Adara Enthaler - More than Enough Said

0:00 Slam poetry doesn't care if it's perfect. It's time to slam. It's the biggest poem I've got inside of her. She was a thief. You love me to love a haunted house yelling. Angry blood black nothingness began to spin. Stupid. Point of view. On to this day, I hate pork. Chops I am the master of my thing. I am the captain of my soul. For when your mouth is writing cheques that your arse can cash, it's I think. Therefore I slammed the podcast bringing you the best slam poetry and spoken word artists from Australia and beyond. My name is Andrew Rogerson and today my guest is a spoken word poet living on Dara Wall Land in Wollongong and they are the host of Enough Said Poetry Slam.

0:47 She's featured at writers festivals, folk festivals and poetry slams all across NSW, and her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies from Baby Teeth Journal and Heroin's Festival, as well as her poetry scenes, Equidistant and Crowdsource poems. She's performed in the Bankstown Poetry Slam Grand Slam in 2023 and 2024 and won in 2026 at the Sydney Opera House with her team. And their name was. In other words. We're going to hear plenty more about this victory lap. Please welcome Adara and Tala. Welcome to the show. Hi Andrew, lovely to be here. Now I was just thinking about famous faces and names from Wollongong and my mind kind of settled on Michael Theo from Love on the Spectrum.

1:31 Are you familiar? Yes, actually I went to school for a couple of years with him. I think I was. I might have been a year above, but yeah, he's such a sweet dude. Oh no way. Do you still see him around town at all? Actually, yeah, a few weeks ago I saw him at the North Wollongong rock pool he was climbing in, having a snorkel with his dad. It was very cute. Oh, wow, Good to know. Oh, well, I hope wherever he is, he's doing well. I know he's had his own adventures in the podcast space, so I'm a big fan. Big fan, Michael. Yeah. Dara, we would love to kick off today's show with some of your wonderful spoken word. I would love to. It is the rainiest nights that we are truly alone. Nights when the roads are canyons flooded mirrors for the streetlights. Nights when I shudder to the kind of Thunder that seizes my heart and a fist and reminds me we are only held together by skin.

2:21 That if we had a creator, they forgot us. That the earth will devour us, Faith to bone to marrow and in the interminable crawl of decay and rebirth, we will not be remembered. So if I pray tonight, it will be with your skin between my open palms. I can't leave room for Jesus when the air is this heavy. There is no Holy Spirit but mine, and I can be holy enough for the both of us. You smell like sandalwood. I mean, probably. I don't actually know what sandalwood smells like, but that's what romance novels say is sexy. And I think you are very sexy.

3:03 You call me beautiful and when you say it, my hand doesn't go to my belly. I don't hide behind a smile, hoping it's curved, distracts you from the width of my thighs because you are already kissing them. You say my body is a temple and I say it's been a tourist attraction too long. My columns are rubbed shiny from too many hands touching in half baked blessings. My mosaics are cracked and stolen. So remind me what it is to be worshipped. Then you flecked at the door and wait for entry to be granted. Sweep the refuse from my aisle, script the pigeon shit from my ceiling and we will scrub the altar clean together.

3:44 Kneel at my feet and baby, I will kneel at yours. Touch me back into existence and see me as I am, brand new, not untouched, but unbroken. Yes, thank you for. The clicks. Cliques all around, of course. Of course it's a staple. Do you reckon cliques came in because it's just an easier way to clap while you're also, you know, holding a drink at the? Same time. Do you think that's where it comes from? It might be why it's continued. I believe the origin has something to do with the grassroots poetry slams being predominantly in sort of colored neighborhoods in America. So they would have the cops called on them if they were cheering too loud. So they had to show their enthusiasm while not making too much ruckus.

4:32 But yeah, it's continues today and I actually have a tattoo of it on my arm. Oh, you do? Oh, that's fantastic. Wow. So, yeah, definitely, definitely a subversive thing. Loved the piece. You know, we're getting a bit spiritual. We're getting a bit sexy. It's all good things. Now, Adara, I don't want to bury the lead here. I would love to hear more about your team's recent victory at the 2026 Bankstown Poetry Grand Slam at the Sydney Opera House. Give us the play by play. It was a blast. So for those who know how Bankstown's Grand Slam works, you get randomly assigned into a group with usually three other poets who also placed first to 4th in the Grand Slam. The pre in regular Bankstown poetry slams the previous year. So I didn't know who I was going to get, but I got placed with Jim Miller, Samantha and Noor and they were all so amazing. There's actually 20 years of age between our youngest and oldest member, but we found our common ground and we got to know each other and we wrote together.

5:35 And yeah, we drilled the hell out of our palms. We made them really powerful in their performance, made sure we had them memorized. And then Sydney Opera House was so cool. We all had our own dressing rooms with our team name on the door and a drink bottle from Sydney Opera House with like the logo on it. And the word shook is, which I now carry everywhere with me just hoping someone asked me about it. I'll be like, oh, this is from hyper when I performed at see the Opera House. No big deal. Oh, this little, this whole thing. And yeah, the show was in the concert hall, so seated 2000 people. And they came pretty close to selling it out. I think I've performed to some big crowds, but that that was definitely the biggest. So seeing all of those people rising up in the stands in front of you is an experience I will not soon forget.

