Antigone in Aotearoa: Interview with Kefala (O’Keefe edit)

By | 1 August 2015


Antigone Kefala | Sydney Morning Herald | 2015

Hazel de Berg’s recordings take place in the homes or work spaces of the subjects rather than a recording studio. This allows something of these places into the recording whether birdsong, traffic or an r&b song playing in the background. In the recordings, de Berg remains enigmatic, the ghostly presence operating the machine.

Kefala discusses her work as a poet, novelist and translator in this interview from 1974. New Zealand gets a look in however for the most part she is more interested in reinstating her European perspective and sensibility. The poem that Kefala reads was untitled at the time of recording but would become part of her sequence Thirsty Work. Kefala was also working in the publicity department of the Australia Council at the time and spends some of the discussion detailing her duties and the excitement and generative possibility grants from the newly incorporated organisation were making possible.

Interview with Antigone Kefala (O’Keefe remix)

Recorded on 23 April 1974 by Hazel de Berg.
2015 mix by Ella O’Keefe

‘Antigone Kefala interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg Collection’
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia, TRC 1/761
Special acknowledgement to Duncan Felton, NLA Oral History & Folklore Branch

Read more about Antigone Kefala at the Australian Poetry Library.

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Described in a 1961 article from the Canberra times as a ‘tape-recorder enthusiast from Sydney’ Hazel de Berg was a photographer and radiographer and oral historian. She spent much of her life collecting the words and voices of Australian poets, artists, writers, composers, actors, academics, publishers, librarians, scientists, anthropologists, public servants and some politicians. Subjects were asked to speak about their lives and work and while De Berg asked questions, for the most part she edited her voice out of the final recordings. Her archives are not then a repository of interviews, but of voices, speaking directly and intimately to the listener. The recordings take place in the homes or work spaces of the subjects rather than a recording studio. This allows something of these places into the recording whether birdsong, traffic or an r&b song playing in the background. In the recordings, De Berg herself is an enigmatic presence, the ghostly presence operating the machine.

More by Hazel de Berg on Cordite Poetry Review →

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