the homesick snail

Like "the homesick snail looking for the very thing it carries on its back" I travel far from home to find... home! It seems that no matter how far I am from the place I call home, I can be at home, if - and it is a big if - I stop a while, stop striving to do everything and just be.
Curled up in the window of an ancient aqueduct in Spoleo watching the traffic groan up into the Umbrian hills in June, I realised that despite my longing for home, I was content and the feeling of being at home was actually close at hand. With my pen meandering across the pages of my notebook I was as at home as I would be lounging on the cushions of my bed in Australia.
Like the snail I was carrying what I was looking for on my back. The stillness that allows me to be aware of myself and my small presence in the world waits for me. Most of the time it seems just out of reach, but if I just allow myself to stop, it is right there.
At my physical home I think I am furthest from the home I carry about with me. There are so many distractions, especially from my writerly self, so much to strive for and organise. In all the casting about and rushing hither and thither I forget that it is from the stillness and the waiting that my best writing comes. And it is in writing that the most powerful feeling of being at home comes to me.
The homesick snail quote came to me from Ric Masten via G Lynn Nelson's book Writing and Being: Taking back our lives through the power of language. Lynn teaches writing from the base of the personal journal. From exploring our own lives, feelings and world we move into public writing. From the wonders of 'word and self and universe' the journal writer enters on a path with a heart 'not to arrive but to see the wonders of the path itself'. From the journal he suggests taking the ideas and writing that most move us into the public realm. When we have concrete stories to tell and are excited by them, we write more powerfully and naturally.
Lynn has sent me back to my journal, to be grounded in my own experience and responses to the world. Perhaps home for me is my journal? It is certainly where I am forced to be still and where I find myself most contented.

Publication???

Because I write poetry with little expectation of an audience, it is always a thrill to find that it resonates with someone else - especially if that someone else is an editor. And in the pile of mail on my desk when I returned from holidays was not just one but three collections of poetry containing my work.
The first was Eucalypt, an Australian tanka journal that comes out quarterly with contemporary tanka on a rainbow of topics. After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan many in this issue touched on the ensuing  shock and recovery. Others treated illness, love, family, gardens and travel, all were multi-layered and demanding several re-readings. I wrote the tanka that appears in this issue after marvelling at a group of tourists so obsessed with their own health that they wore plastic overshoes on their bare feet into a temple in Phnom Penn, completely missing the cool of the floor and the stillness of the place they crackled through.

the soles of my feet
on cool temple stone
in touch
with the earth
and the eternal


I was thrilled to find that I was a finalist in the jack stamm haiku  award and so appeared in moonrise and bare hills, the paper wasp haiku anthology 2010. Haiku is a favourite form of mine. I love the puzzle of packing so much into so little, of seeing analogies and of evoking the same 'aha' in a reader/hearer as I experienced when I was in the inspiring moment. These contemporary Australian haiku are not of the 5/7/5 variety or even necessarily in 3 lines. This anthology encapsulates the variety of haiku being produced in Australia and is available in hardcopy through the paper wasp site but unfortunately not online.

through the leaves
a shiver of rain
distant bells peal


The final collection Grevillea and Wonga Vine: Australian Tanka of Place was the most exciting for me. After 25 Australian poets were featured in the online journal Atlas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka, Beverley George, editor of Eucalypt decided to publish a hardcopy publication. She invited other poets to contribute additional work and produced a sumptuous, well-laid out tanka feast. Purchase is through:
Beverley George, 
    PO Box 37 Pearl Beach NSW 2256     Australia