6:22 But since it went so well, I I have the joy of currently being very poorly acquainted with imposter syndrome. I'm not sure I remember who that is a stranger from way back when. Because, you know, I won. We won hell. Yeah. One of the, I think, 2 biggest poetry slam competitions in the country in terms of, you know, audience sizes, there is that, there's the Grand Slam and there's the Australian Poetry Slam national final, which is also at the Opera House. So yeah, it was so incredibly rewarding and we so enjoyed sharing that experience backstage with all the other poets. There was so much support and love and warmth, and I'm so grateful to Banks Down's team for making that happen. It's huge.

7:06 Sounds like a dream. I've I've got to get up there at at some point to to watch because it just sounds like the the night of nights, you know, along with the APS spine, as you were saying. Get a bus together, drive through Canberra, pick up Canberra poets. Yeah, yeah, we'll make it happen. We'll make it happen. And not, not your first time at the rodeo, obviously. And I, I'm just stunned at, you know, it must take so much trust. Like you said, you're you're kind of randomly assorted to a team. And is it like a a play where you have someone feeding you lines if something does go a little bit awry on stage? Or is it all all or nothing? Yeah, we, because I had already done it twice before. I had seen what had gone wrong and I had experienced some of what had gone wrong. So we put plans in place to mitigate that. So we had agreed if anyone forgets their lines, the rest of us give it two or three seconds.

7:55 And if that person is still struggling, just jump in and say their line and then continue as the poem goes. And yeah, we planned how many seconds we wait for applause before we walk off because just there are so many tiny little elements of performance that can add to the impression of your performance. So we didn't want any awkward moments where half the team walks off and the other two are still standing there with gormless screens enjoying the applause and then go, oh, no. So we wanted to look professional from the moment we stepped on stage to the moment we went to the other side of the curtain. So yeah, we planned for all eventualities and we got, we were very fortunate no one forgot their lines. I had about a half second delay that I hope only I noticed, but other than that I think we pretty much nailed it.

8:39 Yeah, clearly, clearly all the hard work and all the trust and all of your experiences has paid off. Fantastic. Adara, I want to know what is your origin story, your starting point of creating and sharing your work on stage? How did it all come to be? When I was at university, I did the creative writing major at UAW in Wollongong. I started getting involved in all the literary things that I could. So I got an internship with the South Coast Writers Center. And then someone at some point told me about and I said poetry slam, which has been running for 14 years this year. Wow. So yeah, wild.

9:19 And yeah, I think I was just getting into writing more poetry through my degree and getting feedback on that. And then went to the slam a few times and just I got really into it. And then I went, I don't know how long I was going before I ever got up on stage, Maybe two or three years. But the team back then was just so encouraging. So whoever was on the door month to month would be like, are you signing up to perform tonight? And I'd be like, no, no, maybe next time. And I'd be like, OK, I'll ask you again next month. And then eventually I sat down and was like, I've been scribbling bits and pieces on receipts and notebooks and in my phone for a little while now let's sit down and see what I've got. And then I put it all into one Word document and went, oh, I've been writing about one thing for like a year and a half. This is all one poem.

10:10 So I smashed it all in together and I performed it. And then for the very next month, the Co founder of the Slam, Lauren Elizabeth, asked me if I would like to come back and be one of the support features for Bill Moran, who was coming over from the US to do it wasn't featuring at the slam because it didn't line up, but they did an additional show. So for me to hear that from Lauren that they liked that first poem so much, they wanted me to come back and do. I don't even know if I did a new one or if I just did the same one. I was like, oh, OK, I, I guess I'm not bad at this at the very least. And then I just didn't really stop from there. And I joined the team not too long after that. And then COVID happened in 2020 and I ended up taking it over.

10:54 And now I'm the host and producer. And yeah, I just keep trying things and enjoying them and I just keep on going. Onward and upward. Yeah, so many people who I asked this question of they will make reference to a person or a a people who who came before them. Do you know what I mean? And who gently or not so gently encourage them, you know, DOB them in, wrote their name down on their behalf. Are those the kind of people that you think of when you think back of of your Yeah, you starting off in spoken word? Yeah, definitely. So the person in particular who was on the front desk of the slam encouraging me was my now very good friends, Leo Luna, who also was the host before me. They took on that role and then, yeah, sort of retired from the team to focus on other things.

11:45 But before they were even my friends, they could just, they could see that I had this excitement and urge to perform, but I just hadn't quite developed the confidence in myself to give it a go. And they, yeah, they just kept on encouraging me. And yeah, it was actually their hand that I used as a model for my poetry slam tattoo, which I didn't tell them about right away because I didn't want to make them cry. But yeah, they're a very, very special person and had a massive impact on Enough Said slam and on me as a poet. Please tell me you did tell them eventually about the Hampton. I did, yeah. I had a few drinks in me and I like, leaned over to them on the couch at a friend's house and was like, you know, this is your hand, right? And they were like, what? No. And then we both cried.

12:27 Did they did they hold it up? You know against against your arm to compare. Well, I had somewhat sneakily taken a photo of their hand months earlier or possibly a year earlier to plan this tattoo. But I sort of, we were out at dinner at the time and I kind of understated it, like, Oh yeah, I'm just trying to get, I'm, I'm gonna do a sketch myself. I just want to get an idea of what it looks like. I can't get a photo of my own hand from the right angle. Can you let me just check I've got this right. Yeah, that let me just take a photo. So I didn't really let them know that that was what I was fully planning on doing the entire time. But then later after I told them they were like oh you sneaky bitch. And were there tears at the time? Definitely, Yeah. Yeah, that was really special.

