Paris Rosemont - Banana Girl Conquers the World

0:00 Hi friends and welcome to season 3 of I Think Therefore I Slam. If this is your first time here, let me bring you up to speed. My name is Andrew Rogerson, I'm an award-winning spoken word poet from Melbourne, Australia. On this podcast, I've been honoured to have talked with some of the best spoken word and slam poetry artists from both Australia and around the world. This season, not only will you be getting more of the performances and interviews that you know and love, but you're going to be hearing a lot more from yours truly. That's right, I'll be dropping some solo episodes throughout season 3 where I'll deep dive into my own work and the things that inspire me. Wherever you're listening to this, make sure that you're subscribed or following so you don't miss any of the good stuff.

0:42 Thank you so much for listening. Let's get on with it. 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. Blood black nothingness began to spin. To this day, I hate pork chops. I am the master. Of mine, man. I am the captain myself, back by popular demand. It's I think therefore I Slam, the podcast bringing you the best slam poetry and spoken word artist from Australia and beyond. My name is Andrew Rogerson, welcome back for 2026 punters. This season is all killer, no filler. I can tell you that right off the bat. So we're going to get right into things. My opening guest for the year is a multidisciplinary, multi award-winning tie.

1:36 Australian writer and author of the poetry collections Banana Girl and The Barefoot Poetess. They've been shortlisted for awards in Australia, Greece, UK and the USA. The Barefoot Poetess was awarded the distinguished favorite in the NYC Big Book Awards last year. My guest has also recently released their chat book Glitch. My guest has been published in over 100 literary journals and anthologies worldwide, everything from Australian Poetry Journal, Rabbit Splinter, and the Sky Island Journal. They're the winner of the Matthew Rocket Poetry Prize 2025 and were long listed for the Blake Poetry Prize 2026. They're also a critic for Mascara Literary Journal, a guest editor for Written Off Literary Journal, and they sit on the Hunter Writers Centre board and chair the Poetry Books judging panel for the Western Australian Premiers Book Awards 2026. So much responsibility.

2:27 They've performed on festival stages nationwide and internationally. Please welcome the wildest of Wildcards. Paris Rosemont. Hi, Paris. Hello, thanks so much for having me on your show, Andrew. No worries. Have you ever had someone like give you that kind of hype up before a performance or an. Interview. That was amazing. That was the best hype up I've ever received. That's my entire job here. Now, Paris, you have a great honour today, which is you get to kick off the entire season's worth of great interviews and insights on slam poetry. You're going to start off with one of your spoken word pieces. Did you want to give any intro to this or would you like to jump right in?

3:08 Just a brief intro, this one comes from my debut, the poetry collection Banana Girl, and it was one of the very first pieces I wrote on identity because I'd noticed when I was attending writers festivals that people of colour would be speaking about their cultural heritage and backgrounds. And I'm like, why haven't I written anything on the subject? Because it was something I was probably a little bit afraid of approaching. And so I thought, OK, I'm going to have to face my fears and address what it is I'm not saying. And so this is what resulted. Shotgun Smoke. She has been living 1 foot in the Pacific Ocean, the other dipping a curious toe in the Andaman Sea. Who is she?

3:49 Wildflower flourishing in the hothouse till she grows tall as a poppy queuing for the guillotine. Still she sighs and cries over milk spilt from coconuts bought from fluro lit supermarkets instead of farms, fertilised with her forefathers blood. This girl, a shotgun curl of wispy grey, second hand smoke inhaled through a foreign kiss, sucking down exotic backnotes of sandalwoods, coating lungs with fine particle grit, scarlet ink dropping water, confusion of blood. What is her type? She is distraught. She ought to know who she is by now, one of many lost little girls and boys, a diaspora of homeless toys with fucked up daddy issues.

4:38 She is a wave crashing on foreign shores, knocking on your white picket fence doors. She heard the call. Daughter of the revolution, Bitter gourd of dysfunction, mixed cocktail solution, all cock a doodle Doo. She heard the call. She heard the call. She is knocking on your door. Yes, Paris. Amazing. We are not mucking around in 2026, I tell you what. Thank you for bringing that to us today. I got to say, your debut poetry collection, Banana Girl. When I hear that title I can't help but think of the old. I think it was the BBC cartoon Banana Man. Have you heard of this?

