Author(s): Paul Kelly

Music

There is something unique and powerful about the way Kelly mixes up everyday detail with the big issues of life, death, love and struggle not a trace of pretence or fakery in there.' - Neil Finn At its best, Paul Kelly's art is a meeting of opposites, a gift for melody and a gritty sense of reality. It is like seeing ribbons on a barbed wire fence.' - Martin Flanagan Don't Start Me Talking comprises some of the finest poetry written in Australia. Paul Kelly's lyrics illuminate the way we live, sometimes with a haunting and savage intensity, sometimes with humour, always with a lightness and simplicity that belies the complexity of the world he is singing and writing into being. In addition to his lyrics, Kelly has written songs with and for many other artists, include Renee Geyer, Kate Ceberano, Vika and Linda Bull, Nick Cave, Kasey Chambers, Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach and Troy Cassar-Daley. The lyrics encompass his writing over two decades, from 1984 to 2004, and are grouped by album in chronological order: Post, Gossip, Under The Sun, So Much Water So Close To Home, Comedy, Funerals And Circuses, Wanted Man, Deeper Water, Words And Music, Professor Ratbagg