The university’s very own radio station was formed last semester and features a diverse range of news, music and entertainment hosted by students for students. I got to chat with the two hosts of a poetry show and discovered how they’re hoping to make waves in the local poetry scene.
Kirsten: Tell me a little about yourselves, what do you study?
Skyla: I’m Skyla. I’m studying a Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts majoring in Indigenous Studies. It’s my second year at UOW. And yeah, I like poetry.
Paige: My name is Paige. I am doing a double degree with Law and Journalism. It’s also my second year. I am currently almost finished editing my second book.
Kirsten: Wow, congratulations! Well speaking of poetry, are you two involved in the local poetry scene?
Skyla: Yeah, we are. So, I’m doing an internship with a local poetry slam called Enough Said Poetry. It’s on the last Thursday of every month – it’s a fun night. It’s basically an open mic night. So, if you write poetry, you should definitely come along. It’s lots of fun.
Paige: Yes, we have been doing that for just over a year now.
Kirsten: Did you guys join at the same time?
Skyla: Yeah, we did actually.
Paige: I think it was May. We went to one of Skyla’s friends, Kay Proudlove, we went to her performance, and she was talking to us about how her friend runs it. She was like ‘you have to go’, so the next week we said, ‘okay we’ll go’ and we haven’t left since. We just kinda live there now.
Kirsten: Awesome, so last semester you two started hosting a show on RadioU. Can you tell me a little about that?
Skyla: It’s called called Free Verse and basically, we just hopped on the RadioU and we have chats about poetry. Sometimes we play some little fun games. We try to get a guest on every week. Normally it’s someone that I steal from one of my creative writing classes. They read some of their poems for us. We talk to them about poetry.
Paige: Yeah, we just try to promote the local scene, the local artists. Particularly people who might not necessarily have a platform. Yeah, and one of the things we do is that we walk around, usually on a Monday, and just go up to random people and ask them for words. We either come up with a theme or the first week we were like, ‘give us a word’ then we try to make a poem from those words. Which we call our ‘Vox Pox Poem’. Then we’ll read them to kick off the show. If we have extra poems and we need to share them, we just go for it.
Kirsten: So, when did you two first get the idea to start Free Verse? And why?
Skyla: I think we were both kind of thinking about it separately and then we were in the library one day and we sat down and we said, ‘so, I’ve been thinking…’ And yeah, we were both on board.
Paige: Yeah, so we just approached Shawn Burns (RadioU coordinator) and we said, ‘hey, what do you think?’ And he said, ‘let’s do it.’ So, we were very happy and grateful for him letting us do that because poetry isn’t spoken about enough. Obviously between us we talk about it all the time, but we thought there’s a wider audience of people that need to be able to hear that, poetry, art is valid and that there is a platform for them to be able to jump on or listen to and be able to be like, ‘yeah, I feel that way too’ or ‘oh, my gosh, maybe I can hit those guys up and try and put myself on that.’
Skyla: And I think radio is such a cool format for storytelling, poetry because you’re getting to hear it from the poet’s voice. I just think that spoken word is so powerful and it’s not something that a lot of people are exposed to. And yeah, it gives a medium for you to express those things you probably wouldn’t talk about and having it on the radio then they probably would be inclined to go to a poetry event or something like that.
Kirsten: Awesome. What do we have to look forward to with the show?
Skyla: So we’re going to be interviewing students that have been writing poetry. Young poets, old poets.
Paige: Anyone who’s interested, if you want to reach out to us you can always find us on Instagram. I’ve got a poetry account. If you look up Paige Jenkins poetry, it should come up. Send us a message and be like, ‘hey, like, we want to jump on, or we’ve got something to send in.’ Also, I’m always coming up with weird, funky games to try out and Skyla’s my little guinea pig. One time, we read out song lyrics as poems and tried to guess what the song was as quickly as we could.
Skyla: That was so fun.
Paige: It was very good. So, Skyla will bring the seriousness, and I’ll say something like, ‘here’s something fun to do’. And yeah, we’re just gonna chat to people, always chat to each other. As if we don’t do that enough. And yeah, just trying to make poetry fun. If people don’t already think that it’s fun.
Kirsten: It’s very fun.
Paige: Thank you! That’s the correct answer.
Skyla: Yeah, look forward to local stories, and, you know, storytelling from our local community which I think is really important to showcase. And lots of fun. There are really cool, talented, lovely people here in Wollongong, and, you know, people that travel here to study here and yeah, look forward to that.
Kirsten: Alright, as artists, writers, do you have any advice for those wanting to try poetry, whether that’s writing or spoken word or just like any creative pursuits in general?
Skyla: Yeah, sure. So, a lot of my poetry kind of stems from journaling. I think that journaling is a great way to kind of get into poetry because you know, you’re thinking about all these different concepts, different things. And honestly, just getting something down on the page is the biggest first step. I find that blank pages can be really intimidating sometimes. So, you just have to write, just get it out of your system. If you’re struggling and you just really want to get into it, just do it. Just write.
