Family Day, Perth Writers' Festival

It was hot. It was humid. It was fantastic.

Let's just say I was there from start of day until close of business and I do not do festivals/large gatherings of people well at all. I'm the hermitty type most drawn to Michael Leunig's favoured "...Festival of Clouds/the festival that doesn't pull the crowds", so for me to put in eight solid hours at a festival says something about the event.

We spent the day outside under the trees, as writer after writer appeared before us on the Kids' Courtyard Stage (I presented there last year, at midday, in similar, soupy conditions, and let me tell you it is much more relaxing lying back on cushions on the grass, in the shade).

We saw Richard Newsome (laid back, funny, and entertaining), Kirsty Murray (thought-provoking, scientific, and entertaining), Kate De Goldi (reflective, charming, and entertaining), James Roy (hilarious, hilarious, and entertaining), Sally Murphy (poignant, verserrific and, yeah, you get the idea; I'm not going to repeat it any more), Dianne Wolfer (informative, intelligent ...), and finally, Julia Lawrinson in a double-act with repeat offender Richard Newsome to talk about the writing and publishing life (funny, eye-opening and, yes, you know the drill).

It was in a word - blissful. Grass, trees, cushions, writers, books, kids. During the fifteen-minute breaks between sessions we rushed out to the bookstore and the signing table and the cafe and the drink fountain, squeezing these extra bits in as quickly as possible so we could get back to the heady business of lying on our backs under the trees.

These photos give you a sampling of what we saw, but of all of the pictures I took today, my very favourite is this one:

Already looking forward to next year and another slow, soupy (and entertaining!) day beneath the leaves.

Reading on the Moon

Or rather, at the Moon. If you grow weary of the international excellence and convivial literary atmosphere that is the Perth Writers' Festival, come up to the Moon Cafe and enjoy the local excellence and so-called 'op-shop decor' (to quote the West) of Perth Poetry Club.

I'll be reading on Saturday 27 Feb, in two slots from around 2pm and there'll also be open mic for those of you so inclined.

I hope my legs don't break/reading at the Moon.

Perth Poetry Club: "Where Slams Meet Sonnets".

The Moon Cafe: 323 William St, Northbridge.

PIPs

Three days in and the poem-no-longer-in-progress-but-now-declared-finished count is two. That's not bad, given that I've also managed a daily minimum of 1000 words on my novel-in-progress as well as various other bits and pieces that have been clamouring for my attention. And also given that my house currently looks like this:


So there is a lot going on here, about which more later.

Meanwhile, there are three hours remaining until midnight, and therefore still the chance I might increase my PIP count to three for three.

For now, I'll leave you with the opening lines of the two I've completed.

From "Welcome Stranger":

It's how we were raised, on the logic
of gold: all those men just a pickaxe away
from the earth's rich blaze.

(or - now that I read that again - should I break after 'pickaxe'? Do I really need 'away'? Decisions, decisions! So maybe it isn't finished after all. Damn poems, damn them all!)

From "Naming the Beasts"

Tonight, the room is thick
with the smell of boy. He is blueness and
newness; she is caution
and calm.

Tonight's poem is as yet untitled and currently begins with the lines:

There is something sure about a horse
until you're on it.

Though any and all of that could change and it may yet end up being a poem about vowels and misconceptions, drive-ins and/or steamships - that sort of thing.

As you can see, I'm all over this poetry malarkey.

Poetry Week

Bet you didn't realise it was Poetry Week, did you? That's because i) poetry-related events tend to pass most people by without notice; and ii) it's only at my house, or more specifically, in my brain. Yes, it's a self-declared Poetry Week in which I undertake to gather together the fragments of the many poems-in-progress (PIPs?) scattered here and there on my computer and my desk and in the dusty corners of my mind. I'm reading at Perth Poetry Club next Sunday and am weary of cracking open my little book Cleanskin to read the same poems over and over.

So I hereby resolve to complete one new poem a day between now and then. I know I can do this because I have so many poems that are 'almost there', that need just that final push of commitment to bring them to completion. And I've been resisting it - partly because I have a lot of other things going on and partly because bringing something to completion implies a sort of satisfaction with its final shape, a letting go I've found myself reluctant to participate in. It's not quite a lack of confidence; though it can be confronting to declare something 'finished', laying it open to review, I don't think that's it in this case. I think it has more to do with enjoyment of the process. I like the openness of a poem in process, of the sense of possibility. Once it's done, it's done, and it feels like a kind of abandonment, a shutting down of the process of exploration and association I find so appealing.

