Radio Interview on “Friend of Marilyn”

“Imagine a world where you literally do not fit: clothes, rooms, conversations, schedules, relationships…” – Beth Murch, Fat

I was recently interviewed by Cat Pausé, the host of the New Zealand radio program, Friend of Marilyn. We discussed my spoken word poem, Fat the hubbub surrounding it, and what it is like being a large-bodied person in spoken word.  Here’s the link to the interview, which you can listen to free and at your leisure!

Friend of Marilyn – 01/10/2014

I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to talk about my poem with such a diverse audience. I had no idea when I wrote the piece that it was going to impact people so strongly (both negatively and positively!). It is an honour to be the vessel through which people engage in their own explorations of consciousness-raising…and it means so much to me when people share their experiences of how that poem impacted them. May we come to live in a world where we learn to love one another regardless of our shapes and sizes…and we learn to love ourselves, regardless of our shapes and sizes.

 

Something About Phoenixes, Ashes, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda…

His mouth formed the words
“I don’t love you anymore”
But all I heard was a symphony
Of cars crashing
Glass breaking
And police sirens wailing like professional mourners.

Some nights, I bite and pick at my lips until they split.
I tear through layer after layer of skin
Hoping to find innocent cells that don’t remember the touch of his kiss.
I taste blood whenever I say his name.

I smoke cigarettes just to feel my lungs scream.
Each drag on Cancer’s dick fills me with the blackness and grime
That I have always felt was deep inside me already.
I draw heart shapes in the ashtray with my finger.

This work, “Something About Phoenixes, Ashes, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda…” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.