5:21 Yes, Eric, Banana man. Yes. That's it. So I'm always thinking like Paris is banana girl or something like that, but I. Know, I sort of wanted to reinvent myself as a superhero. Yeah, yeah. I love that. Love that. Tell us more about you know, the name of that initial poetry collection. I suppose it was reclaiming something that sometimes held as a sling against Asian Australians in that we're called bananas where yellow on the outside, white on the inside. And so it's a source of both mockery but self deprecation. So I thought, OK, rather than having people use things against me, I'm going to actually claim it as my own. I'm out and proud, I'm a banana girl and there's nothing to be ashamed of. And so I made that my whole thing. And there's a whole sort of back story as to how this sort of persona evolved.

6:10 But when I was at the Red Dead Poetry Festival a couple of years ago, somehow the festival director thought that I wanted a banana as a prop. And so a couple of days before I was flying out to NT, they said, oh, you'll be so pleased to hear your bananas arrived. And I'm like, what? Oh, we ordered you a giant inflatable banana. And I'm like, oh, great, what on earth am I supposed to be doing with this? And so I to incorporate it into my performance that night and it became the star of the show because it's it's very distinctive. And now people when I tour and perform at festivals, they're like, are you bringing the banana?

6:53 And so it something quite accidental has become a thing. You know, that reminds me of like, you know, Katy Perry and Left Shark Like it's just become exactly own little little meme. And hey, look, there's nothing. There's no such thing as bad marketing. So I'd say embrace the inflatable bananas. Let's throw the inflatable bananas into the crowd. Let's. That's exactly what happens. I actually ejaculate the banana into the crowd. Put pardon upon the climax of the piece. That's so great. I love that. Thanks Paris. So that's the origin story of of the banana girl persona and the inflatable banana. We love origin stories on I think therefore I slam and we tend to find that either people say, oh, it was inevitable, but I was I was going to do what I'm I'm doing now. I've always written, or there is the story of like, oh, I never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now. And then someone dragged me to an open mic and the rest is history.

7:48 I want to know Paris, what is your origin story of starting to create and then share publicly your work? It's probably a patchwork of both of those things, really. The compulsion to write came out of a place of real darkness. My life had fallen to shit. Everything was going wrong. And I was at the point of pretty much giving up on everything, which is a very dark story for another time. But out of that, I began to write. And writing gave me a sense of purpose and it helped me process everything that I was going through. And then once I sort of started getting a little bit better, like in terms of emotionally better, I started thinking I can actually craft some of this stuff that I've written because it's stuff that other people might resonate with as well.

8:34 So I started actually working on the craft of writing poetry rather than simply sort of journaling or pouring it all out in a very sort of free form fashion. And I enrolled in my first six week course and one of the tutors said, have you ever tried performing your poetry on an open mic? And I had lived under such a rock, I didn't even know they existed. And so I went to one just with the intention of observing the lady at the door said, Oh, you're here for poetry night. And I said, yes. And she said, oh, what's your name? And I thought we were just having a little chat and she, she was writing my name down on the list. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not here to, to perform. I just want to see, yes, see what it is. And she's like, oh, we're a little bit light on tonight. Go on, give it a go.

9:21 And I thought, OK, well, I actually don't have enough time to get nervous about this, so might as well. And it was a kind of smaller crowd that night as well. So I thought, OK, it's not too bad. And because the people, when, when I introduced my, I said, this is the first time I've ever been in front of a microphone doing this sort of thing. They were so lovely. They were very warm and encouraging. And I thought this is a really lovely thing to be able to take poetry from the page and be able to share it with people and get real time reactions. And there's just a sense of buzz and love in the room when you share something and it resonates with other people. And I was hooked from the very first time I I loved it. It was Sappho in Glebe.

10:01 Shout out to Sappho, Wonderful Paris. We've featured some incredible Asian Australian artists on the show, so everyone from Joe Yang to the Lou Twins. And in your opening piece you did touch on themes like diaspora and your cultural inheritance. I want to know what is kind of the Asian Australian experience like and how has poetry helped kind of, I guess, solidify your identity of being from two different places if I may say. I think the Asian Australian experience is evolving. Asian Australians born today are going to have a very different experience to ones born decades ago.

10:42 So I grew up in the 1980s, which was shortly after the abolition of the White Australia policy. So multiculturalism had come in as a concept, but it was still so new that people hadn't quite got their heads around it. And try as they made, we were still a little bit of a novelty and people were still trying to figure out how to deal with people who are different to the white Australians who were predominant in Australian culture and society. And so I very much felt like a fish out of water. And yet because I came here as a baby, I didn't know any home other than Australia. So it was a very disconcerting experience of not really knowing where I belonged. And poetry has helped me process the sense of displacement and just the the confusion of that and trying to find a sense of belonging and identity.

