This is an exciting episode for me on my podcast, P.O. Box 45 with Wendyoh, because it is my first phoner chat... and with poets... from Melbourne!
Dev Vedant and Irralee Jones are the curators of the (invite-only) online poetry group, Prompted Prose, which has more than 300 members from throughout Australia. And, they are the founders of the regular spoken-word event, Melbourne Morphemes!
Each of these very inspiring creatives, share 2 of their poems and talk about their love of poetry, their inspirations, and, life in general.
Both openly admit that they never thought they would be posting out prompts to poets throughout Australia or co-hosting a major regular spoken-word, performance poetry event in Melbourne.
Dev Vedant joined the original version of Prompted Prose (The Dirty Thirty Challenge ... yes... writing a poem for the 30 days of April) some 2 years ago just to read other poets' works. His beautiful partner, Ella, encouraged him to join the sharing and post his poems. His career is an important one, guiding international uni students to accessing our Australian health care system. Oh, and he's also a cricket tragic! As is my producer/editor James McKay so they also talked about the heydays of cricket in India and Australia... and as a sports journalist for many years during my career, I found their chat very entertaining. Dev and a mate actually run a podcast called 'Cricket Therapy'.
Irralee Jones has been writing poetry since she was about 12 and wasn't shy about sharing her poetry. She has been published on many platforms and joined The Dirty Thirty Challenge some 8 years ago. The most-exciting news is that her first poetry collection, Lost in the Woods, has just been published on Amazon! It features 99 poems... yes, I asked that question. Irralee also has a very important career as a child carer and many of her beautiful kids inspire her fantastical works.
This is a fun episode. I joined the Dirty Thirty Challenge just over 4 years ago and this is how we 3 met... online. We've just heard each other's voices over the phone. The next challenge is to meet in person! Please enjoy.
Creator/broadcaster: Wendy O'Hanlon (girlwithwords.com) and also on FB and Instagram.
Producer/editor: James McKay of The James McKay Show on Spotify, I Heart Radio and Instagram.
Voiceover specialist: Mandy Spooner of Mandy_Spooner Eco Warrior on Instagram.
Singer-songwriter: Ethan Roberts (Favourite Kid band on many platforms).
