In this series, Beyond a Joke I speak with folk about things that make them laugh as a way into a conversation about writing, humour and art.

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In this, the first episode in this series I speak with Anna Jackson about a single cell from a Peanuts cartoon where Snoopy is pretending to be a cow. This turns out to be a really great way into talking to Anna about her amazing new book Actions & Travels: How poetry works (Auckland University Press) and how poetry works.

Some of the things we talk about are:

Here is Allen Ginsberg reading America with an audience and beginning to play it for laughs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orar-V3y5Sk&ab_channel=awetblackbough

And here is the reading without the audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9_aJqtnmPo&ab_channel=DurkvanderMeer

And with the soundtrack by Tom Waits bringing out that elegiac note to it that it has when he reads it without an audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6l_smqPvg0&ab_channel=MIkeChaseEaton

A link to the Szymborska poem: https://genius.com/Wisawa-szymborska-conversation-with-a-stone-annotated

The Chris Tse poem you’ll find in Super Model Minority. 

The Hera Lindsay Bird poem I had in mind w as MONICA. https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/13-05-2016/the-friday-poem-monica-by-hera-lindsay-bird

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