11:34 I think that's what everyone, no matter where they come from, ultimately searching for their entire lives. Who am I and where do I belong in society? Yeah, and and earlier you said that one of the ways you've done this is by reclaiming an insult or almost a slur and making it your own and turning it into kind of your stage persona, you know, inflate of all bananas, not, you know, included. Yeah. Now that that's fascinating. Not only have you been, you know, performing your work extensively for for a long time, but you've also been a judge on competitions like living stories up in Sydney. I want to know during that process you're obviously reading submissions from from emerging writers.

12:18 What is something that kind of lights you up and and pay more attention to someone else's written work? OK, first of all, I never put anything down. I always read from beginning to end because you they might redeem themselves if even if it's off to a rocky start, you never know. But what might make me just a little bit uncertain about a piece is if it is full of cliches and if it's melodramatic. So a lot of poetry, because it's such heart writing, it's very difficult to get that across without being all melodramatic and woe is me, you know, the world is ending and this is you need to find something a little bit original, a way of expressing things that's not something that we've heard before 1000 times. And so the poetry that makes me sit back and pay attention is something that might surprise me, whether that's with subject matter or a beautiful turn of phrase that's quirky or interesting.

13:15 Somehow that sort of thing will really spark my attention. I know for me, maybe the central challenge of writing performance pieces is facing up to the fact that, hey, there's so many million words out there, so many billion combinations. I'm trying to find something unique. You know what I mean? Like I try and, and, and it can become my own worst enemy because I think, oh, I don't even want to reuse words, you know, between pieces and eventually that that kind of falls apart. So I think I'm a bit the same. Like I love hearing someone say something old in a new way, I suppose, and that's what I guess I aspire to in in my writing. Great to hear that, you know, you you always will will finish pieces that you want to see whether it, you know, redeems itself through through the process. That's a very, very magnanimous kind of approach to things, you know, taking your time to go through it all. I think therefore I slam is brought to you by the slam fam on Patreon.

14:15 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/I TTIS or click the link in the description. Now back to the conversation. Tell me, what was it like following up Banana Girl with barefoot protests? A lot of people, you know, they talk about the the sophomore slump, if you like, you know, doing the follow up to the original piece, especially because it got so much attention.

14:59 Was it like drawing blood from a stone, or were you kind of in the flow of things by then? I was definitely in the flow of things by then. The publishing industry works quite slowly and so by the time Banana Girl had come out, Barefoot Protests was almost complete. So it had been, I'd been chugging along in the background working on that, and it was quite a different collection. So I felt nervous in a way in that it the readers who had enjoyed my first collection might have not enjoyed the second one because it was different and it didn't feature some of the things that they might have liked about the first one. But then again, I feel like I matured with the second one and so I was pleased with my progression and the way that had shaped up.

15:44 So it was a collection I'm really proud of. Good stuff. Now, we heard in your intro Paris that, you know, you're very decorated by now, but along with those awards, you've also been runner up several times for, you know, fellowships and various awards. Now, depending on people's views, they might view, you know, being a runner up to something as being like, oh, coming so close, but so far that kind of thing. And that makes me think of, I guess, rejection and the role that rejection might play in the the publishing process and the poetry process. What is a time that you've actually received a no rather than a yes in your work and that's forced you to change your approach to your writing?

16:26 Can you tell us some stories? Interesting question. Well, I get a lot of rejections. So any writer is going to get a lot of rejection. So you really have to learn to, to toughen up and to to take it on the chin because you're not going to get the successes without the rejections. But if it's like an isolated thing that I've submitted into, I'm not going to take that no to heart in that I'm not going to let that alter the course of what I'm doing because that's just one isolated opinion. They don't know me and my writing holistically. So while I might take their feedback on board and feedback, to be honest, is very rare, They don't have time to give feedback most of the time.

17:07 But on the rare occasions they do, I will consider what they've said. And sometimes there are recurring threads that are coming through then then I'll sit back and think, maybe I need to reshape, reconsider. But where I take advice on board, most of all, if it's a sort of no is through mentorships. And so when the mentors I've worked with for quite a while or at, you know, in an in depth manner have said no to certain things for some reason, after the sting wears off, I really take that on board and consider whether I want to adopt or reject that. And it's not always because they're more established than I am and should know what they're doing, that I will take their advice because my stuff is ultimately my stuff. And that even the fact that I'm addressing my mind towards what they're saying is helpful in knowing what I want or don't want in my writing.

18:00 So with my second collection I made a pretty radical change. My mentor at the time was helping me sift out and cull the poems because there were way too many and the ones she removed were the image based ones, so the ones with interesting formats and and layouts. And that had been a really strong selling point for Banana Girl. People liked the experimental nature and inventiveness of the way I played with the page white spaces and the the way the words just sort of danced across the page. My mentor said, if you really want to be taken seriously in the industry, I would suggest you remove the visual elements.