13:09 I'm always a big fan of, of making sure that we actually, you know, vocalize when we've been inspired by someone. I think it's, it's really important. So I'm happy to hear that that happened. Couldn't agree more. So Adara, you you really picked up the mantle for an upset poetry slam in 2020, and you've been carrying it ever since. How did that transition come about? Was that a natural slow process or was it quite sudden? And also, how do you keep such a long running and regular show feeling fresh? It was a wee bit sudden. So I think at the end of 2019, Leo had told the team that they were ready to leave, that, you know, had their chapter in the poetry slam and they wanted to do other things. The following year, our February slam, Elliot Cameron was going to host.

13:56 And then he said, oh, I'm actually not feeling amazing. Would you mind Co hosting with me in a couple weeks? And I said sure. And then a week later we started getting the news about COVID being really quite serious. So then we were like, oh, so if you're feeling unwell, you probably shouldn't be on the mic at all. And he was like, yeah, no, totally. So you'll have to host by yourself. And I was like, OK, sure. And then 2020 was wild because we skipped March because that was the month we all went into lockdown and everyone pivoted was the keyword of of that year. And we run a year's worth of online slams on Zoom, which was wild because I didn't have the audience to feed off. Everyone else was on mute except me or a poet who was performing.

14:39 So I had to dial my enthusiasm up to about 100 times what it normally is when I'm sitting alone in my bedroom in order to make it a show worth tuning into from home, which was, I think, probably an important skill development for me. But yeah, I really enjoy that each slam sort of has its own personality. All of the hosts contribute in a very large way to what that slam feels like. So I've been able to sort of take the energy that already existed of enough Said, being a smaller slam with a large queer community. And, you know, not too formal because we're already, we were always in sort of smaller venues. So we don't take ourselves too seriously, but we also put on a good show.

15:26 So each month, you know, I go into the back and I do star jumps to get my heart rate up and get the energy pumping because you're not always feeling it on a Thursday early evening. And yeah, it gets a little bit chaotic at times. I'm definitely not afraid to embarrass myself on the mic for the sake of a few laughs, but yeah. And you've got to feel out the room because, you know, the venue we're in right now fits 60, but sometimes it's raining and we have a slightly lesser known feature poet and we only get like 30. So on those nights, you have to kind of try a little bit harder to vibe up the audience and get them to click and cheer and respond because they're just, they're feeling a little bit more reserved. So yeah, it's all just about kind of reading the energy of the room and just making sure that everyone who's getting on stage that night feels so utterly taken care of by both myself as the host and by the audience, so that when they get on that mic, they're ready and they know that everyone's listening to them 100%.

16:25 Sounds like you, you really have to take that experience of those Zoom years if you like, where you know, you had to be the loudest person for it to to come across and, and sometimes using that to pep up the audience. I think therefore I slam is brought to you by the slam fam on Patreon. Yes, these are the generous, beautiful, creative souls who help keep the lights on here at podcast HQ. And for less than the price of a coffee a month, they get access to all types of exclusive goodies, including bonus episodes, previews of upcoming content, new poems and musings from me, and much more. To become a member, you can head on over to patreon.com/ITT is or click the link in the description. Now back to the conversation, Adara, just before we started recording, you were well, we were both talking about our dislike of people who Pike, who who say that they'll be there or they'll go somewhere and then they don't show up. I want to know what is the number one thing that makes an event host?

17:29 And you have so much experience here. What's the number one thing that makes an event host happy? What's the number one thing people should do? Buy your ticket before the day of. Yes, I'm begging you, I'm begging you. I understand that we have been in financial crisis and we are in an energy deficit. We're all running low on spoons. But it makes it really hard for events to plan in the short and long term if they just never know how many people are going to show up. And with portrait stamps being as cheap entry as they are, it doesn't really hurt to buy a 5 or $10 ticket and then decide on the night not to go if you can afford it. But yeah, unfortunately our generation and the ones below are all just not particularly catched up. So we like to decide day of whether or not we have the energy to go to something.

18:11 But I would just urge people to take into account that poetry slams give you energy. They don't take your energy. They give you so, so much. It's such a nourishing experience to be vulnerable and to have people be vulnerable in front of you. So even if you're tired and exhausted and you have to rub it in your couch cushions for 5 bucks, it is so worth it every time. Surely everyone's got a couple of bucks, you know, down the back of the couch or there's there's some old ancient dolomite account, you know. Sitting around, but someone. 'S still got a few a few dollars in a. Fiver in the centre console that's. It, it's probably the same reason why we're we're so encouraged to like pre-order books or, or pre safe tracks like all that, all that pre commitment I think is, is obviously so important, especially when you're heading something up. But I guess it helps you plan, it helps you know what to expect and it builds its own sense of momentum. You know, the the more it builds, the more it builds, I suppose.

