Possessing Unpopular Opinions – Ink versus Innovation

I was put forward for this by Tam (one of my – well, technically Mel’s – students from this year’s HWI program). She‘d taken part in the previous edition (“Bootstrap vs Investment”), and thought I’d be a good fit when they were looking for fresh meat new victims new participants for the topic “Ink versus Innovation”. I thought “oh lovely! She’s seen me speaking to the room and thought I was a good public speaker, should be a lot of fun!” But no. At least, not quite. Turns out what made her put me forward was that … they wanted people who were very opinionated.

Sensibly, the organisers – the lovely Michelle and Kelsie – interview prospective speakers first, to hear their ideas for the topic and make sure their final six speakers are a good mix. You don’t want six versions of the same thing, and even more important, you are looking for unpopular opinions. Provocative, or controversial, or surprising. So I had an interview with the two of them via Zoom, sitting at mum’s dining table, looking out to a stormy Bass Strait and trying to decide if this was really a good idea, and if I had anything genuinely controversial to say on the subject. Apparently I did, because Kelsie jumped on something I said, looked at Michelle, and said “Ink IS Innovation!”. And so I was added to the list. And had to work out what the heck I’d actually said, and how to make it a convincing four minute speech.

To be clear – getting to four minutes was never going to be a problem. It was keeping it to four minutes, while being coherent. It’s quite a tricky length of time – too long for just one point, but not long enough for developing multiple points. Especially not if you extemporise. I’m really good at winging it, but to build a decent, convincing argument in four minutes, you need to hit your main points fairly steadily. You can’t just drown people in verbiage. (Well, you can, but you shouldn’t.) And if you go badly, four minutes is quite a painful, drawn-out death …

Fast forward to the week of Word, and I have a basic speech ready. I’ve pulled things from a whole bunch of sources – books on neuroscience, books on history, books on philosophy. Books on books. Books of fantasy. Books of poetry. Internet rabbit-holes. More books. Y’know, like you do.

Essentially that was the pattern I followed for the whole week. By the time Thursday rolled around, I’d trimmed it back to a point where I was fairly reliably getting through it within 3.45, so I was fairly confident.

Ish.

My fellow panelists were mostly people I didn’t know – Kia, Hannah Davison, Lizzie Davidson, and Ekant Veer. Nic Low I did know already, which gave me some comfort – the only other time I’d been an invited participant in Word was when he was festival director back in 2022. He’d spoken to my students at Hagley earlier in the year and had remembered me (or faked it really well – he is a lovely, generous human being).

Going to say it very simply – my panel-mates were the most delightful bunch! As were the team from Publica. Funny, friendly, feisty, and just an absolute joy to work with. Everyone was. (Five stars. Thoroughly recommend.) But still, I was conspicuously the only poet there, so felt a bit like I had my entire field’s reputation for eloquence resting on my shoulders …

I had a ball. Nic went first, and went over time slightly, but was funny as heck. Kia was next, was eloquent and witty and was perfectly within time. As was Hannah (4th), Lizzie (5th) and Ekant (6th). As for me? Well, I went 3rd, and …

… went over time. Goddammit. I stumbled on a point early on, and went off script. A tad. Just a tad. Which threw the timing out for the rest. Fortunately, I knew how long each bit took, so when I saw the hand go up and the fingers start to count down, I was able to scramble to a conclusion, even if it wasn’t the (brilliant! Articulate! Deeply though and well reasoned!) conclusion I’d intended.

Frankly, I could have stayed there all night. (And not only because there were drinks and sacks in the greenroom.) (Although that definitely didn’t hurt …)

So why am I telling you all this now? Well, partly because I want to remember it happened, and this blog acts as a bit of a diary-substitute (as opposed to a dairy-substitute, which I will not permit). But also because I put a decent amount of thought into the damn speech, but ended up with none of my people in the audience apart from my Long Suffering Husband. And I want to share the damn speech!

So, next time on A Dark Feathered Art … what I had planned to say.

Or something like it.

Ish.