Reading in the shade

Just back from a vacation (and a little work) in Europe. Most of the time I was in Italy, most of which is hot and crowded in June, and not conducive to refreshment. My solution was to retire with my books in the heat of the day. As you can see my reading list has grown exponentially today thanks to my afternoons in the shade of a fig tree.
In a village up in the hills from Florence I reread Room with a View, the novel which first whetted my appetite for Italy. I had forgotten how ironic it is and remembered only the section set in Florence. Of course strolling along the banks of the Arno, crossing stoney piazzas and staying in viewing distance of the Duomo brought Miss Lucy's adventures alive, but at the same time the book  enhanced my enjoyment of Florence. This alchemy of pleasure was probably missed by the crowds forging from the Academie to the Duomo with their noses in their guide books, determined to check all the boxes by closing time.
I've resisted reading The Help ever since it appeared on Amazon's bestseller list, probably because I'm just cussed but also because I thought it was yet another American self-flagellation on race relations back a century or so ago. But finally I succumbed and discovered the challenging voices of southern black women in recent history. I know very little about the American south but Kathryn Stockett let those black women speak about their lives in the 1960s from their point of view. They exposed the true relations between black and white women, and told of the irreparable damage done to generations of black families by white women ignorant of or careless with the power they wielded.
Once I got over my irritation with the hyper, whining New York voice of the protagonist, Peter, of By Nightfall I rediscovered my veneration of  Michael Cunningham's prose. He reflects on the things that really matter in life by destabilising the certainties Peter assumes every day just so that he can function in the world. Peter's comfortable marriage, his sexuality and his career come under close scrutiny and lose all of their solidity before the book is over.
In my small hotel room in Vienna after a long day at a conference I downloaded Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife and went on a totally different journey. Somehow she welds middle European superstition to modern pragmatism to produce a gem of a story in beautifully crafted prose.
At the suggestion of an English couple sharing our villa in Tuscany I read Salmon fishing in the Yemen on the plane from London to Bangkok. It was the perfect escape from the cramped cabin and plastic food - Yes Minister times a hundred, very, very funny!
Australian Kristen Tranter's The Legacy was a darker read. A young woman setting out on life with lots of potential inherits some money and gradually fades from her friends and family's lives. Her disappearance seemingly straightforward at first eventually raises more questions than answers. It is not a genre mystery but I am still puzzling through the hints the young woman's friend uncovers 2 weeks after finishing the book.

Yeah for Scrivener and David Hewson!

A few months ago I switched to a Mac after half a lifetime on PCs. It's been a steep learning curve but I'm just about there. All the things I thought were intuitive weren't... and I still get confused switching between PC at work and Mac at home, but I'm now glad I made the leap.
It took a while to find a writing program I was happy with but I eventually settled on Scrivener. I followed the tutorial that came with it - and fell asleep several nights running. It's a little too comprehensive. I found it hard to sort out which features I really needed and which were peripheral to my kind of thinking and writing. In the end I followed my nose and muddled through several stories and articles, but knew there was much more to it, if I could just take the time out and sort through it all.
Today as I read a few blogs and limbered up for the day I stumbled on David Hewson's Writing a Novel with Scrivener. He cuts straight to the point. The features useful to everyday writers are explained in a few short pages. I found out how to go to full screen and back again quickly, how to use the dictionary and turn on the thesaurus, change fonts for the whole project, split documents without cumbersome double screens, rearrange the binder (I'd struggled for hours to work that out for myself). In short I'd been too interested in getting the writing done to fully realise the power of Scrivener for arranging, structuring, formatting, editing, checking  my text etc etc.
After an hour with David Hewson I'm writing and using Scrivener to the limit. (Just had to tell someone how great Scrivener and David Hewson are!!)

Ghost light - Joseph O'Connor

Ghost Light has been a slow read. This quintessentially Irish story of love between Molly, a catholic actress off the streets of Dublin, and the innovative protestant gentry playwright, Synge, is set in the early twentieth century when the stage was not a suitable profession for male or female. Both lovers are historically true but O'Connor has imagined most of the story and action. In reality, while they became engaged before his premature death, their relationship was probably not as close as O'Connor suggests.
The novel covers a day in the life of the aged and bibulous Molly as she crosses London for her last acting job. The story jumps all over the place - an inn or a bookshop in London, a theatre in Dublin or New York, a train in America or is it England? - as Molly's memory focuses then fades. She recalls their early relationship, their friends in the Irish theatre, times in America and their rupture. The first section in the second person point of view conveys the murmurings of the old woman eking out a life alone in the slums of London.
Joseph O'Connor writes lyrically but not economically. The plot is lost in thickets of description and the pace slows to a snail's pace in many sections. I read several other books while I read Ghost Light but am glad I persevered because it is a beautiful, sad and evocative work.

Time for Tabby

Cats have an impeccable sense of time - they stretch out into it, they thrill to the immediacy of life for a few hours and then they retire to recharge their batteries. Miss Tabby wonders what I am doing in front of this screen instead of talking with her. Humans have such strange priorities! If she is awake I should be with her. If it is dinner time I should be fully immersed in its preparation. If a mouse or other excitement crosses my path I should give it my full attention. If I am overtired or sick I should be resting. So simple really!
Instead I am driven by a plethora of shoulds. I should be cleaning the house, writing a poem, resting my back injury, walking the dogs, finishing that story, writing my work blog - all simultaneously, if I listen to my conscience.
Today I shall take a leaf from Tab's book and pay attention to one thing at a time and do it with my whole heart and mind.

