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 and people who support writers and writing. I'm Kate Cooper and our guest on today's program is Matthew Erdely, kindergarten teacher, podcaster, superfan of the Adelaide performing arts scene, events curator, including of spoken word poetry and variety nights and self-described chronic puzzle addict. Welcome to the program Matthew. Would you tell us about your earliest memories of attending a performing arts event?
Speaker 3 00:59
Absolutely, and thanks for having me. Earliest one that I can think of that really sparked a love of spoken word and performing arts in general was the Crown Enceptor maybe 10 to 15 years ago. There was a variety night. It was called Monday Night for the Lonely Soul. If I, my memory serves me correctly and there was music, there was comedy, I think there was a clown, maybe a magician on there, and there was some poetry there. And it just blew me away because it caught me at the right time in my life. So it was very much a case of like, it's kind of lost, not really sure what to do. Someone dragged me along to this event and it was, it just blew my mind and I had to go back next week and then I had to go back the week after that and then a love, a real love for the performing arts in general and spoken word was in some ways born then.
Speaker 2 01:57
So that inspired your love of spoken word, events. What inspired you to actually start getting involved in hosting them yourself?
Speaker 3 02:08
Let's go on a bit of a tangent there to sort of answer that question. I've always been inspired by artists and performers, like whether we're talking like say Rondlemore and you've got some buskers who are just, you know, singing their hearts out and regardless of whether there's a big audience or any audience at all, they're giving their all when you go to, when you go to events as a viewer, as just an attendee, like not a performer yourself. And you sit back and think like, these guys are, these guys, these people, they're amazing. They, I just really felt like I wanted to contribute and find a stage and share them with other people.
And so from at least 10 years, maybe more ago, I've just really liked the idea of bringing people together in events, on on a stage and giving them the stage and trying to encourage an audience to come out and enjoy what they do, what they're good at. And so I've always really believed in and been passionate about providing a stage for, for artists. And so, so to bring basically, to bring the artists to the people.
Speaker 2 03:28
So how do you go about doing that? How do you find people? How do you set up an evening?
Speaker 3 03:33
Well, I guess it comes down to networking, really, like if you start, like with a blank canvas, you've got nothing to work with. So you need to go and get your materials. And so I just went to events. So coming from Monday night for the Lonely Soul, which kind of sparked it in many ways, I started to like, I went up to the artists afterwards, the performers and say, Hey, I really liked what you did. My name's Matthew. What's yours? You know, that kind of thing. Just not, I didn't have any thoughts of podcasts or, you know, hosting events at that point. But basically, just you build connections by just going to events.
And if there's someone that you like, something that they did that you like, just go up and say, Hey, I really like that, you know, introduce yourself, make a connection and you're likely to be, you know, friendly at terms with them. And so like, you know, if something does come up, you've got that connection. So I, the first step was just getting out and seeing events myself and building connections that way. And once I had those connections, it was kind of easy to draw upon, to draw upon people who, in some ways, I'd consider friends to come along for the ride and joining me on these events.
So getting out there, meeting people, going to events, introducing yourself, and then just kind of going for it. So like, you get to also know a lot of venues in the process. And so you, you have an idea of what's available and what might suit your particular invent in mind. But yeah, just, I just recommend getting out there and going to events, building connections.
Speaker 2 05:15
And I certainly agree. I know one of the ways in which I've been able to invite guests onto this program is by attending events like live poetry readings, poetry showcases, and so forth, writers essay events, and speaking with people, building those networks, as you say, and Adelaide being Adelaide, a lot of people know a lot of people, so you talk with someone, they know somebody else, and it does grow organically that way. And I know from the Spoken Word poets who we've had on this program, they really appreciate people coming up to them at Spoken Word events and giving them positive feedback after their performances, so that in itself is really great to do as well.
Speaker 3 05:59
Yeah, it's just a really nice community. There's a lot of nice communities, but the spoken word community itself is pretty wholesome. It's nice, it's supportive, and it was one of... Some would say that spoken word is very cathartic as well. Of course, it's not just about healing. There's a lot of spoken words about that, but it's just nice to be heard, and that's very, very important. The specific spoken word night that I hosted down at Port Adelaide, the good word, it's now called The Voice Box, which is amazing, should check it out. I'll give it a plug later, maybe. But I had held a variety night down there, a sort of a variety night where I brought together improv comedy, which is also another massive love of mine. Improv comedy, spoken words, and music, I believe, on the night.
And then the venue, the venue owners contacted me a while later they were thinking about what nights that they could have, and they particularly gelled with the spoken word artist that was on that night, and they just asked me if I was interested in putting it together. So just be brave and get out there and host and create your own events.
