Coetzee writes with precision and clarity but with precious little emotion. I felt no empathy with Michael K despite the ordeals he survives. He invites no synpathy because he subverts all who try to understand him and slips below the radar and away whenever he is imprisoned.
This is a cold but compelling read from the master story teller. Michael K's journey is for nothing and he surmounts numerous hurdles only to return to the place and life he left at the beginning. The meaning of Michael K's life slides away on all sides, and we are left to question the meaning of our own lives in the light of it.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Unless...
I've just reread Carol Shield's 'Unless', a meditation on the invisible gender. Is it a little out of date with our female prime minister and governor-general in Australia? Not quite. Gender seems to be the main marker of women like Julia Gillard who are in the public eye, rather than her credentials, character or politics. When these latter are discussed it is in comparison to how a male might have or has performed.
And in my professional and writing life I still feel the steely scepticism of males in my ability to do anything substantial or well - and half believe it myself. That is the dangerous corollary and the hardest to change. The discourse that disregards female concerns and preoccupations as less important, and occupations and discourses dominated by women as inferior.
And in my professional and writing life I still feel the steely scepticism of males in my ability to do anything substantial or well - and half believe it myself. That is the dangerous corollary and the hardest to change. The discourse that disregards female concerns and preoccupations as less important, and occupations and discourses dominated by women as inferior.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Coastal escape
Just back from a week on the coast, strolling along beaches, clambering up rocks and enjoying the empty expanse of the sea.
sea flings
waves across the sand
salsa dancers
eternal wash of waves
dog retrieving ball
again and again
winter sun
warms my wind-chilled cheek
your longed-for touch
wood-ducks
jostle for crumbs
lakeside cafe
sea heaves
waves upon the rocks
a mother’s sighs
Alice Springs sojourn
Many distractions from blogging - back again with a few haiku from Central Australia.
Rain had fallen and the desert was green and the gorges full of water. Miles of rocky ridges divided expanses of sand and stone.
red rock
dressed in green
desert dreaming
I met many interesting people, some just for a quick conversation.
shooting star
blazes across the outback sky
company for a night
Rain had fallen and the desert was green and the gorges full of water. Miles of rocky ridges divided expanses of sand and stone.
red rock
dressed in green
desert dreaming
I met many interesting people, some just for a quick conversation.
shooting star
blazes across the outback sky
company for a night
Sunday, April 18, 2010
3Lights
Very excited to find my String Quartet haiku in the spring edition of 3Lights! You will find it at the bottom of the blog on page 9. Read the whole journal and enjoy...
Friday, April 2, 2010
Self as a work of art
"From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think that there is only one practical consequence; we have to create ourselves as works of art." Michel Foucault
I suspect that this is what I have been doing in my journals. By putting words on paper I come to understand what I think and feel. Many times I have not understood something about myself or my situation until I have written it down. In some circular way I am creating myself in my writing.
Life Matters on ABC Radio National this morning explored journal and diary writing. A lot of people, many women, said they wrote diaries when they were teenagers but stopped once they matured. Others wrote diaries during difficult passages in their lives. Some women wrote a diary of a child's birth and early years as a gift for the child. Some, like me, have written journals all their lives and consider them as companions on the way.
The contents and form of my journals have changed over the years. As child and teenager my diary was the repository of daily events, teenage gossip, angst and hopes. Although vestiges of this remain, their present function is as a resource and tool for my creative writing. I doodle with words, opinions and ideas on those irresistible blank pages.
Daily I (re-)create myself as a work of art?
I suspect that this is what I have been doing in my journals. By putting words on paper I come to understand what I think and feel. Many times I have not understood something about myself or my situation until I have written it down. In some circular way I am creating myself in my writing.
Life Matters on ABC Radio National this morning explored journal and diary writing. A lot of people, many women, said they wrote diaries when they were teenagers but stopped once they matured. Others wrote diaries during difficult passages in their lives. Some women wrote a diary of a child's birth and early years as a gift for the child. Some, like me, have written journals all their lives and consider them as companions on the way.
The contents and form of my journals have changed over the years. As child and teenager my diary was the repository of daily events, teenage gossip, angst and hopes. Although vestiges of this remain, their present function is as a resource and tool for my creative writing. I doodle with words, opinions and ideas on those irresistible blank pages.
