Pam Makin (part 2)

Speaker 1 (00:02):

This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Speaker 2:

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper, and 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. We spoke with Pam last week about her poetry writing, taking part in poetry slam competitions and her experiences with spoken word essays, poet in residence program. I'm delighted to continue our conversation this week. Welcome to the programme again, Pam.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

You have your own website, pammakin.com au - where you post your poetry, stories and memoir writings. How did you go about setting up your website and how do you maintain it?

Speaker 3:

Until this financial year, I was a marriage celebrant, and that website was my marriage celebrant website. Now it's a home for my writing, so the domain already existed and I thought, well, we'll make use of that now. It's mostly links to published works and my blog. You'll also find contact details on there. Maintenance can be tricky, but I have a reminder on my phone that goes off every six weeks to say, Have a look at your website and see if anything needs to be updated.

Speaker 2:

That's great. Pam, would you read one of your poems for us now?

Speaker 3 (01:53):

Sure. The poem I've selected to read is a prose poem. It's called The Science of Seduction, and it came about through a writing exercise at a local writing group. So it demonstrates to me the importance of writing exercises and writing groups, because it's subsequently been published in Meniscus Journal. The Science of Seduction... 

Maggots breeding maggots is not what I had in envisaged as a career. All the glamour once wrapped up in the word scientist, seems to have washed out of my greying white lab coat as I pinch the fat little bodies in my tweezers. I think about Margo Ice. The genetically dyed fruit is on ice in the cooler food for maggots food for fruit fly. It is the same kind of cooler that fits six beer cans, snugly six cans, four for me, two for Margo. I should have known better than to have the fourth. I'm not stupid, but I am sometimes thoughtless, especially after three beers. I digress. Perhaps I am stupid. 

I cut the dyed fruit into chunks and sat it among the ordinary offerings I should have offered Margo something less. Ordinary beer is not a romantic picnic. Beverage beer is a Barbie with the mate's bevvy. I should have offered white wine and a cheeseboard, but Margo likes beer. She had looked daggers at me when I took the last one. Fluorescence, the maggots burrow into the soft flesh of the fruit, ingesting the fluorescent markers that will make them glow as flies, easy to spot, easy to track. They will become so interestingly beautiful that anyone will see them, not just a dull grey scientist. 

Questions, what can we learn about humans by studying fruit flies is standing out an evolutionary advantage. I wonder if Margo likes strawberries.

Speaker 2 (04:26):

Thank you, Pam. The poetry page on your website features short reads poems about Adelaide Astic poetry, environmental poetry, poems about love, the pandemic politics, about being a woman, writing poetry and trying to make sense of the world. Would you explain what Astic poetry is and then read for us your Astic poem, Always Look on the Bright Side of Gorecki?

Speaker 3:

Astic comes from Greek roots as far as I'm aware, and basically it's art that responds to art. So really Astic poetry is poetry that exists as a response to another art form, and it can be any art responding to any art. So think Keats' Ode on a Grecian urn, for example, Don McClean's Vincent, Salvador Dali's Mad Tea Party. All of these things are Astic works. It's visual art and music that inspires me mostly. Last year's fringe festival actually, or this year's 2023 Fringe Festival. I did a suite of poems in response to David Bowie's Hunky Dory album. I'm a huge Bowie fan. I've written a lot of things in response to David Bowie across the years. Many of them are on the website. 

Aki Symphony Number 3, Symphony of Sorrowful songs was played by the ASO at St. Peter's Cathedral in 2021. And although I'm not a religious person, that was a religious experience for me, and so I wrote a poem which I'll now read for you all, Always Look on the Bright Side of Gorecki.

It was never going to be a toe tapper. We knew that going in Gorecki was upfront about that. Symphony Number 3 is as described on the box as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, a fitting fundraiser for Afghanistan ever. The optimist I suggested we go an orchestra in a cathedral. It will be wonderful, magical, majestic, a symphony in three movements, each one lament. And so it was not a toe tapper. We knew that going in a symphony of loss and grief, it begins with a simple melody flowing across the strings of the double base picked up by cellos handed to violas, then violins pitching an arc right to left. Across the stage, the red clad soprano raises crystal clear orbs of sound from deep within lofts them into the cathedral dome. They glow and dance held by orchestral strings. 

