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Francesca Gazzola

Welcome to 'In Conversation With Writers', the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This recording takes place on Dharawal and Bundjalung lands.

This episode is part one of our conversation with award-winning performance poet Luka Lesson. In this episode, we will be discussing what writing means to Luka and the advice that he has for writers.

Luka, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm looking forward to hearing about your perspective on writing and sharing your experiences with Year 12 English Studies students across the state.

And on that note, let's dive right in with what might seem like a simple question that will likely have a complex answer. Why do you write?

Luka Lesson

Wow. What a question. I write because I need it. I write as first and foremost a personal need. I wouldn't even say a desire, a personal need to solve problems that might be going on in my life to get clear on issues that I see in the world, to bring things from obscurity and darkness into the light. Clarify them, articulate them, and, and then move on to the next one. Maybe there's some kind of sense of control around writing that it, it helps me to take whatever I feel might be murky in my life and be able to define it and refine it and know what it is, and then kind of feel like I've got that clear and then move on to the next thing.

Another way of putting it is that in my life I have felt like I've been able to heal through writing, to go through things that were difficult. When I was in Year 10, I lost a dear friend of mine. And the only way I solved that in a way, or the only way I really mourned him was by writing. And I wrote a diary to him and I wrote, 'Dear Omar', every night, his name was Omar, rather than 'Dear diary', I wrote it to him. And that was the first time in my life that I've really learned that, you know, the page is very thin, but it can carry a lot of weight. So whatever I'm going through I know that I can put the heaviness on my shoulders, I can put it on the page, and it will accept absolutely everything I have to say. Nothing of it will be rejected or dismissed. You know, anything that I'm going through will be accepted and taken on when I put it down on the page. And so for me, first and foremost, I guess you could say catharsis is a word that might come to mind - a cleansing, a feeling of, you know, getting things out.

Francesca Gazzola

Thanks, Luka. I really enjoyed hearing about the power of writing to heal and bring clarity. Of course, people have a wide range of varying attitudes towards writing. I was wondering what advice you would have for aspiring or possibly even reluctant writers about how to get the most out of the writing process.

Luka Lesson

Yeah, look, I have this platform called Hearth where I, I talk about this a lot and it's one of the main questions that I get. What advice can you give to a young poet starting out? And my advice is, I wouldn't say contra to what is being taught in the classroom, but it's complementary to what's being taught in the classroom because teachers are in Australia fantastic at so many aspects of English and teaching and poetry, especially when it comes to techniques and alliteration and assonance and all these tools that young people can use.

But for me, the one thing that is most important, which is not so easy to teach is that if you want to be a writer and you wanna write a lot and you wanna learn all these techniques and you want to dive in, for me, the most important thing is that you are writing about things that you are passionate about, that you care about.

Because if you care about something and you are angry, whatever the emotional charge is - anger, frustration, joy, you know, whatever it might be - that is the literal charge that will charge the batteries, that will facilitate the entire process of writing, of researching, of creating, of making mistakes, of editing, of memorising. And finally of performing, if that's what you wanna do. If you are passionate about a topic, the research will be exciting. You'll be like, I want to know. If you are writing it, the time will just disappear because you'll just be so into trying to articulate this thing. Your editing process will be probably a little bit difficult 'cause you would've written a lot, but you'll be like, I just wanna say it really well. I wanna perfect it. You'll find all these tools that your teachers will have at your disposal to add to your work to try and make it the best that it can be. You will memorise it fairly easily because you want it in your mind and you will perform it with passion. And if you are interested in what you are performing, then the crowd is also interested. You are then interesting on stage. And the opposite is true. If you don't care about the topic, it will be arduous to try and research it. The writing will be like pulling teeth, you know, editing will be confusing. Memorising will be next to impossible 'cause you don't want it. And on stage you will be bored.

