Speaker 1 00:02
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 00:18
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and our guest on today's program is Drew Cuffley, spoken word poet and 2023 South Australian Poetry Slam finalist and writer of short stories and essays. Drew recently presented at the spoken word essay Youth Poetry Showcase at the Adelaide City Library at the start of Youth Week. Drew's style is described as being inspired by hip -hop and rap, with, at times, complex rhyme schemes, fun word play and a healthy dose of humour.
Welcome to the program, Drew. Would you begin by telling us about your earliest memories of working creatively?
Speaker 3 01:08
Thank you, Kate. Yeah, earliest memories of working creatively would probably be, I don't know, I was a very imaginative child and I always loved imaginary play and things like that. And I think the first thing that comes to mind is my older brother helping me paint myself green when I was a toddler.
Speaker 3 01:26
I stripped naked and we painted myself green and I would pretend to be an orc like in Lord of the Rings because I had just seen Lord of the Rings when that came out. And yeah, I don't know, I was always very imaginative.
Speaker 3 01:40
I was like always running around the yard.
Speaker 2 01:44
And as we mentioned in the introduction, you're a Spoken Word poet and the 2023 South Australian Poetry Slam finalist, what inspired you to first start performing your poetry at Spoken Word events?
Speaker 3 01:57
I think it all started with a program called Youth Parliament, run by the Y, and that kind of got my toes in public speaking, and I realised I was actually pretty good at it despite what the anxiety of it tells me.
Speaker 3 02:14
But it started with that, and then I started writing a bit more, and then I had some friends that knew about some other people that did poetry readings, and I was like, you know what, I'll just go and give it a go, and I was terrified.
Speaker 3 02:29
I looked at my little notebook and kept my head in it the whole time, but I did it, and I was like, oh, people liked that. And it was a pretty eye -opening experience to have that immediate feedback to your work.
Speaker 3 02:46
You can hear people gasp or click or laugh at what you're writing and having that, I don't want to sound crazy, but that power over the audience is very exhilarating and very fun. It's fun to play with people in a very nonviolent and safe way.
Speaker 2 03:09
And what was it about poetry that particularly appealed to you?
Speaker 3 03:13
I've always loved playing with words, and I think poetry is the most, like, pure form of wordplay. You don't- it doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to, you know, have a storyline, it doesn't have to be- I have a beginning, middle, and end, it just is- just is a poem, and I find the- the freedom of poetry very appealing as a writer, because I can just do what I want, and it's- sometimes works, and it sometimes doesn't, but it takes, you know, ten minutes for me to jot down a little rough poem, and it's just fun.
Speaker 2 03:47
and I guess it takes practice as well.
Speaker 3 03:49
Well, yeah, I have gotten a lot better since I first started poetry, but yes.
Speaker 2 03:56
We mentioned in the introduction that your style is inspired by hip hop and rap for the benefit of older listeners. Well, specifically me. Would you explain first of all the difference between hip hop and rap and then why these performance genres inspire you?
Speaker 3 04:14
Well, hip -hop and rap, the difference is mainly hip -hop is effectively the broad genre. It's more focused on the beat. It's describing the instrumental behind the rap, which is hip -hop, the kind of classic hip -hop rap flow, whereas rap is a lot more lyrical focused.
Speaker 3 04:38
So the difference in beat could be more jazzy, it could be more rock, it could whatever, but as long as the core is the lyrical part rather than the instrumental part, that is more rap -leaning, but the two are pretty much used interchangeably.
Speaker 2 04:56
and they appeal to you more broadly as music genres.
Speaker 3 05:00
Yeah, I've always grown up listening to hip -hop and rap, like the Beastie Boys, NWA, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre. I was kind of brought up around that kind of music with my father being very a musician and very interested in different styles and genres, but I think it really started when I first listened to Kendrick Lamar, when his album To Pimp A Butterfly came out, and I kind of realized rap can be like proper art and tell a story, and it's not just, you know, M &M lyrical, spiritual, miracle kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 05:39
Drew, would you perform one of your spoken word poems for us now?
Speaker 3 05:44
Of course. I think you wanted me to read Shakespeare.
Speaker 2 05:48
I would love that. Thank you.
Speaker 3 05:51
This poem is called Modern Day Shakespeare. If Shakespeare existed today, he'd be an Instagram poet performing at an open mic, and instead of holding a skull, it would be an iPhone X with a cracked screen and a van Gogh -style emoji case.
