Performing and Presenting your work
Yang Lian reading at the SA Writers Centre Adelaide in March is hectic and joyful. As part of the Adelaide Festival I spent 6 hours watching Roman Tragedies, which was sore on the back but brilliant for the spirit. I also got to hang out with some excellent Australian and International writers/poets when I chaired a forum as part of Adelaide Writers Week. We covered Presentation and Performance - how to captivate a room with your reading. The line up was impressive: Ali Cobby Eckermann, Omar Musa, Jeet Thayill and Yang Lian. I saw Omar perform last year so I was familiar with his work but the other three, not so much. In my research I began to see what an incredible body of work they have and also the vastly different lives they have led. I was looking forward to meeting them. The problem with biographies is that they are such cold things, they act to hide rather than reveal the flesh and blood people they are telling about; the living, breathing, graceful, warm, thoug...