Two legendary songwriters unite.
Scheduled to visit Australia in April for Bluesfest and a run of headline shows, Patti Smith will join our very own Paul Kelly in conversation to discuss life, music and writing while she’s in the country.
On the back of her recent memoir Year of the Monkey, Smith will sit down with Kelly at Sydney Writers’ Festival. A collection of musings about ageing and mortality chronicled across a solo journey from Southern California to the Arizona desert, Year of the Monkey is another poignant addition to Smith’s catalogue of written works.
Beginning her career as a poet before melding her writing with music in her seminal debut Horses, Smith has long been dubbed a punk poet. Smith has fortified her status as an acclaimed writer through her award-winning memoir Just Kids and its follow up M-Train, as well as a handful of poetry books.
A fellow wordsmith, Kelly also has a few books under his belt, releasing his “memoir in a hundred songs” How to make Gravy in 2010 before collating his favourite poems for last year’s Love is Strong as Death.
According to the announcement from Sydney Writers’ Festival, the conversation will see the pair sharing “thoughts on loss and aging, personal catastrophe, political grief – and hoping for a better world.”
Word nerds, get ready for a literary feast when these two great minds meet.
Patti Smith will appear in conversation with Paul Kelly at Sydney Town Hall as part of Sydney Writers’ Festival on Wednesday April 8. Find out more here.
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