S2E1: Joel Mckerrow

[interference]
J: Future writers and all that kinda stuff, so a lot of my time is spent uhm, within...
[GPS signal lost]
J: A lot of my time is spent...
[laughter]
J: Getting lost
E: We're gonna use this, right?
J: That's so random
[all talking, not clear]
E: Webster!
W: It's on silent, I don't even..
[interference]
J: Alright
W: I've got a bit that I need to do.
W: We need to... Have a pre-recorded bit
E: He's like: I don't care, let's do this thing
W: Uh, what was it again?
E: Hello
W: Uhmm..

[intro music]
E: Hello and welcome to WordUpPodcast, I'm Eevie
W: And I'm Webster
E: And today, we are with the first guest of our new season.
J: Hmhmm
E: Hmhmm, can you introduce yourself?
J: My name is Joel McKerrow, I'm an Australian spoken-word artist.
E: Welcome to the podcast
J: It is good to be here
W: Welcome to Amsterdam, how's it feel?
J: Thank you. It feels... uhm.. I'm feeling pretty exhausted after... I think it was about 26 hours total in transit. They got here yesterday. And then, because it's like whatever ridiculous o'clock when I arrived (in Melbourne), I'm like: Well, I need to stay up till night time. And so, when adventuring through the city, which was wonderful to have that experience, but then just by the end of that I was absolutely exhausted. And uhm, had little sleep again, and then decided I'd go to a museum today, and walk around seeing Vincent's work, the Van Gogh museum.
W: Nice
J: And so uhmm, after all that, I'm kinda ready for a sleep. But we'll do a podcast instead of sleep.
E: That's how we roll
W: Yeah, we need you awake for this.
E: So what's your first impression of Amsterdam?
J: Oh, my first impression of Amsterdam? Uhm, I really like it. I like that it's uhm. It has... It feels like there is a focus on aesthetics and simplicity and... yeah just... And design, like people care about what their spaces look like. And it feels like the city as a whole cares about what their spaces look like. Which... I love going into cities where that's the case, where people have obviously thought about aesthetics and design and concentrated on that in architecture and in... Although, there's some... Like... I'm walking down the street and a lot of the houses are not straight.
W: No, I think you must be high, that's why.
J: That's not true. It was kinda freaking me out. I'm like: I can see the curving angle of that house. It's a little scary. But I really like Amsterdam. I was thinking today, walking, like "Ah, this is a city I could live in".
E: Yeah
W: And what brings you here?
J: So I'm here for a festival. So I have the lucky... Lucky? It is lucky, although it's not as romanticised as people make it out to be, to be a full time spoken word poet, who gets to travel around the world. Sounds wonderful, which it is, but it also can be a lonely thing, and can be a hard breaking of rhythm and patterns thing. But I am here, a festival has invited me to come to festivals, one's here and one in the UK. So performing tomorrow night is the opener. So I'll be opening to, I think there's a few thousand people there. So yeah, I'm doing the spoken word opening piece. With a poem of mine called "Welcome home", which is a letter to the creative artists, to say "welcome home".
E: Nice.
W: That's pretty exciting. So, how did you get started in spoken word?
