Speaker 1 (ID) (00:02):
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
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 programme is Pam Makin, who's wearing a great t-shirt telling us that she's a dreamer, storyteller, writer, creator, as a writer and creator.
Pam is a written and spoken word poet, fiction and short story writer and memoirist. Many of her works can be found on her website, pam macon.com au ... Pam has participated in a number of spoken word poetry slams. She was a finalist in spoken word essays state slam in 2021 and in the 2020 Winter Slam, and was also a heat winner and runner up at the 2019 Summer Slam. Most recently, she was runner up at the 2024 B Natural Poetry Slam as part of the Nature Festival. She was long listed for the 2023, Not Quite Write - that's spelled W-R-I-T-E - prize for flash fiction, and won the published established writer category in the 2024 Mindshare Creative Writing Awards, which are supported by the Mental Health Coalition of South Australia Writer's Essay and Access to Arts.
Pam's Poetry has been published on the Mindshare website, mindshare.org au and has featured in the journal's Saltbush Review, meniscus in Review, and five fleas as well as the poetry anthology Adelaide mapping the Human City in 2023. Five of her pieces were selected for poetic city Canberra's Haiku for You project. Pam has participated in open mics across Adelaide, including co-hosting the Good Word and voice box at Mixed Creative in Port Adelaide. She was spoken word essays poet in residence at Adelaide City Library in April, may of 2023 where she conducted sonnet writing workshops. Pam is the founding partner with Jazz Fechner of ellipsis poetry. She is also a community volunteer, and we'll hear more about that too during our conversation.
Welcome to the programme, Pam. We have so much to talk about and in news just to hand, you've won a prize from the London Writer Salon in their competition portrait of a room, and your winning piece is being published online in the Writer Hour magazine at the start of this month, November, 2024. Congratulations.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Thank you so much, Kate.
Speaker 2:
Pam, you are originally from Melbourne, so would you begin by telling us about where you grew up and what that place means to you now?
Speaker 3:
Well, I grew up in a part of Melbourne, Southeast Dandenong, which has changed quite a lot since I lived there. When my parents were married in 1957, that was back when a young couple could afford to either buy or even build their own home. They built a little house in a new little subdivision in Dandenong North, and at that point there were a lot of young families and it was like being on tv. It was the suburban childhood that you would imagine kids playing in the streets. Everyone's mom had eyes on you all the time. You felt safe and protected, and we had fun. And of course there was all the things going on behind closed doors that still go on behind closed doors, but we were very much sheltered from that.
My dad died in 2020 and mom and dad were still living in that house. Then mom went into care late last year and that's when she sold that house. That's a long time to be in one place,
Speaker 2:
And that's a long time for a home to be in a family and to fill your lives with so many memories.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And that is where my memories live. We did travel around a little bit when I was very young. Dad worked for the state electricity commissioner of Victoria and chased some upgrades through regional Victoria, but we were well and truly back into that house in 1970 and stayed. So my memories are there.
Speaker 2:
And you've chosen Adelaide as your home now. What appeals to you about living here?
Speaker 3:
Oh, well, initially it was a man, of course. I began a working holiday around Australia at the ripe age of 22. First stop Adelaide. I haven't been to Perth yet. I met a man. We now have two children, two grandchildren, two dogs. We've paid the mortgage. We built a life here, and I found community here through building that life. I can't imagine living anywhere else.
Speaker 2:
Now, Pam, your website tells us that for as long as you can remember, you've been a reader. You love words and stories, and you've wanted to be a writer. What are your earliest memories of working creatively?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Playing creatively is my earliest memory in that space. If you ask my mum, she will tell you that I was always the kid on the floor with the paper and the pencils and the scissors and the glue, and I remember being that kid, being the one that was making birthday cards for grandparents and friends and seeing if I could make 3D animals from 2D implements. When I was in grade six, another school friend, Debbie and myself were taken from class by the deputy principal. I think he was at the time, Mr. McKenzie, because he felt that we needed extra mathematical tuition that we were above the grade level, and his mathematical tuition included origami, and I just loved it.
