Aaron Mitchell (part 2)

ID 0:02

This is a Vision Australia Radio Podcast.

Kate Cooper 0:18

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations with emerging and experienced, creative voices in our community. I'm Kate Cooper, and our guest on today's program is Dr Aaron Mitchell. We spoke with Aaron last week about his love for writing about the overlooked, everyday aspects of the human condition and about being a spoken word poet. Welcome to the program again, Aaron, and I'd love you to read another of your poems for us.

Aaron Mitchell 0:49

Excellent. Well, what I actually might do is read a not-fully-formed poem that I read at Ellipsis just the last Thursday that it was on. And this is a poem about the weather, and this is the weather as reflected by people's emotional behaviours and how people sometimes might blame others for their weather within and that we all have responsibility to be respectful of other people's weather and be mindful of our own weather.

Kate Cooper 1:25

Sounds terrific.

Aaron Mitchell 1:26

Thank you. Okay, so this is called Venus Weather. It was inspired by the idea of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. But I don't know. The title Venus as a planet, is very... it's got this acidic, really hot, 700 degree atmosphere. Any... spacecraft they've tried to put in, it doesn't last more than a couple of minutes. You only ever get a few photos back from any space probe that's been sent to Venus. So I think it probably went a bit too extreme as far as where I was going with this poem, but I still retain the title. Okay, so Venus Weather... 

The weather is what it is when I arrive. Each person an unexplored landscape, what you see is never what you get. For weather shows only the moment to truly know someone is to see all their seasons, to embrace the diversity of moods. Only through time, through long exposure, can you take its full measure. The summer of undying lands to bask in Fond youthful memories the golden hour's light, the Emerald bud burst, or an eternal winter, a companion for grief, rendering you cold, preserved from feeling the hot days of autumn, the crisp, changeable light of spring. Sometimes I am clay, harsh, dashing rains scour paths through me, a deluge washing away all before it leaves behind the earthly scent of Petrichor in darkened bedrooms. 

Do I summon the storm or conjure the clouds? Can I sway the forecast with a whisper a wish? Do not blame me for the bat of Amazonian butterfly wings. I did not cause your exaggerated tornado. Ever heard of climate control? That space between stimulus and response, your choice under your command, to survive and endure, we must carry our weather within. Be accountable for our storms. Do not mistake the unreactive gray rock for quiet acceptance of your precipitous precipitation. Skin hairs rise. My spidey sense tingles, the air crackles with energy. Prepare to duck and cover. It's going to blow with exquisite fury. 

We all long for blue skies, for sunshine. What about rainbows and lollipops? Sweet confections? Lovely to see, delightful to taste, but rotting the teeth beneath, striving for calm, leave sailors stranded on high seas, their sails hanging limp as my mood, my mojo,boredom, complacency, art, prevailing conditions. Who did this? I did. I tried too hard to control, to lock down, to provide certainty and safety, and succeeded. Passion dies and the fixed, the predictable, a mismatch between what I want and what I need. Now I stand on a midnight cliff top at the precipice of dead joy, gazing at flat seas and clear skies alone, forgotten. I wish for the Tempest, the tsunami, the explosive drama, The searing heat, the sharp edge of danger, I promise to embrace the beauty in the material skies. 

I call to the elements, Rise. Let the wind tear at my hair, let the waves smash against me once again so I can feel my skin from the outside in, to feel truly alive.

Kate Cooper 5:49

What I love about spoken word poetry is the impact of the poet's voice taking me further in understanding the poem, I reckon, than if I were just reading it out loud myself, or looking at print on a page, I just get so much out of listening to poets perform their works. Do you find that when you're in the audience, so when you when you're relaxing, you're listening to other people, that the intonation, the rhythm, the flow, you get more out of that than any other way of receiving poetry?

Aaron Mitchell 6:28

Oh, absolutely, Kate. Look, the words are just flat on a page, and the poet brings them to life in full three dimensional, vivid colour. You know, with sound and movement, some people have really beautiful ways of moving themselves as the words come out that elevates the words just beyond the word the expression is, is really sometimes even improves your understanding of things. It's very... I try, and when I see those things happening. I think, how could I do the same thing? Because it's the point. The performance really makes the poem in some respects. 

That's why I keep coming back for it, because I I love the opportunity to perform, but to to see others say their words, and it's very deeply affecting sometimes. And some of these poetry events, you are invited into this inner sanctum of someone's interior, of their mind, of their fears, their pains, their passions. It's all very special and privileged, and then to hear them express it. And then you can see that they are reliving the kinds of memories behind those words. And there's quite a lot of hard subject matter that it occurs at these events. 