Paying attention on the Mekong

Several years ago I spent two days drifting down the Mekong River from Thailand into Laos, and still it haunts me. While others huddled down with their books, ate and drank, or chatted, we found a spot in the stern. Mesmerised by life on the ancient waterway, I dared not take my eyes off its banks and streams for even a moment.
People in long narrow river boats tended crops on remote banks or nets strung across rocks. They rowed, or steered motorized river boats, between villages or paths to mountain fields. Large cargo boats passed us regularly, carrying all manner of produce and goods. Families lived in the helms. Children played sure-footed on the decks.
Unusually for me I didn't pick a book up for the entire journey. I pointed sights out to my husband or took necessary subsistence, but mostly I sat motionless soaking the experience in.
How often do we allow ourselves to truly be in the present like this, soaking in scenes and experiences that will continue to affect us years later? With iPhones, iPads, computers, and yes, even books, we allow ourselves to be distracted from our present, that is our lives, for almost every waking moment. I wonder what I will remember of the days I spent fixed to a screen of some kind in ten years time?

Eureka!

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

Anne Enright on writing

Booker prize winner Anne Enright nails the reasons people write.  To stay at it is an effort of will and they must really want to write. Writing has become such a habit for her that she feels bereft without it. Self-definition is also a reason for her writing but she insists it all comes down to a strong, almost irresistible need to write.
I've known that urge to make sense of the world through writing and have filled volumes of journals and megabytes of memory with my meanderings. Some makes it through to the public eye as fiction, essay or poetry but much remains as private evidence of my obsession to learn about the world.

The Taste of River Water

I heard about Cate Kennedy's latest book on Radio National's wonderful Book Show. The Taste of River Water is a collection of poetry on every phase of Australian life, but particularly life in rural Australia. A woman's response to bush people and happenings, to the loss of a baby, as well as to experiences of Australians abroad.

Cate neatly captures the stoicism and laconic attitude of country people. I worked with farmers and their animals for the first 30 years of my professional life and know well the kind of people who leave the town photographic competition for:


                                          "the long drive home,
                                          to the big bone-dry expanse of land beyond salvaging
                                          with a second prize certificate
                                          and so few words between them


                                          no speaking up
                                          no protest or complaint
                                          no claim of being wronged, or misrepresented"


She slips her knife of words between readers' complacency and piety in poems about contemporary issues. Irish commissioners too busy eating their dinner to save starving famine victims at their door are compared to our current treatment of refugees in her clever The Poor Commissioners.

"But they are with us,
trudging with the last of their energy,
thousands of miles now, from poorhouses and famine fields,
chilled and exiled, holding pitchforks or children
or unsigned paperwork,
forged, faded identifications, the wrong currencies,
they are with us and we will not see them
as they come through the valley,
spurred by a mirage of lit windows
and laughable hopes of some borrowed hearth,
they are with us, and we are done with them,
we will not meet their eyes."


Every word works to draw us in and make us culpable. The language, alliterations ('forged, faded identifications'), repetitions of phrases ('they are with us'), and metaphors reinforced with the marching rhythm skilfully lead us on.
This is an excellent and consistent collection of poetry available in e-book or hard copy from  Kobo.

Call yourself a writer?

