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"writing poetry is a very natural thing... it seeps out of the unconscious ... to bring a lot of academic laws & rules down upon it - the hierarchical shape of education down upon it - is like bringing an expensive frost to a harvest... when i write i try to remain empty - there is always a struggle as the ego wants to tip one over the edge... the ego is cunning, clever, well-schooled... it is harnessed to the bloody vehicle and intends to take it over, to drive it. i work like a medium, secretly blind yet sharp as a hunter. locked in the slippery narrow tomb, i lurk, waiting to birth an idea. it's as if i am giving birth to myself each time, and in giving birth to myself i give birth to the world, this diseased and fascinating egg that never hatches. we're all dancing around it. it's like a mad opal shining in the unconscious, uneatable, undigestible... it's through the cracks of this egg we peer. one never knows what's going to spill out... in this way i often look to myself like a terrible fool... to creative one must relinquish all knowledge... i never seemed to have any to begin with... knowledge is the poison..." (christina conrad) Born in New Zealand (12/18/42) Conrad is an internationally acclaimed poet, playwright and "outsider" artist. She is the author of three books. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.K. They have also been widely anthologized (The Oxford Book of Modern New Zealand Poetry, Kiwi and Emu, and The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Verse). Conrad's first book - This Fig Tree Has Thorns - is considered a modern-day classic. A French translation, published by Infrablu Press in Paris in 1996, sold out within two weeks. She is also represented in the Bloomsbury Book of Women Writers (U.K.) and has been the subject of several documentary films, including one that is now in progress. Conrad's paintings and clay icons have been exhibited in major galleries in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. "I have the same number of relatives as the number of hexagrams in the I Ching, and used to think this was significant back in the days when I didn't eat meat and chopped firewood in a sarong." Born in Orlando, Florida, in 1947 - the only son of two wandering West Virginians - Billy Marshall Stoneking left the States in 1972 because "too many bumper stickers said, 'America: Love It Or Leave It'. and because most of my favorite American literature had been written by expatriates." He has written poetry, plays, fiction, screenplays, historical non-fiction, and criticism. His published work includes the modern Australian classic, Singing the Snake (Harper/Collins, 1990); and the equally good though less-classic, Lasseter:In Quest of Gold (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989). Taking America Out of the Boy, an irreverent auto-fictography, was published by Hodder Spectrum in 1993. His first full-length play, Sixteen Words For Water (published by Harper/Collins in 1991) has enjoyed several successful productions, mostly recently in Dublin (1999). It has also had seasons in London, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, Dunedin (NZ), and will have its North American premiere in Buffafo at the Alleyway Theatre in MArch, 2000. In the late 1980s, he was a series writer for Paramount Television's Mission:Impossible; and was creator/co-writer of the award-winning, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) television drama series, Stringer. Much of his work has been influenced, and continues to be influenced by his long association with tribal Aboriginal people. From 1978 to 1983, he lived and worked at Papunya Aboriginal Settlement (275 kms west of Alice Springs, N.T.) where he collected and published stories and other materials in the local dialect (Pintupi/Luritja). He is conversant in several Aboriginal dialects. His film documentaries - Desert Stories, Nosepeg's Movie, and Pride & Prejudice - as well as other work, draw heavily upon the time he spent in the desert. His latest play, Eisenstein in Mexico has been translated into Spanish, and will be published by the University of Sinaloa Press in Culiacan, Mexico, as part of their world literature series. |