Speaker 3 06:06
Instead of Romeo and Juliet, he would write about the forbidden love between an Instagram reels boy and a TikTok girly. Instead of mutual suicide, they would ghost each other after being in a two -week -long talking phase that entirely consisted of reuploaded TikToks of cute cats cuddling that the girl had already seen three months ago, but she pretended she hadn't.
Speaker 3 06:27
It was true love. The phrase to be or not to be would be simply reduced to is this an on -god or a for real moment? And instead of shaping the future of literature fundamentally for all generations with subversion upon retelling, upon subversion of the retelling being replaced with Mr Beast's type content in which William would give homeless people poems about their dream house.
Speaker 3 06:52
If Shakespeare existed today, we would barely notice him. He would be but one blip among millions on the radar of writers. Instead of comparing thee to a summer's day, he would write for the daily wire about how global warming is a myth perpetuated by China in an aim to get ahead of the West.
Speaker 3 07:08
He would write love poems about capitalism, slam poems about his favorite VPN company of the month, and angry poems about how wokeness is a tumor leaching life out of the literature community. If Shakespeare existed today, he would be a sock puppet, with morals so loose and stretched, 10 corporations could speak through him at once.
Speaker 3 07:27
If he existed today, he would write all his plays on a MacBook in a bougie gentrified cafe drinking $9 vanilla iced frappes. If he existed today, he would be a nepo baby sucking on the teat of pissing down economics, only allowed to exist not out of talent, but out of luck, being born to the right pair of rich and influential genitals.
Speaker 3 07:48
If Shakespeare existed today, he would spend his wealth on pet exotic animals held in a ranch where he lived out his lost childhood by sacrificing children to a god unknown. He would use the blood of the child's sacrifice to brush his teeth, wash out his mouth, and as a bidet in a twice weekly bath.
Speaker 3 08:06
If Shakespeare existed today, he would be a semi famous now washed up soundcloud rapper mumbling over peaking trap beats. He would overdose on cocaine while flying his private jet to get his groceries.
Speaker 3 08:17
He would be anything but a playwright.
Speaker 2 08:21
Thank you. Now I grew up with Shakespeare so when you performed that at the recent Youth Poetry Showcase it really caught my ear. What's the backstory for you to this poem?
Speaker 3 08:32
I have a friend who really loves Shakespeare and I thought it would be funny to write a poem that just completely, you know, took the mickey out of Shakespeare himself and took a very nihilistic view about the current state of the, you know, art industry.
Speaker 3 08:51
And yeah, I'd mostly just write it to, you know, poke fun at my friend and Shakespeare and have a bit of a healthy laugh, to be honest.
Speaker 2 09:01
But it's poking respectful fun at Shakespeare, which I really liked. Tell me, Drew, how do your experiences of performing your poetry influence the way you go about creating your work?
Speaker 3 09:15
There's a word that I often use when reading my own or somebody else's work, and that's flow. It describes how a thing sounds, how a stanza or a line or a whole poem just sounds, and it's smooth and it flows and it goes around and winds to a point and then off to another one.
Speaker 3 09:39
It doesn't have to be straightforward, it can be windy, think of a river, it's never really that straight, but that's the most important thing when performing is keeping someone engaged, and I think the best way to do that with poems, with any kind of writing or written content, is to keep that flow, keep that flow state and keep people questioning where you're going to go next.
Speaker 2 10:08
And how do you keep yourself on track with that flow? How do you discipline yourself to be able to achieve that?
Speaker 3 10:14
To me, I feel like it's just intuitive. It's not really something that I have to get a whip and self -flagellate about. It just comes naturally, like I read it out and it's like, that works, that doesn't work.
Speaker 3 10:29
That's too many words, that's not enough words. That's a pretty way of saying something, that's a pretty boring way of saying something. It's just whatever sounds good to you, I think.
Speaker 2 10:40
And it's interesting because I've spoken with a number of prose writers over the years just informally and a number of them have said that they read their work out loud, even though it's not meant to be performed, it's meant to be, you know, word on paper or word on screen these days, they still read it out loud just to get that confidence overall about how they're conveying their language and their meaning and the story.
Speaker 3 11:05
Yeah, I mean, like, language comes... like, spoken language comes before a written language. So, when you're writing something, it's... I always want it's helpful to make sure the sentences can be read in one breath, for example, or if you need to, breath's maybe put a comma.
Speaker 3 11:20
It's like... it's that kind of natural, intuitive thinking that I find is most helpful with writing.