And every time they read it, they relive it, and they in some way, for the cost of their expression, they sacrifice themselves to to put themselves through that experience again, and maybe it has therapeutic benefits, even maybe it makes them happy, maybe it takes them to new places where they resolve and can move on. But whatever that occurs, we are all the better for it. As far as having the joy to receive what is being shared, it is being shared. And one of the things I like about being in an audience is actually taking images out of my head and listening with my emotions. 

So actually going along with the poet as they're speaking, but feeling it, rather than trying to just imagine it. And that's really, really powerful. And I find it, even when the subject matter is difficult, I still find it in a strange kind of way, very soothing, and I come out feeling so much better than I go in whatever kind of a day I might have had, just to be given, as you say, that opportunity to share in someone else's experiences.

Kate Cooper 8:10

But from those different dimensions, it's quite extraordinary and takes courage on the part of the poet. It's generosity, it's courage, and it's that holding out of a hand and bringing someone creating that community of understanding that I really love.

Aaron Mitchell 9:30

Yeah, I was going to say one of the things that I discovered... someone made a comment about how they don't focus on the words, they focus on the feelings and the sounds and the rhythm. And I was like, Wow. And so I tried to make a poem that had far more kinds of, yeah, just feeling in it, and I worried less about the words, and I was thinking about the sensory aspects, and I included sort of references to sound and light and things like that that I would not normally [when] I'm doing a poem. 

And it was just a whole way of, like sharing a sensory experience with somebody else, where, you know, the particular poem was set in night clubs of my youth, and it was all about how, you know, the sensing of the light and the sound and the thumping of bodies. And it was just, really just meant to be a sensory experience, and by sharing it to the room, I felt that I could also transport them back to that moment in time that I personally experienced just a really cool idea of just the just focusing on the sounds and the feeling and turning that into words that then you share.

Kate Cooper 10:36

And you've partly answered now what I was going to ask you next, and I'll still ask it, because you might have other things that you'd like to say. When you get an idea for a poem, how do you go about crafting your work? Talk us through an example of how you do that, because I reckon with you, there isn't just one way. You've got different methods that you use.

Aaron Mitchell 10:59

Yes, oh yeah, absolutely. And you never want to be sort of typecast as the one type of poet. I think you've sometimes the subject matter itself dictates a certain kind of treatment. I I'm presently working on one about the nature of wishes and how people they wish upon a star, but they don't always necessarily wish for kind things, and in some ways, they are making a prayer to the world for something to happen to them or to someone else that will provide some sort of intervention of some sort without taking action themselves. And so as part of that poem, I started looking at the Where did we wish? Where did where the idea of wishing on a star come from? 

And it turns out the earliest reference we have was some Greek Egyptian called Ptolemy. And he had this idea that when there are falling stars, and we look up at them, and we can wish on them that the falling stars are really when the heavens get pulled open and the gods are looking down on us. And so the point was that if you were looking up when the gods were looking down, the gods were more likely to hear your wish. And that's a very... was it 3000 years ago? I went and actually did research, so sometimes I'll hit up Wikipedia or Google things or whatever to actually understand some of the concepts I'm doing. Sometimes it might give me words around it. 

Quite often, just a this idea comes into me, I might wake up with it, and I can't get out of my head. So then on the bus, I'm crafting the words some of these poems I can write in four minutes, like they like, you know, it's 70 or 80% done in that time. And then you're just then spending in the next few days where you'll have a little idea or you'll change something, but, you know, the vast majority of it has already formed, and I tend not to overwork poems. I once read a poem to a writer, and they didn't like anything I wrote, and because their point of view was that, you know, it wasn't finished, it it could have been edited better, or whatever. 

When I go, if I say it's finished, it's done, and I'm allowed to make that choice, because it is my thing that I have created. And, you know, there's very few things in life where you actually get a say in what something is. And I go, Well, that's it. It's done.

Kate Cooper 13:27

And that gets back to what you said earlier about diversity, because what I might like is not what say the person in the next studio here at the radio station might like in terms of poetry. And that's the whole point is we have this diversity in our poetry community, in our artistic communities, that meets the diverse needs. So one person might say they don't like your particular poem. Next person comes along, loves it. Absolutely loves it. And I'm fascinated too by what you said earlier, it's so interesting to have a scientist poet on the program, because I knew about wishing on a falling star. Didn't know that it came from Ptolemy. So I've learned something else today. Thank you for that. 

On Vision Australia radio. You're listening to our conversation program, emerging writers. Our guest today is spoken word poet, Dr Aaron Mitchell, Aaron, you've touched on some of the answer to the next question I wanted to ask you, and that's about how your experiences of performing your poetry influence the way that you create your work, and you've touched on the dynamic relationship with the audience. What can you add to that for us?