Paige: Yeah, I was literally about to say to quote Nike: ‘Just do it.’ No, it’s one of those things that, like, for me, was a way to like, organise what I was thinking. I mean, I read a lot like a lot of books, it’s excessive, I consume a lot of words. So, there’s always some kind of inspiration, a phrase or a word, or, even just the way that letters look on a page to me, I’m like, ‘ink, yay!’ You know, song lyrics. There’s nothing stopping you from hearing something or reading something and going, ‘oh, I like that.’ And then using that as a basis to make it your own. Also, you don’t have to share it with someone if you don’t want to and no one’s expecting you to be Taylor Swift.
Skyla: Writing starts out bad. You don’t start out perfect. You should be writing lots of crap before you write anything good.
Paige: I found some of my old stuff I wrote from, like, year five and six. I used to do like eisteddfods for poetry. I would perform other people’s work. Then a few times throughout it, they’d be like, ‘oh, we’re going to enter a poetry writing competition’ And oh, my goodness, was it horrendous? I don’t even know what it was about, it was just words. And now, I have stuff that I’m proud of, and comfortable enough to be like, ‘yeah, I would want to buy this if you put it in a book.’ But if I put that in there, people would be like, ‘did a like nine-year-old write this?’ And yes, a nine-year-old did write this. It doesn’t matter what age you are, just write something. And don’t be afraid for it to be shit. Just write it.
Skyla: And you can build on those skills later. Don’t worry about the techniques or, you know, different kinds of problems, or fitting it to the right rules.
Paige: Yeah, I think I tried to, I used to be so in love with the boy and I wrote him a song. I found it, because I’m a hoarder when it comes to words and I rewrote it, and turned it into one of the poems that I put in my book. So, you don’t have to stick with whatever the original format was. Write whatever and you can add different emotions to it. You know, like, obviously, a 12-year-old being in love with a boy was, well, what is that? No, not good. Whereas now it’s like, more of a like homely kind of feeling. Like you can just change it, keep the main metaphor or whatever, but like, change it to whatever you’re feeling now.
Kirsten: Yeah. Sounds like writing is an evolving process.
Skyla: Yeah, absolutely. I think it is. That’s how your writing gets good because your first draft is never going to be good. And so, for me, writing is definitely an evolving process. Yeah, because you get to play with different emotions and get to play with different sounds. Read your work out loud – that’s a massive thing. Poetry is very rhythmic and so when you’re reading it out loud, you kind of get a feel for how the poem is flowing. Yeah, it works wonders.
Paige: Yeah. And like, don’t be afraid to someone you’re comfortable with and hang out and then just like, ‘bam, poetry slam you with it.’ That was no pun intended, but that was good. And just say, ‘okay, how would you have read it?’ And then you might be like, ‘oh, I hadn’t thought about that.’
Skyla: You can’t get too attached to your work either. You’ve got to learn to kill your darlings. Remember, this isn’t the be all and end all even if you’re really proud of it. You have to be like, if it can be better, you’re just going to scrap it, you know?
Paige: Also, you don’t have to just delete it straight away. Open up a new word doc and copy and paste it because you never know, maybe down the track it will fit somewhere else, then you can make something brand new out of that.
Kirsten: Awesome, alright rapid fire this or that. Books or movies?
Skyla: Oh, books. I’m gonna go with books. Okay, I really like film as a medium. I think that film is brilliant but nothing beats a good book.
Paige: Romance: books. Action: movies.
Kirsten: Winter or summer?
Skyla: Oh, you‘re killing me.
Paige: Again, I’m autumn.
Skyla: I prefer my spring and autumn.
Paige: I’m gonna say winter because then you can wear onesies and oodies and can cuddle with people without needing an excuse.
Skyla: I think I need my sun. I’ll go with summer. But I do like my transitional seasons.
Kirsten: Go out or stay in?
Skyla: Go out.
Paige: Stay in.
Skyla: I need to dance.
Paige: I do that in my bedroom.
Skyla: I do that in my bedroom too. Mostly my kitchen actually, it has a better floor. My bedroom has carpet.
Paige: See, I don’t want anyone to hear me haha.
Kirsten: Spoken word or written poetry?
Skyla: Spoken.
Paige: Written.
Kirsten: Speak Now (TV) or Red (TV)?
Paige: Oh! Speak Now!!
Skyla: Hmm, I’m probably going to go with Red because it’s really nostalgic. I went to go see Red when Taylor came to Australia. I was like 11 or something.
Kirsten: Last rapid fire question: Free Verse is on RadioU on Mondays or Wednesdays?
Skyla and Paige: Wednesdays.
Catch Free Verse on Wednesdays from 12pm on RadioU.
Photos: Provided.