(i) A Chaotic Friend, (ii) Write it down often.

This description contains a paid promotion in that I use Amazon Affiliate Links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. What happens when wild, chaotic living meets disciplined, daily creativity? This episode examines two contrasting yet complementary paths to meaningful artistic expression.

We begin with Roland Robinson, the Australian poet who lived from 1912 to 1992—a chaotic, wild-haired figure who hiked with my parents and whose intellectual fire never dimmed in my mother's memory. Robinson's life was a beautiful chaos of divorces, affairs, and cross-country journeys, yet this apparent disorder fueled his mission to document Aboriginal stories and myths. His poem "The Sermon of the Birds" exemplifies his dedication to preserving First Nations voices, showing how he channeled personal turmoil into cultural preservation and activism.

The second half shifts focus to Walter Mosley's structured approach to writing. The acclaimed crime fiction author behind the Easy Rawlins mysteries offers transformative advice: make writing your first daily activity. Even changing a single word counts. This simple practice creates an anchor amid life's storms, helping writers overcome the "not creative today" or "too busy" excuses that leave projects forever unfinished. My own journey with schizophrenia illustrates this perfectly—detailed notes initially kept for doctors gradually expanded into material for multiple books, including "The Overlife, a Tale of Schizophrenia."

Both Robinson and Mosley reveal essential truths about creativity: it thrives in both freedom and structure. Whether your path resembles Robinson's chaotic energy or Mosley's disciplined consistency, the key lies in commitment to your unique voice and story. What daily practice might anchor your creative life? What chaos might you transform through your words? Subscribe now and join our exploration of writing's power to capture life's complexity.

References:

(i) Roland Robinson (1912-1992) by Peter Kirkpatrick, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 19, 2021.

(ii) https://allpoetry.com/The-Sermon-of-the-Birds

(iii) "Devil In A Blue Dress," by Walter Mosley (visit https://amzn.to/4jTMJWB) The link is an Amazon Associate Link/ As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

(iv) “The Overlife: A Tale Of Schizophrenia,” by Diana Dirkby (visit https://amzn.to/454WgW6. #ad #commissionsearned The link is an Amazon Affiliate Link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases)

(v) “Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies,” by Diana Dirkby (visit https://amzn.to/42Z81KY. #ad #commissionsearned The link is an Amazon Affiliate Link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

My Website and Social Media:

https://dianadirkbywrites.com (fiction writing)

https://aussiemathematician.io/ (mathematics)

 My Instagram: @dianadirkby_writings (https://www.instagram.com/dianadirkby_writings/)

My Facebook Page: Diana Dirkby Writings (https://www.facebook.com/DianaDirkbyAuthor)

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My YouTube channel @Diana DirkbyWrites (https://www.youtube.com/@DianaDirkbyWrites)

#australianpoetry #aboriginalmyths #waltermosley #fictionwriting #keepingadiary #rolandrobinson #firstnationspe

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Two-Part Podcast
• 1:10 The Sermon of the Birds Poem
• 2:45 Roland Robinson's Life and Impact
• 5:59 Walter Mosley's Writing Advice
• 8:20 Benefits of Daily Writing Practice
• 9:37 Podcast Closing and Call to Action

Transcript

Sunday, May 11, 5 pm PST

(i) A Chaotic Friend, (ii)  Write it down often.

This podcast transcript contains a paid promotion. This Podcast Is In Two Parts: (i) A Chaotic Friend and (ii) Write It Down Often. (i) I begin by reading a poem by the famous Australian poet Roland Robinson, 1912-1992. Roland was a friend of my parents' and had a chaotic lifestyle. The character “Robert” in my book “The Overlife: A Tale Of Schizophrenia” is based on Roland. The misprints in the following poem are Roland’s.

The Sermon of the Birds

by Roland Robinson, source: allpoetry.com

I was clearing thirty or forty acres once

Out in the western range near Nightcap Mountain.

And as I was working, I heard a gathering of the crows

Singing out in a jungle gully. Their clamorous cries

Drawed the attention of all the other birds.

Jackass and butcher-bird, soldier-bird, sparrow-bird,

Scrub-robin, magpie, and the black and white cockatoo,

They all flew down to the crows in the jungle-gully.

And I followed after their clamour, and in the midst

Of all the splendid excitement of the birds

I heard one feller was singing above them all.

It was the lyre-bird, the mimic of all the scrub,

And they held this beautiful sermon for half an hour.

The birds would stop and listen a while but still

That beautiful voice, the lyre-bird, would keep on singing

And draw then and join them all to a chorus again.

And as I stood there and listened, the Scriptures was

Hitting me all the time. The sermon seemed

Like the prophecy when Christ shall come and summon

The birds, the valleys, the hills, the mountains and the ocean

To sing in praise of the grace and the reckoning day,

And the beauty of earth in the splendour that He crated.

And I went back and told my people of what I had seen,And the sermon of praise I heard in the mountain range.

