It’s 1pm when the phone rings. ‘Hi it’s David here, how you going?’ I tell him I’m well, and explain what I’m doing in Melbourne. We talk about Salt’s financial troubles, and he seems a little surprised at how bad it is. I tell him we hope to pull through, and that some new ideas in the pipeline should help.
David tells me that he’s interested in multimedia poetry – accompanying printed text with audio and video recordings. His Salt page has a few examples of his Blister Pack recordings – check them out.
We discuss Salt’s creative approach to selling poetry, and he tells me that he thinks we do a great job in reaching new audiences. We talk about the possibility of recording some of our Melbourne-based Salt poets for the website. This is something that I’d like to look into.
David admits that living and working in Geelong (a coastal town about 70km west of Melbourne) means he doesn’t get to see as many Melbourne readings as he would like. Plus with a four month old baby, he has his hands full at home.
David tells me that it’s great to have a Salt representative in Australia. Email communication sometimes isn’t the most effective means of contacting us, and to be able to speak to someone in person is a great help. I tell him that I will report our conversation back to Salt HQ and throw around a few ideas.
Hopefully good things will come of this.
In other news, I have a meeting planned with Tom Shapcott on Monday, and expect to speak to Kris Hemensley from the Collected Works Bookshop too.