19:14 It does. And there's a lot of events out there that cannot go ahead without minimum numbers. You know, if they're hiring a theater or a venue for their show and it costs X amount of money and they only make X amount of money on ticket sales ahead of time and they're a really small production, They might have to cancel a few days out. And all of that preparation is for nothing. And then day of everyone goes, oh, where'd that show ticket link go? I was going to buy tickets to that. I was going to go. And they're like, well, why? We posted every single day for a month. Why didn't you buy tickets before? It's gone now, so just ahead of time, we're begging you. We're begging you, we need your spoons. Let's go Yeah, save up your spoons for the slam.

19:54 On that note, because you have such extensive experience as an MC and, and not just at poetry slams, but we're talking, you know, I, I heard that you'd, you'd hosted some, some singles nights and some, some other festival events and things like this. I want to talk about the times when it, it goes all wrong. Like what are the biggest live event disasters that you've had to? Ride out or smooth over on stage Is it? Is it, you know, crazy hecklers? Is it terrible weather that blows the stage down? What? What is it? I think the most challenging I've had recently was my poetry slam team had a a few sets at the Illawarra Folk Festival in January. And that festival got some absolutely torrential rain.

20:36 And for our second of three gigs we were in sort of a Bush teepee tent outside with no mic or electricity. So we had to basically shout our poems over the rain. And I very quickly lost my voice. It was holding on by thread for our evening set, but by the next day it was gone. So that was interesting. I learned who does and doesn't have an outside voice. So we're going to do a workshop on that I think later this year on, you know, projection techniques in case that happens again at our regular slam. I think the worst thing that ever happens is just that sometimes we get a bit of a dodgy poem. Like someone will come on and they'll they'll try to preach to the audience or they'll do this really vicious poem about how much they hated their ex-wife or something. Just a little bit too sexual.

21:27 You know, there's there's nothing wrong with an erotic poem, but just sometimes it's not really everyone's vibe, especially if it gets a little bit sort of objectify Y. So for those ones, I just try to sort of gauge how the audience is feeling as I'm listening to if they're feeling the way that I'm feeling about this. And then usually when a poet finishes and sits back down, I'll try to say something that responds to that poem like, oh, that's so great, that reminded me of this or Oh my God, that one line was amazing. Made me laugh. And then I'll go to the judges. But for those awkward ones, I will usually, unless they said something heinous that I think needs to very briefly and jokingly be called out in order to release the tension in the room, I will usually just go straight on to the judges. I'll be like, oh, right, thank you, Glenn judges, what did we think of that? And then just just steamroll past it so that we don't have to dwell on the awkwardness.

22:16 Yeah, yeah, there's, there's kind of two speeds with these things. I guess a few thoughts when you were yelling your, your, your poetry over the rain. It sounds kind of cool in a primal kind of way to, you know, be be battling the elements. But I'm guessing after a minute or two, if you're doing a really long piece, it's probably starts to go after after a little bit. It can do. Yeah. I did it at least once before. There was a sort of Co-op space that I Co founded in beginning of 2019 called Society City in Wollongong. It was like a secondhand bookshop and a venue space. And the night that we launched it, with all of these things happening inside, we had soapbox poetry happening at the front. And again, torrential rain. So myself and a few other poets had to take turns standing on a milk crate shouting the poetry into the rain. And yeah, there is primal is a good word for it. There's something very visceral about having the elements playing a very enthusiastic backup to your poetry. How do you go with, let's say someone's gone, you know, a long way overtime, like how do you deal with that? Hasn't happened in too long.

23:23 If they only go about a minute or so overtime they just get docked points and we don't really yank them off stage. But there have been a few in the past before I was a host. It's usually an older person who maybe didn't quite hear that it is a strictly enforced time limit that has like 10 pages of A4 paper stapled together and just keep slipping through them. And yeah, at a certain point, you have to go on and be like, you kind of just listen for something of a pause and then jump on and be like, hi, that was so great, but you're out of time, sorry. And they go, oh, oh, sorry. And then before they have a chance to object and say, could I just finish, though, you just sort of move closer to the mic and go round of applause for so and so everybody. Thank you so much. And just bully them with relentless enthusiasm to get off the stage.

24:06 It's less like the Oscar, you know, where the the orchestra slowly, you know, rises. It's more like vaudeville or something. Someone. Starts, you know. Clicking on the keys or or yeah, doing a little push or whatever. If I had a shepherds crook I would have it handy just in case. Yeah, so true, so true. Here comes the barbershop quartet, Long live enough said. Poetry slam, you know, 14 years, that's, that's extraordinary. Having just experienced a local event that was great, but kind of came and went all in the space of six months. You know, 14 years is, is no joke. So looking forward to, to many, many more years. Adara, I think it's time for peace #2. What have you got for us?

24:49 Let's do it. So intro to this one, Slams are a wonderful place for people to talk about stuff that is a bit heavier in what's going on in the world. And my city, Wollongong for a long time had weekly and then fortnightly Palestine protests. And there were people who ran those protests who came to the slam and became part of the community. It was so lovely to just have the space be a place for people to talk about, you know, some of the worst things happening in the world and share it with people who were there to just kind of hold space. So that was, this is my version of that. The Wollongong Palestine protest marches past the courthouse, the cop shop, security guards and boys in blue sauntering alongside the chanting crowd of kids, mums, teens and seniors, prams and wheelchairs rolling down Crown St.