This poem is based on a story told to Roland Robinson by Alexander Vesper, an Aboriginal man from New South Wales. Robinson has attempted to reproduce the story and words as Vesper related them to him. Alexander Vesper was an Aboriginal bushman, able to interpret the birds' song for himself. Whether he imagined this bird choir or not, the fact that he could tell such a story as this shows that he was a good poet himself, who lacked only the technique to enable him to write poetry. allpoetry.com © by owner. Provided at no charge for educational purposes. 

The character “Robert” in my book “The Overlife: A Tale Of Schizophrenia” is based on Roland Robinson. For several years, he went hiking with my parents for days. Roland's intellectual and political impact on my mother never died, and she spoke to me often about his poetry and his beliefs.

Roland led a genuinely chaotic life with several divorces and many affairs. He went on long trips all over Australia, gathering material for his poems. He looked wild: tall, lean, with a shock of hair. He is most remembered for his activism in supporting the Aboriginal people of Australia. He met Aboriginal people for the first time towards the end of World War II when he was working in Australia’s Northern Territory. From then on, he was on a mission to record as many Aboriginal stories and myths as possible, deeply affecting his poetry and outlook. He was writing in his chaos and the chaotic shame the white man should feel because of the way they treated the Aboriginal people throughout the history of Australia.

When I first began writing as a child, I favored poetry, and my mother’s stories about chaotic Roland deeply affected my writing. Roland lived a good kind of chaos. 

These days, among the preferred terms for Australian Aboriginals is First Nations people. “Aborigine” is considered outdated and potentially offensive.

Now to the second part of the podcast: Write It Down Often. If you have the app MasterClass, which contains courses by well-known, successful people in many different professions, you may know the course given by Walter Mosley. The app offers several great classes teaching various types of writing, including poetry. Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, an African American private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Perhaps his most famous book is “Devil In A Blue Dress,” which was made into a 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington. I learned much from Walter Mosley’s MasterClass course on “Fiction and Storytelling.” He strongly emphasized that writing should be a daily commitment; if possible, it should be the first thing you do daily, even if it’s just changing one word of your work. I have found the idea of daily commitment immensely fruitful. It helps overcome excuses like “I am not creative today” or “I am too busy,” which can undermine your efforts, leading to unfinished literary work. It’s a way to anchor the chaos in your life with a helpful task.

A daily commitment to writing is similar to keeping a diary, except it’s the diary of your characters' lives in your book or poem.

I recommend that, on top of that, you keep a daily diary about your life, and that you be open and honest in what you write. There is a good chance some of that work will find its way into the books you write for the public. When we write, we always rely heavily on what we have experienced. My book “The Overlife: A Tale Of Schizophrenia” grew out of reams of notes I had made about how I lived with schizophrenia. I initially made the notes for my doctors, but it rapidly expanded to include my thoughts and feelings about a much broader range of topics than what I would say to my doctor at the next appointment. For example, material for my book “Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies” was implicit in my notes. The notes proved extremely valuable; there is no way I would have remembered all that material if I hadn’t written it down.

Another piece of advice from Walter Mosley that motivated my blog post “Tell Me A Story” on my website dianadirkbywrites.com is that your work should tell a good story, regardless of the genre. This advice influenced my decision to choose fiction over memoir in my books. 

Fiction also offers significant artistic flexibility, allowing you to exclude people you don’t wish to include and to create meaningful characters for a richer narrative. Plus, I love fiction, and enjoying your work is essential.

My name is Diana Dirkby, and you have just listened to or watched an episode of my Podcast series “Fractured Ink: Writing in Life’s Chaos.”

Thank you for listening or watching. If you are watching on YouTube, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, sign up for notifications, and like my video if you like it! Thanks for your support!

References:

(i) Roland Robinson (1912-1992) by Peter Kirkpatrick, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 19, 2021.

(ii) https://allpoetry.com/The-Sermon-of-the-Birds

(iii) “The Overlife: A Tale Of Schizophrenia,” by Diana Dirkby (visit https://amzn.to/454WgW6. #ad #commissionsearned The link is an Amazon Affiliate Link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases)

(iv) “Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies,” by Diana Dirkby (visit https://amzn.to/42Z81KY. #ad #commissionsearned The link is an Amazon Affiliate Link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

My Website and Social Media:

https://dianadirkbywrites.com (fiction writing)

https://aussiemathematician.io/ (mathematics)

 My Instagram: @dianadirkby_writings (https://www.instagram.com/dianadirkby_writings/)

My Facebook Page: Diana Dirkby Writings (https://www.facebook.com/DianaDirkbyAuthor)

My X-account: @dianadirkby (https://x.com/DianaDirkby)

My YouTube channel @Diana DirkbyWrites (https://www.youtube.com/@DianaDirkbyWrites)

#australianpoetry #aboriginalmyths #waltermosley #fictionwriting #keepingadiary #rolandrobinson #firstnationspeople