And I still occasionally will pick up a piece of paper and make a crane or a frog, or just recently with Halloween, I've been making little flapping bats and things like that, so I remember those things. But when it comes to writing, my earliest memory of writing is because of my older sister Linda, having to do an assignment in high school where she had to compile a poetry anthology, and I was think 10 years old at the time, and she asked me if I would write a poem for her anthology, and I cannot remember the poem, but I remember that I wrote one, and so that was probably the first thing I wrote that I would call a poem.
But having cleared my mother's things out of that house I've mentioned earlier, we found amongst her treasures, a handwritten story undated, but looking at the handwriting, probably I was about five or six maybe called the Magic Penny, and it was a very poorly spelled story about a penny that comes to life, this little child's fantasy world. I don't remember writing that one, but it had my name on it, so I'm pretty sure that it was mine.
Speaker 2:
Emerging and creative spelling.
Speaker 3:
Yes...
Speaker 2:
Not poorly spelled.
Speaker 3:
I am a better, more consistent speller now,
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But isn't it interesting, I had a similar experience this year in going through parents' papers and finding things that I'd written as a child that I had no idea that they'd kept.
Speaker 3:
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, my mother kept everything. I think we've still got things in storage that we need to be going through,
Speaker 2:
And isn't it wonderful to have that memory of a teacher who in giving you some advanced maths, taught you origami? That's really inspiring.
Speaker 3:
Yes. Yeah, he was a great man actually, even to have pinpointed back in the mid seventies, children who needed that extra tuition to keep them interested was quite advanced, really.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Absolutely. Pam, before we continue, would you read one of your poems for us?
Speaker 3:
I will. I have selected a poem to read for you called In the Beginning was a Word, and it talks about my love of words and stories.
In the beginning was a word and then another word and another and another, and then all the words settled to form a story. The story searched for a reader, found a girl, an ordinary girl in an ordinary house, in an ordinary suburb. The story remade the girl into a reader. The reader fell in love with the story and with the word all the words. She held the words in her mouth, rolled them around, tasted them one by one, then altogether tried different combinations. In doing so, the reader discovered more stories, so many stories, she lost herself in the words and in the stories in them. She met others.
The reader observed that others' lives are rich with adventure and purpose, that heroes and princesses are not often the same thing, that stars are born only to burn and die. Most precious of all, she understood that the human experience is denied the pitiable gods, the words, the stories, the insights of others had transformed the reader. She's to become a writer, but first, this ordinary girl from an ordinary suburb who lost herself in words and stories must find herself still a reader. She knows where to look.
Speaker 2:
That's beautiful, Pam. Thank you. And before we talk more about your writing, you're still a passionate reader. What sort of reading do you do now?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I read all sorts of things. I usually have several books on the go at once. I'm very much into the Libby app from your local library because I can have a book wherever I go. So I've usually got an ebook and an audiobook happening on the Libby app because you never know when you're going to be stuck in a car park outside auto pro, and you need something to entertain yourself. I travel a lot on trains, and so I use the Libby app for train journeys, but I also read a lot of poetry. I like to read the books that are listed for prizes, so I seek them out.
I recently discovered an app to catalogue my books, and I had no idea how many books I had until I started cataloguing and the count only yesterday when I bought another poetry book and scan the barcode. The count is now at 1,115. Over 200 of those are poetry books. So yeah, I read a lot.
Speaker 2:
Wow. So your house is full of bookshelves.
Speaker 3:
Our house is full of bookshelves. Yes, yes. I've probably read cover to cover, read upwards of 80 books this year, I would think.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
That's really impressive. On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our Conversation program, Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Pam Makin - storyteller, written and spoken word, poet fiction and short story writer, memoirist, open mic co-host and community volunteer.
Pam, we mentioned in the introduction that you are a spoken word poet who performs at poetry events around Adelaide, and you've been a finalist and runner up in Poetry Slams, and congratulations on that too. What inspired you to first start performing your poetry at spoken word events?