25:39 We use our hands and voices to scream our anger of a genocide in our lifetime, one of several of the fragile excuses of our government to not intervene. Years of dribble dribbling from the Lily livid lips of our elected politicians pussyfooting around the point. In the past two years of Wollongong Palestine protests, I've watched a woman's two sons grow up joking rainbow calls to action and climbing trees. That family has been there week after week, and I can't help but wonder how many Palestinian kids would be their age, their height, their level of joy if Zionists with guns hadn't taken away their chance to grow. The urge to give up is strong, to let the blanket of indifference rise over my head and believe there is nothing that I can do.

26:29 But every time it is the hands and voices at rallies that remind me it is not hopeless that we can carve a better world, even if it takes every breath in our bodies when the people band together a matter of time before the fascists fall. Thank you, Adara. I, yeah, I don't know what to say apart from like, you know, it, it's, it, it's going to be so interesting to see like how we look back on this part of history in terms of all, all the things that are happening around the world. And, and particularly, I mean, I know in certain states of, of Australia, it's gone so far that there are certain phrases and certain iconography that you just, that you just can't use. And it's just, it just doesn't, yeah. It just doesn't seem like the right response at all. Like, yeah.

27:20 But it's great to know that there's, there's people in your neck of the woods because, you know, I see, I see plenty of, of demonstrations going on all the time in Melbourne. But to know that there's people in solidarity all around the world doing similar things, it's really great. Yeah, No, I. Agree. Wollongong is not a large city. So it was really three years ago now. Except wrote that poem a year ago. Yeah. To see 150 or so people showing up every week for a long time was it was really bolstering to have that. And. Yeah. And poetry slams I'm so grateful for because they're one of the few art forms where absolutely no one is going to tell you that you shouldn't put politics in your art. That's an insane thing to say to a poet. It's never. No one's going to say that out of poetry's land. So it's a good, safe place to talk about the things you need to talk about that you feel like no one in else in your life or in your workplace is discussing.

28:12 Do you think all? Art is is political. And when we say political, I don't necessarily mean, you know, things that are happening in the world. I just mean figuring out how we all live together in this big wide world. That's what I kind of mean by political, I suppose. Yeah, I think. Nothing happens out of context. Everything is informed by something. So even something as simple as a child's drawing of their house and their family is political because a child in Palestine would not draw the same thing right now. They would Draw Something else. So there is inherent privilege in the life of that child who lives in a safe home where the worst thing that's ever happened to them was broccoli. And that is political.

28:53 Politics are in everything. I don't think anything, even a pretty oil painting of a yellow flower, exists only in the context of, well, isn't it pretty? Everything has surrounding context. That makes it political in one way or another. And I don't think that detracts from the beauty. It just it informs the art. Yeah, well said. Well. Said well, we've talked about the the many hats that you wear Adara, and you also have this role as the marketing coordinator for red dirt poetry festival right there in the middle of the of the red centre there. Mm hmm. My newest hat I'm very. Excited your newest hat, OK. There you go. I wanna know how do you go about drumming up interest in spoken word and presenting it to new audiences? Because I've definitely been in situations, I'm sure you do as well, where you're, you're talking about your involvement with spoken word with someone who has no context for that. And I have trouble pitching exactly what it is or what is appealing about it.

29:52 I I find it hard to vocalize. So what do you do as a marketing coordinator to present this beautiful thing to the world? Yeah, it is a. Really lame thing to have to try to describe. It never sounds as cool as it is when you try. Annoyingly, video content is, I think, the best tool that lovers of weird niche things have at their disposal to show how cool something is because you just can't picture it without seeing, you know, the energy of a room. Because almost every single person in the world, they go to poetry slam once and they leave and go, that's really cool. And they really, they're genuinely surprised because they didn't think poetry was for them. They thought it was that thing that they were forced to learn about in school. Poetry slams usually try their done just to have, you know, a camera volunteer and try to take content for reels and TikTok just to try to show people who are outside of this community, this is what it looks like.

30:45 Look how much fun we're having. And and look, this this poetry slam has professional videos of people who've performed. So if you're a performer, you could do that. So there are yeah, there are two main angles for marketing poetry slams and similar events. And 1 is, do you really like being on a microphone? Do you have things to say? This is a place for you. You will have an opportunity to do that here. And the rest of it is, you know, do you just love art and vulnerability and events with a lot of audience interactivity? Like it is not a sit down, shut up type of event. Poetry slams, you know, we're clicking and we're booing the judges, not the poets. And we're and we're Ming and I, I encourage everyone in my slam to Heckle me as much as possible.

31:31 Exactly. We hiss the judges, we yell at the judges. And it's genuinely a really, really fun time. So yeah, trying to find ways to show people what it looks like from the inside is I have found the the best way to sort of encourage people along. It's it's the same as a shop front. You know, if you can't see what the shop looks like and you have to go up a set of stairs and up several floors, it's a bit intimidating. But if you if it has a glass window right out front, you can peek inside before you step through the door. You're like, oh, yeah, that looks safe. That looks fun. I'll go in there. And that Venn. Diagram of, you know, people who are interested in arts and people who are interested in in I guess the context that slam poetry happens in is probably larger than we think.

