Benjamin Franklin's advice to a cis straight youthful man upon where best to sow his wild oats.Read by an Aussie woman of a certain age who is quite fond of oats, herself.Please Sir, can I have some more?

Storytelling With Mama Duck

Advice To A Young Man On Choosing A Mistress, A Letter From Benjamin Franklin, 1745. Read By An Amused Aussie

A poem about love, by Irish poet James Joyce, recorded on the eve on Bloomsday, 2021.

On The Beach At Fontana By James Joyce: Read By An Aussie In Ireland

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.....Hope my funeral will be a very, very long time from now, well attended and someone among the merrymakers celebrating my long and interesting life remembers to read this poem aloud cos it's one of my favourites.

"The Love Song Of Alfred J. Prufrock" By T. S. Eliot, Read By An Aussie Woman Of A Certain Age

Music on in the kitchen, birds calling in the garden and an Aussie reading poetry aloud at wine o'clock.

"This Is Just To Say" By William Carlos Williams, Read By An Aussie In Her Conservatory

The possible origins of the hipster beard in 19th century Australia

"The Man From Ironbark" By A. B. "Banjo" Paterson

Humorous Bush ballad, about Irish people adapting their culture to their circumstances in 19th century outback Australia.My mother bought me an illustrated version (illustrations by Aussie artists who were daughters of the NZ/Aussie writer Ruth Park and Irish Australian writer D'Arcy Niland, come to think of it) when I was five years old, and read it to me animatedly.I was entranced by the sound of rhyming language in a familiar environment about landscape and identity.My clever Mummy taught me to read, early. I became a writer, journalist, comedian and broadcaster.From little things, big things grow.Read to our kids, in person and aloud, happily. ?

A Bush Christening By A. B. 'Banjo' Patterson Read Aloud By A Nostalgic Aussie

One of my favourite poems, musing on womanhood and the stages of maiden, mother and crone with cycles of vanity and ageing.When I first read this poem as a 23yo English Studies undergrad, I melodramatically identified with it, from the perspective of a struggling young mother and writer in a brutal marriage.Far too closely..... I've had my head in the gas oven in a metaphorical sense far too often as I struggled with self esteem and finding my way in the world.Now I'm 50.I've survived this long.I'm reconciled and at peace with anything my mirror shows me.Thanks for listening.

"Mirror" By Sylvia Plath, Read Aloud.

The famous poem written in England, 1906, by a woman homesick for her country of birth, Australia.Read by a woman in 2021, conscious of the original sin of Terra Nullis, grateful for the opportunities enjoyed by her children in a sunburnt country, missing the smell of gum leaves and gravel as rain falls on the slate roof of her cottage in Ireland.

"My Country" By Dorethea Mckellar

I read a poem by that Algonquin Queen of the sardonic and Bohemian, Dorothy Parker.Lockdown socialising has me musing, indeed.

Dorothy Parker "The Burned Child" Read By An Incurable Optimist

The thru line of my Irish great grandmothers down to my emancipated Aussie daughters, in context of English colonialism and genocide.

Freedom, Australia And Horses!

Episode one: a humorous tale written & narrated by Mama Duck. A fish out of water seeks divine inspiration on her existence in an unfamiliar territory.

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Storytelling With Mama Duck

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