Speaker 2 07:15
Fantastic. And the word supportive has been used, I think, by every spoken word poet who I've spoken with on this program. So there's a definite strength and warmth in the spoken word poetry community around Adelaide and loads of events.
Speaker 3 07:32
it's crazy. Whatever your interest is, there's something out there for you. I'm sure some of your previous guests might have mentioned it, but the Adelaide Poetry gig guide on Facebook just has a crazy amount of events you could check out.
Speaker 2 07:48
There are in so many that sometimes you have to choose on a night. Which one do I go to this month?
Speaker 3 07:54
Yeah, it's exciting. And sometimes it gets to the point where there are competing nights, sorry, competing events on one particular night. And that's how, like, the scene in Adelaide is amazing.
Speaker 2 08:06
it certainly is. And do you have particular poetry genres that you like or particular poets who appeal to you within the range of spoken word poetry but also beyond with written published poetry?
Speaker 3 08:23
when it comes to poetry, I'm definitely a purveyor of live poetry. So, and then that, I guess, constricts me in for want of a better word, to the local, the local scene. So in terms of maybe the style of poetry, like, I love variety. I love variety. I'm a massive fan of variety. So anything that's even slightly different, I will just like, yes, I want that. I want that in my life. I want more of it. And so a couple of, a couple of spoken word artists that kind of stand out immediately jump out to one, Martin Christmas, he, he's a bit of a legend in the local performing arts theatre scene here in South Australia. And he is like, what's the, what's the Forrest Gump quote about that, you know, the box of chocolates, like, your life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Martin Christmas is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get from him.
So he always, he's always taking risks and chances. And it'll be like, some of it will be shocking. Some of it will be really sweet. Some of it will be just like performance art, like you'll get amongst the crowd. And so I really love his kind of in-your-face sort of style. It's you just never know what you're going to get. And so I love that. But then also on a similar note, I really like Avalanche. He is this, another legend of the local scene goes by Avalanche. I'm sure he's got a non Avalanche name out there, but he, you know, came from overseas many moons ago. And he is very like, he's got like a, how would I describe it, like a primal kind of guttural kind of edge, edge to his, his work.
And it's very like, there's a little bit of an adrenaline kind of rush experiencing his, his spoken word. So that's kind of stuff. It just wakes you up. Like, you know, if you're half listening, like, you're just in the moment. And it's great. I also really like Philip Bleak. He, he's incredible storyteller. He's a really great musician in his own right. I think that really is his songwriting comes through to his spoken word. And he's got a voice you could just like listen to for hours and hours and hours on end. Like you really, he's just a great storyteller. And yeah, really allows the listener to get, to almost become the person that he's talking about.
Speaker 2 11:02
Yeah, I think for me going to spoken word poetry events really is a window to the soul in ways that just reading words on paper can't really be.
Speaker 3 11:14
Yeah, like it's reading great poetry is it's great. You know, you can you get a sense of the brilliance of the person and they're great at painting pictures. But when it comes to spoken word and performing at there is just extra elements that just fire off fire off in the brain. It's much more memorable. Because you've got the emotion of the person like how what their face looks like what are their eyes doing and how is their voice sound like what's their body posture like and what are they what are they doing like physically and then on top of that you've got the everyone else around you you may be the only person in the room which is cool that's fine but you have an audience and like the the gaffes or you know like the the classic spoken word supporting of clicking fingers it's there's a lot more elements to it.
Speaker 2 12:07
So we've talked about some of the rewards of hosting a spoken word poetry event. What are some of the challenges of doing that? What sort of things do you have to think about?
Speaker 3 12:18
Yeah, that's actually, that's a really good, that's a really good question. From a bit of a selfish point of view, I would say, just the physical side of it. So rocking up month after month, you might have had a long day, like leading up to it, usually spoken word events are in the evening. So physically, you might be tired, but you're going to have to give all this energy to your audience and to the artists that you have on stage. So that's just one practical thing that you need to do. Open mics kind of generally take care of themselves. If you have a good event, people are going to rock up to it and people are going to feel supported and welcome and they will sort of line up to, to read and to read and share.
But sometimes you don't get that many. It's kind of a little a bit random in that sense. You have, I guess, a practical thing which is can be challenging for people to deal with is when you know, you're out in public, you know, you might have people come in that are not part of your community. And then, you know, particularly who they might just present, how do I put this in a PC way, challenging behaviors that could relate to a number of different things. But it's like how to deal with like, you know, hecklers or people who aren't sort of used to the etiquette of a spoken word night and how to deal with that. And so that's definitely a challenge and then just simply motivating yourself to, to keep doing it night after night after night and finding the love, just finding the love and the passion for it.