The sound folds back into the instruments flowing back across the ark. Returning to the depth of the double base, the second movement belongs to the soprano fragile in appearance. Her strength is in her voice. The despair of loss across centuries fills the spaces between held breaths, raising eyes a loft to the stillness, grounded again for the final lento. The mood remains dignified, sorrowful, a symphony of spiritual calm, a symphony of sorrowful songs. It was never going to be a toe tapper, but we knew that going in there was no melody to whistle on the drive home, but somehow, some way, our spirits were lifted.

Speaker 2 (08:41):

Thank you. It's very beautiful. Thank you. And it was a successful fundraiser for Afghanistan - and in our conversation before coming on air, we both spoke of our shared love for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, so a big shout out from us for the wonderful contribution they make to our cultural life in Adelaide.

Speaker 3:

They are world class.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely. Pam, you write memoirs and other reflections and recollections and take part in a regular event called, is it 10 times 9 or ten by nine?

Speaker 3:

So it's pronounced 10 by 9, even though it's written 10 x nine. It's a monthly storytelling event that started in Belfast in 2011 and it now has chapters globally. The Adelaide chapter began in 2017. I've been involved since 2020. In a nutshell, nine storytellers have up to 10 minutes to tell a true story from their own life on a theme, a very broad theme that's stuck to very loosely. And I got involved quite accidentally after the April lockdowns in 2020. Everything was shut down. There were no events happening for anyone anywhere. 

I was starting to go a little stir crazy at home looking for something to do, and 10 x 9 was one of those things that started up pretty early and I'd seen it, I'd never been to it, didn't have a lot of experience with what it was going to be, and I thought, oh look, I'll just give it a go. That's what my life was like then was I'm just going to give it a go. So I went along and I've become a regular reader and listener since.

Speaker 2 (10:40):

Pam, when someone asks you what you do, you reply, I'm a writer. When did you first start calling yourself a writer and how does it feel to put that on official documents as your occupation?

Speaker 3:

It's only been very recently that I've started calling myself a writer publicly, and really it was only because I ran out of other things to call myself. It's a really common question when meeting someone: Oh, what do you do? Well, I sit in a room in my house and I doodle in a notepad and I... no, I'm a writer. Yes, that's what I am. I'm a writer. Invariably they then say, Oh, have I read any of your books? Then you go, Not yet, I haven't finished writing them. Anyway, it sometimes feels like confessing a dirty little secret, but the more confidently and more often I say it, the more I believe it myself.

Speaker 2:

And you're actually an award-winning writer. Now, we mentioned in last week's program that you've just won a prize. Would you tell us about that and how it feels to be an award-winning writer?

Speaker 3:

I've actually won a couple of prizes recently. It's just been a very eventful month and a bit, but I think that happens in the life of writers. You get a flurry of acknowledgement and then nothing for a while really helps to pin that imposter syndrome down and a little again. So I've won the Mindshare Established Writer's Creative Writing prize, and there was a plaque involved with that, and I've never won a plaque before and I was really happy with that. And then within the space of a couple of weeks, I've won a creative writing prize with the London Writer's Salon in their competition Portrait of a Room, and there's a commemorative coffee mug as well as some cash that goes with that. 

I'm very, very thrilled about the coffee mug I have to say, but really it's the acknowledgement that you're not rubbish at what you do - other people like it.

Speaker 2 (12:51):

And your pieces, as we mentioned last week for Mindshare, have been published on the Mindshare website and you've got a link from your website, but also with the London Writer's Salon. That piece is also now published.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and links will be on my website for all of those things.

Speaker 2:

That's brilliant, and again, congratulations. 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, how do you go about creating your works? Do you have a favourite place where you like to write? Does it vary?

Speaker 3:

Look, the hardest question I think for writers to answer is the how, and I've heard a lot of interviews with, writers struggle with this. It just begins with a loose thread of some kind. You just keep tugging on that until something unravels and it might be a snippet of overheard conversation or a word that you've just discovered, a new meaning for a new context for or an image that won't shift something, anything. Inspiration comes from all sorts of places and you just keep going. You have to because it won't let you alone if you don't. 

But a writer is always writing and not everything that a writer is doing looks like writing, but it's all writing, like gazing out the window and watching the magpies is on the lawn is still writing because there's still a lot of activity going on under the surface. But as far as places to write, there are three places that I do most of my writing when I look like I'm writing, when words go on pages. The first place is in my home, in my office where I have two desks, one with my computer on it and the other has got notebooks. So I have my analogue desk and my digital desk. 