32:11 I guess it's just about finding the right people, you know, and and going to where they are and being able to communicate that like it's it's just something, you know, I'm. I'm still trying to figure out so it's good to get some some input there. What can we expect from Red Dirt Poetry Festival 2026? It's coming up in August, I believe. Is that right? It is yeah. The. 20th to the 23rd, I think there is a massive array of artists. I cannot say who they are, but they're coming from all over the country. Red Dirt has a partnership with some writers coming over from I think Chile and maybe also Spain, coincidentally, that are getting involved in one or two of the events. We're going to be activating Alice Springs Airport with some interactive poetry stuff.

32:57 So as soon as people land in Alice Springs, they can find out about the festival and read some lines by, I hope this isn't a secret. I don't think so. Read some lines by the poets who are performing and yeah, there's there are things under the stars. It's all over. It's daytime, it's nighttime. There's a school program. There will be a heat. The Central Australia heat for the Australian Portrait Slam will be happening during the festival as well. The one winner of that will go along with the Darwin heat to the national final at Sydney Opera House later in the year. Yeah, it's going to be great. It's a lot. Amazing. We'll have some more information and some links to the website in the episode description.

33:39 Hey, quick, Pep. Talk. If you're enjoying the episode, I'd love it if you could leave a rating review, comment or like wherever you're listening right now. You know how this works. Every little bit of digital interaction helps people to find the show and keeps the poetry flowing. And if you want to do something extra special, please share the episode with someone who you think will vibe with it. That also helps with all of the above. Thanks so much for listening. And now back to our guest. I want to change gears. Now Adara and talk about Zenes and the magic of Zenes, which is not something I'm super familiar with. I've certainly had other guests on who are Zen connoisseurs and and I've got some more people coming on who are Zen connoisseurs.

34:24 You're grabbing the collection right now. I am literally. I I ran a workshop recently, so I have, I have some choice scenes right here. Joe will hold up as I am speaking for the people. Yeah, Who can hear me? I I can describe a few. Yeah. Can you tell? Us what designs bring to the creative table that differentiates them from from books or other kinds of poetry collections or anthologies because you've chosen to release some collections as scenes. Yes, yeah. So the amazing thing about Zanes is that the most accessible form of publishing it is available to anyone with access to a printer and maybe a stapler if they need one, maybe disappearance scissors. It is the most immediate way to get something that you created into your own hands, and then it's everyone else's hands as well.

35:11 It's so accessible. So I'm not yet to brave the process of sending my work into publishers and trying to get a book deal sounds awful, but I can still share my work with people, which is really lovely because when you perform for people who've never heard you before, you get people coming up to being like, do you have your stuff anywhere? And if you haven't been published, you're like, I don't know, I got some videos on my Instagram. But if you have a Zine, you can say, well, I have this little thing for $5 in my bag. And yeah, they're just, it's such a sort of community LED art form where people just, they make the dumbest stuff. So mine are obviously poetry scenes with a little bit of art, some partnerships with artists because I did not have a visual bone in my body.

35:55 But then people make super silly stuff as well. Like this one says little things that remind me of you, and it like folds out like an accordion. So they didn't even have to say for that one. I have a little one that's like, the size of a matchbook that's like a little poem through space. They can be. Yeah. So my ones are more A5. So I have, you know, about 10:00-ish poems in each of them. But a lot of scenes are just one single poem or collections of art or comics or funny jokes. Like here are the weirdest AO3 tags that I have been able to find, which is the fan fiction website. Or like, here are a bunch of drag names that I thought would be funny. Or here is Tinder, if it was entirely 4 gnomes. And a lot of it's personal as well. You know, there's a lot of like, you know, I've been on tea for a year and this has been my experience. Or like, you know, last year my, my nan died and I ate 433 pieces of toast.

36:50 And it's just that experience. Like it's just so it, it's completely open. You can do literally anything. If you're not good at drawing, you can collage. You can just cut bits out of magazines and things that you find at op shops and do it that way. It's just it's so so accessible sometimes the. Art form reminds me a little bit of like the little illustrations that Andy Griffith's, you know, national children's book author treasure I used to do in the margins of all the Terry Denton books. You know, there'd be little, little flip cartoons or, you know, just stupid little one liner puns or whatever. So wholesome. I saw this video. By Struthless again, another Australian slash New Zealand creator.

37:33 He was recommending Zine making as a replacement for doom scrolling. As in he was saying that to make a small Zine, even if you haven't finished it, to actually rub a bandit around your phone so that every time you go to pick up your phone, instead, you pick up the Zine and you do a little bit of work on it. I thought that's that's really neat. I mean, he's, he's another massive advocate, so I love that. That's such a good idea. That's the solution to some of the world's problems, I think. Do you have any grand? Visions for what some future or ultimate scenes might be for you? Or does it look like more collections? I would really like to try. My hand at collage, I keep defaulting to just flicking through art books and then pulling out existing art.

38:13 And then I have all these pages of things that I can't really do anything with because they're already completed. So I really want to try the art form of cutting things out and rearranging them in interesting ways and then using that as a backdrop for poems. The Zine fair that I run is this Saturday, which will be already happened by the time this episode comes out. But yeah, I've got two days to finish a few things and then go to Officeworks and stand in line at, you know, 9:00 PM and piss off all the employees by printing off everything at the last possible minute on Friday night. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Sorry, Sorry. I just I. Meant for that to be double sided, sorry. Could you just really quickly so you're about to be. Immersed in the absolute the the Zine cinematic universe, I absolutely.