Speaker 2 11:28
That's good. I hadn't spoken about punctuation very often with people, but yes, you'd need to bear that in mind. So that's another way in which performing your poetry then influences how you create the finished product.
Speaker 2 11:44
For many people, it would be quite nerve wracking to start performing poetry in public. And you mentioned before about having your face in your notebook the whole time when you did it first. But what experiences can you share with our listeners about how to prepare for a performance to warm up your voice and also manage any feelings of nervousness?
Speaker 2 12:05
So what would you say to young Drew going for the first time now that you've had that experience?
Speaker 3 12:14
I think that the biggest thing is nobody remembers anything, like people will remember what they liked, people will remember not as much what they didn't like. As long as you're at least average, which most people are, no one will care by the end of the night, and by the end of the week, no one will remember unless you absolutely blew their minds or you know, you had an accident on stage.
Speaker 3 12:41
Like, it's as long as you just stick within the comfortable average, you'll be fine. And like, while I don't, you know, I like to think I'm slightly above average when it comes to writing, but I like the first time I performed, I got so many compliments and there were so many people that were like, that was amazing.
Speaker 3 13:01
Just you going up there, I could see that you were like a bit nervous, but like, I felt like I was going to die, to be honest. And doing that, they were like, Oh, well, you were like, you were a little nervous.
Speaker 3 13:11
And I was, they're like, just, they just thought that I was a tiny, tiny bit nervous. But the most important thing is just no one will remember. And people will be inspired by you, I think. And that's the most heartening thing about it is people came up to me and were like, I'm going to perform because you performed and making bets with like new friends at open mics saying, I'll perform if you do.
Speaker 3 13:35
And it's that whole like collective, yeah, you feel responsible to your peers. I think that helps.
Speaker 2 13:43
That's fantastic and so the more you do it, the more you become familiar with the community as well as more confident in yourself about the delivery.
Speaker 3 13:54
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 13:55
And that's that's great advice to focus on what impact you might have with just one of your poems with one of the people listening that's a great way to think about it.
Speaker 3 14:05
Especially open mics, especially open mics. There's always someone who's come along, it's their first open mic, and they just need that one little push up onto the stage. And that could be if you're that person who needs that little push, there might be another person.
Speaker 3 14:19
And if you go up, then you can say it's your first time. Everyone would give you a wrap to us applause because it's so wonderful seeing someone perform for the very first time.
Speaker 2 14:28
That's brilliant, really supportive. On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Drew Cuffly, Spoken Word Poet and 2023 South Australian Poetry Slam finalist and writer of short stories and essays.
Speaker 2 14:50
Drew, would you perform another of your Spoken Word poems for us?
Speaker 3 14:55
Yeah of course. This one harkens back to when we talked about my hip -hop influence. I write a lot of things with complex, rhyme styles. And this is called Locomotives. These public executions, photo op, destitution, holocop, restitution, wrestling, air pollution.
Speaker 3 15:13
A friend of mine told me cities run on railway lines of powder, and that slender frames of mine fold under the pressures of gunpowder, but no fun allowed her to study better. Say it louder, I'm sorry, but I speak in lowercase letter headers.
Speaker 3 15:29
I'm ready to foul out this algorithm like the uncleaned automatic rifles crowd, while out front with the death -of -him -a -fun fiend erratic causing coppers' trifles. 21st century careers out here paint -chipping, licking the railway for faint highs, clipping like the audio track on the Handicamp footage, no broody o -deed on the Brandywine footbridge.
Speaker 3 15:52
You send a handicapped child onto the tracks to make an artistic chef smidge, render out the fat from the rightly riled protesters, and fry the pizza guy in the lard and keep the leftovers of his cleft palate in the fridge.
Speaker 3 16:05
Allow for theft in the ballots, and remember the left hand gets the mallet, and the chest pain gets the fenty, hefty dosage in the vein, plenty, train spotting in the public park. Locomotives have crazy intentions, anything stiff to stick in the scab, anything with a whiff of H in the drab.
Speaker 3 16:21
He gets the rubber band tattoo around the bicep. Spots are bother too for the tricep, he gets the tracks permanent to avoid suspicion, he tied themself to him, now suspicion is permanent. Main goal is to get numb, dumb, lacking all substance, packing subtext and reluctance, she's packing heat with abundance and she's no fun to dance with, she makes you hop, bang, bang, bang.