Speaker 3:
Well, we need to go back to December of 2018. I'll talk more about what happened in that month, a little later. I know there are some questions coming up that pertain to that, but I was looking for a way to step into the Adelaide poetry community, make some connections. I hadn't been in that space for a couple of decades actively that is, and the very first thing that came up in my searches was spoken word, essays, summer slam, and the heats for that were kicking off in the January of 2019, and I thought, Okay, look, I've done a bit of performance before, not really slam... but a friend of mine who is a visual artist, wonderful visual artist, Debbie Sater, she and I did an exhibition in the Barossa in 1999, and as part of that, we performed on stage with a couple of other friends, some poetry.
We didn't really know what we were doing, we just thought, this is a great idea, let's give it a crack. And we did that, and I've done a few little things like that since, but not many. And then I thought, okay, well, we'll give this slam a go. Well, I stepped on the stage in the state library not knowing anybody in the room, and I won the heat. And it was quite extraordinary because instead of a stranger walking into their space and them saying things like, oh, who was this coming in here and walking out with the prize, it was a, oh, here is a new person. And they were embracing me and asking me questions and then telling me about other events that were coming up. And it was like I walked into a room full of family that I didn't know was there. So that's why I came back. I went because I needed to find some people. I came back because I found them there.
Speaker 2:
That's a wonderful story, and we'll come back to talking about community shortly. Following on from that question, what's it like to actually take part in slam competitions? What do you most enjoy about the competition part of it?
Speaker 3:
Well, the competition is not really what I'm in it for. It can be really nerve wracking depending on what your own temperament is. I know there are some poets, it's one in particular I'm thinking about who gets incredibly nervous beforehand. She's absolutely amazing, but just paces and frets and works herself up. But I do all of that beforehand and on the day of the Slam, I'm just like, all right, well, whatever happens, happens, it's fine. For those who are not familiar with the slam concept, each poet gets two minutes, one poem, your time starts the moment you speak. So there's no intros, no, oh, well, isn't it great to be here? Thank you all. And I wrote this poem when I was trekking in the Andes in 1923, all that sort of stuff, none of that. It's you, the microphone, your poem, and you're penalised if you go over time.
The judging, there is no criteria. The judges are selected from the audience at random. There are five of them. They give you marks out of 10, the top and bottom scores are eliminated, and the other three, the aggregate is your score. So you don't know who the judges are going to be. You don't know what they're going to, what they're going to look for. So you just choose a poem that pleases you, that maybe has something in it that you want to tell an audience, and you go with that. So for me, it's a two minute open mic spot. It's lovely when you win. Don't get me wrong, that part of the competition is great. When you find that you're getting a prize at the end of it, it's a huge thrill because like any other prize or publication or invitation for an interview, it's acknowledgement and recognition, but the competition is not really the point.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And that's what I as a member of an audience have noticed about the Slams is that everyone is so happy. As you said earlier, for whoever wins, it's like people don't come across as being competitive in any way. They're really being courageous. They, they're putting their work out there to be judged on the day, but there's such a warmth and encouraging atmosphere. It's really certainly lovely to watch.
Speaker 3:
Well, that's lovely to hear too because quite often when we as poets competing in slams or we're participating in an open mic, you feel like you're preaching to the choir that your audience is other poets. So it's really nice to hear the perspective of a non poet audience member and that community comes across.
Speaker 2:
It sure does. And Pam, how do your experiences of performing your poetry, either at slams or open mics actually influence the way you create your work to start with?
Speaker 3 (19:53)
It makes me read everything that I write out loud. Even the longer pieces, the flash fiction pieces, some of the short stories, I always read them out loud. If I'm stumbling over anything when I'm speaking out loud, then I know it's probably not working terribly well even on the page. So even though listening and reading are two very different experiences, you still need to make sure that your message is clear, that the language makes sense, and that if you are listening to a poem or a story, the shape of the words needs to make sense in your ear. Whereas if you're reading it on a page, particularly with poetry, the shape of the poem needs to be pleasing on the page. But you can do both. And there are some poems that I have that there are two versions of. There's the version I read on stage, and there's the version that I print.
Speaker 2:
That's really interesting to have two versions of a poem. Do you do that often?