Speaker 2 14:01
On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation programme Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Matthew Erdely, kindergarten teacher, podcaster and events curator. Matthew, this next question is in several parts. Would you tell us the story of artists unearthed? Your podcast, The Focus, what inspired you to create this podcast, what skills you had to learn and how you went about that, how you sourced your guests and how you got the episodes on to Spotify?
Speaker 3 14:35
How much time do we have I could take this whole podcast with this question alone? So I guess we'll go with a genesis of it and sort of how how it came to be have to go on another tangent here So I had a group going for a while and I'd love to bring it back. There's this group called juice It was like a very silly kind of acronym. It was basically just us Innovators creating enterprise. It was very it was a very wacky kind of acronym that basically it was an ideas group and so we had everyone has ideas that they Be amazing if I did this it'd be amazing if I Created this event or it'd be really funny if and then you just lose it. You just lose these ideas.
You don't get people generally don't write them down They're spur of the moment don't write them down or talk to people So I created a group we caught up for coffee like once once a month And we just talked about ideas and one of the ideas that came out of that shout out to Luke Baker And Sarah Jane Justice who was also part of that group one of the ideas that came out of that was a podcast It's like, ah, it'd be cool if I did a podcast like I love spoken word artists I love performing artists in Adelaide and I think there's a lot of cool stories and Like expertise and knowledge and just their pure talent.
I didn't just be great to share that with people. So I was like alright podcast. I'd be cool if I did a podcast it was Just an idea for quite quite a while, but eventually Luke and Sarah that I mentioned before they Spurred me on motivated me to get it done and then I was like alright cool I'm just gonna call up the parks library shout out to the every all the staff there at the parks library It's a fantastic community venue They have an amazing media room and I just called them up and I just booked a time I didn't really have much of a plan at that stage But I just did it and then that kind of forced me to get a move on and just like alright What am I gonna do?
So the idea came from the ideas group and then it was about Setting up just finding finding guests and because I had been to a lot of events held my own events Networked like I was saying before I went to love events introduced myself I had a good list of people to draw from and thankfully they all said yes so sourcing artists was easy easy for that and then we had It was learning to how to how to use the media room itself. I used a program called audacity and it was pretty user friendly, but there's a lot of skills I had to try to develop and a lot of watching like YouTube videos and Just learning on the fly so I think I did a reasonable job Coming from my knowledge base and level at the end And as for like how I got say the episodes Onto Spotify did a quick Google and I found Spotify for podcasters.
So you can just Google that and it's Pretty easy user friendly You can upload your episodes once edited to that and you can also give a schedule for like when you want to release them And it has some basic like stats and stuff like how People listen to it. So yeah, Spotify for podcasters and yeah, it was a challenging experience like it Probably was about a year From just six episodes because I you know life got in the way. Sometimes it does that, but yeah super proud that I got it done. But yeah, it's mostly editing skills where the main ones, main skills that I had to sort of pick up on the way and I'll just generally how to speak to people.
Like I'm really enjoying this interview right now. I think you're an absolute pro and so I'm really, like it's I'm picking up a lot of skills off you. But like I I didn't have anything to draw from at the time So it's like how do I how do I interview people? How do I talk like where do I the mics and so much stuff I could go on with with that a lot
Speaker 2 18:41
Well, you're very kind and having listened, I was impressed with the quality of your podcast. So you did a good job and you had a quirky, cool approach to how to get started. But I'll leave it for our listeners who are interested in following through. But I did want to ask you, because it is nerve -wracking producing a program or a podcast that's widely available. So what experiences can you share about how you manage those feelings of nervousness when you set out?
Speaker 2 19:13
Did your experience hosting live events help you in that regard, or was it a different kind of feeling?
Speaker 3 19:20
Oh, different kind of feeling like there's nervousness, pretty much no matter what you do, particularly in a public setting where there's, you know, speaking involved, like for the spoken word events, it was, you know, you've got a lot of people in front of you. And it's just sometimes it's hard. You don't have scripts. So it's like, what do you, what do you even say? So it became easy with the spoken word night, because once I had done the first one, like that one actually started out with other people hosting, I just kind of put it together and just let other people host it. And then it wasn't, it didn't feel right. So you just kind of have to dive in with your feet first, head first, can't think of dive in with some sort of body part, leading the way and just take those steps and do it.
But yeah, managing it, you just repetition. So you just, you just make, I just like to, I like to make, just make room for whatever I'm feeling. So, like, you just like, this is going into like, potentially a different area, it's going to now become a self help, self help episode, everyone. But basically, like, accepting whatever it is that you're feeling, I'm feeling nervous, where am I feeling it? And then calming myself, breathing into it, making room for it. And that feelings of nervousness, anxiety, whatever it is that might come up will naturally go away by themselves.
