for someone to come up to you in the break and have a conversation about what really worked for them and even possibly make suggestions. And collaboration is always a constructive thing and a useful thing, I reckon.

Aaron Mitchell 19:28

Yeah, interesting. I'm always wary of trampling on other people's ideas, so I try really hard to be supportive, and I will discuss something without, like applying a view to it. So it's just about re prosecuting that information and expanding on it and maybe asking questions about it, and so that, in itself, may promote a rethink of how people do things. But what you were saying about. How people get up with work that is not fully formed is actually really important, as far as providing the safe environment where, you know, we're all trying to polish things as we go. 

And, yeah, you don't have to get up and do these things perfectly, you know, without notes and things like that. Quite often we have people who come up who have won previous poetry events, that publish books and things like that, and they are a whole different kind of poet. They get up, they speak, they look at the crowd, they've got all these sophisticated movement with their hands, and they're just this different order of magnitude kind of person when it comes to how they present themselves. But I still think that there's power in diversity here, so the audience still has an experience, regardless of the caliber or experience of the person themselves. There's something that everyone has to share, that everyone has an opportunity to learn from.

Kate Cooper 20:57

And I'm glad you said that, because none of us really ever stopped learning, and an experienced, published poet can learn as much from a first time poet while they're getting the applause that I love, the way that audiences always give that extra applause to someone when it's their very first time, they can get as much out of it as the first time poet listening to people with more experience. It's always that interaction and that ongoing process.

Aaron Mitchell 21:29

Yeah, absolutely, I think yes, in poetry, as in life, we are all works in progress. 

Kate Cooper 21:35

We sure are. Aaron, just switching from poetry for a short while. You've also written two short unpublished novels as part of an event called Nano Rimo, not sure if I've said that correctly, you can correct me afterwards. Would you tell us, first of all about what that is, and then about what inspired you to take part in this event.

Aaron Mitchell 21:57

So I used to do live journal blogging back in the day, where, when it was first a new hot thing, and quite a few people in that community were participating in an annual event that happened every November, and it was known as national November writers month, Nano Rimo dot org, there's a good Wikipedia page on it. And so basically, everybody around the world in the month of November that wants to write a novel, they sit down and they write their, I don't know what is it, 13 or 1600 words a day. You can sign up for it. You get all these like, beautiful little little emails that keep you going and say, you know, well done. 

And you everyone sort of publishes their word counts for the day, and it's really quite relentless. But by the end of that month, you have written a book the size of the Great Gatsby, which is kind of more like novella land, but nonetheless, you have got 50,000 plus words. It's a substantial piece of work. And there's this email that nano Remo sent out to you about two weeks in, and they say something like, you're halfway in. You might think that you haven't written very many exciting words, but, but I can assure you that in those words, there is some gold you have found hidden gold in your words. 

When I got that email, I was like, Oh, how did they know? Oh, I was so pleased. Like the first few days were a bit of a struggle, and I questioned why I was doing this sort of thing. And then I really came to feel it was important. There's this whole movement. Writing is therapy, and I think that some of this writing definitely has therapeutic aspects, as you're going through various ideas. So the first book I wrote was based on when I was watching TV shows on ancestry. Every now and then they found a book about same some famous relative in their family tree. And when they read this book, they could read about the day to day life of the person, and this was just gold. It was better than finding a shipping record or some other thing that reading about the personal experiences of the person was just so amazing. 

And my father died in 2001 and my son was born a few years after that, and he never got to meet my father. And my father was very influential on my life, and had a very interesting life. You know, at the age of 21 he was repairing seaplanes in Port Moresby New Guinea and then he went traveling around the world, and just had all these adventures. It was the ultimate sort of, I don't know, I don't think I've had anywhere near as exciting life as he's had, but nonetheless, I thought that I would capture these stories of him that he had told me since he wasn't able to tell my son them, and I would also then talk about my early childhood with him and the adventures that I had. And I would put them all in a book, and I wrote it for my son, and we used to read it in the. Laugh together. 

And I recently had a dream where I had died and I had not given my son a copy of the book. And so then I frantically went and found, like, where I'd saved the email, and it was like, you know, from five years ago or more, and like, two emails a kind of go, and I had to find this thing, and I printed it out, and I gave it to him, and it was during his year, 12 exams, and he stopped studying and just started reading the stories, very hungrily. And I took the folder back from him and said, Okay, I'm going to put this in the car, and we're going to read. You can get to read whenever we drive anywhere, and then, like the next morning, can you drive me to school, dad. 

And so then for a month, every day, he pretty much read a day's worth of my writing every morning before he got to school. Sometimes we'd have to sit in the car park and wait for him to finish a particular chapter. He was so excited. It was so he was just laughing so much. He was, Did this really happen? And and it was just such a beautiful thing to share, and he's got that for the rest of his life, and I just felt that was just a really awesome thing that I could give him. The second book I wrote was about the nature of work in Adelaide, and I've done a lot of strange things, changed careers many times, and I've had very strange employment experiences. 

And so I called this book Random River. And this is a thing where you can't really choose where the river goes. When it goes around a bend. You go around a bend, the only thing you do is slightly chart your your location within the channel, but, but not really control the direction and and this comes from the notion of, when I was in high school, we had these careers days, and they're saying, you get to pick your career. You get to choose your job, and it's the job that chooses you, they let you in. And it's like I felt that it was the wrong way around. And so I've done all these strange things only because employers chose me. And so this random nature of opportunities in Adelaide is what's provided my work path. That sounds very odd when I explain it to people, but seem very logical at the time, but it only makes sense looking backwards, but going forwards, it seems very strange.

Kate Cooper 27:16

I can relate to that some jobs have chosen me, and I've also, like you made changes to career paths, what a wonderful gift to give to your son. Though about the story of your father, have you thought about turning it from an unpublished manuscript into a published work at some stage or...? 

Aaron Mitchell 27:38

Well, this is the fear the judgment of others. But also, like, I don't know who else would find that interesting. You know, very interesting to my son, because he's part of that family. They are cool stories, and maybe they, you know, they do capture a time and a place, and certainly very different from the life that my son has lived, where I was roaming in the outdoors for many hours every day and a weekend kind of thing, doing things like climbing cliffs and going through caves and just doing horrendously unsafe things. And my child, he might find some unsafe part of the internet, you know, just this whole living in a bedroom on a computer screen versus, you know, just gallivanting around around the world. It's a whole other experience. 

And so maybe there might be value in it. People have asked me that before. I feel a bit strange about it, but yeah, it may will happen in the future, maybe when I'm finally getting around to those memoirs, that's when I'll revisit some of those things and rewrite them.

Kate Cooper 28:41

Those are the stories, though, that make history real for young people the social side, not the filtered you know, this happened on this date that was signed on that date. But how were ordinary people living through those times? That's that's your real history. Thank you so much. Aaron, this is a delightful conversation. So let's continue in next week's program, our guest on Emerging Writers today was spoken word poet Dr Aaron Mitchell. 

This program is produced in our Adelaide studios, and can be heard at the same time each week here on vision, Australia radio, VA radio on digital, online at varadio.org, and also on Vision Australia radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes.

ID 29:40

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