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 Max Levy, poet and producer of the Folk& Words events at the Grace Emily Hotel. Welcome to the program, Max.
Speaker 3 00:38
Thanks so much for having me on, Kate.
Speaker 2 00:40
I'd like to begin with a question that I've asked a number of guests on this program. Would you tell us about the places where you grew up and what those places mean to you now?
Speaker 3 00:50
Yeah, certainly. I was born in London, South West London in a town called Twickenham, which is where my parents lived at the time they'd moved to England in the mid-90s during the job crisis in Australia and stayed a while longer than they expected to. We were there till 2006, shortly after my younger brother was born, and then we migrated to Australia, straight to Adelaide, because most of our families here, at least on my mother's side. England's a place I do really want to revisit quite badly. I was hoping to get there. At the end of this year, but I think it's a little bit of a pipe dream, at least for now.
But hopefully sometime next year I'd love to go back to England. We've got family friends there, and there's just so much English culture that I'd love to reconnect with, and go to football games and Irish pubs, and visit monuments and the grave sites of some of my favourite English authors and Polish musicians. But yeah, since then I've been in Adelaide, which is also a city that I absolutely adore. I'm a staunch supporter of the arts culture in Adelaide, and I just, yeah, I love being able to go out, see live music, see anything you want all the time.
There's such a great culture here, and I love how small Adelaide is, but I can walk to the city, and it's 10 -15 minutes to the hills, 10 -15 minutes to the beach, like just everything's so close, and it's mostly walkable as well, at least in the city. So yeah, I see myself staying in Adelaide for quite a while with trips to England here and there in between.
Speaker 2 02:18
Well, we have that in common because I grew up in the southeast of England and came to Adelaide and likewise, you know, you belong somewhere sort of, but to me, I get that feeling of coming home when I've been away and I fly back into Adelaide. So Adelaide means home to me for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Tell me, Max, what are your earliest memories of working creatively?
Speaker 3 02:43
Like most people, it's probably art classes in early primary school. I've always been a big reader. Writing came a little a little later, but I used to really, really love drawing. My best friend in primary school, we basically bonded over drawing. That's what draw us together. I'd draw us together, of course, forgive the pun. But I used to actually get really bad grades in art class. And my mum recently reminded me of this. She told me that I used to go around helping other students complete their art projects, so I actually never finished my own. So I ended up getting quite poor grades throughout all of our classes.
But I kind of started writing stories more so in adolescence, or maybe even preteens. I was obsessed with this African-American author called Walter Dan Myers, who wrote essentially basketball novels. I was a big basketball fan. I love playing basketball, but he wrote stories about these kind of teenagers that would go to a new school, play basketball and kind of like shop the world and all that. So I started writing stories like that that were just yeah, pretty blatant ripoffs. But still, yeah, really fun to experiment with that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 03:52
And people's first writings are often imitative, they're inspired by writers they love, that's often what gets people started. So when did you first become interested in poetry and what was it that most appealed to you about this form of expression?
Speaker 3 04:10
Poetry is still a pretty new thing in my creative life, I guess. I probably started writing them maybe two years ago and I actually really, really didn't enjoy learning poetry in high school. I don't know if it was just the selected content or it just didn't connect with me when I was younger, but I really loved it in the last couple of years though. I don't actually remember like why I started writing my first few poems. I think it was just a case of like some sort of creative inspiration from reading or seeing something. I did start going at open mic nights initially as a spectator a couple years ago, performed at my first open mic. That was at a cafe in Semaphore. They had this little soapbox event where anyone could go up and do music or poetry. And that was really fun.
And yeah, I really love poetry. What draws me to it is that it's kind of very freeform and I don't feel restricted by some of the rules or maybe guidelines of alternative kind of literary practices. I love being able to muse on like my own reflections, experiences, emotions are obviously very important. And then you're free to either just simply reflect on how you feel or things that have happened to you or you can turn them into, you can fictionalise them with metaphor, allegory, all sorts of things. Yeah, and then I also love the kind of romanticism and lyrical elements of poetry as well, although I'm not particularly drawn to rhyming schemes.
What I love about poetry is that there's kind of no rules and I don't like to be boxed in by a rhyming scheme. If I have something I want to say, I don't want that particular line to be limited by having to end with a particular sound when there could be a word that I would much prefer to use in that context. But at the same time, I really like half rhymes because yeah, it just lets you experiment with a lot more different sounding words and internal rhyme is really fun as well. And often I'll find myself, this is going to sound like some sort of weird brag, but it's not. But often I'll find that I'll write something and then realize afterwards that I've made it rhyme with half rhyme or internal rhyme and it was, yeah, sort of accidental. But yeah, it's a really fun outlet for me that I really enjoy.