J: I got started many years ago. I was... it's a... I'll give you a shortened version of the long story, that's probably a good thing to do. I actually got started on the border of Thailand and Birma, is where I got started, really with the writing side of things. So I'd written a bit of poetry in my teenage years, but it was very cliché, very cringe factor, teenage kinda poetry. Uhm. But then I was on the border of Thailand and Birma, I went over to do some work there in an orphanage. At a place where kids came across the border out of Birma. After they'd seen a lot of their family wiped out and villages wiped out by the military over there. And had escaped across the border and the Thai government wouldn't let them become Thai citizens or anything like that.. So they couldn't get any medical or education or anything. So there's a whole lot of... There's a strip called no mans land, between Thailand and Birma, where there's a whole lot of villages that came up and a bunch of refugee camps and things like that. And so I went to this orphanage that was there and my first experience there... I kinda walked in as this mother came in who'd been trekking for a few days with her little baby boy on her back, who was really sick. And she heard about this orphanage that she could go to and get medical attention and... She got there, but as she got here, she realised that her baby boy had just died on her back. And so, I kinda arrived at the same time, to this wailing weeping mother. And then my first job at this place was to go... I remember walking up this little, kinda sandy jungle path into this bamboo jungle, this clearing.. this grave site clearing, with all these bamboo crosses just stuck into the sand there. And my job with two of the orphan boys was to dig a grave for this little baby boy. And it just shattered my life. Like, I had grown up really comfortable, in kinda white, upper middle class, bubble-ville. And had no idea about the reality of the world, really. And so, this... I just... This is a long story to say: I needed some way to express the shattering... Like, I just got angry, I got angry at my... Angry at western society, that we would allow this to happen. Angry at my parents, to let me grow up in kinda ignorance. Angry at myself, just angry... And I pulled out a pen and paper and I started writing. I remember writing there, on the border, in this little bamboo hut, hearing machine gun fire in the valleys over in Birma. And the writing came out as poetry, as me just trying to get out the wrestling around inside that had been happening through this. yeah, that's kinda where my writing began. A little while later, a friend sent me a Youtube link to Anis Mojgani. Have you heard of Anis Mojgani? He's an American performance poet. He won National Poetry Slam in the States and all that kinda stuff. He's a famous poet over there.
And I just had that moment of watching spoken word for the first time and going like "Oh shiiit, like, this exists" it moved me so much and so, I'd been college lecturing and doing a bunch of stuff and so... Kinda bringing together this love that I had had over that past year of writing and poetry and now like the performance aspect, I was like: "This is me" Like I found my thing, and then it took over my life.
W: Wow
E: That's intense
J: Yeah, that's an intense story, just to kick of the podcast, innit? With a nice light-hearted story about Birma and genocide and...
W: That's a fascinating way to get into your craft. And was it a case of you were writing, you started writing at that point and you didn't think about performance? It was more of an outlet?
J: Yeah, I never knew you could perform poetry anywhere at that point. It was just an outlet for me to express myself. To work through those rumbling around, that anger and that injustice and that... All the stuff that was coming up in me from that experience.
W: Wow
E: Would you say you have certain topics you write about?
J: Yeah definitely, I mean... Stemming out of that, and my life since that time.. That was kinda the beginnings of... I suppose what I'd call: the shattering of my life and world view and understanding and my fish bowl I suppose you could say. I think I said to you, yesterday, that one of my favourite sayings in the world is "A fish in a bowl doesn't know that it's wet" It's been swimming around in it's little water fish bowl all of it's life and has no idea about this thing called 'dryness'. And this experience for me was like a shattering of my fish bowl. I had to confront my privileged existence in all the different ways that I am privileged as a white man. A white, heterosexual, married man in our world. And so that experience for me then lead into a whole lot of writing as my life, as I was kinda de-constructing and challenging western society and our media system and our consumer system that we're all a part of and all that kinda stuff that naturally kinda came out in my writing. So I definitely worked through that, and then at the same time, it kinda then began to... I suppose the other thing that I write on a lot as well as the social issues in the world and my own privilege amongst that would be kinda my... I think what I began to realise as I was writing my poetry and as I was doing a bunch of kinda activist stuff and trying to use my life to better our world and things like that... I still saw so much in the communities and the activist communities and the people that I was connected to who were trying to change the world, I still was like... In the wake of all the good stuff they're doing, there's all these broken relationships and it was like they didn't deal with their own shit. And so, as much as they were trying to help the world, there was still their own shit that got in the way and so a lot of my topics then have become... I think of poetry as a way for me to really self-reflect and ask myself hard questions and space to lament my life and challenge my inner world. And bring hope to my inner world as well. To hold... I call it "inside my aching pain and delicious hope". That I think... each of us has aching pain and delicious hope in our lives. And I suppose it's really easy to go to either one of those, like some people go really easily to the aching pain and the woe-is-me and everything-is-fucked and am I allowed to swear on the podcast?
