Sean Whelan

The Total Cardboard Interview
September 2004

Total Cardboard caught up with Sean in one of Melbourne's most prestigious gay bars. In response to our probing he scribbled the following thoughts on a napkin:

What is poetry?

I always seem to get poetry and irony mixed up. And sometimes I even get pottery and ironing confused too. You should see how dirty my hands get on laundry day.

Sometimes it just seems,

to be,

about,

line,

breaks.

Poetry is the flickering 'O' I can see from my bedroom window in the 'PORSCHE' sign above the old silo on Victoria St that morse-coded me for a couple of days last week before being fixed. Poetry is not my diary, or yours. Poetry is a craft, or at least it should be. It doesn't happen by accident, or if it does it's an accident that the poet noticed thereby giving the accident a second chance; life. Dr Frankenstein was a poet. Ears and brains are sensitive creatures; let's look after the little critters.

What are your views on the Melbourne spoken-word scene?

Huge, pulsating, glowing thing. Wonderful to be able to call it a scene at all, we're probably the only state in Australia that has one. But. in a minor state of crisis at the moment I believe. Clint Greagan (publisher of Salt Lick Quarterley) wrote in Deadline recently that he thinks there are actually too many readings in Melbourne and I'm inclined to agree. Readings should be real events, lately I've seen a lot of readings that are tired and lonely. There are some really amazing writers and performers kicking their stuff all over Melbourne, but I've seen way too many of them doing it to tiny, tiny audiences. I don't think I'm being unkind when I say a lot of readings are averaging only 10-20 people, if that. These writers and audiences deserve better. And I agree with Clint who believes that this is a result of too many readings and people taking regular events for granted. There's nothing quite like being in a packed room listening to a talented reader and having the audience riding every corner and curve. I'd like to see more of that and less of readings that feel a little like a wake. How this is to be achieved, I'm really not sure. I think maybe a little more savvy marketing perhaps, poetry is still a pretty dirty word to most people.

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Love is the New Hate is just one of four new poetry collections published simultaneously by Hit & Miss. The other three are:

Emilie Zoey Baker, She Wore The Sky On Her Shoulders

Dan Disney, The Velocity Of Night Falling

Angela Costi, Dinted Halos

They are available from Readings Bookshop, Carlton; Brunswick St. Bookshop, Fitzroy; and Collected Works Bookshop, Melbourne City.