38:57 Am yeah, My, a couple of friends and I run it. It's in its fourth year, Strangefold Zine Fair at Wollongong Town Hall, and it's, yeah, it's so lovely. We've got, I don't know, 60-70 odds tables, tablers coming from, you know, Sydney. Sometimes we get people from Central Coast and Blue Mountains and yeah, they'll be laying this stuff out on their tables. And the people of Woolongong can have a walkthrough and buy things for as little as $0.50 or more dollars. Help me make my rent and go home with, you know, these tiny little snapshots of people's lives. And there are, and we're setting up a workshop in the room next door as well, So. And there's a competition so people can try their hand at making their regimes and and winning stuff.

39:37 And yeah, it's an amazing way to spend a few hours. I love it so much. Wow. Well, can't. Wait to to see the highlights. Once it's all once it's all wrapped up, just quickly pivoting back to the longevity of of Enough Said as an event. I'm usually not super good with hypotheticals, which is why I like to ask them rather than receive them. So here's one for you. If Enough Said Poetry Slam closed its doors tomorrow for some reason, what is the one thing that you hope the Enough Said community takes with them that proves? That the work and the time they're mattered. Well, hopefully we're not calling. That down into the universe, and I said should run for another 16 years at least so we can make it an even 30. But I would say I would.

40:23 I really want everyone who comes to the poetry slam to understand and accept in their heart is that everyone has the right to take up space, especially on a microphone. You know, a lot of people go through the world constantly apologizing for themselves and even when they get to the poetry slam and they've wanted to do this for so long and they finished the poem and they memorized it, but they don't trust themselves. So they have the book in front of them and they do the poem and then nervous. And then they get off stage as quickly as they possibly can with this little shrug as soon as the poem is over. And that's OK to be nervous. But I just, I really want everyone to understand that they have every right, as much right as anyone else, to get up on a stage and share their work.

41:04 They don't have the right to be on every stage. Because you perform once doesn't mean you get to go to every event ever and be like, I'm amazing. Put me on your run sheet. But yeah, it's, it's an amazing place to be able to share what is important to you to share, whatever that may be. And it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't. You don't have to have been doing it for years before you ever get up on a poetry slam stage. You can just try it. And the audience is going to be right there with you no matter where you are. You know, at another slam, it's a different but similar energy at any poetry slam. And they're just there. They're there for you, and you're there for them. Wow, what? What a vision.

41:45 I'm getting fired up here. This is great. Speaking. Of collage As we were before, I now want to add your answer to the collage of our overarching creative analogy for season 3. So if your creative work is a color or or shade in the color spectrum, what is it and why I think it? Would be a very, very deep plum sort of color I want. I want the pink tones in there for the femininity. I want the closeness to blood for all of the the visceral kind of topics that I often talk about. A lot of my poems come, you know, from the body and they talk about things that happen, you know, in US and to us. And I want the femininity.

42:29 And also my hair is pink so I feel like I couldn't pick a color that wasn't somewhere on that spectrum. Deep, deep plum. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a bit. Sexy, and so is my poetry, for the most part. Very nice, very nice. Now moving on to the segment which we've nicked, we've stolen it. We've we've been a bit of a klepto from a diary of a CEO. This question comes from my previous guest, Andrew Horner, who asks, do you think social media platforms are diluting artists authenticity with the pressure to constantly create content? I don't know if that's. Happening to poets specifically, I definitely think it happens. Overall, I think a lot of us, maybe less so now, I think Gen. Z is doing a better job of just kind of shit posting whatever. But millennials in particular, we were teenagers for the most part when Instagram came out.

43:22 And so for a long time, a lot of us were going into every fun or interesting experience thinking about how we could get a good photo of it for social media. And I and A lot of others are still sort of training our way out of that. But it's also a helpful tool. Unfortunately, the pages that you see on Instagram that are entirely screenshots or images of poems tend not to do all that well because people respond to faces more than anything else. That's something I've learned over the years as a marketing coordinator is that you take the most beautiful photo of the world, but it still won't do as well as a photo with someone's face in it. That's just what people respond to the most. So unfortunately, it means that a lot of us have to make our face our brand. You don't have to, but it is a tool that you can utilize to get people to pay attention and then go into the comments or swipe to the next image and look at your poetry that way. Social media can be a bit of an accountability machine as well if you like, you know, if you are not performing as often as you'd like to or you're just not interested in performing at all, you know, a page poet doesn't have to be a spoken word poet and vice versa.

44:30 It can be a journal. A lot of people can treat social media like a digital journal and a place to share what they've written immediately with the world and not wait for it to be published somewhere. So it has pros and cons. Basically as someone who's. Kind of dipped my toe into some of the newer platforms, so like a blue sky and an upscrolled and stuff. I'm always amazed at these newer platforms. They're so much quieter just in terms of, of, of visual noise. And you know that that's going to change in the future. You know, who knows how long they're going to stay in that state or, or if they're going to rise or fall. I mean, I guess we'll see.

45:10 But I'm always interested. Like I would gladly pay. This is my stance on social media in a nutshell. I would gladly pay for social media if it helped me spend less time on it, which of course is not what it's currently designed to do. It's designed with all the little hooks and everything that, that, that we know it it has, right? Yeah. It's the addiction. Machine It's interesting to hear that that's how it's going on the new platforms 'cause I I work in events so platforms that are not location based have no benefit to my work so I haven't really bothered with any of the new ones but it's it's nice to hear that they are more conversational than anything else and they haven't yet been completely taken over by advertising and algorithms yeah it's. There's no, there's no AI junk there yet. Like I said, it's just, it's a stark contrast. But whether it stays that way or whether they live and die by that sword, we'll, we'll see.