Speaker 2 06:29
So Max, would you read one of your poems for us now?
Speaker 3 06:32
Yeah, absolutely. I have this poem called Boston that I wrote in Boston. I was recently in on the east coast of America a few weeks ago. Yeah, so this one is about my time in Boston, things I noticed while I was there.
Getting lost in foreign Boston, red brick walls, cobblestone paths, the architecture of America, future past, sirens, blaring down Lewis Prang, where our search for Isabella Gardner began. Marble steps, horseback nights, armor, dutch paintings and fireplaces, a Venetian courtyard of stone balconies, down Evans Way, dad knows the way to Back Bay and the Revolution Hotel, the street smell of weed and cigarettes.
Speaker 3 07:15
But this city that I love when I soon won't forget brims with the atmosphere of student life in Harvard Yard, the Widener Library, stone parts, elm trees, sacred cemeteries, the whole city is a museum of fine art, laying on a lawn, reading John Dunn, the soft sonnets of European religion, Western romance and Franco Harra's sporadic stammers of Madison Avenue. New York awake and alive and to Adelaide, my heart cries to my friends who I miss, who I'm reminded of all the time, walking down Charles Street, looking inside Helen's Leather, where Australian boots, the ones I walk this city in, bring me memories of Olivia and Ned.
My bag fills with pins, each a landmark and a memory, a pin point to the points. I imagine for weeks to Northeastern, I walk the wind tussles my hair gently and I'm without care nor worry. Passing students in outfits, I admire deli, Starbucks and admirable street cars, apartment rentals, diamonds and falafels, archways of golden stone, ribbon suitcases, pizza houses and more paths lined in red bricks. New England, the YMCA of the East, waiting for tear beneath a bustling bar, a hole in the ground, a song to be found amidst young Bostonians. The students of history and creation, the ever awake sleepers of bunk beds, subway carts and great state halls.
Ben Franklin was baptised in the church that now looms above me like a red sun and Bunker Hill, where the monument soars. Two hundred and ninety four steps, the arduous climb unattempted but admired from the path below. This the celebration of American defeat in Boston, but the great victory later achieved at large and abounding. My Boston Tea Party took place in the cafe beneath the Venetian Palace, so out of place in the American industrial cityscape of Western belief and capital, where motels surround bars, surround banks, surround parks, surround castles, surround cars, surround balconies, surround plazas, surround colonial art, surround death, surround dark, looming towers and springtime sweet golden fountain of laughter.
I took a restroom break in Cheesecake Factory, a ridiculous place where ambient oranges illuminate the urinals and the drenched poignant aroma washes the oak tables in tea leaves and charred sizzling meats. Down Huntington Avenue, a long stretch indeed. And I feel free here, breathing the air and the second hand legal weed, red, blue and white stars. The flag flies freely on every corner and on every post. It's not possible to forget you're in America when you're in America. These boots on my feet have taken me far with minimal pain, past stained glass and shiny 7-elevens, street food vendors and red brick department buildings that are built identically but beautiful, it's unique in their exterior expression.
On Wednesday, I'll say my farewell and be driving the highway to Rhode Island, then Connecticut, Philadelphia, Virginia and Washington at last before home. To Boston, I will wave goodbye, but in my memories, the city, its people, its springtime blue skies, its red walkways of history and time will survive forever and ever in these long and wistful lines.
Speaker 2 10:15
Thank you so much. As I'm listening to you, I think of the term documentary poetry by which I mean, I felt like I was walking along with you. I could feel the experience. I've never been to Boston, but I could sense the connectedness between history and present, which is obviously of interest to you. Yeah, I don't know if the term documentary poetry exists, but if it doesn't, you've just created it.
Speaker 3 10:45
Yeah, that's fun, that's lovely. It's not something I've heard of either, but yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. I guess it's something that I do enjoy doing, expressing my observations and trying to turn them into something artistic.
Speaker 2 10:56
Now you said before that poetry didn't grab you while you were at school, but before we came on air we were talking about writers who've influenced you, so are there particular poets who've influenced your work and if so why are they important to you?
Speaker 3 11:12
Yeah. Yeah, there's a few. And they're all kind of from different realms. Some of the influences so that I return to constantly are my favorite Americans. Frank O 'Hara, whose book, Lunch Poems, I read while I was in New York, which was very immersive, I guess, because he writes so much about just observing things in New York. I love Jack Kerouac. I love Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, just the beat writers. There's something so fascinating about that time, the abstract expressionism, reflections on reality, social, political commentary.