Then there is a magnificent bookshop in the Mayer Centre, Paige and Turner Books, and once a fortnight I go in there with my laptop and I sit in that space and I write, and anyone is welcome to do that at any time. If you would like to come and body double and write with me, you're more than welcome to fortnightly on a Saturday. The other place that I write, which might surprise you is in the Art Gallery of South Australia. I don't take the laptop there. I have a notebook and I sit wherever I find a work of art catches my attention and I stare at that and I write whatever comes into my head. So they're my three go-to writing spaces.

Speaker 2 (15:54):

And that's the Ekphrastic poetry that you were talking about earlier.

Speaker 3:

Correct.

Speaker 2:

Sounds wonderful. Pam, as we mentioned earlier, you are the founding partner with Jazz Fechner-Lante of Ellipsis Poetry. Would you tell us about Ellipsis Poetry, what events are coming up and how our listeners can find out more?

Speaker 3:

Ellipsis Poetry is an open mic event. It's free to listen, $5 for a five minute spot to read. It happens on the second Thursday of every month at Arthur Art Bar in Curry Street. Most of my work involved with that is behind the scenes. Jazz, who is beautiful and wonderful and very creative and talented is the face and the main driver of that. She's a wonderful young poet who is also a photographer, and she was the photographer at another spoken word event that we were involved with. And when that had to come to an end because the venue closed, she spoke to me about this new project and it came about mainly because the spoken word events that were happening in Adelaide, and there were plenty of them were happening on days that didn't suit us or in places that were inaccessible or places that we weren't very comfortable being in. 

And so Jazz wanted to create the open mic experience that she wanted to go to. And so we've done that. The next one is the 14th of November. There will be one every month through until our special fringe edition in March, which will not be open mic, it will be feature poets. It's called Eclipse, and it is a show about body image.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. So our listeners will be able to find out more by checking out the fringe gig guide when that comes out.

Speaker 3:

Fringe print guide and online guide digital guides will have Eclipse at Arthur Art Bar. If you'd like to know more about the open mic, you can find Ellipsis Poetry on Facebook or Instagram. If you can't find them, find my website. Shoot me a message and I'll hook you up.

Speaker 2 (18:14):

Brilliant, thank you. And we'll give your web details before we finish the program today. Pam, you're a guest speaker and a storyteller at the Rover Car of South Australia Annual General Meeting in September, 2020. What's the story behind your connection with Rover Cars?

Speaker 3:

My association with Rover Cars is purely by marriage. My husband Patrick was one of the founding members of the Rover Car Club of South Australia back in 1977, so he's been at it for a very long time. He's always had Rovers, and particularly Land Rovers. We had up to 14 Land Rovers at the peak of his obsession or illness, as I like to call it. He currently drives for anyone who is interested, a red 1972 Rover P6 B3500S, and his restoration project is a 1954 Royal Review Land Rover, the very same vehicle that was used in the 1954 Royal Tour here in Adelaide by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Speaker 2:

Wow, that's impressive, Pam. As well as being a writer, you volunteer with both the Barasa Regional Gallery and Scruffs Lovers Dog Rescue. Would you tell us what you do as a volunteer with eacvh of them? 

Speaker 3:

Well, with the Barossa Regional Gallery, I'm a front of house and collections volunteer, so I'm at the front desk welcoming visitors, answering their questions, keeping stats, all that kind of thing at the front desk. I also assist with maintaining their records and archives associated with the permanent collections that they have. There's generally not enough of that work on the days that I'm there, which is Monday and Tuesday to fill my entire shift. So there's a bit of downtime and they're very supportive of me taking in my own writing work to do. 

So I do a lot of editing in that space. They're a very supportive community again, and I'm there because until about five years ago, I lived in the Bara. We were there for 26 years, and so the volunteering role helps me to maintain my connections with the, but in particular my connections with the creative community up there. And that is a valuable community to me. Scruff Lovers is a very different story and a very different role. I fell into that quite accidentally. When they left home, our youngest began to foster dogs with Scruff Lovers Rescue, and at one point they were overwhelmed trying to get profiles up on Facebook and on their website for adoptions, and it was suggested Maybe mum, you could write some profiles. 

That was four, nearly five years ago now. And yeah, I've done, I dunno how many, possibly hundreds. So I'm a content writer. I write tender profiles for dogs. It's fun, and again, it's a really good writing exercise, so if there's any budding writers out there, you want to develop different voices in your writing. Writing profiles for rescue dogs is a great way to do that, and it helps the rescues and the dogs.

Speaker 2 (21:59):

Sounds fantastic. And also before we came on the program, you and I were talking about how incredibly rewarding it is to be involved in a community volunteering project or projects.

