Sweetman Podcast Simon Sweetman

An in-depth phone conversation with Henry Rollins. We promo his then-upcoming (2023) NZ tour but also talk about his move to Nashville, after 40 years of living in LA. We talk about his childhood, his recent return to travel, the Covid Lockdowns, his acting, his writing, his radio show. The works. Henry weighs in on America and politics, and previews the type of talk he'll be doing on the stage.

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You’ll remember that last month I went down to the Fringe Bar and read some new poems:
I’ve decided I’ll try get along and read some more of the new “Richard” poems. I’m trying to learn to sit in the moment with these poems, to let them hang. I’m bantering away between them because there’s tension, then release, and hopefully some relief. There’s not a lot of relief from these poems, so that’s where the banter comes in to save. But I’m also trying to provide a wee bit of context, and to still let the poems hang, and live by themselves. A work in progress.
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Anyway, if you’d like to read along, or read them before, or read after, these poems are:
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I took myself down to Poetry in Motion’s regular monthly open-mic night. There’s always a feature poet, but a few slots for open-mic readings in the first half of the evening.
Here is a warts-n-all live recording of three new poems from me, with a little context around the poems — and my return to open-mic reading after a lengthy absence. Finding my feet (and voice) with reading again. Hope you like. Happy for any feedback.



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Hi and welcome back to the podcast. I’ve had a huge break. This has been for a bunch of reasons – but really it was because of the pandemic. Lockdowns killed my flow, I didn’t want to just do phone and Skype chats. And then, ever since hitting ‘stop’ it’s been very hard to press ‘play’ again. Or in fact to hit ‘Record’.
But here I am again, with the new sporadic approach to podcasting. Meaning, there’s no guarantee of a weekly chat or even fortnightly. I’m just hoping to get an episode up every now and then.
And so, to episode 274 of Sweetman Podcast.
The first podcast for the year. The longest break since I started this podcast.
This conversation is a repeat guest. The writer Megan Dunn. I first spoke to Megan in 2018 (and you can click that link to hear the earlier chat). Megan had written her first book when I spoke to her a few years back. I asked her to come back when she completed her second book; it was going to be about mermaids. That book never happened. But there’s some writing about that topic – and we talk about that topic here and much of what’s in her second book, the brilliant Things I Learned At Art School, a memoir-in-essays
.
I’m a huge fan of Megan’s writing and it’s nice chatting with her – we geek out about pop culture and art.
This conversation was actually recorded way back toward the end of last year – to date it I’m including a link to a New York Times article, Who Is The Bad Art Friend? We talk a bit about this in the podcast, this essay was doing the rounds at the time. That’ll give you a context for when this conversation took place. You can see how I never could have made it in the world of PR or event management. This is the biggest promotional lag ever! But it’s still a fun and relevant conversation. And the book is still available to buy.



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A phone conversationw with TV host and comedian Dai Henwood. We've never met and this is our first ever chat, so we talk lockdown and covid, and rap music, and we talk about his father, the late, great Ray Henwood (a wonderful actor). We do talk comedy, a bit. But this was more a getting-to-know-somehow chat. And I loved it. I hope you do too.

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An in-depth conversation with Wellington-based actor, writer and producer Jean Sergent. We talk about her life and work, growing up in an acting family, her current show - Live Through This - her interest in reading Tarot and a whole lot more. Great chat!

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