First time I read Allen Ginsberg's How, I was just completely blown away by how visceral and raw, and it's controversial, and it's outrageous, and it's graphic. But the repetition of his observations is so beautiful, and it's personal, but also deeply representative of the things that he notices. And then the beats, like Satire, they're very, very funny, Kerouac's hilarious, Burroughs is outrageously funny. Sometimes reading his short stories or novels, you kind of just have to put the page, like put the book down and just kind of laugh because you've just read the most outrageous thing you've ever, you've ever heard.
But I also love some of the romantics, like Baudelaire comes to mind, kind of reading him expose me to those kind of like romantic and deep, beautiful, lush descriptions of environments or towns or cities or even people, as well, such beautiful lyricism and rhyme in Baudelaire's work. And I really, sometimes really enjoy religious poetry, Christian poetry comes to mind. I recently read a collection by, I think, a 16th century poet called John Donne, and I'm not a religious person, but I admire the kind of steadfast belief and how he could turn his beliefs into, yeah, like beautiful songs and prose and, yeah, and reflections and stuff.
Like musicians are obviously also very important, like probably the two that come to mind the most are Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, Dylan for his folk music and just how personal he made it, how simple it was at times, but he just crafts these beautiful, amazing, great commentary songs as well. And Jim Morrison is a poet that I admire and a singer that I admire. Like he just strikes me as this very, I don't think he was the best person, but he strikes me as this very interesting person who was very into his philosophy and mysticism and kind of like Greek myths and those sorts of things that would be inflected into his song lyrics.
And then philosophers as well. Albert Camus is a big inspiration. I love his essays, but I, more so, I love his novels, how he can write a captivating story about a plague or a disassociated individual, but inflect so much great philosophical work into it as well. And, yeah, novelists as well. Kurt Vonnegut's been a fantastic recent find. A friend told me about him, and I kind of heard the name before, but whilst I was in America, I bought a copy of Kat's Cradle, which is fantastic. And after that, I just kept reading him. I bought like four or five, six more of his books while over there. Read them all in the space of a few weeks and just, yeah, absolutely couldn't stop reading him.
Speaker 2 14:36
It's interesting because Bob Dylan's a performer, Jim Morrison was a performer, and I'm interested because you mentioned reading your poems at open mics. What have you learned from your experiences?
Speaker 3 14:49
I think it's really important to be exposed to performative poetry and to actually read your words because a poem is so much different on a page than when you're actually speaking it out loud. You respond to your poems in a different way when you read them. It might be something you wrote ages ago and then you're reading it. So it's all the more present and you kind of reflect back on how you felt or what you were going through when you wrote something from a different time. It's also very joyful, but also very scary and vulnerable to read poems.
That's what I admire so much about poets and poetry is that you do have to like really put yourself out there and be in a very vulnerable position without the support of an instrument or a band or anything or just any kind of support. It's just you up there. Everyone's looking at you and you've got to kind of stumble through a couple pages of work without without having some sort of breakdown. But at the same time, it's it's very rewarding and it's very cathartic. Yeah, before you read a poem, it's scary and then you read it and you kind of enjoy it. And then you're finished and you feel very, very satisfied and you feel very, very good about having read your poetry.
And then hopefully you get some really nice feedback about it and it's and it's really fun. But yeah, I think reading your poems as well means that you have to be so much more attentive to the kind of performative aspects of the poem. Like if you you could have the most lyrically beautiful poem ever on paper, but if you don't emphasise the right sounds or the right words when you're when you're reading the poems, then it might not translate the way you want it to.
Speaker 2 16:26
Sure, so in that way your experience of performing your poetry does influence the way that you write.
Speaker 3 16:32
Yeah, absolutely. I'd written a fair few poems before I ever performed them, and performing them means that you have to be quite attentive to things like pace and timing and delivery and the emphasis of... If you don't emphasise the rhymes, then people might not even notice them, especially if you are going for something lyrical, but then if you have a really important line that you feel like kind of represents the essence of the poem, and you kind of gloss over it because you haven't read it out in a particular way yet, again, it just might not translate to the audience as well.
And sometimes you can, like, I find something as simple as highlighting the rhymes on the page, or underlining certain bits, or writing pause next to a line to make sure that I don't kind of rush through the line, I let the line linger so people can think about it before I move on to the next thing.
Speaker 2 17:29
On Vision Australia Radio you're listening to our conversation program Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Max Levy, poet and producer of the Folk& Words events at the Grey Simile Hotel. How do you go about creating your works? Do you have a favourite place to work or does it vary?