And if you're bored on stage, the audience is also bored. So this is what I try and lead by. When it comes to my work, I try to go for the things that make me just wanna devour them. These things that I'm so interested in, that I'm so angry about, or passionate about or connected to, or personal stories or whatever it might be, so that I am searching out topics that I can use to educate the world or to educate my classmates, or to grow as a human being, or to research some quirky aspect of history that interests me. In that way the whole process is powered by that emotional charge, and it cannot fail. You will win. Even if you write a terrible poem, you'll learn a lot from the process and you will be hungry to start again because that nucleus of passion and connection is present the entire time. I find this to be something that isn't talked about enough, and I think that it is for me, the underlying root of success for any young person that's looking to write - to write what you care about and, and even if that's taboo, just try. Just try and do it in a way, even if you hide it in metaphor and symbolism, still go for what it is that you are passionate about. It will make the whole process much easier and you'll learn all these other techniques along the way without it being too much a process of paralysis by analysis, where we analyse things too much in the process of writing. 'cause analysing is one thing, writing is a completely other thing. And a lot of these questions today I've never even thought about because I'm so in the writing that I don't even consider many of these ideas, but the passion is the thing that will power the entire process of writing, and that's my advice. To find the thing that gives you butterflies in your guts when you go to write about it, that's the thing you should write about.

That is not the thing you should avoid writing about. 'cause chances are that's like an elephant in the room that will impress everybody, and that will actually be a catalyst for change 'cause someone else is probably very nervous about writing about it. And that's the job of the poet to be that tiny bit more honest and vulnerable and authentic and brave to write about the things that other people won't touch.

Francesca Gazzola

Thank you, Luka. That brings us to the end of episode one of 'In Conversation With Writers' with Luka Lesson. Be sure to tune into episode two when we will discuss Luca's perspective on writing. If you like today's episode, please subscribe to 'In Conversation With Writers', leave us a review and share with your friends.

You can also follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes. Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

[End of transcript]

Francesca Gazzola

Welcome to 'In Conversation With Writers', the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This episode is part two of our conversation with slam poet Luka Lesson. In this episode, we will be learning about Luka's perspective on writing.

In the last episode, we spoke about the personal value that writing has for you, but you have also said that you use poetry as a tool for personal and social transformation.

Can you speak to us a bit more about this perspective on writing?

Luka Lesson

Yeah, I think that the personal is political. So if I grew up in Brisbane and experienced racism growing up, and I write about that, there's no doubt somebody else that has grown up, either in Brisbane or on the other side of the world, had a very similar experience or can find similarities.

So the more personal I am, the more authentic, the more vulnerable I am then often I find the more it resonates on a wider level and in naming what I've been through, I am then allowing other people that I may have never met to feel seen, even though I might never see them. The fact that I am naming something that might be taboo in a racist society, that might not want me to talk about what I've been through as a youngster or as a man kind of tussling with a misogynistic society, for instance, whatever it might be. If I am looking into these areas of society where people don't want to look, and I'm coming back with a little gem or a little idea or a sentence that I've been able to articulate that has not been articulated before or rarely gets articulated, so I'm able to name what I've been through and therefore name what other people might be going through. I might be able to name what it means to be a man that's trying to unpack his own sexism that has been ingrained by his upbringing in a country that, you know, supports that in a way or that that feeds that. Um, no matter which background you're from. Some of my poems are didactic where I say this is how the world should be.

But there are other ways where my poems are asking questions rather than giving all the answers, and the audience must find the answers to those questions on their own. And this way of writing, I think is where I'm leaning to more and more as I get older; less didactic and more, uh, acknowledging the complexities of life, personal growth, healing, love, connections. You know, these types of things are what leads society at large over the long term towards greater unity and a stronger fabric of society. So I see my personal as political and vice versa.

Francesca Gazzola

Mm-hmm. Thank you for those insights, Luka. It is wonderful to know that writing has the power to teach and connect with people in those ways.

I'd like to get your opinion on a question that English teachers are often asked by their students. When we are analysing a text in class and we are unpacking a metaphor or a symbol, for example, students will often ask, 'do you think that the writer really meant that?' Or 'don't you think you're reading too much into that?'

So I was wondering, to what extent do you think that the meaning of the text begins and ends with the writer? For example, when students are reading your poem 'May your pen grace the page', should they be trying to work out what you meant? Or can students participate in making meaning from the text and then have some sort of ownership of the meaning?