46:05 I guess you just got to find the the flavour that that suits you now Adara, you get a chance to I guess buy a brick in the house. That is, I think therefore I slam what question do you want to leave for my next guest sight unseen, so. Happening back to do something I just said, there is spoken word poetry and there is page poetry. How much do you think these two forms of poetry can and should overlap? Should the page poet go to poetry slams and learn from spoken word poets so that they can read their work when they have book launches? Should the slam poets try to get their work published in literary journals or can they attain legitimacy without that? What do you think?

46:54 Can they exist together without each other? How do they work? Is it the chocolate and? Peanut butter of literature? Who knows? Or is it? Is it the oil and water? We'll we'll find out next week. Very good. I appreciate that Adara. Now, before you wow us with your third and final piece, we'd like to know that if if people want to learn more about you and what you're up to see some of your work, where's the best place for them to to go? I. Have a website itisadaraandtala.com and I post my major accomplishments there, but I update my Instagram more often, which is at the Poet Adara. So anytime I have a gig where I'm performing or emceeing or doing typewriter poetry or whatever it may be, I will post it there.

47:40 And that's where you can find me. Fantastic. And. Again, we'll have all the links for that in the show description. Adara, would you mind playing us out with your final piece for today? It'll be my. Pleasure. It's a bit of a longer one. I wrote it only a few weeks ago for International Women's Day, and it's called Ode to the Trans Girls. Owed to the trans girls waking up smelling of petrichor, the smell before rain prophesying a downpour of change, a blossoming warmth, The scent of things to come. Owed to the trans girls whose hair smells like burned gum leaves from the harm reduction burning they are undertaking. Sifting through the underbrush of their genders, spotting the parts that no longer serve and scorching them away. A careful destruction of fallen foliage to prevent future catastrophe and allow new growth to shoot forth. Owed to the trans girls who have shown me their changing bodies, sending selfies of arched backs in underwear, asking for recommendations for their brand new hips and whether their sports bras need an underwire.

48:49 Owed to the trans girls who have come out to me at midday pub lunches and Instagram DMS, have swum through my castaway clothes and gone home with a curvy girl starter pack wardrobe to go with their new pronouns. I'm sorry you can't have my bras. You have perky runway tits and I have checked baggage. But if your boobs aren't growing as fast as you'd like, let me take you out for fried chicken or mapo tofu. Maybe the extra estrogen will help. I wish I could give you some of mine and then we could both fit into AD cup, but I'll go bra shopping with you anyway. An ode is a love letter from a poet, but everything a poet writes is a love letter to something, and MTF transition looks an awful lot like a love letter to womanhood, to girlhood, to the intersection and overlap of feminine and masculine.

49:40 Ode to the trans girls who taught CIS women like me that there is no one way to be a woman, that we need no pregnancy nor unwavering softness to be part of this divine sisterhood. Who showed all my CIS sisters with facial hair and infertile wounds and broad shoulders and long necks that they are so, so beautiful. Go to the trans girls whose safety pinned together their style with such chaotic precision that my best friend has to run up to you on the street to compliment you, and we see that fear in your eyes before you realise what she's saying. I'm so sorry you have reason to be afraid, but I promise you're safe with us. Owed to the black trans girls at the Stonewall riots throwing bricks at hateful cops on the frontline, and to the drag kings at Sydney Mardi Gras protesting genocide. We must protect the dolls as the dolls have protected so many others.

50:33 Ode to the trans girls who had to burn their Harry Potter novels when their author told them they were destroying what it means to be a woman. I promise you a middle-aged British lady in a mould covered castle is not the authority. This is an ode to the girly pups, the hypothems, the skater butchers. Ode to the girls wearing cat ears and Metallica Tees, the girls buying power tools at Bunnings, the blue head lesbian emo tea girl DJs and the cottage called crafty housewives. Ode to the girls packing heat in their mini skirts. Dicks bigger than the men. Reddit deciding who can and can't call themselves a woman. Owed to the girl. Trans girls who saw the TV glow, who felt something in their rib cage vibrate so hard they couldn't ignore it any longer, made a knife of their insistence and cut their way out of cages made of flesh owed to the trans girls who, in my hours of self hatred, of bitter resentment of what it means to be a woman in a misogynistic world of men, showed me that it must be worth all this pain if you would go through so much to become one. A writer from Salem, MA said that God made trans people for the same reason God made wheat but not bread, and fruit but not wine, so that humanity could share in the act of creation. And I don't believe in God.

51:48 But if that is the case, then I am a holy witness to the trans girls on day one or day 10,000 of girlhood. You do not need my personal welcome to a worldwide community of women. You were one from the moment you realised it, but by God you have it anyway. Wow, Adara and Tala, the pride of Wollongong. Enough said. Poetry slam, Red Dirt Poetry festival. Check out all the things. Thank you so much for thinking with us and slamming with us today. Thank you, Andrew. This. Was beautiful.

52:34 Wait, your big fans? What's that all about?