Speaker 3 17:50
It definitely varies, you know, like anyone. I get a lot of work done in my bedroom, you know, it's a comfortable, safe space. But also, like my garden is really nice as well. Honestly, I write a lot of poems when I'm kind of waiting in line for something or on a bus or yet or sometimes even at work, which has gotten me into some trouble for being on my phone. But but I try, you know, I try to tell them, hey, I'm working like I'm doing my creative stuff, but, you know, most of the time it's not very well understood. But, yeah, like creativity really comes and goes in like sporadic waves. It's not I'm absolutely not creative like all the time. There are so many things to focus on.
But when the creativity does kind of flow, it it really, you know, comes comes on quite strong and I can write three, four poems in one sitting or or like 10 poems in the span of a few days. But then I might not write a poem for like a few weeks or a month or something. But I think that's not the worst thing in the world as well, because if I don't write a poem for a month, it's possible that I've found some new influence or found some new music or poetry, some sort of new material or content that I can be inspired by and then often that will translate into the poems that I write after the hiatus anyway.
Speaker 2 19:15
Another guest on our program mentioned writing poems on a bus and somebody else writes on the train, so Adelaide Public Transport is producing, is helping to produce literary works.
Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 19:27
Max, would you read another of your poems for us?
Speaker 3 19:31
Yeah, I'd love to. This one is called Joseph. It's about a character in a painting that I own. It's a shorter one than the last.
He sits above my bed, hiding behind plants and cassettes, wearing yesterday's melancholy, a hand raised in some bewildered, anxious gesture. The worn face of homelessness observes through sunken blue eyes, the old dog resting peacefully on the bed, planes flying beyond the window, and the novel laying open and unfinished. A cheating glance into the home, a painting upon the cabinet, an expression so distraught I feel I must avert my eyes. With cheeks aflame like two soft nectarines and lips locked in a whisper, he looks from within at a home that is not his.
Speaker 2 20:15
That's lovely and I like the relationship between different art forms, the poet speaking to the visual artist. So that's a lovely connection. Max, as well as writing poetry, you also facilitated others being able to perform their poetry. What inspired you to start organizing the Folk 'n' Words events and what do they involve?
Speaker 3 20:39
Yeah, Folk 'n' Words is a blend of two of my favorite art forms, which is, of course, poetry and folk music, thanks to my friends Ned and Olivia for helping me come up with the name for that one. It's really fun. It's a curated poetry evening rather than an open mic. I love open mics. I feel like they have so much power and they're so important in giving people a platform to perform. But I did notice that seemingly the Adelaide scene was lacking a curated event. I think before Folk 'n' Words, I saw one curated poetry event maybe throughout a whole year, so there aren't a lot. But yeah, I wanted to put my own spin on the thing and provide a space for artists to perform their words.
I also wanted, of course, a platform to present my own words, which hosting has been, yeah, hosting is really fun, performing our own stuff is really fun as well. In regards to the music, it brings something different. It breaks things up a little bit. Poetry is one of my favorite things in the world, but it's not for everyone. Some people can't sit through like an hour and a half of just listening to people read their poems. People can get a little bit restless, so the music really breaks things up, provides something different to listen to, and the nights also tend to have an intermission as well, which I feel like is just a great opportunity for people to stretch their legs and those sorts of things, because the last thing I want is to kind of lose people's attention.
I'm very proud of the people that I've been able to bring into Folk& Words to perform, but I acknowledge that attention spans differ, and sometimes you just have to kind of keep the ball rolling with these things. Yeah, I guess what inspired me was going to poetry events and open mics, noticing the potential for how much how much fun they can be if they're organized well. I went to New Zealand in July of 2023, and that was with my cousin Ned, and that was one of the first times I'd ever read any of my poems to anyone in more of like a personal sense.
I read him quite a long poem. I have called a poem For a Shell, and it was that trip that made me really start to get the ball rolling with putting together Folk 'n' Words, and I came back and within a week I was contacting people and speaking to the people at the Great People at the Grace Emily Hotel, who've been so fantastic in helping bring Folk 'n' Words to life. And then yeah, a couple months later, I had sorted everyone that I wanted to, and I'd made an Instagram account and been promoting, and the first one was, yeah, it was fantastic. I got to perform alongside some of my closest friends were basically the first people I hired to perform, who also fortunately happened to be very talented artists as well, so I'm very lucky in that sense.
And yeah, we got like 100 people, maybe just under at the first one and packed the room, and it was yeah, it was yeah, truly amazing, very proud of it. And since then, we've done two more, sold them out as well, like 100, 110, 20 people at the last couple of ones, which is yeah, mind -blowing to create something and get such good feedback and reception for it as yeah, it's yeah, I couldn't be prouder, honestly. Yeah, people can find out on social media, of course, it's basically the best platform to promote oneself nowadays. The Instagram is folknwords, that's yeah, just an N for the [?] and just one word on Instagram, no dots or spaces or anything.