Luka Lesson

Oh look, I think students definitely have ownership. I mean, I put a poem into the world and it's in some ways no longer mine. Each person that reads it will find something else in it.

I wrote a poem, Athena, and in it I talk about Apollo taking a quill from my hand that I've just ripped from the chest of Athena, from the owl of Athena, and Apollo fills it with ink. And then I, I start writing poems with it. And I remember I was in Auckland, New Zealand at the university and an academic there was like, 'oh yeah, of course, perfect choice. You know, Apollo, the God of poetry.' And at the time when I wrote it, didn't know that Apollo was the god of poetry. And so I learned things about my own writing.

I learned things about my own poetry after the fact sometimes, and I think that's valid. I was in Beijing with Xi Chuan is like the most celebrated poet in China. I was invited with a couple other poets to perform for him and his students and after I performed a few things they asked, 'Why the major theme in your poetry struggling from darkness to light?'

And I was like, 'whoa, what are you talking about?' And they basically showed me like, what are these recurring themes that are so close to my consciousness? I couldn't, hadn't seen it yet. I am obsessed. I am obsessed with going from darkness to light. So it wasn't until I had that conversation that someone kind of switched me on to this fact that I am obsessed with that.

So I love that people take my poems and show me what they see in them. And sometimes I would say that yes, 'that's wrong' in like in inverted commas, you know, like that they've shown me something and I'm like, 'nah, that's not really... I don't see how that actually works'. I think you're putting a bit too much interpretation in there, but that's cool - go away with it and roll with it. You know, I don't have to accept everything that's delivered to me, but poems that I put out into the world, they have a life of their own. The only thing that I would say a caveat to that is that my poetry's not very abstract. My poetry so far is pretty straightforward.

You know, there are other poets in the world that could be interpreted to the end of days. They're writing something extremely cryptic. So far, my work is not that cryptic, so I don't know how much license there is in my writing compared to other writers, but for me personally, I don't think that it stops with me. That's for sure.

Francesca Gazzola

That brings us to the end of episode two of 'In Conversation With Writers' with Luka Lesson.

Be sure to tune into episode three where we will discuss the role that the audience plays in Luka's writing process.

If you like today's episode, please subscribe to 'In Conversation With Writers', leave us a review, share with your friends.

You can also follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes. Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

[End of transcript]

Francesca Gazzola

Welcome to 'In Conversation With Writers', the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes.

This episode is part three of our conversation with Australian slam poet, Luka Lesson. In this episode, Luka discusses the role that his audience plays in his writing process.

Luka, during our discussion, you've spoken about what you personally get out of writing, but you do have an audience who will ultimately engage with your work. So I was wondering how much consideration do you give to your audience when you are writing?

Luka Lesson

I thought about this one long and hard. I think the easy answer is 50 50.

The easy answer is 50% of the time, or 50% of my ideas, or 50% of my desires as a writer come from me. So I use a project as a chance to go and learn, but then when I sit down and write, I am thinking about the audience. I guess as a writer, part of me thinks it would be nice to be able to say, you know, none of it, it's all for me.

It's all just like, I need to write this stuff and I need to figure out this stuff about life, and I need to do this and do that. But, even though I would like to think I'm some kind of purist poet where I sit down and I write for myself, in actual fact, when I sit down and I'm writing, I am really reaching out to the hearts of people and minds of people that I, that I know are my audience, or that I know are people who already love my work.

I think that it seems to be a process that is very insular and that you must be an introvert to be a writer. But I also feel like you have to be extremely empathetic because you must in some ways know how lines are gonna land with your audience.

So I think at times it might be at 80% where I'm thinking about the audience, and I think at other times it might be at 20% where I'm thinking about the audience and like this one's kind of more for me.

I have a poem about my grandmother and I speak Greek in that poem, and it's connected to my relationship to her. And I performed that poem in Beijing. And a Chinese lady came up to me afterwards and said, 'Your grandmother's exactly like my grandmother. You know, she makes jokes about very, very serious things. She has very wise, funny anecdotes about things like racism and war and things that she's been through. She grows basil in her garden. She always tries to slip me a little bit of money before I leave the house. You know, she, she's on the other side of the world, but she's exactly the same as your grandmother.'