Aaron Mitchell 14:49

So for me, word order matters a lot. The way I write is not entirely the way I speak and when I find that I rehearse a poem and I say it out loud, I will trip over words, and sometimes there's no cure for it and I've just got to drop the line. Other times, it's just a word order thing. But I will sometimes read out a poem and record it at the same time, and then as I'm reading it, I call I'll read it in a looser fashion, and I'll drop words out, and I'll add little ad libs to it. 

And there I move from how I first wrote it to then how I said it, but then what I do is I turn how I set it back into writing, so I end up with a more kind of digested and produced, kind of way of speaking that's more natural to me, rather than a slightly more artificial and perhaps slightly more scientific or legal writing style. If I can say something in a way that conveys it in a smoother way, that's more understandable and sounds less stuffy, I'm all for it because I've got this tendency to choose simple words that have absolute clarity, and for legal or scientific purposes, where you know you don't want any confusion, but that kind of words choice is boring, and so sometimes I'll even come up with a more delicious word to substitute in for what I a plain word that I previously used. 

And so I don't know... I'm still trying to work out how I do these things, but there's definitely a honing that goes through from writing, performing, rewriting it, performing just that iterative style means that you get to smooth some of the bumps out. And that's the difference between like a an earlier version of a poem before I get to a completely settled one, and talking about those delicious words.

Kate Cooper 16:51

What do you do if you've got one but it isn't working in that particular poem, which I imagine would be frustrating. Do you park it somewhere? Do you keep notes? And then go back to those and try and get it into another poem, because you really want to capture what that word was giving you?

Aaron Mitchell 17:11

I think all writers have the metaphorical shoebox of pieces of paper that they just collect and accumulate and and there they mostly stay. I have a Notes app on my phone, which is littered with many unfinished poems. I tend to forget what I write, I guess because I live more in the moment, and I'm never ending as far as words coming out of my mouth, and so I don't know, I'm never so precious that I want to reuse something, a whole new concept can overwrite anything I previously thought about it. And I just run with that. 

And it's really curious how sometimes these poems, they get their own life. When I on day one, I had an idea of how this poem would end and and what sort of kind of emotions I wanted in it. And by day three, it was kind of it just was in a whole different world. It was still the same subject, but it went on a completely different journey. And I couldn't even have pulled it back if I tried, because different sections the palm had these interdependencies. So the whole thing was like this integrated skeleton of hip bone connected to thigh bone kind of thing, you know? And I couldn't really fix it and make it a different animal if I tried.

Kate Cooper 18:27

Do you keep your drafts just in case?

Aaron Mitchell 18:30

Yeah, I do, but I don't know. I'm always, because of my I'm very golden retriever in my energy...  I'm always excited by the next new thing and have sort of forgotten the old toys I previously played with, so I don't know it's whatever the new hot thing is that's seizing my brain and searing my thoughts. Having previously had a golden retriever at the house. They're always positive. They're always upbeat. It's always like, Wow, it's another day. How can I have fun? It's a really optimistic approach to life. To be a golden retriever, it is, and I love it, and I do generally have that perspective. 

But I discovered happy poetry doesn't sell - seriously. Like I was like, Ha, start off with love poetry. You know, that's where everyone does things. And I went up and did this poem. And I did the poem twice on this, the first night that I did it, and the the host of the evening on the second time I read it, went, Oh, not another love poem. I'm sick of love poetry. I was like, Oh yeah, yeah. I guess that's what everyone does, right? And we're all quite real amateur poets in our teenage years, when we first fall in love, right? 

And so I don't know, I tried actually exposing myself more and reducing my self, filtering to make it more interesting. I mean, I'm always worried about what other people think and and will judge me, and that then shuts me down. Then... and so I try and now reveal more fun things or fun ideas that might not be my own, that then take me new places and put me into more dangerous territory. You know, it's try to work with dangerous words and thoughts. And I had a short poem called Secret Agent. And I was like, No, this poem's not really good. It's not really long enough. And I read it, and I got whoops from the crowd and, and I was like, Hooley Dooley, that's that's just ridiculously good. I was so well received. 

And it was all about this whole... I've got this inner life that I'm scared, that I won't want other people to see, and... so I hide it deep, and it's sort of this imposter type scenario, and you're wearing a mask, and yeah, in a room of poets, yeah, that was, that really, really struck a chord.

Kate Cooper 20:50

That's brilliant. But talking about judging, it does get back to what we were saying before. Everybody is listening to you from a different perspective, and it only takes one person in that audience to really connect with you for your poem to have been worthwhile, even if the other people aren't in the mood for love or for a love poem, one person is - that's the whole point.

Aaron Mitchell 21:15

Yeah, on that.... I'm trying to work on how I can get more audience participation, and I had this poem where I was building this sort of repetitious line at the end of each little phrase, and when I got to the end of the poem, I didn't say the last word of that phrase, and someone from the audience said it for me, and I was like, Yes, it really worked.

