Episode 77: Maxine Beneba Clarke on her powerful new poetry collection, <em>How Decent Folk Behave</em>

The epitaph to Maxine Beneba Clarke’s extraordinary new poetry collection, How Decent Folk Behave, is the following, from Nina Simone: ‘An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times’. Maxine’s poems, which explore a broad range of contemporary topics, from climate change to violence against women, from Trump to racism do indeed reflect the times, but they do more than that - in precise, compelling, soaring language Maxine offers in these poems a vision of hope for better times ahead. This was a powerful and deeply moving conversation – a fitting note on which to end the Summer Series of eight fabulous Australian writers.