Daily I (re-)create myself as a work of art?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Dreams of Speaking
A few weeks ago I dined with Australian poet John Foulcher who is preparing for 6 months Australian Arts Council residency in Paris. The grant covers an apartment and some living expenses (and this year's applications close today! See Australia Council Literature Residencies).
As I had just returned from a month in that fabled city I could anticipate some of the Parisian experiences that might inform his work. So I wasn't far into Gail Jones' Dreams of Speaking when I realised that she too must have lived in Paris on such a scheme. However, although the novel is clearly geographically set in Paris, the crux of the work is the meeting of two cultures and, more tellingly, two persons who on the surface were very different but at heart very much in sympathy. Jones image of the strings of a piano vibrating when another piano is played nearby describes their relationship exactly.
I learnt much from the structure of the novel. Jones uses many small flashbacks worked into a bookending flashback. The story is centred on Mr Sakamoto. Around her meetings with and memories of him Alice, the protagonist, reevaluates her family and personal relationships, and her responses to her encounters in the world. Alice is writing about technology and Jones explores many of the ambiguities of modern life through her - mobile phones on remote mountain tops, the silence of internet cafes containing a cacophony of communication.
Not much of my Parisian experience has bubbled up in my own poetry yet. I think I am afraid that it has all been written before. There are so many literary greats and not-so-greats who have trodden those streets and byways already. Jones shows how it can be done from an Australian perspective, how being in a city but not part of it is still a valid base from which to write and how place flavours people and their intersections but doesn't need to overpower them.
No doubt John will come home soaked in new experiences and perceptions that will well up into new work in their own good time.
As I had just returned from a month in that fabled city I could anticipate some of the Parisian experiences that might inform his work. So I wasn't far into Gail Jones' Dreams of Speaking when I realised that she too must have lived in Paris on such a scheme. However, although the novel is clearly geographically set in Paris, the crux of the work is the meeting of two cultures and, more tellingly, two persons who on the surface were very different but at heart very much in sympathy. Jones image of the strings of a piano vibrating when another piano is played nearby describes their relationship exactly.
I learnt much from the structure of the novel. Jones uses many small flashbacks worked into a bookending flashback. The story is centred on Mr Sakamoto. Around her meetings with and memories of him Alice, the protagonist, reevaluates her family and personal relationships, and her responses to her encounters in the world. Alice is writing about technology and Jones explores many of the ambiguities of modern life through her - mobile phones on remote mountain tops, the silence of internet cafes containing a cacophony of communication.
Not much of my Parisian experience has bubbled up in my own poetry yet. I think I am afraid that it has all been written before. There are so many literary greats and not-so-greats who have trodden those streets and byways already. Jones shows how it can be done from an Australian perspective, how being in a city but not part of it is still a valid base from which to write and how place flavours people and their intersections but doesn't need to overpower them.
No doubt John will come home soaked in new experiences and perceptions that will well up into new work in their own good time.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
A Tiger's times
I finally filched a copy of Man Booker prize winner The White Tiger from my daughter and read it in one sitting. As a writer who has struggles with voice in almost every piece I was most impressed with the strong and sustained voice of the narrator of this book. Despite the almost surreal environment in which he lives, I found him and the events he recounts utterly believable. Aravind Adiga deftly handles stories within stories and structures the tale within letters written in seven nights.
That the premier of China would be interested in a small-time entrepreneur based in Bangalore's view of Indian society is questionable - but we believe the White Tiger and his world from the first page.
That the premier of China would be interested in a small-time entrepreneur based in Bangalore's view of Indian society is questionable - but we believe the White Tiger and his world from the first page.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Waiting on ideas
As I sat in Adelaide airport waiting for a delayed plane last Tuesday I analysed what it is that I am looking for when I go away.
When I plan a break away from home I think I am hoping to find a still place from which to observe the world with fresh eyes. By leaving the familiar and the habits, routines and reflexes associated with home, I am forced to stop and notice what is around me.
As long as I pull out my notebook, even an airport coffee lounge is fecund with ideas. With a pen in hand nothing is lost. If I don't allow myself to settle down, if I bustle and hustle, then I miss the chance to notice and to rejuvenate my writing with fresh connections.