And there's a Facebook called Folk 'n' Words, there's a Facebook group for the events when they go live. And I've also got an email list, but I've misplaced it, and it is something I need to keep track of. And yeah, when I figure out the email list, people that perhaps aren't on social media can can get that info about Folk 'n' Words when it's happening as well.
Speaker 2 24:31
That sounds great. And so for now, on Instagram and on Facebook, people look up spoken words and it's at the Grace Emily Hotel.
Speaker 3 24:40
Cheers, yeah.
Speaker 2 24:41
Which is a popular venue for artistic events, isn't it?
Speaker 3 24:45
Yeah, we absolutely love the Grace. I'm at the Grace Emily most Wednesday nights because they've got the free jazz jam. The Gremelies, they're fantastic. They're really fun to watch and it's yeah, it's free. And it's just a really, really fantastic atmosphere in there. My friends and I absolutely love it and that we're there most weeks. So it was the first place that came to mind to do a Folk 'n' Words at. And it's it's great. Like it doesn't need to be at a bigger venue than the Grace, I think, at least for now, because it's just, yeah, it works perfectly at the moment.
Speaker 2 25:16
And we've seen a blossoming of live poetry events in Adelaide in recent times, so would you share with us your reflections on being part of the community of folk and spoken word poets in Adelaide?
Speaker 3 25:33
Yeah. It's a fantastic community. I think anyone participating in just being in poetry events, going to them, performing, organising, everyone's very, very passionate about poetry. And it's one of these things that has the potential to kind of become a lost art. But the poetry seen in, at least in Adelaide, is so, so strong and kind of refuses to do that, kind of make sure that the the flame continues to burn for poetry, which is so important because I study philosophy and that's definitely kind of like a, maybe not a lost art, but dwindling. And it's the same for things like history and kind of literature on the whole. There's less readers than ever. There's less poets than ever. There's probably still plenty of musicians, but again, probably still less than there was.
So the community of poets in the community of artists in Adelaide at large is a very supportive place. It's basically just one enormous friendship network, kind of everyone sort of knows each other in the scene or at least knows of it, everyone else. And I've made some, I've made some great friends by going to poetry events and I've made great friends running a poetry event. I think you've been in contact with Drew Cuffley, who's a fantastic poet. I think he was just in Naam doing some reading, which is really awesome for him. He read it at the second Foken Words and he's, yeah, he's fantastic. Other people like Macy too, Aranze Garcia, just fantastic, fantastic young emerging poets that I'm now fortunate enough to call friends.
And it's, yeah, made some really cool connections through it as well. There's just, there's so much support for it and putting on an event like Folk 'n' Words is very rewarding, as I've said. But yeah, it means that I get to kind of, rather than just be an observer of the art scene, I get to have my little thing and make my contribution to something that I'm so passionate about and that I like wholeheartedly believe in as well.
Speaker 2 27:31
Yeah, we've had both Aransa and Drew on this program where we're certainly very keen to promote poetry events around Adelaide. So just before we finish, Max, would you tell us, when you're not writing poetry and organising Folk 'n' Word events, what do you enjoy doing?
Speaker 3 27:49
Well, writing is really the biggest passion. I write articles on a platform called Substack, which my blog's called The Infinite Rise. I interview local artists and creatives and then try to write articles about them with information and a narrative. Many of these people have, of course, been my friends that are also artists. People like the local folk singer you may have heard of Ella Eon and local painter Max Belard and yeah, a few other really talented people. I've got articles in the works for a guy called Jerry who runs a tree planting and revegetation non-for-profit, which is cool. And yeah, got a few other interviews in the works as well.
But writing is really fun. I'd love to push myself to be writing for a newspaper and getting some paid work through that and kind of getting published and all the things that writers want to do. Music's another enormous passion. I'm a very amateur guitar player, but I do play in a band called Trenchfoot, which has done like two practices ever and will perform eventually. But it's a strange time right now, but just going out and seeing live music and usually get to see friends playing in bands as well, which is really fun.
And I'm about to finish a university degree, study arts, philosophy and history as my major and minor respectively. And that's coming to an end, which I'm excited for to kind of get out there into the world. I'm playing for some more professional jobs right now.
Speaker 2 29:20
Best of luck. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. Our guest on Emerging Writers was Max Levy, poet and producer of the Folk 'n' Words events at the Grace Emily Hotel.
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 30:16
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