Claire Gaskin is our guest on Spoken Word this week. Fresh from featuring at the Melbourne Spoken Word & Poetry Festival Closing Night, Claire talks about her first forays into live poetry in 1980s Melbourne, and how much the "scene" has changed. She reads some new and old works, and shares some insights into teaching (and marking!) poetry students, her writing process, and favourite poetic devices. We get a preview of her new work-in-progress, drawing on Ancient Greek mythology to examine patriarchy and different forms of women's resistance.

Claire Gaskin’s first book was a chapbook entitled, A snail in the Ear of the Buddha, published by Soup Publications. Her collection, a bud, completed in the receipt of a Literature Board grant, was published by John Leonard Press in 2006 and shortlisted in the SA Literature Awards. Her collection, Paperweight, was published by John Hunter Publishers in 2013. Eurydice Speaks is forthcoming with John Hunter Publishers in 2019. She is working on her fourth collection with the working title of Ismene’s Survivable Resistance.