E: (quietly) yeah
W: You just did.
J: I just did, I'm sorry, for any children that might be listening
J: Uhm, yeah... some of us really get into that kinda deep, dark "the world is screwed" poetry and creativity in general. But I think, for me, it's actually the job of the artist, the role of the artist I think in society and in our lives, is to hold both of those two things together: aching pain and delicious hope. The aching pain, that lament and questions and challenges, the reality of our world, and how our world is structured and set up. But then also calling people to the delicious hope of what could be. In fact, the poem that I'll do maybe a bit later.. It's called "Do not despair" and it's actually all around this idea of holding this aching pain and delicious hope together. yeah.
E: So it's just holding both, it's not finding a sweet spot in between?
J: Yeah, i don't know if there's a sweet spot in between that aching pain and delicious hope. And I think sometimes it's actually right to sit in the aching pain for a lot longer. Because it's too fake to go to the delicious hope.. If that makes sense? And I think, at times then, we kinda gotta drag ourselves out of the pit of aching pain and through delicious hope through inspiring things and beautiful things and open our eyes again to see the beauty in the world and... As I said, I went to the Van Gogh museum today and was walking around and just seeing like, his use of colour and everything we know about Van Gogh, like rebelling against all that was happening in his interior, mental world, that was bringing him into depression and things like that, was like... yeah, just that world rebellion just kept on coming into my head, like he's rebelling against the aching pain of his life, through painting the most vividly coloured beautiful things. I'm like: "Whaaa... that's what I want to do with my poetry" Like... I do want it to question and challenge the dark uhmm... I wanna paint vivid, I wanna paint beauty and give myself to beauty as well. So there... Holding those two together, obviously, is really important for me with my poetry.
E: Because they do say that: It's three things that allow you to get rid of the pain, that's sound, breath and movement. So writing is like journalling, can be a movement. And sound is.. so you're doing that through your poetry.
J: Yeah, absolutely
E: And all these three things, right? Because you still breath in between I guess?
J: Casually
W: Once in a while... And are there any artists that you take inspiration from? You speaking of Van Gogh and his idea of rebelling.. Where else do you source inspiration for your poetry?
J: Lots of different places, recently, poetry-wise it's been Mary Oliver, Have you heard of Mary Oliver? She's an American poet, she passed away... Last year maybe? So, an older lady, not a spoken word poet, though there's recordings and stuff of her sharing poetry. Her poetry is just beautifully rich, and really vivid around observations. So her creative discipline was taking a notepad and pen every morning, she lived in a forest for most of her life, and so, she'd go for a walk in the forest every day and just observe something. Just sitting there, writing about the birds in the nest, or the caterpillar or the whatever it might be. And then, out of that came her poetry. So the poetry is filled with kinda animals and beauty and forest and lots of things. But always, she gets to the deeper reality through the physical reality. So she's been really inspiring me over the last while. Mary Oliver. Oh, I'm sure there's lots of others as well. I've always been into kinda the soufy through me, and Hafez, Caljebran?15:52[1] and a bunch of those kinda poets really inspire my work. Probably, the, someone who's had the most effect on my writing, and probably on my life actually as well, is an old Irish poet, he died a few years ago, in I forget what year, I don't know, maybe like ten years ago. He is John O'Donohue, so he was an Irish Catholic priest, poet philosopher, uhm.. But his writing is just beautiful, stunning kinda stuff. I remember picking up his book and reading it and it was one of those moments of "oooh I found my people" like, I've found my tribe, in his writing. Yeah, not just his prose writing is just as much poetry as his poetry writing. Yes, so he's inspired me to no end in life, absolutely.
E: Yeah, but he's quite amazing. This one I know.
J: You know his work? oh, great.
E: I read him, I think I was 15, the first time. And I read it translated, not in English, and then I had to reread everything in English. So it's also... Yeah, I relate to everything he says, so yeah, pretty amazing. Uhm, but, you're also not just a poet, you're also a teacher.