In some measure I found the stillness and sharpened perception that I was looking for in the lounge of a coffee shop serving more than passable coffee in Adelaide airport.
When I plan a break away from home I think I am hoping to find a still place from which to observe the world with fresh eyes. By leaving the familiar and the habits, routines and reflexes associated with home, I am forced to stop and notice what is around me.
As long as I pull out my notebook, even an airport coffee lounge is fecund with ideas. With a pen in hand nothing is lost. If I don't allow myself to settle down, if I bustle and hustle, then I miss the chance to notice and to rejuvenate my writing with fresh connections.
In some measure I found the stillness and sharpened perception that I was looking for in the lounge of a coffee shop serving more than passable coffee in Adelaide airport.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Skin Divers
I introduced my sister to the delights of Canberra's Canty's Bookshop this afternoon and was thrilled to find Anne Michaels' poetry collection Skin Divers squeezed between the great males. Her poetic prose enthralled me late last year when I discovered The Winter Vault and then devoured Fugitive Pieces on an international flight. I read it at a more leisurely pace crammed in an apartment in Paris, revelling in her expert layering of meaning and image.
In one of the Canadian bookshops on the Left Bank I hunkered down under the table and savoured some of her verse, unable to afford the $A50 plus price tag on our limited travelling budget.
So ... I could hardly believe it today when my eyes fell on the pristine copy of Skin Divers at a price I could easily manage.
Good old Canty's has done it again!
In one of the Canadian bookshops on the Left Bank I hunkered down under the table and savoured some of her verse, unable to afford the $A50 plus price tag on our limited travelling budget.
So ... I could hardly believe it today when my eyes fell on the pristine copy of Skin Divers at a price I could easily manage.
Good old Canty's has done it again!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Favourite Australian novels
To my shame I have only read five of the top ten favourite Australian novels as anounced by Australian Book Review (ABR) this month. Of course I've heard of Voss and The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, and I've started and never finished Cloudstreet and The Man Who Loved Children, but I could hardly believe that I had only read half of the top ten.
ABR asked their readers to nominate their favourite Australian novel and 290 individual novels were nominated. I scrambled to nominate Kate Grenville's The Secret River and Tim Winton's Dirt Music as mine. Although these were easy for me others came very close.
I am a great fan of Australian writing. After a childhood living in an imaginary country somewhere between England (think Beatrix Potter, Noddy, The Famous Five and What Katy Did books) or Canada (Anne of Green Gables) and Australia, it was a great joy to find people writing about the land I actually knew - dusty paddocks and endless summer heat rather than snow, rain and green fields.
So what were the top ten you ask? Here they are and the link to ABR's complete list follow. Jump onto
Australian online bookshop Fishpond and buy some soon! I'm off to catch up on a bit of reading.
1. Cloudstreet Tim Winton
2. The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney Henry Handel Richardson
3. Voss Patrick White
4. Breath Tim Winton
5. Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey
6. My Brother Jack George Johnston
7. The Secret River Kate Grenville
8. Eucalyptus Murray Bail
9. The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead
10. The Tree of Man Patrick White
ABR Favourite Australian Novels
ABR asked their readers to nominate their favourite Australian novel and 290 individual novels were nominated. I scrambled to nominate Kate Grenville's The Secret River and Tim Winton's Dirt Music as mine. Although these were easy for me others came very close.
I am a great fan of Australian writing. After a childhood living in an imaginary country somewhere between England (think Beatrix Potter, Noddy, The Famous Five and What Katy Did books) or Canada (Anne of Green Gables) and Australia, it was a great joy to find people writing about the land I actually knew - dusty paddocks and endless summer heat rather than snow, rain and green fields.
So what were the top ten you ask? Here they are and the link to ABR's complete list follow. Jump onto
Australian online bookshop Fishpond and buy some soon! I'm off to catch up on a bit of reading.