18:41 And I'm like, oh, but that's the core of who I've established myself to be. And so it took a lot for me to really let that advice sink in. And ultimately, I did what she suggested because I wanted to give my best shot at being a good poet, whatever that may be. But I wanted to see how far I could make it within the industry. I did that and the book did really well. So I think it was solid advice. But then I released a chat book recently called Glitch, and that one had all the pieces that I pulled out from from the second collection. So it was like my little passion project. Like I'm not here to win any awards with Glitch.

19:22 I'm just here to have fun. Let let the the playfulness come out. And I am going to, you know, do upside down and all around it. Yeah. I was about to ask like is there a chance that those kind of shape based poems will make a comeback? But there it is. You know they go underground and then they come up when? Yeah. So it just wasn't right for that particular collection. And I really respect that advice. It was hard advice to take at the time, but ultimately the right choice for that one. And you're right, I I was able to salvage the ones that I didn't put in there and they became a collection of their own, which feels like a proper, you know, chat book collection because of the cohesiveness of the style or, or cohesiveness in there uncohesiveness, if that's a word. Unconvention, what I'm hearing Paris is that ability to be, I guess, teachable or or open to feedback. Sounds like it's really, really important, like you said, if you want to have a, a shot at building up a, a body of work within Australian poetry.

20:23 Are there any other, you know, top three qualities that you think a writer needs if they want to really take a run at it? I mean, does it look like having a thick skin, for example? What? What do you think? So teach ability. So the willingness to learn and to absorb and to be able able to adapt, it would be 1. Also persistence. Persistence because you will get rejected so many times you will feel like giving up. I don't know a single writer who hasn't felt inadequate in the face of so many rejections. But I always feel like your success is just around the corner. If you just keep trying, you know, ultimately you will get there. You just have to keep trying. There's if you give up, then you're gone.

21:05 Like you're out of the race. You just have to keep on plodding along and, and giving it your best shot. And then the third is. I think playfulness. There's a tendency with poetry especially to get all serious and highfalutin. And, you know, and, and I did that for a while too, to be honest, because I want to be a serious poet. But then I like this is a little bit boring. I want, I don't, I don't want to do that. I'm I, what I actually do these days is I love form. It's not that I don't respect tradition and convention, but I like to also play with it sometimes as well. And so I think if you retain a sense of playfulness, it doesn't become a chore.

21:45 It doesn't become something you're doing just to score the goals or to hit the marks. People can tell when there's real love and passion in what you do. And so I think if you retain a sense of playfulness, the spirit will always be there. If you retain a sense of playfulness, the spirit will always be there. That's a quotable quote and I think you're right. I think audiences and I think readers in Australia have a very fine attuned bullshit radar, for lack of a better word, like, you know, they'll they'll find out if, if things aren't coming from a genuine place. Paris, would you say in the general respect that some of the the Nos and the rejection or or or whatnot that you have faced has led to further fuel for your creativity and further determination to what you're trying to do? Yes, so probably one of the biggest. It wasn't a no as such, but I had a mentorship session with Diane Seuss from the US and it was a narrative, lyrical piece that was quite different to some of the other writing I've been doing.

22:46 I wanted to workshop this one with her because it was different and I wasn't sure whether I was hitting the mark with it or not. And she said, Paris, have you ever tried writing a novel? Because I think you've got a whole book in you. And I'm like, Oh well, a couple of people have suggested it, but it's so far out of my domain, I wouldn't even know where to start. And she said start here. You've got the material, you've got the feel for something novelistic within you, something that you can really stretch out into a juicy story. And so following that, started writing my very first novel, which I'm still working on very slowly, but it's it's a different kettle of fish, such a different skill, but I'm really enjoying the challenge of it. And so yes, that has definitely led to something that was pretty much a career swerve for me because I thought I, I'd sort of told myself these past four years, I'm a poet. This is what I'm do.

23:42 This is what I'm building towards. And then suddenly, oh hey, hang on, I want to write a novel. It's so easy to get pigeonholed, I guess and, and to pigeonhole yourself and just go I'm, I'm a 1 trick pony. This is this is what I do. You know I want to do this well. So. Well, it seemed like madness to have worked so hard all these years and and suddenly to sort of not be throwing it away, but to be branching out into something where I'm going to start on the bottom rung again. And so there's a lot of work ahead of me. But yeah, you just do whatever calls you, I suppose. Yeah, I guess it's a, it's a little bit of ego death. It's a little bit of, like you said, starting over, beginners minds, you know, let's try. Yeah, it's quite humbling. Yeah, yeah. I want to know more about this this debut novel that you're working on.

