Poet Ender Başkan wins PM's Literary Award

0:00Or some of Australia's best authors have been recognised in Canberra overnight at the Prime Minister's literary awards. A tax-free prize pool of $600,000 was awarded across six categories, recognising outstanding contributions to Australian literature and culture. I'm very pleased to say that my next guess was one of those very talented recipients. Ender Bashkan is the winner of the Prime Minister's literary award for poetry for his debut collection, 200 million musketeers. Ender joins me in the studio this morning. Welcome and a big congratulations. Thanks, Sally. It's great to be here. What do people say when you say, I'm a poet? One of my daughters, she's four. She's been recently going around and telling everyone, my dad, he's a poet. He makes poems. He's a poet. He makes poems. And people were like, oh, OK.

1:01And so I just wear it. But now I've got this medallion that I can keep in my pocket. And why did you choose poetry rather than writing a novel or putting something on the stage or why is that the form that really works for you? I've written a novel that's been published in the past. I've written a few that have been scrapped. I've written poems, fragments. Poetry is the most kind of immediate way or form for me to kind of get into and get on a role, I suppose. And I had kids about eight years ago, or my first thought was about eight years ago. And I just had less time and headspace. And so I was writing on the back of receipts and napkins on my hand and things like that. I had to use. Exactly. And I thought, you know, when you write those scraps and you collect those ideas, but they're just deferred for so long. And in a novel, I just didn't have the headspace to go there.

2:02And so poems are immediate. And poems are eternal just to all the poet fans out there and all the poetry people, you know, poetry is forever. You've explained it beautifully. Parenthood and living all of those experiences is at the heart of a lot of your writing. That was so important for you to try to express what's going on because when a little tiny human being arrives, it kind of turns a whole lot of things upside down. Absolutely. It kind of rocks your emotional world and cracks you open no matter what's going on in the rest of the world and the rest of life. You really lock in on the intimacy of that moment and those new relationships. And I think for me it was both becoming apparent and then my eldest coming into language starting to talk around two years old and just jabbering and singing songs. And I really got into the joy, the material of language and that really got me going.

3:04I thought there's something in here. Better write all these brilliant things down that my daughter's saying to me. And the cadence of young children is really interesting as well. It sounds like that kind of drew your ear in as well. Absolutely. And very kindly agreed to read upon this morning. This opens your collection here. Can you just tell me briefly about this piece? This piece, it's actually a very long piece. I'm going to read the first page or two. And it was just an experiment with kind of lots of different voices and the chaos of domestic parent life. So it has many different threads in it, many different voices. And I thought I wanted to kind of land this maneuver. So I worked on it for a very long time. And I can read it for you. I would love that. Thank you. It's called Here is the Shirt off my back, swimming in the afternoon. If you want an alarm clock to work, make sure you place it out of reach. But never mind, our mutual friends are awake.

4:06And so we, 5.49 AM, I am dead, I'm on demand. rubbish truck. rubbish truck. I run out to see the bin flung up and over with you. Why is the driver wearing sunglasses? Even if you miss the first truck, you get two more chances. And sometimes I hot air balloon. Milk, Daddy, can you make me a milk? You fill the bottle, start the kettle, grind the coffee. Rumi said, you make your own oil as you cook. And as a cooker, I say, let's cook crudely the power of concentration, vis-a-vis concentrations of power. The Russians have the Kremlin. The Ottomans had the sublime port, and both our children have runny noses. Sometimes your bigness makes other people feel small, and sometimes your bigness makes other people feel bigger. We go away, we buy our friends' gifts. Wooden spoons, knock off footy shirts from the Spice Bazaar. We fly home long haul. Gifts packed and wrapped. They live in Kobraug, us in Brunswick East. The gifts sit in our drawers for months. The sky, it reels with love.

5:08Somebody said his diaries were better than his novels. August 2, 1914, Kafka writes, Germany has declared war on Russia, swimming in the afternoon. It's beautiful. And thank you so much for coming in, and congratulations again. And best wishes for your family as well. Thanks so much, Sally, great to be here.