Jane Clifton

This is the thing about Patricia Highsmith.

You do find yourself on the side of the person who is about to commit the murder.

And she creates that period of the 50s and the 60s so vividly.

so strongly it's like reading a life magazine you know you see the furniture you see the cocktails the highballs the coffee the sandwiches and you see people trapped in these situations and when they do commit the crime it's really messy they're not good at it these are not guys

who are wandering around with, you know, duct tape and, you know, rope in the boot of their car, who are drawn to murder.

They are drawn to it as a solution and they really muck it up and you're always, because you're waiting for them to get caught, you're always in this state of incredible tension.

What's Word Travels?

Word Travels is a literary and literacy arts organization.

So we run the National Poetry Slam, and then we run a week-long festival called Story Fest, which is now being rebranded as Story Week.

But basically, we go out to various communities around Australia, Asia, North America, and we set up programs for people.

to be able to tell their stories to each other through either a poem, an actual story, or a monologue.

Usually it's about live performance of writing.

Yeah, so what you do is you have to build up your muscles first and then you find a poet and you pick one up over your head and then you throw them onto a rubber mat and then, no.

It's competition.

Yeah, exactly.

It's basically a poetry competition.

You can have a Grand Slam, Tennis Championship, and in that you can have tennis players.

You have a poetry slam, you've got a whole bunch of poets on stage who one at a time come up with their two minutes in the National Poetry Slam and other poetry slams.

It might be three minutes, but it's usually a time-limited thing.

And they perform their original work and judges are chosen from the audience and the audience members