24:26 The title is Bruised Fruit. So again, kind of other theme with with some of the the other titles that you've had. Can you give us a little synopsis or, or tell us what that title, that phrase kind of means to you? Yeah, so you actually picked up on the fact that it plays upon banana girl. So I've got the fruit thing coming through. But in Thai culture, a lot of nicknames are fruit based, OK. And so I don't, I don't know why this is, but it it's just a thing. And so my nickname and Thai is Pear and I, I know a Moe which is short for watermelon then more. And yeah, so lots of of fruit based nicknames.

25:06 And I like the concept of bruised fruit because a bruise is something that sometimes you can see, but sometimes they they go deep as well. There are a lot of bruises we don't see. And I like the nuance in the layering of that. It's just, it's just very, I don't know, very sensual and very deep and, and yeah, it just carries a lot, I feel. And if we extend the metaphor a bit, I mean, I, I literally have a, a little bit of a bruised banana here on the side, but some people will turn, you know, bruised bananas into, into banana bread kind of thing. And they're. Like so the reinvention, yeah.

25:47 They're the best for that. Do you know what I mean? Everyone's got a different point where they're like, oh, I like my fruit like this. I like it overripe or whatever or, or I like it when it's when it's like this. So yeah, I think there's a, there's a lot of depth to that title. It's a work of fiction, but there's a lot of me injected into there as well. So I'm having a lot of fun playing with the characters because I can either get my revenge on certain people who've been mean to me, or I can rewrite the narrative. And so I can choose better or even worse outcomes for me that that entertain me. I'm like the puppeteer of my own story. Yeah, so semi autobiographical, brilliant. Well, we, we can't wait to to see when that comes out. Paris, I think we'd love to hear your second piece for today. OK, this one comes from my second poetry collection, Barefoot Poetess.

26:39 It's called Diagnosis Eccrasis, a high. Bun after Sarah Jane's silhouette watercolours bleed Feathered shoreline silhouettes. Rorschachesque inkblots. How to carve a poet out of a pumpkin With great care, or none at all. Be sure to wear latex gloves, a fishmonger's apron, goggles, galoshes. They bleed a lot. Find a nerve, make an incision. Oh, watch how they gush and splatter onto the butcher's paper. Now read the splotches like Carmine tinted tea leaves. Of course they carry deeper meanings. It's up to you to find out what.

27:23 It's a butterfly. Did you just yawn? Sorry I don't excite you more. Thank fuck this illegitimate haibun is starting to take shape. Sometimes I worry about my well running dry, you know? Like when will I write my last good poem? Has it already been written? As a poet of just two years, six months and 28 days, give or take, it seems a little sad to potentially already be a washed out. Has been. Then again, better than being a never was. So anyhow, this. Well, it's still wet, obviously. A fan tailed shell, an oyster dribbling pearlescent mucus. Upon closer inspection of her anatomy, the flesh is more pert than languidly spread oyster flaps, more like a tight muscle, whiskered pubes and all.

28:19 Did you know that some bivalve mollusks mass reproduce in a phenomenon called broadcast spawning? It's one gigantic sea orgy, a salty, foaming, free for all potluck. Perhaps I need to step away from the doomscrawling 'cause now I can't Unsee the footage of this synchronised trickle of white, not unlike the humankind drifting out on the tide, possibly at the very beach I swim in. It wouldn't be the first time I gag on something foreign. I've swallowed. I hadn't even been actively searching. The algorithm suggested it for me. What do you think that says about me, Doc?

29:00 The C word. I can't bring myself to say it. No, not cunt, worse cancer. So the scare really scared me. I've been almost ready to go by my own hand then. Chuckle. Snort. Oh, what a plot. Twist Fate thought it'd be a lark to take that choice away from me. I realised I wasn't ready to go after all. Not like that. Quick and clean would have been my modus operandi. Nobody wants an ugly death. I see a vulva inside a breast. I'm aroused. Does this mean I'm queer? I'm talking about my sexuality here, doctor, not my peculiarity, though there is no doubting that I am indeed a strange little bird.

29:53 Do I terrify? Hey, Speaking of saying new things that no one's ever heard before, I don't think I've I've ever heard oyster reproduction described in such a way that was that was incredible. You're going to have to look it up now because yeah, seeing it was eye opening. I'm like, oh, this is just got to go in a poem. So many, so many layers to that. Now, Paris, I want you to be my teacher for a few minutes here, because apologies for my poetry ignorance, but you'd refer to this piece as a high boon. Is that a particular format of poetry? Tell me what? It is. It's an old Japanese form, OK. It intersperses passages of haiku with prose. And so each one sort of interlinks. So haiku, prose haiku, and what the haiku serves as is to distill the concepts, the themes, and they act as a prelude to the prose passage that are going to follow, and then a bridge to the next one that's going to come. So it's a beautiful form that that weaves itself so well. And it's segways, you know, between the different sections. Right.