And that connection was because I was authentic in my writing. And so all of a sudden, this woman on the other side of the world felt like her grandmother had been honored because of my honoring of my grandmother. If we are able to commit to a life of personal growth and this alchemy in public, then it automatically encourages the same at large. But I think the easy answer then is that in general, overall it, it might just even out to be 50 50.

Francesca Gazzola

All right. Putting a bit of numeracy into English. I love it. Yeah, 50 50. The form that you often select to represent your ideas is performance poetry. One unique aspect of this form is that you do have quite an immediate connection with the audience.

The feedback is immediate in that they let you know which parts they like, and a poetry slam has scores awarded after the performance. How do you respond to this feedback process? Do you take the feedback away with you and make changes to your work, or do you let it wash over you a bit more than that?

Luka Lesson

Yeah, that's a good question. So, I started entering poetry slams and poetry slams are interesting because they can be very arbitrary, right? So the people that are judging your slam are not necessarily poetry experts, they're just people in the crowd. The beauty of that is that you just have to impress the average Joe on the street with your poetry. You have to resonate with anybody and that's good because it doesn't get too academic. We don't start trying to just impress our peers with like super complex language, et cetera. The not so good part about that is that often we are trying to impress a crowd in our local town. And that can be successful and we can do that and win poetry slams in our little community wherever we are in the world.

But then you go to another city or another suburb or another country and the same poems don't work. So the first time I toured in New Zealand, I found out very quickly that New Zealanders do not like to take themselves too seriously. So you have to have a poem, or at least some jokes between poems where you are laughing at yourself 'cause if all your poems are just like really serious, deep, meaningful poems about your own life and kind of a bit naval gazing, they won't put up with it. They'll be like, all right, bro, have a laugh. You know, like, take this melancholy out of your work. And that's what I found pretty quickly in New Zealand.

So, so yes, for the first part of my career, I was very deep into poetry slams, and I love poetry slams, and I still love poetry slams, and I love it as a way of training yourself as an artist to become good. Because at 7:30 pm on Friday night next week, I have to be ready to absolutely crush it in front of a crowd on stage to the absolute best of my abilities at that moment when my name gets called out.

And that's really good training for like, you know. 10 years later when I was performing with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and they're like, we get one rehearsal, you gotta be ready. So this is great training, I think for artists. And a lot of people don't like this idea of competition in art. And I think that poetry slams are great because it's not really about winning, it's just about being the best you can be on stage 'cause everyone knows that it's being judged by a crowd and anything could happen. I know that a crowd liking or not liking my work is not necessarily a judgment of the work. It can be many other factors involved, including my political persuasion versus the audience's political persuasion or my subject matter versus what they're interest ... maybe they know nothing about ancient Greek history and I get up and tell this long story, and they're like, I have no reference point for that. So there's many different factors.

Would I take an audience's response as gospel and go home and change a poem or re-edit a poem? No. Do my poems change over time from the first time that I perform them? Yes. So they change by about five or 10% for the first say, 20 times that I perform them. My poems are kind of from the memorisation stage and then performing them live in front of a crowd. I see them as like sediment settling into place. After about 10 or 20 performances, they kind of find their ideal structure, their ideal way of being performed.

So you'll notice for like my 'Antidote' poem, the video clip that I made with all the snakes. I did that before I'd performed that poem live in front of people. So I wrote the poem, I recorded the audio, I filmed a video clip, and then I started performing it in public. And there's a few things that I don't do anymore, when I perform the poem live that I do in the video, but after performing them live for a while, I realized that actually they're not useful for the poem. They don't need to be there. They're actually unnecessarily lengthening the poem, and it's better to get to the end quicker and sharper, and that was a personal choice after performing it for 10, 20 times.

But if I perform that poem now and it doesn't resonate, I'm not gonna go home and edit that poem. So it's more personal and it's more also remembering that I'm more of a oral traditionalist. I'm in love with memorising and performing my poetry live and delivering my words to people and seeing how they land with people, and I'm in love with that.

But that does not mean I'm gonna cut the guts outta my poem and change it. But it does mean that I have a finished poem and there's little tweaks that I sometimes take to the poem because I believe that they need to be there. Those tweaks need to happen, not because somebody didn't laugh.

