Episode 77: Maxine Beneba Clarke on her powerful new poetry collection, How Decent Folk Behave.

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.

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