Speaker 3:

It definitely is - working is more than receiving money. We're led to believe that your labour should be rewarded with a pay packet, and yes, absolutely, in most cases it should, but working and filling those community roles gives you so much more, gives you a sense of purpose and connection, and it's helping people and dogs.

Speaker 2:

And you meet some amazing people. That's certainly what I've found on this program.

Speaker 3:

You absolutely do.

Speaker 2:

Pam, before we finish, would you read one of your 10 x 9 stories for us?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. So this is one of the shorter 10 x 9 pieces. It doesn't go for 10 minutes, and I chose this one as a tribute to my dad. The theme, this particular month was Unbelievable, and this story is called Without Cheese. 

Let's start with a game of Odd One Out. I'm going to give you a list of three situations and you can tell me which is the odd one out: one, making a statement under oath, two, telling a story on the 10 bx 9 stage, or three, answering your child's earnest question. If you said three, answering a child's question, you are correct. Sorry, there's no prize. You see, under oath or on the 10 x 9 stage, one is expected, nay obliged to tell the truth - not so when speaking to children. 

I was 11 years old when I attended Grandpa's funeral. My dad's dad's funeral. Grandpa was Catholic, as is all of dad's family, and so grandpa had a traditional Catholic requiem mass. That's a lot to take in at the age of 11, even more so when you understand that I was not raised in the Catholic faith. Mum is Protestant Methodist. That was Uniting Church as it is now. Dad was more than happy to lapse as a Catholic when they married, but still with his upbringing, Dad was our resident expert on the ways of Catholicism. 

Back to Grandpa and the mass. There was a lot of jargon and a lot of it in Latin - and much that I didn't understand. I sat with Mum and let the whole thing simply wash over me. It didn't feel like it was much about Grandpa. I suppose it was a week or more later, I was mulling it all over. For some reason, the word Eucharist had stuck in my head. It sounded like [?it CCA] or uterus, and I couldn't make any sense of either of those associations in context. I couldn't fathom what it meant at all, so I asked the expert Dad - Dad, what does Eucharist mean? 

It's Latin, he responded confidently. It means Without cheese. What? Why? He seemed very sure of himself. Dad was sometimes a bit of a joker, but he looked very serious. I didn't think he would joke about church, and especially about his own father's funeral. When your aunties and Grandma and me went up the front, yeah, we took communion. That's when the priest gives us a cracker and a sip of wine. Okay. The cracker and wine are called the Eucharist. Oh, but we don't get any cheese. It's just crackers and wine without cheese. Eucharist. It made perfect sense. There was no hint of this being one of dad's jokes, and so as unbelievable as it might sound now, I believed it.

Church, especially the Catholic church, didn't play a huge part in my life. This word and its neat definition didn't come up often, if at all until I was a teenager. I don't remember what book it was. It was likely The Thorn Birds. There is a lot of Catholicism in that, but I read Eucharist and recalled what Dad had told me. By this time I was a little more sceptical about my father's religious knowledge and a little less gullible, so I looked it up in a dictionary. I have my high school dictionary still and the definition reads thus...

The Christian service ceremony or sacrament commemorating the last supper in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed. There is nothing there to contradict what Dad had told me. The substitution of crackers for bread could be a result of a lack of availability of a fresh loaf on a Sunday morning in 1970 suburban Melbourne as opposed to the Middle East market towns of 2000 odd years ago. My faith was not shaken. 

Of course, as the years went by, I realised that my faith in my father's honesty was completely unfounded when I called him on it. Some 40 years later, he laughed and claimed not to remember ever having said such a thing. It was harmless, I guess perhaps even valuable in a strange way. It gave me an image of the Pope sitting in a vault in the Vatican surrounded by all the cheese who refused to share an image that I cannot shake, even now knowing the truth. And it gave me a story to tell.

Speaker 2 (27:56):

Thank you. That is gorgeous. Love it. Pam, would you tell our listeners again how they can find out more about your work?

Speaker 3:

The easiest place to go would be my website, pammakin.com au - and you'll find contact details there, links to my social media, Instagram, Facebook, and my blog. I do actually post different content on those three platforms, so follow me on all of them, or whichever one you like best. Also, there's a form there that you can contact me on if you want to drop me a line. I would be very happy to hear from you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Pam Makin - storyteller, written and spoken word poet, fiction and short story writer, memoiris, 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 at varadio.org - and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts where you can catch up on earlier episodes.

Speaker 1:

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