Speaker 3 16:44
None of them are Philly, none of them are even from Philly, no cheese steak to peg them with, quickly move on like, freeze skates, cheese, wait, please, hey, this year's squeeze plate ready to impest with the Steeze straight jacket and grippy socks, death grips the throat of the breeze, it's wheezing, grieving for the fate of it all.
Speaker 3 17:01
I don't know anything at all, I ring my neurons out for some substance, but really though, I don't know anything at all. Not even a smidge of an atom left over from that handicapped child, steadily headed towards a trapped grandchild, the world's burning around us, readily chapped lips around the reviled manchild, some call him Elon, others call him Bezos, I call him dinner though, call me the Skinner show, reckless with winter blows, speckless plates and beginner flows, jet fuel cakes iced with molten steel, nothing abates the swollen chest, peeling, reeling in the stolen crests, squealing rhymes, none of them quite that appealing, bite marks up his arm like wheel tracks in mud, scarring makes up half his skin, fielder intense in his back, skin hot, coursing hot blood, flushing cheeks with a flood of red wine, bed wetter, no fine dining in this hall of mine, sprawling rhymes hidden with a twist of lime in this trying time, or stop with this boring crime, stop trawling through line after line, the railway tracks are drying up anyway.
Speaker 2 18:04
Well, that is full of internal rhymes, so many of them. I've got lots of questions now from that, starting with how do you keep track of all those rhymes?
Speaker 3 18:16
Um, I mostly just, I write it based on the previous line, or the previous stanza, so I set up a rhyme scheme and I look for rhymes with those words and then I continue the story. So that's why it goes all over the place, because it's like, not written with an end goal in mind, it's just a writing exercise really, like, I write, oh, dissect it line by line, you know, like a friend of mine, and then slender frames of mind, it's similar to that, like they, I just rhyme, I pick out words that seem like they might have good rhymes, and then I rhymed them in the next line, and wherever my mind takes me is where the poem goes.
Speaker 3 18:57
It's, yeah, it's a bit complicated, but it's mostly intuition.
Speaker 2 19:03
And that was a great example, your poem of the complexity of the structures that you do use. And I had a question from a listener to the program a while back. And that was, could I ask from time to time, how long it takes a poet to write a poem or a novelist to write a book?
Speaker 2 19:23
I would imagine that it varies from poem to poem in your case. Do you, do you recall roughly how long it took you between concept and completion of that poem?
Speaker 3 19:35
I got 90% of the way there in about two hours and then I left it for a couple weeks and came back and finished it in about another half an hour. But I don't like to go back and edit my poems, I like to, you know, write it and once it's done I'll let it sit and just read it when I have a fresh state of mind.
Speaker 3 19:57
But I know poets that take, they spend months on single poems, single stanzas even, but I try to try and avoid that. I just like, if I had to think of something I'd just write a new poem, really.
Speaker 2 20:10
two and a half hours to produce such an incredibly rich and quite long poem. That's remarkable. Now, we mentioned earlier that you are a 2023 South Australian Poetry Slam finalist. What have you learned through from your experiences taking part in poetry slam competitions specifically?
Speaker 3 20:32
I guess the main thing I've learned is to drop the complicated rhymes when performing in slams, because a lot of people find it quite overwhelming. And that's, you know, it is like when you're in slams, especially in the spoken word essay slams, that audience is the judge, there are random people picked out.
Speaker 3 20:50
So you want to perform something that everyone can relate to. And while, as much as I love complex rhyme schemes, they do make it a bit obtuse and opaque. So I try and in my other poems, I try and be very straightforward, straight to the point and just like blunt almost call things out and just say what I'm thinking directly with little to no implication or anything in between the lines really.
Speaker 2 21:24
Drew, I have another question that I've been asking guests on this programme. How do you go about creating your works? Do you have a favourite place where you like to write, or does it vary?
Speaker 3 21:35
It varies. Generally, lately, I've been really enjoying sitting out on the deck and looking out at the garden and just writing what comes to mind. And it's a form of meditation for me really. So any relaxing environment is nice, but one time I forgot my headphones on the bus, so I wrote a poem about it instead.
Speaker 3 21:56
And there are times like that when it just hits you.
Speaker 2 22:00
So do you keep a notebook or do you use your phone?
Speaker 3 22:03
I use my phone and my laptop. I have a cloud service that I just have everything on and then I download backups to keep it safe. But yeah.
Speaker 2 22:15
Do you also write short stories and essays? Would you tell us more about those?