Speaker 3:
It's not often that I do that, but when it does happen, it is because I've written something for the page that I really like, and then when I read it, it doesn't quite sound the way I want it to sound, or the transition between words is different or there may be something in an accent. Being from Victoria, sometimes if I'm the other side of the border, I dance dances and I plant plants. When I'm here, I dance dances and I plant plants, so sometimes it's a pronunciation thing, and so I will change the performance version so that there is no ambiguity so that it tracks well, and yet I will leave the print version as it was because that's what I really liked.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
We don't think about that often enough, the regional variations in our language within Australia. But it's fascinating once you start to look at those language influences and then how our use of English is enriched by all the speakers of other languages within our community.
Speaker 3:
Yes, on that, harking back to my upbringing in Dandenong, in my year 11 English class, which was 1981, I was the only person in that class, including the teacher whose parents were born in Australia, and we had students from all parts of the world, a lot of Greek and Italian families, but also people from South Africa, from Uruguay, from Chile, from Vietnam, from various other countries in Europe, and we were all there together. No one was bothered by that.
Speaker 2:
Well, that diversity really enriches our educational experiences as well as enriching our community as a whole.
Speaker 3:
It certainly does.
Speaker 2:
Pam, we mentioned in the introduction that in 2023 you were a poet in residence through the partnership between spoken word essay and the Adelaide City Library and that you ran sonnet writing workshops. Would you tell us about your experience as a poet in residence and what you learned from that?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
To start with, I learned a lot about sonnets. I put in a proposal to spoken word essay for series of workshops called Shakespeare's Monkeys, where I wanted to deconstruct Shakespearean sonnets and reconstruct them in various ways. The sonnet form has really lasted hundreds of years. It was around just a little before Shakespeare's time, and the modern sonnets are still with us. Diane Seuss won the Pulitzer Prize, I think as recently as 2021 with a book of sonnets. Her sonnets very different to Shakespeare's sonnets. So I sort of wanted to explore that journey, and I read a lot about sonnets once I received the email that said, congratulations, you now have to do what you said you were going to do. That's scary.
So I read widely, probably more widely than I would ordinarily have read on that subject. So that's the first thing I learned was lots about sonnets. The other thing I learned is that I'm not the only one who loves sonnets. There's a whole range of people out there in the community who are quietly loving sonnets, and most people know at least a line or two from a sonnet - How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, Shall I compare there to a summer's day? These are all lines from sonnets. So that was interesting. There was barely a time during my residency whether I was in the library space, available for the public to approach or whether I was running a workshop where I was actually sitting by myself. So I was very encouraged by that.
The idea of running a workshop on writing though, for a writer, it's a bit like teaching your teenage children how to drive in that all of a sudden you have to think about everything that you're doing instead of, well turn the corner. Well, how do I do that? Oh, well, you have to change down gears and turn the steering wheel and make this line that way, and that stands that way. And so you need to deconstruct your own methods as well as deconstructing the sonnet form. I'm deconstructing my own processes, so I learned a lot about me as well.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Pam, the residency has a real community focus, and there are very vibrant communities of poets in Adelaide and South Australia. More broadly, what does it mean to you personally to be part of these creative communities?
Speaker 3:
Often we think of writers as Joe March sitting in her all alone, scribbling away, and look, there's an aspect of writing that is that you do need quiet time and headspace, but you can't write, I don't think, anyway, if you're a hermit, you need community. You need people who understand what it is you are doing, who can encourage you, who can help you find that word you've been looking for, who can read over your things and either tell you you're on the right track or you've lost your way a little. It's really important to find the people who get you. It also means that you're not the only one. You're not the outlier. You're not weird.
Okay, we're all a bit weird, but we're not weird all by ourselves, and I don't know that I could do it at all without the creative family that I found here in South Australia.
Speaker 2:
Pam, it's lovely talking with you. So let's continue our conversation in next week's programme. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Pam Makin - storyteller, written and spoken word, poet fiction and short story writer, memoirist, open mic co-host and community volunteer.
This program can be heard at the same time each week here on Vision Australia Radio, VA radio on digital online@varadio.org, and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts where you can catch up on. Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org for more.
ID (28:47):
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