Kate Cooper 21:37

Well, that sounds like really good fun. Do it again on one of the Ellipsis nights, and we can all join in.

Aaron Mitchell 21:44

That'd be brilliant, absolutely.

Kate Cooper 21:46

And do you have a favourite place where you like to write, or are you able to write wherever and whenever an idea comes to you?

Aaron Mitchell 21:54

Well, again, the golden retriever strikes. It's wherever I've got the energy. And so that can be quite inflexible if the idea comes I've just gotta get it down. There has been times where I was falling asleep and I was seized with this fever and idea that just overtook me. And then I fell asleep, and the next morning I lost it, or I had an idea of vaguely what it was, but like all the energy had gone, and I never really wrote a poem about it. And so sometimes I've just gotta, like, get it down in the moment. I will cut conversations short because I've just gotta write something. 

But other times, you know, I will get a few lines down, and then when I have a next, like, free slot, and so quite frequently, a bus ride, because I'm more captive to like I've got no control over what happens to me. As far as this, I'm just on that journey, and I sit there, and I find that the movement of the bus, the jostling the other people around me, somehow gives me enough internal energy to get to some sort of activation state where then the words start to come. And I like the notion of sort of writing in the real world, rather than being locked up in a room. That seems to somehow work better for me, which is interesting, because I'm not someone who like, likes working with with music playing in the background or anything like when I'm doing proper brain work. I like absolute silence. 

But for poetry, I need noise, which is it's a different part of the brain. It must be that is so interesting. I've had a number of guests over the last two years who've said they like writing on the bus, and they get their inspiration there. So thank you, public transport in South Australia.

Kate Cooper 23:35

That's great. Aaron, would you read another of your poems for us?

Aaron Mitchell 23:40

This is the short poem I mentioned before, called Secret Agent, that I just did for a fun thing that got really received quite well.

I'm a secret agent in my very own sleeper cell, and this national man of mystery attracted my personal hell. What do I hide from the world? My defects, my trauma, my imposter syndrome. I'm as fake as a plastic Flamingo, all pink and birdie without the ability to fly. I'm naked in front of the crowd in my Emperor's New Clothes. Isn't it meant to be the other way round, the duality of existence, like a SRO dingus cat, what is real and what is the mask?

Kate Cooper 24:21

Thank you, Aaron. When you're not creating and performing poetry, what do you enjoy doing?

Aaron Mitchell 24:28

Well, I'm ridiculously active. This morning, I just went for a paddle around Delphin Island at Westlakes on my paddle board. I also am a regular supporter, a participant, volunteer for Park Run. So I've been doing that for around 14 years. I'm up to about, I don't know, 44-5 runs at Park Run, and so I've been doing that with my son. But the community is just fantastic. Every Saturday morning I turn up and... you know, there might be 4 to 500 people there. I might know about 200 it's like being at a wedding with all your favorite friends. 

And so it's a minute saying hi to someone, going to the next person, going to the next person. And you know, there's a pre-run briefing explaining how you're meant to cover this course safely, and the volume of the noise of happy people talking to each other quite frequently drowns out the run director who's trying to give us safe information, just because of the sense of community, people turn up for Christmas Day, for New Year's Day, and I've been doing that for many years, and it's just my happy place of the week. 

And it's really good in terms of you have your connection, you have your fitness. People look after each other. They do check on on you, and it also helps you through harder times. Sometimes you know you're having a bad day at work, but you turn up the Park Run and everyone is happy to see you. It's a beautiful thing. And then there are times where, as a runner, you might have an injury, and you could easily stop running and be depressed and just not turn up for anything. And you want to go, because you get to see your friends and that then you walk Park Run is, a third and... in fact, two thirds of people walk it all the time, but when you run it, you want to keep running it for as long as you can. 

There was recently a chap who was the first, he was the first Park Runner in Adelaide, and he recently died at the age of, I don't know, 85 or something. And he was a frequent attender to many Park Runs around the state. And we did kind of a more memorial service for him at the Park Run, and I might have actually read a poem about him - but, but yeah, and his family really appreciated it, and we, just like we all came together and just appreciated the commitment to getting together as a community and moving and living.

Kate Cooper 26:54

Well, that's a beautiful story. And I'm tempted to say that Park Runners are inspiring guests on this program, because at the start of the year, we heard Michael Randall, a former guest, talking about his joy participating in Park Running as well. So if there are other poets and Park Runners out there, we'd love to hear from you. Aaron, it's been delightful to speak with you. Thank you so much for coming in and taking part on our program. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was spoken word poet Dr Aaron Mitchell. 

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, varadio.org, and also on Vision Australia radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes. Thanksfor listening to this Vision Australia radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org for more.

ID 28:11

Vision Australia radio - blindness, low vision, opportunity.