31:05 So the high part of it is from haiku. I'm very familiar with haiku. They're they're always quite fun. So yeah, kind of smashing 22 formats together. That's good. I also, you know, there's so many layers to what you've just shared in the poem, but I love how you talked about a bit of the anxiety of like, have I written my last good poem? That is, that is a thought I have every day. It's. A constant as a writer. Still, I never know like whether I've got another one in me. Yeah, yeah. Do you think about your writing as having like what I'm trying to say is, do you think you have a poem that is your best, that is your pinnacle, or do you think? It's still come. Oh, I can't definitively pinpoint 1 as my best.

31:48 I've got so many different ones that are dear to me in different ways. So many different ones that I find are technically very strong and thematically powerful in in different ways as well. So how can you compare the the fruit bowl as such? How can you say this is the best fruit for all time? You'll like different ones for different purposes at different times. And so, yeah, you've you've asked me the impossible question. I can't pick between my children. Yes, that's it. That's it. No, no favorite children around here. No. And I'm sure that if you ask your readers or your audience, you'd get all kinds of different answers because I. Do yes and so and I love that as well because it's really interesting to see what other people are picking as their favourites and they're sometimes they surprise me.

32:34 Some of the sort of smaller ones, I suppose the the more throwaway ones will really capture readers attention because of something that it says, because it might be particularly quirky. For example, you, you like the oyster thing, something in something I've said, a reader might say, I have never heard that before. And it's just, you know, yeah, I'm keeping that. Love it, love it. 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.

33:15 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 talk a bit now about, I guess, taking risks versus playing it safe. Paris, what, what do you think in your time riding is the riskiest creative choice that you've ever made? And who or what gave you the courage to take that risk? My very first mentor was through a fellowship with Allie Whitelock, and she taught me both by telling me directly and when I read her poetry that you can actually swear in poetry. So I had been so classically trained. All I had read were the greats, older poets where there was no swearing.

34:04 It was very restrained and refined. And to read contemporary poetry where it was a free for all opened my mind. It really broadened my horizons. I'm like, what? You can actually do that? Is that allowed? And it's like, yeah, who's stopping you? And she said you can write whatever you want, get it all out there at first instance. And then if you want to come back and sort of not censor it, but remove certain parts that might be a little bit sensitive or you may not wish to share with a wider audience, that's your prerogative. But her advice was to just get it all out in its raw form first, because that's when you have the most adventurous things. Did that feel liberating to you in terms of.

34:45 Immensely. Permission. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. Like, yeah, you taught all your life to be a proper lady and never swear and and all of that. Well, in through all my school years, I never swore. None of my schoolmates ever heard me swear. I was very proper. I was a bit like that too. Yeah. And so now I think a lifetime of repression is just surfacing on all my poetry. It's like, yeah, I'm just letting it loose and and it's a whole lot of fun. Oh, fantastic. Well, that that's some wonderful guidance. That's that Ali provided there. It makes me think as well of, you know, people hold Shakespeare in such high regard. But of course, you know, you don't have to dig too far to realize that there is, you know, serious innuendo and their equivalent to to cursing etcetera. Like it's at the time it was, it was considered kind of course or for the common person, it wasn't. He was body, he was rude, he was crude. He appealed to the the people, the working class, you know, the masses.

35:43 And so they were all all for it. Yeah, absolutely. So there's there's that element of subversion, I suppose of, of expectations of what you're doing going from risk to I guess the concept of, of playing it safe. Have you ever felt pressure to write safer work in order to get published? Is that or is that something that you you push against? You've already mentioned this story of kind of changing one of your formats, but I have there been other times when you've felt like you've had to compromise on your vision? Yes, a pretty early on I was getting a lot of rejections and I was reading some of the publications that I was getting rejected from and they all seem to play it kind of safe. And I thought, OK, to be published it means I have to try and, you know, scrub up a little bit and play it a little bit safer as well.

36:38 And so I, I experimented with that and to be honest, it actually did bring me a little bit of success in those realms. But once I got that success, it was enough to prove to myself that the calibre of my writing was of high enough standards. And once I got that out of the way, I thought to myself, well, this isn't really what I want to write. You know, achievement unlocked. Now I can we come back to play, you know, I can play again. I can do what I want. And so I began to to write, I think, truer to myself. And I realized that the publications that are not going to accept my writing are probably not the ones that I really want to be published in anyway.