1. Cloudstreet Tim Winton
2. The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney Henry Handel Richardson
3. Voss Patrick White
4. Breath Tim Winton
5. Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey
6. My Brother Jack George Johnston
7. The Secret River Kate Grenville
8. Eucalyptus Murray Bail
9. The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead
10. The Tree of Man Patrick White
ABR Favourite Australian Novels
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Summer vegetables
The season is later here than in my hometown. By now the zucchini vines have outgrown their roots and the fruit fly has discovered the reddening capsicum in the north west. Here the tomatoes are just ready to pick, the chillis are sharp and the beans are sprouting overnight.
tomato
warm from the vine
the taste of summer
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Haiku Journey
I've been rereading Clark Strand's wonder-ful Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey again. This morning on my walk I emptied my mind, as he suggested, and as well as I could with three dogs all tugging in different directions, and kept my eyes wide open. I paused to watch two eastern rosellas squabbling in a bird bath and marvelled at the kangaroos' ability to keep perfectly still when they sensed us approaching. Try as I might I couldn't find a haiku in either situation. No flash of insight for me.
I sat in my lounge with my breakfast coffee when I got home and gazed across the paddocks, dry and brown as summer drags on. Over the hills in the distance crept the blue haze portending another blazing hot day.
I sat in my lounge with my breakfast coffee when I got home and gazed across the paddocks, dry and brown as summer drags on. Over the hills in the distance crept the blue haze portending another blazing hot day.
blue haze
creeps over the hills
summer stretches on
Sunday, January 24, 2010
3lights
I'm working on a a haiku string for the next 3LIGHTS edition. The theme is music so I guess it's right up my alley! If you have suitable work for the new online edition see:
http://3lights.wordpress.com/submissions/
I'd recommend a visit to 3Lights beautiful gallery of poetry at
http://www.threelightsgallery.com/foyer.html
http://3lights.wordpress.com/submissions/
I'd recommend a visit to 3Lights beautiful gallery of poetry at
http://www.threelightsgallery.com/foyer.html
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Which are the mistakes and which the art?
"Creativity is allowing ourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" Scott Adam
Talk about words that come along just as you're ready to throw the whole artistic thing in... This quote in Jacqui Lofthouse's motivational tips caught my fancy as I was in the middle of a morass of mistakes, far from the creative genius Scott Adam was thinking of!
Jacqui's blog:
http://stubbornworld.typepad.com/the_writing_coach/
Talk about words that come along just as you're ready to throw the whole artistic thing in... This quote in Jacqui Lofthouse's motivational tips caught my fancy as I was in the middle of a morass of mistakes, far from the creative genius Scott Adam was thinking of!
Jacqui's blog:
http://stubbornworld.typepad.com/the_writing_coach/
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Piano Lessons
Like Anna Goldsworthy I had lessons from a continental pianist with a gift for teaching soul as well as brain and hand. Unlike Anna I didn't aspire to or even dream of the concert platform. My teacher, Miss Feledi, fled Hungary after the war and washed up in Sydney. Like Mrs Sivan she could change the mood of a piece from within. Under her fingers the piano keys could evoke joy, melancholy, dreaminess or grief from the same sequence of notes. To demonstrate the touch required for a certain passage she would grasp my hand and sweep her fingers from my shoulder down to my fingertips. On another day we would caress the keys and 'sing' with our softly curled fingers.
Anna's book is a tribute to Mrs Sivan and her pianistic and teaching skill but it is also a merciless expose of her own growth from ignorant child through peer-governed adolescence to over-confident university student. Her gaffes as well as her triumphs are chronicled and dissected. She reveals the doubts and obsessions of a high achieving girl and how she ultimately chooses her love of the piano over the other paths open to her.
I was returned to the root of my love of music and making music and wish I had known Miss Feledi in my adult years. So much would make sense now that as a school girl I only dimly understood.
Anna's book is a tribute to Mrs Sivan and her pianistic and teaching skill but it is also a merciless expose of her own growth from ignorant child through peer-governed adolescence to over-confident university student. Her gaffes as well as her triumphs are chronicled and dissected. She reveals the doubts and obsessions of a high achieving girl and how she ultimately chooses her love of the piano over the other paths open to her.
I was returned to the root of my love of music and making music and wish I had known Miss Feledi in my adult years. So much would make sense now that as a school girl I only dimly understood.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
In the Company of Rilke
I'm savouring Stephanie Dowrick's latest book "In the Company of Rilke" a morsel at a time. Rilke's poetry has long sharpened my awareness of the mysteries around us and this meditation on his relevance to 21st century life uncovers even greater depths to Rilke than I could ever imagine.
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