J: I am a teacher, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
E: Yeah, I do a lot of so... I think, because I never want my poetry to just be about me, just like.. Poetry can be so self-wankerish... Does that translate at all?
W: Self-masturbatory
J: I always want my poetry to be about bigger things than just myself and my career, my poetry vocation to be as well. That it's not just me trying to use poetry for my own betterment but trying to bring about a better world, a better society, trying to inspire future writers and all that kinda stuff. So a lot of my time is spent within schools and within... Sometimes even in juvenile justice centres and indigenous communities, and refugee communities and stuff around Australia. In fact, when I just started doing poetry, very quickly wanted to bring it into something. And so a friend, a few friends, and myself started an organisation called "the centre for poetics and justice" So going into places I'm using poetry and hip-hop and rap as a way for kids who are going through hard stuff to explore their own story and share their own story and things like that. It doesn't ??18:37[2] anymore, but I am continuing that work. So I do a lot of work, normally either around identity or around social issues, or bringing the two together, within schools. But it's just as rewarding as performing poetry in front of thousands of people. Like to get in and have a kid who is really shy or rolls their eyes when you say you're gonna do poetry and has a very narrow understanding and then begins to open up and open up and then if you get a few school days with them or whatever and to see them by the end screaming their poetry into the world, and that thing that we know poetry can be... Just makes it all worth it, I love it. Yeah, I love doing stuff in schools, education stuff.
E: Is there something else you do? A secret?
[laughter, talking all together, inaudible]
W: What else do you do?
J: Is there other things that I do?
E: The cape coming out
J: Other things than poetry... What else do I do? I have no idea what I'm doing... I have a hobby, that's not about writing.
E: Parenting?
J: Parenting, that's not my hobby
W: Full-time hobby.
J: Yeah, that's my full-time hobby, so I do have... I am a father of two. A three year old and a five year old. So life is very hectic and exhausting with those two. And I'm married, so I try to be a husband in there as well, in that time. Ad also, this hobby is wood carving. I actually... I really love... I picked it up maybe two or three years ago, just picking up a bit of wood and I've got some kind of palm knifes and just carving and making whatever... body sculptures and I just did a horse for a friend recently, and yeah... I never done that kinda handwork before, but I've really fallen in love with it. So when I get time, which I ain't get heaps of time, between my poetry career and touring and performing and then whenever I'm home, parenting and if they're asleep, then that's where trying to be a good husband comes in. Yeah, so my life is very full. Between everything that I do. Cause my poetry, I also have a lot of stuff that I do with my poetry in terms of projects that I'm working on and things like that. So I don't just kinda get up and perform poetry in a few places or whatever... I'm constantly like: okay, what's my next thing, what's my next thing I'm working on. So, there's.. I just finished the first draft of a fiction book that I've been writing. Fair to say, kinda young adult fantasy-esque type thing. And I've got an album... So I've done three albums in the past of music and poetry combined and got another one that I'm beginning to work on at the moment. And I've got a book coming out later in the year, November, which is like a non-fiction... A little bit memoir-esque, but it actually begins with the story that I just told before about where poetry began for me. And kinda goes into what it looks like to have your world shattered and then how... The book is called "Woven" to re-weave your life together, so... There's always, I'm constantly onto...
E: Sounds intense!
J: Yeah, I've got lots of things that I do. One of my exiting things coming up soon is. I don't even know when this is coming out, but if this comes out before my thing starts, which is September 9th... It's coming out after, so you're gonna hear it in post... you won't hear it before this thing starts, but... My first online course.
W: Oh cool
J: Yeah, it's starting September 9th. So online creative writing course, all around self-reflection and poetry and things like that. So I'm really excited about that. Bringing that together, doing all the filming for the videos and all that kinda thing at the moment.
E: We'll put the link on, definitely.
