1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
The themes that recur in the poems I write today are similar to those in my first book, First Names, published back in 2006. Maybe I’m less shy about them today, more willing to accept them and give them the space they need to ring out. If there was a moment when poetry suddenly changed my life, then it came when I read Sylvia Plath’s ‘Morning Song’. I was a teenage boy growing up in country Victoria. The experience of early motherhood that Plath evokes in that poem was not something I had much interest in. But I was amazed by how those words and images bristled and came alive, as if a spirit leapt off the page and entered me. Perhaps everything I have written is a homage to that spirit as I have discovered it in many poems and poets since. My new book, Prickly Moses, is no different.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Delighting in nursery rhymes and nonsense rhymes as a kid. Growing up thinking words are not just sense but something alive and mysterious, and that rhyme and reason are sometimes two distinct modes of language.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Each poem has its own peculiar conception, birth and growth. You learn to let them find their own way. Saying to yourself, for the next 6 months I’m only going to write sonnets, or now I’m going to write a book of poems about bonsai or whatever … I can’t see much point in that.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
One small, difficult birth after another. No grand projects.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
It’s a question I often get asked in an interview. And I wonder if the question is really asking, why are poets so bad at finding readers, or is there even an audience for poetry? I enjoy reading in public and meeting other people interested in poetry, but I worry it’s not the way my poems should be encountered. My ideal audience is someone reading alone under their breath, slowly, thoughtfully, letting their own voice merge with that of the poem, maybe sharing their excitement with an intimate friend.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
If I could write a poem to resolve climate change or the mess in Gaza I’d do it today. But poetry works not so much by answering questions as by following intuitions.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Blow the minds of readers, connect them to a richer human culture. Although I’d try to formulate it in a less grandiose manner, I like what Wordsworth says:
‘[the poet] is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed; the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.’
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
You need readers whose opinions you respect, but in the end you have to be your own best critic, and that is so hard to do. After 25 years of reading and writing seriously I still despair at how fickle my opinions can be. One day a poem I’ve written seems fantastic, the next it’s worthless.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I think the advice that continues to be most relevant to me, is to learn to be your own best critic.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays to translation)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t really think in terms of genres. I take pleasure in writing and speech where language is wielded well, and I try to live up to that in my own work.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
It’s good to have a routine. Mine is to write in the mornings mostly. But the reality is some days there are bills to pay. Some days you have nothing to say, or you are gripped by the need to write while you are doing chores or out with friends and you have to stop everything.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
To reading and walking.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Living between Italy and Australia, and between the present and the past, I feel like I have multiple homes. All of them incomplete. Even when I am at home in Melbourne, there’s a part of me longing for the home where I grew up in country Victoria. Lately I think about the wind as moving the air between these various places, connecting them somehow in my imagination.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
All of the above and more.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The ones I discover by chance, that I wouldn’t consciously set out to read.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Be more widely read.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I like the idea of the quest narrative that scientists often evoke to describe their work. To discover some truth or law of nature. And I’m fascinated by rocks. So maybe a geologist.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Awe and devotion for our language, and a need to pay homage to our forebears.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I’m rereading Thoreau’s Walden and I am amazed by his enthusiasm and curiosity. How dogged his celebrations of both the natural and the human realms, and how much clarity and liveliness in his prose.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A poem about the weeds and self-seeding plants that grow in the laneways in the inner city suburb of Melbourne where I live. Why? I don’t know. It sounds like a terrible idea for a poem. But there is something that niggles at me that I can’t identify whenever I walk in those lanes. I need to know what it is.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
No comments:
Post a Comment