Welcoming POEM FOREST Intern Sophie Bellotti
We are delighted to introduce you to Sophie Bellotti, our new digital communications intern for POEM FOREST. She was interviewed by fellow intern Annie Yoshida.
Welcome to Red Room Poetry Sophie! Can you introduce yourself?
Thank you! I’m a reader, writer, student and arts worker, currently living and working across Wangal and Gadigal land. I completed my honours in Naarm at the University of Melbourne, where I was lucky enough to dive into my ongoing fixation with language as a medium for communication and transformation. I’m now studying publishing at the University of Sydney.
You recently completed a thesis on 'compost poetry' - can you explain what that is?
What isn’t compost poetry? Drawing from a vast tradition of recycling, sampling, collaging, intertextuality and various forms of waste poetics, my thesis proposed a methodology of de/compositional poetics as a form of ecological relation, or solidarity. De/compositional poetics looks at what can be made by unmaking and remaking, foregrounding the semiotic and material histories and futures of texts and images. It’s a kind of anti-consumerist approach to creativity.
Can you recommend some must-read poems? What poets most inspire you?
Along the lines of compost poetics, I’d highly recommend Bella Li, M. Nourbese Philip, Natalie Harkin and Stuart Cooke. Also, The Tiger by Nael (that viral poem from a few years back) remains one of my favourites of all time.
What are you most looking forward to in working at Red Room Poetry and POEM FOREST?
I’m so excited to contribute to spreading this transformative message! I truly believe in the power of poetry to change how we conceive of and relate to our world – for young people to be empowered with that capacity makes me so hopeful for our future.
Do you write poetry yourself?
I do! I am constantly trying to write my way towards meaning-making, to understand (through de/composition) the world around me, the writers I read, the impact I have on the people and places I engage with. Poetry plays a central role in my thought process.
What are your plans when you finish studying?
That’s still to be decided! My dream is to keep working alongside wonderful, creative people, to ultimately contribute to platforming and disseminating the voices of Australia’s amazing writers and artists, and the vital and transformative stories they have to tell.
Sophie Bellotti (she/her) is a reader, writer and arts practitioner currently working and studying on Wangal and Gadigal land. Sophie’s multidisciplinary practice explores the interplay of matter and language, and how language carves and becomes material reality in socially and culturally situated ways. Her work appears in Rabbit 34 and Upswell’s Admissions. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and is currently studying publishing at the University of Sydney.
