In this episode, Claire chats to poet, photographer and playwright Brydie Walker Bain about her debut collection The Windwhistle Gate.
Full of breathtaking poems to uplift and inspire, this pocket poetry book would make a gorgeous gift for the creative in your life, or for anyone searching for solace in these challenging times.
The poetry is accompanied by stunning photographs from around New Zealand, taken by the author, and her husband, photographer Corin Walker Bain.
When talking about creative process and practice, Brydie mentions this story from Elizabeth Gilbert´s Ted Talk -
“I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who’s now in her 90s, but she’s been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape.
And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, “run like hell.”
And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she’d be running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it “for another poet.”
And then there were these times — this is the piece I never forgot — she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she’s running to the house and she’s looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her, and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards, from the last word to the first.”
Isn´t that fantastic?
Brydie also talked about Alain de Botton´s Why You Will Marry The Same Person and she chose James K Baxter from New Zealand as one of her favourite well-known poets. She read out his poems The Maori Jesus and High Country Weather.
Brydie Walker Bain is a high country poet from Waitomo Caves, New Zealand whose work has been published in the Dominion Post, Stuff and Calico Publishing. She has been short-listed for the Storylines Tom FitzgibbonAward and her plays have enjoyed sell-out seasons and readings in Hamilton, Auckland and London. Her favourite things are the wind in the hills, words that make you pause and being on the road to anywhere.
You can purchase copies of The Windwhistle Gate here www.agreatbackyard.co.nz/the-windwhistle-gate
Find Brydie on Instagram and Facebook @brydiewalkerbain and Substack Te Toko Report | Brydie Walker Bain | Substack
Share this post