37:25 And so I started to look for more underground, quirky places that do embrace the spirit of rebellion and and that sort of thing. And so that's where my pieces found good homes that really appreciated some of the more deviant. Stuff, the deviant stuff, yeah, I think it's tremendously exciting when you see indie presses or or self-publishing projects or platforms like Sub Stack where that feeling of playing it safe is, is brushed to the side. And it's really a blank canvas for people to to do what they want. And it's it's great that you've had, you know, both sides of the coin. If you like you've, you've taken some risks and, and, and you've also, you also know what it is to, to compromise on a vision and, and you seem convinced that you want to, you want to stick to what, to your guns, really, and, and embody your full self in your work.

38:17 Now you're, you've got some interesting plans coming up. You're headed to New York City soon. What's What's all that about? I am. So my second poetry collection, Barefoot Poetess, was awarded Distinguished Favorite in their New York City Big Book Awards and I happened to get a Create NSW grant to fly me to New York next month and I'll be able to receive the award in person, give a little speech and attend a three day book conference, which sounds amazing. I'm incredibly excited because I've never been to the US before, so this will be my first big adventure in the Big Apple. That's huge. And I think that just shows the importance of creative grants in Australia like it, it almost seems like every year that we see funding get cut for this or that.

39:02 So the fact that there are still so I mean enduring funds that can unlock things like this, like you said, it's a brand new experience. I just think it's so. Grateful. Oh, as a poet, I live under the poetry line, under the poverty line, that. Is that's that is such a good Freudian slip there? Should we call it the poetry line there? Poetry line. Totally. But that's the depressing state of reality in the arts. It's not a sustainable living. You have to really, you have to have a lot of grit and tenacity to survive as a poet. Yeah. So yeah, incredibly grateful to the people who award grants and fellowships and whatnot, because I wouldn't be able to have. You're educated myself.

39:46 I came to poetry from scratch, having never done classes before, and I started really learning, backfilling the gaps in my knowledge. I'd always been a reader, but that's quite different to writing yourself, turning your own hand to to producing the work. Yeah, having skin in the game, as they say. Yes, exactly. Do you think there's a world where you go over to New York and you love it so much that you become an expat and and start a new life in in the States as a poet? Oh. Knee jerk reaction is no like as exciting as it is, I think I'd be happy to visit, you know, live, live the the high life there for a while. But I love Australia so much. It's, it's my home. I love so much about it, the beaches, the culture, the people.

40:32 If I were to move anywhere, to be honest, it will probably be Europe. Europe has such a an arts loving culture. It's ingrained in society and and there's such an appreciation which sadly I feel Australia is perhaps a little lacking, not within my community, but you see on the news it always ends with sports and sports is so prevalent. And yeah, that's not to say that it's counter to the arts, but if the arts were given a little more value and akin to the sports, perhaps it would be a society that would be more on par with what we see in Europe. I reckon there's a lot of room for collaboration there. I mean, look at every time we have an opening ceremony for the Olympics and, and the incredible things that go down there in terms of of music or I know there has been spoken word at some of these places as well. When you mentioned Europe, my thoughts turn to my previous guest, Josh Cake, who is, you know, he's been in Edinburgh and, and Paris as well, different places doing things over there.

41:31 So, you know, I think that was definitely a concerted decision from him saying that he was going to embed himself in that, in that kind of scene. So it makes a lot of sense that I, I think you do find a lot of Australian expats in Europe, you know, dancers, things like this. These are things I remember him talking about. So big trip to to New York City soon. What else is coming up for you? Obviously you're you're working on the novel Bruce Fruit, but what else can you tell us about what you're working on? Projects, tours, whatever. Yeah, I've got a couple of festivals lined up, but more, it's interesting. So less on the performance side of things, but more on panels and in moderating capacities, which is an interesting shift because I've been, I think I've been doing festivals for a few years now. And so the festival organizers are seeing me in a different light.

42:23 They said, OK, we can see you as a performer and doing your poetry stuff, but we can also see that you've got a skill in the knowledge that you've accumulated. And the fact that you're widely read means that you can really elicit a lot of topics and tie them together in, in panel discussions. And so I'm I'm excited about branching into this new sphere for me. I guess that again that that US trip and that US audience, how much interactivity have you had with US audiences or is that is that also quite new for you? Interaction in printed form. So a lot of the journals I've been published in, I've been accepted in the US and Europe more than I have been in Australia. So Australia was a late adopter of my work. I think because some of the edgier pieces that the market is so big overseas that there are smaller sort of sub niches where they can accept things that are a little bit outside of the conservative mainstream.