But I often find too, that some of what is shut down breaks off the original poem to form its own work. And this can't happen until the first poem is formed. So in that sense, failing to bring a poem to completion means forestalling the beginnings of the others. So somehow, in a circular fashion, I've managed to co-opt the basis of my resistance into a justification for its defeat. How very tricksy of me.

Today's project will be 'Welcome Stranger', which is the closest to completion of any of my fragments. So I'm easing my way in and will report back in a few days, when I have some poems to show for my labours.

For now, I leave you with this:

It's fridge poetry, which was one of my Christmas presents, and to which, via the crafty goodness of magnetic sheets, permanent marker, and a sharp knife, we have added our own personal touches - family names, idiosyncratic phrases, specific buzzwords and so on, but also, unexpectedly, hyphens. Did you know there are no hyphens in fridge poetry? Clearly these kits are not put together by poets! Any poet knows that hyphens are absolutely essential. I didn't realise how essential they are to me until I started trying to make poems without them.  In fact, I've been going over some of my work and noticing how ubiquitous hyphen-based compounds are. In looking at just four short poems, I've found:

moth-dust

flesh-wounded

rock-cheeks

stalled-dead

squeeze-box

snake-slick

far-flung

star-strung

night-young

wave-drunk

salt-spray

sand-stagger

Maybe I overuse hyphens? Maybe they are a crutch of sorts? It's eye-opening to find things in your work you weren't aware of. And interesting to think about the ways in which you can adopt a kind of formula, a set of pre-choreographed moves, without really thinking about it. Good to become aware of these things so you can write against that lazy grain and open your work up in new directions.

Poets Elisa Gabbert and Mike Young have a funny, and somewhat confronting, article about this entitled "41 Moves in Contemporary Poetics". Thanks to Andrew Burke for the link.

People of Perth, This is Awesome

This post is not about writing or reading or books. But it is about art and creativity and bringing the audience to the work and the work to the audience, which is in fact not really an audience but a key part of the work, simultaneously constructing it as they consume it and performing various other acts of deconstructive postmodernist discursive etcetera.

Oh, and getting wet.

People of Perth, this is awesome. And not just because you can - nay, must - get really, really wet in the centre of the city. But because, delightfully, while it's about constructing walls, it's at the same time about breaking them down, not just in water and rooms, but in people.

We stopped in yesterday, to the Cultural Centre outside PICA, just down the steps from the State Library, where Danish artist Jeppe Hein's aquatic sculpture Appearing Rooms, is currently installed (though 'installed' seems the wrong word entirely somehow). We stopped past for a few minutes, just to check it out, to say ooh and ahh and I went and saw that Appearing Rooms thingy, kind of cool har har.

Over an hour later, we left, all of us wetter than we had ever expected to be. And considerably more relaxed.

 

It was fun being in the rooms, yes, but it was even more fun watching other people interacting with them.

There were people who came prepared - in bathers, with towels. They clearly had some sort of insider information.

There were people who came unprepared. Who came to see the sculpture but didn't quite know what they were getting into. Who tentatively stepped into a room trying not to get wet, avoiding the jets as the walls shifted. Who almost unanimously, within less than a minute, were grinning and letting themselves get slowly wetter and wetter until they were soaked to the skin and wondering how they were ever going to get home like this.

There were people who didn't come at all, who were just passing through on their way to somewhere Important. Who tried to be too cool for school, walking past, not being drawn. But it looked like so much fun and it couldn't hurt to stick a toe in, could it? Just to say they'd done it, that they'd been in a room. They weren't going to get wet, not really.

Heh.

There were kids playing chasey between rooms and kids launching themselves up and down the library steps, picking up speed to hurl themselves into the water. There were kids sitting quietly, playing with gentle jets of water that had popped up off to one side. There were kids sitting on wall spaces, waiting for not-at-all-gentle jets to shoot them up the bum so they could guffaw and leap up, grabbing at their shorts. There were kids angling arms and legs into the spray just-so to deflect robust jets of water at unsuspecting adults.