J: Yes, yes, to put the link on, 'cause I'll run it again. So joelmckerroweducation.com is where people can out. The next one that I'm gonna... I'll do the same one again. So the one that's happening in September is called "A Clearing in the Forest - an online writing course for the cultivating of artistry and self-growth through the creative process". So it's specifically a creative process kinda course. For people to begin with having nothing, having no idea what to write or what to do and feeling quite stuck in that. Trying to get them all the way through to the point where they're inviting people into their work, whatever that looks like.
E: Nice. This sounds really busy...
J: It's my life, yeah. My life is insane.
E: Do you have help with that, or do you have a system? Do you have five?
J: I wish I had an assistant, I wish... I really wish I had an assistant. I don't, no, I do it all myself. My wife does actually help, no, so yeah. No I don't do it all myself. Shout-out to my wife, who does.. She did a lot of it, like the web design for my course and things like that. So she's been helping out a bunch recently. But most of the time, yeah, I'm just organising it all, and... Which is kinda the... It's part of that... Like I said before, that romanticized idea of what a full-time poetry is. When probably... And this is for any artist I talk to, it's the same... It's like 70% of their full-time career is logistics and emails and invoicing and all that kinda crap that we have to do. And then there's like two days of actual creative time of writing and then another bit of time of performing, yeah. So I wish I had some assistance so that my full-time poetry is actually writing poetry full-time. That would be wonderful.
E: Or just like having time to meditate and like reflect.
W: Well, we would love to hear one of your poems, if you don't mind.
J: Sure, yeah

[interlude music]

There is too much pain here
Have you seen it?
Or not seen it as much as felt it
Let the broken wrap around you like
chain, like heavy chain like sorrow
There is too much sorrow here
It gets under your skin
and in you eyes, a dark lens
and everything seems hopeless
these days
Everything seems hopeless
A little girl's taken as sex slaves
A suicide behind detention centre fences
A black man shot a little boy
washed up on a beach
A wife beats and the president,
his grabby hands and how
we just laugh off abuse
from those who're in power
the incarceration of colour and
always, always the starving children

The people my government still keeps imprisoned on
an island called Nauru
Sometimes I don't know what to do
To spare is an absence
And I feel useless in it's blackness
and yet, friends
my daughter still makes me smile
And my son, he makes me laugh
yet the girl who was raped
on the day that I met her, she
would not stop giggling and
tickling her brother
both of them lost in a rapture deeper than I could ever know
yet the girl with the HIV scabs all over her body
on the dirty streets of Kampala
she would not stop pulling faces at me
Her revelry a refusal in the face of the disease
that burned through her body
yet the boy in Birma who had just seen his family shot
he still loved to play paper, rock and scissors
and he would beat me every time
yet the children still chase each other daily
through the bombed out buildings at the broken city
They do not realise, so they do not let the delight
die yet, they fly kites, yet the dance, yet they dream
yet the mothers still sing and I have heard their song
and it sounds like hope
and it sounds like jubilation
And I do not understand it
Still joy resides here where she should not be
There she thrives more vibrant than anything

And so if these fractured friends
if they may still smile
Then I too, must appreciate
the way that the day always begins with colour
the way the flowers grow
the way the words taste
the way the afternoon sun warms my skin
the way she lets me in
I too, must hold hands with delight
kiss the extravagance
to revel in this existence
to no despair
to see that beauty
she is everywhere
folded deep into every dark thing
So may our lives be a chasing of the beautiful
not a taking of the light into the darkness
but recognising she already resides there
let us chase the light and find
the light and run the light and taste the light
become the light and dance the light, even in
the night when the sun is cast upon a heavy moon
friends, do not despair
for this beauty, this light, this joy, this hope
they are everywhere, folded deep
into every dark thing.

[Applause]

J: Thank you
W: That was amazing, thank you very much
J: Thanks, yeah, no worries, my pleasure.
W: Powerful and emotional
E: It's yeah... I'm goose-bumpy
W: So tell us about your process, how did you get to this?