43:20 So they were quick to take my work. And so I've built quite a a big following in the US and Europe and Australia came as a secondary thing. And really it was only because my debut collection received a a pretty big short listing for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. That was the first time. Yeah, it was a a big one. It was the first time people took me seriously here. Before that, it was like, oh, she just writes poetry that is fun, but it's not proper poetry. But once I got that shortlisting, they were like, oh, OK, so this. The industry body recognizes her work as something that has merit and meaning within contemporary Australian literature. Maybe we should start paying attention too. Yeah, there you go.

44:07 So yeah. So it's sort of yeah, one of those follow on things that you have to be successful in order to become more successful. Sure, sure. Getting a foot in the door, as they say. And so that's really exciting that you'll be able to go over there and have a bit of a closer relationship with the people who first paid attention to. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to. That fantastic We're going to use this episode to kick off the new creative analogy for the season as well. So in previous seasons I've talked to my guest about things like if your creative work was a meal that you took to a dinner party, what kind of food would it be or last season we did if it's an instrument in an orchestra, what would it be Well, we have a brand new creative analogy for season 3 which Paris you're going to kick us off with. I want to ask you if your creative work is a color or a shade on the color spectrum, What color do you think it is? I would say that it's purple.

45:02 Okay. Because I find purple. It has a liminal sense to it. It's mysterious, it's Moody, it can shift and morph depending on what shade. So you've got the bright, vibrant shades of purple, you've got the soft, pastely, you know, pretty shades, and you've got the, the darker sort of more pensive, opulent shades, I suppose. And so I I love how purple is is so rich in in what it can evoke. First thing I think of when I hear purple is lavender, right? And of course that reminds me of the smell. So it's a very central thing that that comes up for me. Fantastic.

45:42 Well, as in Seasons Pass, you know, as I ask all my guests this, we're going to get hopefully a nice little colour wheel of people's experience. So I want to hear some purples, I want to hear some some oranges, I want to hear some red. So I'm excited to see what comes out of it. We also turn our attention to our favorite stolen segment on I Think Therefore, I Slam. So I've shamelessly ripped this off Diary of a CEO, so I call it Diary of a POET. Paris, you get to have some input into the interviewing process. What would you like to ask the next guest that I interview, sight unseen? I think an interesting question because in poetry we read what we read on the page.

46:23 I'd like to know what you've purposely left out of your poetry, and what does that omission seek to protect? That is high journalism there. I think that's a really great one. I look forward to presenting that to my next guest. They're going to get a bit blindsided by that, I think, but. They're going to hate me for it. That's all right. I was about to say, oh, I always protect the identity of my question askers, but I don't. I'm straight up. I'm like, hey, Paris Rosebud wants to know your deepest, darkest secrets. That's that's awesome. Paris. If people want to find out more about you, follow your international escapades and the work that you're doing in both poetry and soon to be fiction.

47:09 Where should they head to? Where's the the best place to get all things Paris Rosemont? I'm most active on Instagram so my handle is at Miss Paris Rose and I've also got a website parisrosemont.com. And we're going to have links for all of that in the episode description. Paris, we would love to hear one more piece from you to bring the house down. OK, this last piece is well, I haven't actually publicly announced my next poetry collection yet. It's complete and it's you're out looking for a publisher, so I will I will formally share the title with you. It's called A Brief Flirtation with Blue. Not purple.

47:54 No, no. Gotcha. This one's blue, but again, the the title's layered as well. You take blue how you like, but this poem in in this collection is a villanelle. It's called Lovesick Lament. I'm slipping, losing track of things you said. I've never been a fan of long goodbyes. Sometimes I think it's better that you're dead. Oh, take me back. Entwined with you in bed to tenderness of touch, ecstatic size. I'm slipping, losing track of things you said. A mad girl chasing ghosts within her head.

48:35 I cannot let you go, Not till I die. Sometimes I think it's better that you're dead. One day I tried to join you. How I speed toward untimely darkness. I'll devised. I'm slipping, losing track of things you said because my mind's all muddled, dulled on meds. I'm glad you cannot see me in disguise. Sometimes I think it's better that you're dead. I keep you safely stowed within my head. My. Darling, though, you're dimming. Still I try. But I'm slipping, losing track of things you said. Sometimes I think it's better that you're dead. Wow, Paris Rosemont, This conversation has been an embarrassment of riches.

49:23 I reckon it's been the perfect way to kick off season 3, where once again I've searched the globe for the best slam poetry and spoken word artist to bring them to our audience. It's everything I hoped it would be. Thank you so much for thinking with us and slaying with us today. Thank you, It's been a pleasure. Wait, you Big Sands, what's that all about?