I met the awesome, dry-witted Peter Goldsworthy in Clunes Booktown in Australia, made famous by being the place they filmed the documentary “Mad Max” way back in 1979.

Peter is already renowned as a prose writer, a very talented poet, and a real-life medical doctor to boot, much like our friend William Carlos Williams. We chat about how his day job shapes his poetry and fills it with deeply human stories. Here’s the eloquent blurb:

Ryan recently visited the Clunes Booktown Festival in Australia, where he met multitalented poet, novelist, screenwriter, librettist, songwriter and doctor Peter Goldsworthy. They discuss his thoughts on narrative compression and his preferred modes of writing, his love of eastern European poetry, inventing translations, achieving your voice through imitation, Australian identity and why he doesn’t want to work full time as a writer. Peter also reads a number of his poems.