First Chapters Q&A with Amy Bodossian

Amy Bodossian is a critically acclaimed cabaret performer, comedian and poet who has been captivating audiences with her eccentric and unforgettable work.  Her career began in her hometown Adelaide where she was nothing short of a spoken word icon - her raw, poignant, and often absurd style of performance poetry becoming a favourite amongst Adelaide audiences.  She has won the SA Young Women Writes' Poetry Award and been on ABCs Spicks and Specks and Please Like Me, and performed sell out shows to audiences across Australia.

 Amy will be reading from her first book of poetry Wide Open, at First Chapters on Friday 7 February.

 1. Brunswick Bound has asked you to read a piece from your published work.  Tell us
what we can expect from the piece you have chosen?

 In Wide Open I dive into the oceans of my romantic escapades. The three poems I've chosen represent three different stages of some of these. The first is a pretty humorous exploration of sexual tension during one of the most excruciatingly slow courtships ever recorded, the second is a heart wrenching reflection on the death of a relationship, and the last a meditation on acceptance and 'opening to the whole catastrophe', making peace with what we cannot control.

2. How would you describe your writing?

 Erotic, neurotic and whimsical. Elemental, sentimental and a little bit mental. I also think it's very accessible.

3. What was the first book that you read (or had read to you) that left an impression on you?

 There's a hippopotamus on my roof eating cake.

 4. Do you believe that books should answer life’s big questions?

 I think that art in general is vital to humanity and should crack us open in all sorts of ways. When I read a book or a poem or hear a piece of music I want to feel something - to have an experience, to be freed and shaken and torn open by laughter or pain or joy. I want to see my humanness reflected, and to feel like something has moved inside my soul. I want to look into that red, raw, juicy, dripping heart that we all share and know I'm alive. I want to see 'God.'

5. Do you have any writing quirks?

 I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I have quirks up the wazoo! Oh, and I don't have the trendy kind of OCD, but the real 'I can't write this sentence because I'm ruminating so hard on perfection I am completely inert' kind.

6. What is your favourite word or phrase?
'No mud. No lotus.'
I also have a few favourite words : glittering, shiny, poodle, fluffy, dew drop, jubilant, pathos, starlight, bloom, chirp. fragile, to name a few.
Jubilant dew drop – now doesn't that sound nice?!

7. What have you found most surprising or interesting about publishing a book?

I am primarily a cabaret and spoken word performer. When I perform I am there, live, sharing my work with an audience. When I put the book out it was terrifying because it was beyond my control – not that when one is performing one has total control over the intimate personal experience an audience member is having, but at least you can feel the energy of the room, and you're delivering it with your voice and intonation, etc. When Wide Open was first released I wanted to go into the room of every person who bought it and personally read them the poems! It was a whole different kind of vulnerability having my words floating around in the ether like that.

8. What is the question that you hope never to be asked in an author Q&A?

This one.

9. What question do you hope you will be asked and why?

Are you happy with where you are in life? Because I can say; You know what? In some weird way I think I am. Or perhaps the word is 'content'. And it's certainly not because I've achieved all the things I thought I would, but because I am getting better at embracing and accepting this outrageously messy and complex and joyous and heart breaking/opening thing called the human experience. Of course I'm still a baby and I certainly haven't 'arrived', but as they say 'the path is the goal.'

10. Which author or book do you think should be better known or more widely read?

The poet Ali Whitelock should be world famous.

Find out more about the First Chapters Event Series on the Brunswick Bound website.



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