Gem Mahadeo is a Melbourne-based writer and musician, who came to Australia in 1987. Her poetry has appeared in zines and online journals such as Concrete Queers, Cordite Poetry Journal, Going Down Swinging, The Suburban Review, and Rabbit Poetry Journal, and in performance as part of the Quippings Troupe. In April 2018, she was a successful applicant for a ‘Woman Writers of Colour’ commission on the theme ‘collaboration’ through Writers Victoria, and she wrote a suite of three poems based on independent video games exhibited at Bar SK in Collingwood. In 2018, she is blogging a real-time weekly ‘zine-and-drink review’. On today's episode we touch her musicology, poetry, strategies for performance, poetry business cards, zines, teaching, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and avoiding burnout.