I saw a man in heavy black pants and a thick winter hoodie prowl the perimeter for ten minutes staring suspiciously at the water before launching himself headlong into the middle.

I saw a young Maori guy run through the middle like a linebacker to catch the ball his mates had hurled over the top, ducking and weaving his way seamlessly through the water, and the crowd.

I saw a herd of shirtless bogan youths stop dead in their tracks, their features coming the closest they may ever do to registering unfettered delight. Surely this is what their naked torsos had been waiting for all these years?

I saw so many parents whose kids clearly weren't dressed for saturation letting them get absolutely and unequivocally saturated. Great work, parents!

I saw so many people sitting and standing and leaping and running and grinning their silly heads off, having the best time ever with a houseful of perfect strangers, soaked to the skin in the middle of the city.

We're going back, with towels, and possibly a change of clothes. Or perhaps not. Perhaps we'll just pack light, catch the train in, let the chips fall where they may.

Get there, if you possibly can. Take the kids. Take someone else's kids. Go on the weekend when there are lots of other people around. Appearing Rooms runs Fri 12 Feb-Mon 5 April, 11am until evening. Hein's exhibition continues inside PICA as well; I recommend going in there first before you get too wet.

The Invisible Underside

I'm deep in writing mode at the moment. I'm also deep in re-writing and proofing and a range of other things. And reading, always reading. I've been reading Eireann Corrigan, an author I discovered by accident when I inherited the Writing for Children course at Curtin University from Georgia Richter. Readings from the course's previous incarnation included a short excerpt from one of Corrigan's books (a YA poetry memoir titled You Remind Me Of You) - just a few poems but enough for me to immediately see that this was great stuff, and wonder why I hadn't heard of her before. I haven't managed to track that book down yet but I did find Splintering - a YA verse novel - and was reassured that Corrigan is as fiercely talented as those first few pages - even the first line, which made me stop in my tracks - had me believe.

Here is that rarest of things - a verse novel which doesn't sacrifice the focus and richness of language poetry demands in the service of narrative, which achieves, effortlessly it seems, that precarious balancing act or fusion in which both elements pull equally together.

Effortlessly.

It seems.

The writers reading this are smiling their wry writerly smiles right now. Because they know exactly how much effort goes into effortlessly.

I know that too, but had forgotten, being so caught up in the rolling sweep of the work, which makes you feel somehow that this is a writer who thinks, talks and dreams in poetry. So I was reading and my head was playing out its own delightful narrative, which goes a little something like this:

ah, this is amazing. wow. oh, this is a writer. i wish i had written this. i wish i could write like this. call myself a poet! call myself a novelist! can't do either as well as she is doing both at the same time. i want to read this over and over i want to stop reading this right now.

You know how it goes. Inspiration. Deflation. One smooth package.

And then I saw this:

Do you see it? the his car? As a proofreader, I can't help noticing it. As a writer, I can't help feeling happy because of it. Not because I found a 'mistake'. I don't care to gleefully track down errors in other people's work (unless I'm being paid, that is, when my glee knows no bounds). It's not that I get a kind of bitter thrill because despite the work being so stunning it still contains a typo, so there! It's not about the typo.

It's about the invisible underside. It's about all the not-there lines and words and images and phrases. The ones that were rejected. The ones that were endlessly tweaked and hammered into shape. That were deleted and restored, then deleted again. The ones that make the deceptively effortless surface so, well, deceptive.

It's simply that the his car makes me see the writer at work behind the poem, pushing to make every line the best it can be.

And when I'm deep in writing and re-writing and proofing, it helps to remember that eventually, at the end of it all, there will be a smooth surface, of sorts. And maybe someone will read what I've written and say ah, i wish i had written this.

But if they don't, it won't matter. Because I'll be glad I did.

In closing, may I just add:

i) check out Eireann Corrigan's work.

ii ) please, Eireann Corrigan, don't write to me and say actually OMG it just all came to me in a big rush, you know? Well, I doubt there's any fear of that. You do not strike me as an OMG-er. This is one of many things for which I have been thankful lately.

iii) many things for which I have been thankful lately will be covered in a new post soon. I am feeling rather gluttonous in my good fortune.