Francesca Gazzola

That brings us to the end of episode three of 'In Conversation With Writers' with Luka Lesson.

Be sure to tune into episode four where we hear about Luka's stylistic influences. If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to 'In Conversation with Writers', leave us a review, share with your friends. You can also follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes. Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

[End of transcript]

Francesca Gazzola

Welcome to 'In Conversation With Writers', the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This is part four of our conversation with Luka Lesson.

How would you describe your style and what are the stylistic influences you see in your work?

Luka Lesson

This is one thing that I have to say - I don't intentionally think about this that much. There might be a question about my influences. So the first book of poems I ever read was the Tao Te Ching. It's a book by a Taoist philosopher Laozi, and it's a book of poems numbered from one to 81, I believe. They are like spiritual reflections, very short, sharp, clear. Not exactly dense, but definitely full of meaning, but not hard to read in any way. But there's actually many layers to what's been said. And so that was one of my early influences, this idea of how we can use poetry as as a means to express something that goes beyond the human experience. So there's that influence in my work.

And then I fell in love with hip hop when I was in high school. Around the time where I lost my dear friend, I fell in love with Bone Thugs and Harmony and Tupac and Biggie Smalls and like West Coast and East Coast Rap, NAS, all these different rappers that I then went into this phase for like a very long time.

It's still going now. Just falling in love with hip hop and storytelling through those means. So my style is an amalgamation of those things. Something that is very influenced by the rhythms and the rhyme schemes and the vernacular and attitude and style, and also the absolute deep love for storytelling that lives in hip hop, but basically smash those things together and I think you find me, and I guess I would also need to throw Homer in there. Not necessarily in terms of style, but definitely in terms of being inspired and in love with my own Greek heritage. So I guess what you could say is that my style is looking at aspects of my own Greek heritage and ancient heritage and modern, but I'm using tools from hip hop and spiritual texts to express that.

Francesca Gazzola

Okay, thank you. I find it really interesting to hear you say that your style is not something that you think about on a conscious level, but you know, through your response there, it's very clear that everything you've read, it has contributed to the writer that you have become.

That brings us to the end of episode four of 'In Conversation With Writers' with Luka Lesson. Join us next time where we will dive a little deeper into 'May your pen grace the page'.

If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to 'In Conversation With Writers', leave us a review and share with your friends. You can follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes.

Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

[End of transcript]

Francesca Gazzola

Welcome to 'In Conversation With Writers', the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This episode is part five of our conversation with performance poet, Luka Lesson.

In this episode, Luka discusses his poem, 'May your pen grace the page'.

As I'm sure you're aware, Luka, 'May your pen grace the page' has been prescribed by NESA for Year 12 English Studies students, and I was wondering why you think they've made that decision?

Luka Lesson

I don't know exactly why it was chosen, but I can tell you what I think would do people good by interacting with that poem. I wrote that poem when I was in a really difficult time in my life. I didn't know anybody that was a full-time poet. I didn't know anybody that could like mentor me or show me a path. I was broke. I was like really struggling, and I wrote that poem as a letter to myself to believe that I could do this as a living, you know, you should be touring. 'Get up, step up, never let up. Get your setup set up, get recording, get stories pouring'. All of these lines are lines to me to get me to motivate myself, to wake up and believe that I could do this thing that seemed completely impossible at the time, but I had this inkling that it was my path.

So beyond the pretty word play and the structure and the prayer-like energy of this poem is underlying it, the idea that your words are extremely powerful. That this poem that I wrote when nobody knew who I was somehow has in many ways become like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The poem itself has helped me become a full-time poet, and now it's a poem that people are studying. It is an example of how powerful words are. And if young people get that from it alone and that they write themselves a kind of 'May your pen, grace the page' about whatever it is that they want to be in their lives, that it can serve them very well.

I've performed this poem to crowds of, you know, three people and crowds of 3000 people. It has helped me along the way. It's been one of those poems that has really opened doors and been a bit of a touchstone for me. So that's one thing that I think is really important no matter what young people wanna be or do in their lives, just the idea that, you know, the word is extremely powerful and that we can write things that can help us to carve a path in life.