J: That's a good question. My process for this poem, or my poetry in general, is... Trying to, I think, come at both the... What you'd call probably the abstract and the concrete. And to bring both together. And so, if every poem has... Every piece of writing, really. But poetry is kinda about the deep things and the big things and the hard things. It's about social injustice and it's about pain and suffering and joy and extravagance and all that kinda stuff. But the very abstract things like "How do you talk about hope? How do you talk about love? Or suffering or loss or whatever it is?" And so what I'm always trying to do with my creative process is to hold... to bring that abstract concept, that fanatic idea into relationship, we need to dialogue with story and imagery. And so for me, with that poem that I just did, is reflecting on the pain. The aching pain and delicious hope, like we were talking about before, of the world. But kinda going through and remembering these experiences that I've had in my life, way in the midst of where you would expect darkness to be. And there would've been no hope, seeing like the hope in these kids... Playing, and the joy in them and the power and these mamas singing beautiful songs and like all these experiences that I've had throughout the world. And so, the link, kinda abstract idea with some of the stories from my life... I think that's always what I'm trying to do with my poetry. And so, my creative process... I didn't... Normally I either come at it from either of those angles. Like I'll start in the abstract, in the conceptual, with a thought, with an idea, something that I wanna write about. And then kinda begin to work from there, what's the... From that meta-thing, what's the metaphor that could play with it? That could engage with it? What's the either metaphor or story or imagery in any kinda sense. And so I'll either go from the abstract into the concrete, in that way. And connect that abstract concept to... Normally using my five senses, I normally use my five senses a lot. Like, if I could taste hope, what does hope taste like for me? Or if I could... That kinda idea.
W: What really struck me, was how visual that piece was for me. I was seeing everything you were speaking about. Because it's so vivid and colourful, in a sense I felt like I was there, you know? Going through the journey that you're speaking of in that moment. So I think that really worked.
J: Yeah, sweet. So uhm, yeah... I kinda take those two things, I bring them together. But a really big part of my process is allowing myself to write crap. So one of the things I always tell my students: The secret to writing poetry, writing really good poetry, is stop trying to write really good poetry. Because we just get too quickly into editing brain, and our creative flow gets stifled. Like, we're up here critiquing our work before we even write... before we've even written it. Before we even know what it's meant to be, we questioning what we're doing. And so, the only way to write good poetry is to write tonnes and tonnes of shit poetry.
E: Verbal diarrhea.
J: Verbal diarrhea. To write and write and write and write and then take that and craft that into the pieces that I then get to perform to thousands of people. But to start with, it's just being willing. So I show up every day, my creative practice is I write a poem every day. And most of that poetry is crap. But that's the point. Like, there's no way I can get to the good stuff if I'm not willing just to sit there and write it out. And I'll often will start with flow of conscious, so pen to paper and not allowing my pen to stop moving. And then going in and finding the best stuff within that to take and craft into the actual final piece.
W: Are there any... any things in normal life, that you think contribute to you writing well, or better, or more to your core, in a sense?
J: In my normal life, yeah... I was thinking about this the other day, actually, because I realized like... When I do have time for writing, and when I do have a day that's like ah, a writing day. I will... I've worked out that I carve space for me to do my creativity, without even kinda realizing it. So it's my job to take the kids to school and child care. So I drop them at school and child care. And then I come home and I go straight into the kitchen and it's just like making a cup of tea, which I thought was just making a cup of tea.. But it's actually something that's bringing me into being present, in to the moment. Like it's this slowing myself down and then I take that tea to my... I have an old antique desk that I took and restored myself. And that's where I do a bunch of my writing from. And so, just even opening that desk up and sitting there with my tea. It's like a ritual in some sense. Like it gives me the space to then create out of. So I think that really helps. Like, having this calm, set aside space, and carved set aside time as well. Is a really helpful thing. Just so that I am with no social media, and all that kinda stuff, so that I'm present. Cause I think the work of any writer... Any writer who wants to make it, who wants to actually write stuff. The writer's job is to show up, to sit down and to not get up until it's done. like, to just go at it and have that discipline and practice. So I think the more ritual, patterned kinda habitual stuff that I can bring in, in my ordinary life, the better my writing then comes out of it. Yeah.