Speaker 3 22:20
Yeah, I actually started writing poetry because I got writer's block and it was just taking too long to finish these longer form pieces, so I just wanted to complete something. But yeah, I originally started writing essays and short stories, but short stories came after the essays.
Speaker 3 22:43
I was one of those psychopaths in school that loved essays and absolutely just loved arguing and not arguing, but like discourse, debate, that kind of stuff. So I absolutely love writing, like Orwell is a big inspiration for me, and as well as Tolkien, and I love creating these little snippets into worlds with short stories.
Speaker 2 23:11
I enjoy reading both Orwell and Tolkien. I think I was quite old when I first read Lord of the Rings and wished I'd read it earlier and I'm sure I will read it again. I absolutely adored that trilogy.
Speaker 2 23:25
And I think you mentioned before about debating. It's such a good way to learn when you have to defend a position. It makes you think about it and then explore reasons why not to support your own position.
Speaker 2 23:38
So yeah, it's a great learning tool.
Speaker 3 23:40
Yeah, my friends and I have this game where we come up with, you know, like a... have to defend something apparent, and that the game is to find a valid argument to do that, and it's just a good thought exercise to get your mind working.
Speaker 2 23:57
and then come up with arguments about why not to defend.
Speaker 3 24:01
Of course.
Speaker 2 24:03
defend that. Drew, could we have another spoken word poem, please?
Speaker 3 24:09
Certainly, let me just find it. This poem is a lot more narrative focused. It's called Don't fret. Cloth draped over your form, the colours of the sunrise, golden sunlight, highlights, cold, stiff you shiver in loose robes.
Speaker 3 24:29
The sun moves behind you, it's warm, soulful, kind, its light fills you wholly with a flood of warmth, the wind nagging your robes away from hugging your skin, a seaside cliff to your back, it's dead silent other than gusts of ocean breeze.
Speaker 3 24:48
Meditation takes your mind, breathing in and out, in and out. You think of times when you held your breath, when she was on top of you moving up and down, you didn't know what you wanted but it was anything other than what was happening.
Speaker 3 25:07
You bring your mind back to centre, you breathe in, you breathe out, feeling the sea breeze nibble at your exposed skin, feeling the cloth draped over you flapping your belly letting out pleasant noises of digestion, your mind wanders, you bring it back, it wanders and splits off, wandering, herding thoughts like cats prone to pissing in the wind.
Speaker 3 25:33
You feel like you're falling, your stomach occupies the space previously taken up by your windpipe, you open your eyes, your breathing quickens to a haste you've never felt air rushing past, each molecule of air is akin to a mundane memory all flooding your mind like air rammed and compressed into a jet engine intake.
Speaker 3 25:53
You close your eyes and hold your breath and your face meets the rocks below. Crunching, cracking, sounds unheard of until now but they deeply felt. They resonate an echo within your now broken skull as your legs wrap round to meet the rest of you.
Speaker 3 26:13
As your body contorts and spills its innards into the rock pools you feel less, stretched, flexed, stressed and malformed beyond your breaking point, your brain matter now spread like nut butter along the toast coloured sea rocks.
Speaker 3 26:28
You bring your mind back to centre, sweeping their little giblets into a dustpan and mopping up the rocks ringing neurons out the mop into a bucket along with the rest of you, repackaging what was disseminated among the pools into a self that can be made sense of.
Speaker 3 26:46
You breathe in, you breathe out, the lungs in the bucket inflate and deflate in time with your breathing and you bring your mind back to centre and you breathe, letting thoughts rush by like a warm breeze.
Speaker 3 27:02
The crabs in your mind pools gobble up the remnants don't fret, nothing is wasted, they love the taste of your memories.
Speaker 2 27:14
That's beautiful, I really love that. Thank you so much. And Drew, just before we finish, I'd love to ask you, when you're not writing or performing poetry, what do you enjoy doing?
Speaker 3 27:26
are so many things. Listening to music, watching movies, favorite director, probably David Fincher or Denis Villeneuve, working on my card that's always broken, working on my friend's cards that are always broken, playing games, hanging out with friends, camping, cooking, so many things.
Speaker 2 27:48
That's wonderful and I wish you all the best with all of those. Thank you so much for being on our program, Drew. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Drew Cuffley, spoken word poet and 2023 South Australian Poetry Slam finalist and writer of short stories and essays.
Speaker 2 28:06
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.
Speaker 1 28:39
Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio .org for more.
Speaker 3 28:50
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