Dean Biron jointly won this year's Australian Book Review's  Calibre Prize for and Outstanding Essay with a rather jaded, if not bitter, piece called The Death of the Writer. In moving to the academy from a life in the police force he seems to have taken on its world-weariness, skepticism and elitism with a neophyte's enthusiasm. While worshipping at the altars of the classics, Kafka, Malouf, Conrad, he disdains and dismisses the writing course and festival attendees who aspire to be writers and who, heaven forbid, actually call themselves writers with what he deems insufficient cause.
Biron agonises over the worthiness of his writing in the"face of the standards set by antecedents such as Conrad." He battles with self doubt (no wonder!) but believes that to call oneself a writer is to pretend to conquer these doubts. Calling oneself a writer is not supposed to be an easy thing, it should be a battle. He does not want to be classed with those who pass themselves off as writers: the journalists, reviewers, soap opera writers, ghost writers, biographers, memoirists and - gasp - bloggers who fill "cyberspace with cliched gossip." The "appellation of writer ... should perhaps remain exclusive to that rare living being who has transcended anonymity and written himself or herself into the greater culture".  And who decides who may be called a writer? Are we back to the glorious days of the canon of literature and the gatekeepers pontificating in their ivory towers? Did this guy not take a unit in popular literature or cultural studies in his entire university career?
I agree with him on one matter: the main trait of writers is "the necessity to write, the requirement to live much of one's life through the prism of writing. To need to write, that is the vital thing." I write to sort out matters in my own mind, to truly understand my life and ideas. My life is not real until I have written it down. Writing nails the day, my thoughts, my reading to paper and is the only way I can  pursue and capture knowledge and understanding.
When Biron gets back to the point of his essay after taking pot shots at all who have ever attended a writing course or festival, he expands on Barthes' death of the author in a convincing and profound way. He examines the paradox that those who want to write well write in order to live but must "figuratively die at the end of each day." The words they have written change them and make them more self aware and self critical than they were before. The person they were at the beginning of the writing has gone, never to return.
His final advice while sound smacks of the fragile male ego: "give up worrying about whether or not you are already a writer. Reject the notion that by classing yourself a as writer you might one day induce others to do the same. Just go ahead and write, damn it." A person who plays cricket is a cricketer, one who paints walls is a painter, one who sings is a singer. Their talent and ability don't come into it. I have written this blog, surely I am a writer.

The Blackwater Lightship

This time in a month I will be on the west coast of Ireland.To get in the mood I thought I would read some Irish novels. Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship was the first I picked off my shelves. Much of it is set in Enniscorthy not far from where I'll be staying and the rest is acted out in Dublin, where I land in early June (following in HRH footsteps?).
Toibin's prose is typically understated, his sentence construction simple, reflecting the tight-lipped characters. He layers character and action deceptively slowly. Not much seems to happen but backstory and shifts in mood and attitude register chapter by chapter until we realise that a turnaround in the relationship between mother and daughter has been achieved.
This gradual unfolding worked for me in The Blackwater Lightship but I tired of the slow pace of Toibin's latest novel Brooklyn well before its anticlimactic ending. His writing is not for sustained reading on a long journey. It works best as bed time reading - a bite at a time, mimicking the tiny portions of story and character he allows us in each chapter.

The Lightkeeper's Wife

Mary the Bruny Island ex-lightkeeper's wife returns to the island off the east coast of Tasmania in poor health and with a secret that she resists revealing to her three adult children. She raised these children in the isolation and wildness of the island before the light was mechanised. Now they live scattered on the mainland avoiding each other and memories of their childhood.

On Bruny Island Mary compels Leon the ranger to take her about and she gradually builds a relationship with him. Part of her story is revealed in her interaction with him and part in her memory of the places he takes her to. As a teenager Mary's parents banished her to Bruny Island to prevent an unsuitable liaison.  She met the steady boy Jack on a neighbouring farm and married him, but the embers of her first love remained ready to burst into flame.

Much of the book is taken up with Mary's attempt to recall, relive and understand the years she spent with Jack on Bruny Island. The difficulties of married life in isolated circumstances, where two people provide the only adult company for each other, are examined and later compared to the Antarctic experience of separation of couples for many months. 

Mary's story is told from a third person point of view but her son Tom's story is told in the first person. All the other reviews of this book see the novel as primarily Mary's story but I disagree.  The first person POV of Tom's story makes his thoughts and pain more understandable and his experiences more immediate. As the book progresses we spend more time in his head than Mary's and at the end the secret that Mary has carried through the novel is the answer to his unsettled and troubled way of being in the world. 

The most fluid writing in this novel is in the descriptions of the Antarctic landscape and life on the bases down there. In Karen Vigger's other life she is a wildlife veterinarian and has summered down in the Antarctic.  She captures the changes in light, human reaction to emerging from the darkness of constant winter and the ephemeral but intense nature of contingent relationships and small community life so exactly that she can only have experienced it herself. 

Although Karen's voice is confident and the story mostly compelling, some of the sentence construction and transitions are somewhat awkward. While she 'shows' most of the story some of it is 'told' and these are the least engaging sections. This is not high literature but it is a good story well told and in the main well controlled. This is a story of life on the margins of Australia, on Bruny Island and Antarctic bases, and of solitary people shouldering burdens and keeping secrets from others who could have shared and eased the load.