E: So no pictures of kittens or?
J: No pictures of kittens.
W: You don't sacrifice a chicken before you write, or anything like that?
J: Nice, surprising. Or a kangaroo, I'm from Australia. No sacrificial kangaroos.
E: O, okay, good to know. No animals were injured.
J: This is so freaking Aussie... There was a coocoobara stuck in our house the other day. Do you even know what a coocoobara is?
W: I was gonna ask. I've heard the word.
E: I've heard the word, too.
J: It's a very Australian bird. It's like a...
E: Oh, it's a bird, okay.
J: But big like massive bird. It's a bird that laughs.
E: Many birds laugh.
J: It's bird is very distinctively laughter. It really sounds like it's laughing, so there was this massive coocoobara stuck in our house the other day.
E: And she was laughing at you?
J: No, it wasn't laughing, but it was.... My three year old was freaked out by it.
E: Oh, it's probably bigger than...
J: It's bigger than her. Yeah. But I had to do the whole courageous dad thing, so I had to be courageous and bold.
E: That's where the cape comes in
J: But I'm like shitting myself as well. I remember a bird came into our house a few years ago, before kids, and I was like petrified and went to get my wife to get it out. I was too scared to do it myself. But now I had to be the protective dad...
W: But wait, you're a big burly man
J: I'm a big, burly man, who would think that... It was one of those black crows.
W: With the steely eyes
J: You are just gonna bite my face off
E: Wow
J: And the coocoobara has the same savage like real strong beak. That you're like: Oh, if that thing got near me. But I was brave and I got it out.
W: And the same three massive toes?
J: Nahh
W: No, I'm thinking of something else that's really dangerous in Australia.
J: Three massive toes?
W: Yeah, It's got like three claw type... It's a bird.. Anyway...
E: It's a bird...
J: There is a lot of dangerous things in Australia...
W: Ah yes, that's the one. It's called a coop emu.
J: An Emu! ahhh...
W: They're scary.
J: They're just... massive you know, like... But you're never gonna see emus like roaming around.
W: Okay, cool.
E: So they don't...
J: No, that would be out in the bush. Out in outback Australia.
W: Oh, okay, good. Glad. I had a trip planned, I was really worried.
J: Right, No emus or kangaroos jumping around main street of Melbourne, unfortunately.
W: Ah, that's a shame.
E: You never know, maybe, I mean....
E: Okay, so national geographic, here we are... from poetry to...
J: Flora and fauna of Australia. Wildlife of Australia
E: It's great, it's good to know, I mean... Now I know another word.
J: Coocoobara.
W: Uhm, I wanted to know about your process before going on stage. How much do you perform, after you've written a piece? Is it something you practice in the mirror, or is it something that comes out kinda naturally because you're practising it in your head? How does that work for you?
J: I make sure I do it out loud a lot. So my memorising technique (I memorise a little of my poetry) that is, out loud. Just grabbing the first verse or chunk or whatever, and going over it again and again and again and again. And then the next and the next and the next and then memorising how they join together. So I'm constantly saying my poetry out loud, and that helps me as well to find the rhythm that I wanna bring to it. And to find the different dynamics, like the raising in voice, and dropping voice, and pace and tone and tonal changes and all that kinda stuff. And so, yeah, I do a lot of work I think taking it from the page to then performing it. But it really is all out loud again and again and again and again. I think That's the only way I've found to do it, to work out what it can be. yeah, and as I get on stage with it, I think probably... Just a big part of it for me is wanting to give people an experience of the poem. So obviously in performance poetry we always say: "Don't tell me your poem, show me your poem" but I wanna do more than just show as well, like, I want to give people an experience. I want them to feel the heart of it, the joy of it, the anger of it, the whatever it's about. Sadness of it. So that for me means I need to be willing to go to that place as well. And so I'm constantly trying to, even though a piece that I might've performed hundreds and hundreds of times before, trying when I get up on stage, to be as present as I can to that piece. Just like I was doing it that first time. To share it with as much emotion or conviction and authenticity as I can. So I'm... Before I jump up and perform, I'm really focusing on tryna be present and embody that poem as I get up there.