I wrote it as a rap song initially, and it had more verses initially, and then I had to enter into a poetry slam. So I cut the other verses, or a couple of parts of the other verses, and I threw together what I felt were the best parts of the poem, and I performed the chorus at the beginning and the chorus at the end. I performed acapella and a poetry slam, and that is now the poem that we know.

So it's, I believe, the first Australian spoken word poem on a curriculum in Australia, but it's also the first rap because it was originally written as a rap song. And so this is another part of it that I think is really important. The rhythm of it is embedded in it and that it is intentional and that there is something of a chorus in that repetition part.

These things put together make it something that I think resonates and a lot of people love writing, and obviously it's an English class, and so an ode to the love of writing is something that I think many people love 'cause we all have a love of, of playing with words. Most of us do, at least.

Francesca Gazzola

Thank you, Luka.

It's been such a fantastic opportunity to hear from you about this poem, and I'm sure that students will appreciate these insights that you've shared. This brings us to the end of episode five of 'In Conversation With Writers' with Luka Lesson. Be sure to tune into our final episode in this series to hear Luka discuss his writing process.

If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to 'In Conversation With Writers', leave us a review and share with your friends. You can also follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes. Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

[End of transcript]

Francesca Gazzola

Welcome to 'In Conversation With Writers', the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This episode is part six of our conversation with Luka Lesson. In this episode, Luka discusses his writing process.

Luka, we discussed in the last episode the reasons that 'May your pen grace the page' may have been prescribed for the HSC English Studies course.

One of the intentions of the syllabus is to deepen students' knowledge and understanding of the ways that language can shape meaning for particular audiences and deliberate effect. I'd like to know about the deliberate effect that you aim for and the language choices that you make to achieve that effect?

Luka Lesson

Yes, this is a really interesting question. I am obviously at all times trying to write the best thing that I can and put out into the world the absolute best of the best writing that I am producing. So in some ways, I don't like this question because..

Francesca Gazzola

I apologise.

Luka Lesson

No, no, no. It's all right. It's, when I first read it, I was like, that's really interesting.

Because I don't think of my writing as, oh, I'm going to catch these guys. I'm gonna, you know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna have this effect on people. I just am trying to write the absolute best thing that I can. I'm just really trying to write, I'm just really trying to articulate what I'm feeling in the absolute best way possible.

So, to give you an example with 'May your pen grace the page', I wrote many little mini prayers that were based around this idea of 'May your white page yang love your black pen yin. May the ball in your ballpoint roll.' I wrote another one, which somehow I still remember. And it is, 'May you bathe in a bright blue fountain of youth blessed with all the truths your fountain pen has produced'. So I was trying to pull together this idea of a fountain of youth and a fountain pen. How can I kind of play with this idea? And so, I would've written maybe 40 of those mini prayers. And I don't know how many are in the poem, maybe five of them are left in the poem.

So I wrote many, many, many, many things. Other people might have liked that line, but for me it's not quite as sharp and clear as the other sections of the poem. So it didn't make the cut. So I guess my deliberate effect is that I'm constantly just trying to find the lines that are the gems. And there are some that look very much like gems, but are not quite as shiny, and they have to get cut.

So yes, I am trying to make an effect on my audience. And yes, I know that some poems are happy poems. Some poems are angry, some poems are political. So yes, I know that I'm pushing people towards certain emotional states with my poetry, but it really comes sincerely from the heart rather than, oh, this is gonna get 'em, if you know what I mean.

One of the jobs of the poet, I think, is just really trying to nail and articulate the feelings that we're feeling in the sharpest and cleanest way possible. So that's what I'm focused on more than anything. How do I articulate this feeling that I'm feeling in a way that I know is gonna resonate but doesn't feel manipulative, if you know what I mean.

Francesca Gazzola

I really like the way that you've touched on your editing process there in terms of picking the best prayers as you, as you called them, and I would like to hear more about that. Does feedback play a role at all in your editing process? Do you share your work during the drafting stage?

Luka Lesson

Yeah, I don't share my work with anyone.