And so once you have made room for it, you've accepted it, made room for it, you can send to yourself, reconnect with whatever your values are, whatever your goals are in the current, like, task you're trying to do, regards to the, to the podcast or whatever it is you're doing out there. And then it's just much easier to sort of move forward. So that's, I think, what I tried to try to focus on. And then once I had, you know, one episode recorded, I was like, okay, I'm up to the second episode.
I'm feeling nervous, whatever I'm like, well, I've already done one episode. I've done one, I can do two. I've done two, I can do four. And then, you know, made it to six. And that was awesome, as I'm more than I thought I would do to begin. So yeah, I just try to make room for what, accept and make room for whatever it is that you're feeling and life will find a way.
Speaker 2 21:36
It does, and I think the nervousness is about wanting things to work and staying sharp and being focused when you're when you're involved. You mentioned before about learning the editing skills, and one of the things that I've loved about doing this program is the technical side, is conducting an interview but then doing the editing and behind the scenes afterwards. It's wonderful to learn new skills in that regard and I can assure you you're never too old to learn so tell us a little bit more about your experiences of doing the editing.
Speaker 3 22:12
Yeah. That was just, it was all on the fly. So the editing, like the program I used at the media room at the parks library was called Audacity. And that's, it's pretty much like an entry level kind of program. It's very, it's pretty straightforward. It can be overwhelming because there's lots of different things you can do, whether it's levels, you know, cutting out, like noise reduction, like cutting out background sounds, like editing, editing, like inserting like silence and pauses to get like a feel to a flow for the conversation that's happening.
I still feel like I'm a bit of a, what is it, a green thumb? There's lots of body part kind of metaphors today. So I'm still pretty raw when it comes to that, that sort of side of things, but the great thing in this, this day and age is you have a lot of resources out there that you can go to. So go to YouTube or just Google, you know, some videos on whatever it is that you need to do. And there's help readily available. And also, you know, my experience is limited to the parks library for this podcast, but the staff there were amazing and a great help as well. So just draw on the, draw on the people around you.
Speaker 2 23:37
And it's great to do a shout out to the wonderful people in our libraries across South Australia for sure. And the technical side of producing a podcast or a program is really good fun as well. It's so enjoyable.
Speaker 3 23:50
It is. It is. That was kind of one thing that I wasn't actually expecting was like the creative side. You guess, you've got to edit and, you know, you've got to try to, you can only include in the podcast what it is that, that makes the podcast work. There's a lot you just have to cut out, like, you know, some banter or, you know, just things happen that you just cut out. But the creative process was actually really fun. You know, like splicing in, like, other elements from outside of the podcast, whether it's like wacky sound effects or, you know, yeah, but the creative, the creative side was actually was really cool.
Like, yes, it can be tedious, like the editing and whatnot can be tedious. It can take a very long time, but they having like creative control over it was cool. Like, you know, you're finding your intro or your outro music, blending that into the we have on the podcast, you have the loose kind of overview of that was we'd have a conversation and then we'd have like an example of their work performance. And it was just really cool sharing that and fitting that in the creative process was really cool.
Speaker 2 25:04
I love that word splicing, it takes me back to the early mid-80s when I did some radio volunteering and back then we used to splice with reel-to-reel tape, like real splicing. So nowadays we cut and paste in a digital environment, so it's different but still fun. Matthew, before we finish, let's talk about what you do when you're not hosting poetry events or working on a podcast. What do you enjoy?
Speaker 3 25:32
Oh boy, there's a lot to talk about here. So a couple of the things that I really enjoyed doing at the moment. I really enjoy playing dodgeball. So dodgeball often associated with a high school kind of sport for most people or the movie of course. It's actually really popular in Adelaide. There's a lot of nights that we play on, lots of leagues, and it goes all the way from like a local level up to international level. There's a World Cup this year, which is pretty cool in Austria. For dodgeball, it's crazy. But Adelaide dodgeball, check it out on Facebook if you can. And so I like playing dodgeball, I like playing sports.
I'm a massive reader, so I've got a book here actually, which I was going to find a cafe maybe afterwards or later on and just sit down and read. It's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and it's fantastic. So I love reading, try to get through a couple of books a month. I'm sort of old -fashioned, but I think one day I will get on the audiobooks and I do enjoy actors doing their voiceovers. So I like reading, I like dodgeball, I like doing puzzles. I like just spending time with cats walking where I can really. So there's a few things that I like doing, but yeah, massive reader, huge reader.
Speaker 2 26:56
Me too. Matthew, it's been lovely to speak with you on the program. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Matthew Erdely, kindergarten teacher, podcaster, superfan of the Adelaide performing arts scene, event curator, including of spoken word poetry and variety nights, and self-described chronic puzzle addict.
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. 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 2 28:04
Vision Australia Radio. Blindness, Low Vision, Opportunity.