E: Yeah, sounds very heavy, also. Because you go into that through empathy also, to connect to the people, to the audience.
J: Yeah. Yeah. It is emotionally heavy, being a performance poet I think. Yeah. If you're... I mean, performance art can just entertainment, fun and that kinda thing, of course. But kinda being willing to go there is part of the way that I do my poetry. And so it is... It's freaking exhausting, like. after doing a set, giving my whole self to that, I can feel very tired.
E: How do you refill yourself? How do you recuperate?
J: Things like the wood carving and that kinda stuff.
E: Tactile experience, more
J: Yeah, and just lying down, listening to music and...
E: Yeah, disconnecting I guess.
J: Disconnecting. Yeah. I think disconnecting from life and the world. Which is hard, because often I'll get home and then it's my turn with the kids, so... It's not as...
E: Well, it switches it up, right?
J: It does switch it up, that's right. It might not be as classic re-invigorating, but sitting there and building Lego, can be just as...
E: Very.. soothing.
W: So what's next for you in the future?
J: What is next for me in the future? As I said, I've got a few things.. Like there's a bunch of stuff that I'm constantly doing, and so a few things coming out like the online course coming out in September, my book, called "Woven - a spirituality for the dissatisfied" coming out in November. It's being published in Australia in November. And I think start of next year I'll work on this new album. and try to bring that together. There's an American musician that is keen to do some stuff, so I might bring it in collaboration with him, which would be really great. And so... yeah, I think those three kinda things are gonna take me well into next year. And then, who knows? We'll see after that, I'm sure I'll get inspired with my next idea and next project. I'm excited to take my fiction book and like, I've just begun the editing process of that.
W: Oh cool.
J: Which as we know is just... Actually, I'm loving editing more then I am initial writing these days. Which is really weird, cause I used to hate editing. But now, I love it. Like I love the movement of taking the work, like all that shit, crap poetry that I've written, or fiction book or whatever that I've written. And working out the most beautifully articulate and economic way that I can phrase this. That someone would read it and be just as moved by the sentence, by the way that I have phrased and structured this sentence as the content itself. Like, you know, those lines that you read something and you're like "oowhh". So I love doing that, so I'm really enjoying working on that. To then hopefully find a publisher for that fiction book at some point. And also keep touring and all the stuff that I'm doing.
W: And for our listeners: Where can they find you on social media?
J: Well you can find my website at joelmckerrow.com and then instagram and facebook and stuff... That's the main kinda things I use on social media, I Instagram a lot. is just joelmckerrowpoet on Instagram or Joel McKerrow on facebook. The other thing that I do, that I totally didn't even mention when I'm on a podcast, is I do my own podcast as well. So not my own, it's me and a film maker/photographer in the States. An incredible woman named Joy Prouty started a... We just finished our first season of our podcast, it's called "the Deep Place: on creativity and spirituality" and so, beginning to do interviews and stuff like this one, for my second season are coming up at some point at the end of the year. So you could look up "the Deep Place: on creativity and spirituality", if you listen to podcasts, have a listen to stuff as well. I've got all the videos on youtube and all the normal kinda stuff, so just look up Joel McKerrow, there's only one other Joel McKerrow, and I think he's from the UK, and definitely not a poet.
E: Handy
J: Yeah, so you'll find me pretty quickly.
W: Cool
E: Nice. Well thank you so much for being here.
J: My absolute privilege.
E: And we're looking forward to everything you have to bring out, also, into the world. We'll share all the links.
J: Yeah, that'd be great.
W: Thank you very much.
W: And as usual, you can find us on www.worduppodcast.com where you'll find our past episodes with guests from season 1, as well as our latest guests and season 2. You'll also be able to find our social media and information that our guests have talked about. Thank you.
E: Doei.

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Transcript by Audrey van Houten