I don't do feedback. I did feedback on, I'll do feedback on a book. If I'm finishing a book of poems and I have a number of poems, then I will have feedback on the order of the poems in the book or in my last book that I published, the verse novel of 'The Agape and Other Kinds of Love' project. I sent it to a poet and novelist, Omar Sakr.

He did well to help me edit and give me some feedback, but that's because it was a verse novel, something that I'd never done before and feels like it's too big for one artist to hold all the details of each poem and the running order and everything else. So I do do feedback on big projects, but I don't do feedback on individual poems.

I don't send my poems to anybody. I feel like I know enough now to know where it's resonating and where it's not, where it's fluffy, where it needs tightening. And so that doesn't form a part of it, but I am ruthless with my editing process, so I am a big proponent of what they say in English circles, 'kill your darlings' or 'write in passion edit in cold blood',I'm a big proponent to writing everything and not judging too much your writing when you're in the creation stage and then being very ruthless in the editing stage. The writing is important, and then the editing is in some ways more important. It's very important to only put your best foot forward when it comes to your writing and to not let anything that isn't essential slip through the cracks.

So yeah, I'm a bit harsh, but I very rarely called someone to read him a poem and said, what do you think? At least not for, for 10 years.

Francesca Gazzola

Oh, okay. That's really interesting. I imagine that when you've refined your craft as masterfully as you have for, as you said, at least 10 years, you have more confidence about what you want to say and how you want to say it.

What I find really interesting and unique about spoken word poetry is that the form is so dynamic in that each performance might be slightly different in terms of how you might deliver certain lines.

Would I be right in saying that a performance poem might never really truly be finished then?

Because you might make little tweaks along the way and every time you perform it, maybe there's something a little bit different in it.

Luka Lesson

Yeah, look, for me, that only happens for a certain amount of time. So when I say the first 10 or 20 performances, I perform my poems hundreds of times. So 10 or 20 performances is literally like 1% of the performances that I'm gonna do with it.

So it's just like this initial settling in time. Sometimes if there is a political or social reference in the poem that has to do with a certain thing that has happened that everybody will get that month, like I have a poem called 'Viral' where I talk about how after Donald Trump became president for the first time, his wife gave a speech and apparently it had been plagiarized from Barack Obama's wife's speech, Michelle Obama, when she became the First Lady.

And so I have a reference to that in that poem. And if I perform that poem now, many people wouldn't remember that having happened. Okay. Yeah. And so maybe I might change that reference and make it a different reference, or maybe I might keep it, and some people might be like, ah, I remember that, and others won't. I don't know. But that's where sometimes there might be some change.

My brother actually helped me with this a lot. He's a musician, he's a guitarist, and he was recording an album, and there were some mistakes in his album. And I have poems where I have lines in those poems where I don't love those lines, but I just had to finish them because I needed to perform at the slam or at the whatever, and he put me onto this great thing that in Turkey, when they're making Turkish carpets, they intentionally weave a mistake into the carpets because the carpets are a symbol of the divine.

The geometric shapes and the patterns and the colors that are used in these carpets are basically symbolism. To symbolise God or the divine and to try and be as perfect as God is seen as bad luck. It's a bit like you're setting yourself up for a fall to try and be that perfect. And so they weave intentionally these mistakes into the carpets.

And so I see my process of like finishing a poem, but knowing that there's this line that could have been better and that line might have been better, and maybe this could be like this, and then this idea of like, man, if I don't just memorise it now, it's never gonna be finished. So I accept things that are in there that might not be perfect as perfect perfect, perfect.

I accept them as my little woven stitch that I'm doing purposefully imperfect, and I memorise it and I get on with it. And I perform it as though it is my favourite line in the poem. And some people have come up to me and recited to me my least favorite line in one of my poems and said, 'that's my favourite line'.

And so I think it's important for the poet and the perfectionist to just go, it's finished, you know it's done. And love it for what it is. And move on to the next one.

Francesca Gazzola

That brings us to the end of episode six of 'In Conversation With Writers' with Luka Lesson. This was the final episode in this series. If you like today's episode, please subscribe to ' In Conversation With Writers', leave us a review and share with your friends.

You can also follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes. Until next time, this is your host signing off. Be sure to keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

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