A Summer Without Men

Siri Hustvedt  dissects a long term relationship in this literary but highly enjoyable novel. Mia's husband leaves her, puts her on 'pause' as she terms it, to pursue a younger work colleague. After a complete breakdown Mia retreats to her hometown to examine her self and life without him. Through contacts with her mother's friends and with some teenage girl students she begins to understand what has happened to her and how she might respond. As an english professor/ writer she also examines her experience through the lens of literature and poetry.
In the old wedding service a man and a woman leave their family homes to make their own home and become one . Mia discovers the truth of this as she feels herself torn in two by the break. Their memories and histories had become so entwined that to pull them apart means pulling her self apart.
Whatever your interest - philosophy, literature, psychology - you will find something of interest in this novel, although perhaps it is a little too self- consciously postmodern. I enjoyed the consideration of the mature relationship and what it means to live and merge with someone for several decades.

Are you reading more?

Am I the only one who is buying MORE books? The publishing industry laments the downturn in sales; reading is supposed to be in decline, at least deep book-type reading is; and writers are being screwed because there is no market, supposedly...
This morning I heard a review of The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt on a podcast of our fabulous Australian Book Show and immediately downloaded it onto my iPad. I am already half way through this examination of women's lives in relation to men. Many points intersect with my life but wait, a review will come later.
And this profligate book buying is not unusual in my household! Every time someone suggests a book to me I check it out on Amazon and if I like the look of it I download it. Sometimes they are duds of course, but because they are cheaper than hard copies it doesn't hurt so much to put them down. ( I am way too old to waste precious reading time on books I don't enjoy/ understand/ respect!)
Maybe this is just another aspect of my impulsive nature. Or perhaps it is a result of a life of deprived access to book shops. I have lived most of my life in the bush over 100 miles from the nearest book shop and dependant on one or two book buying binges a year to keep me alive.
At the moment I have 3 e-books and 1 real one on the go. How about you?

The Writing Life - Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard does not glamorise the writing life. She tells it as it is - mostly hard work, occasional high flying. Many of the metaphors and little stories she tells to describe the life of a writer are amusing, but hit hard at any romantic notions about writing. The cameo story she tells of an inchworm climbing one blade of grass after another, searching frantically for the next step at the top of each blade, resonated with me. Hammering together lines of words, probing ideas, keeping the whole thing together never gets easier. We just keep blindly on, climbing the blade, searching for the next, leaping into the void in faith.
So often we write into the dark. Even long-published, feted writers like Annie Dillard, fear that no one reads them, except maybe nerds, academics,  or other writers in the same field. Once, after publishing a long and complex essay partly concerning a moth and a candle, she thought that no one but an academic critic had understood it, or even read it. Some little boys came to the door as she was despairing about her wasted life. One of the children noticed a picture of a candle and asked if that was the one that the moth had flown into. Annie was bowled over. A child had heard the story and understood it well enough to tell it back. Such incidents lighten the solitude of writing and make the grind worthwhile.
I highly recommend this small book to any writer or aspiring writer. It is full of pearls of wisdom and Annie Dillard parables. It encourages even as it sweeps the rose-coloured glasses onto the floor.

What to write about?

Too often I seek subjects to write about that others have examined before, instead of following my own leanings, the things that fascinate me, that I yearn to know more about. These of course would be too easy to write about. Like a martyr I force myself to write what I think others will want to read instead of trusting my own enthusiasms and writing to kindle a fire of interest in my readers.

Dear Annie Dillard addresses this with her usual bluntness:

"Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."

Perhaps this is why I find writing prompts a bit of a yawn. They are other writers' enthusiasms. Usually I find nothing that surprises me or breaks down the dam blocking the river of ideas. The trick is to be aware of what triggers my interest, to note on paper what intrigues or astonishes me and then to follow my nose as soon as I have the time and space - or sooner.

Cats intrigue me. I can never have enough of their idiosyncrasies. My camera has had a workout this weekend capturing my sister's two felines in every conceivable crazy situation. Fortunately my real job is working with them and their carers. So I write a blog about cat health and other catty issues. (You haven't read it yet? Here it is!) Writing it is no burden. Every day I find material to work with. My nurses have trouble nailing me down to do the veterinary part of the job because I love writing about my patients and feline friends so much.

Not that the physical act of writing is ever easy for me. Setting down words in sentences that work and that I like is hard slog, even after all these years. But it helps to write about something I love and want to learn more about. I push on through the mire and the mud because I want to reach the green field over the way.

Glissando:a Melodrama By David Musgrave

The semi-formal tone of the narrator of this novel somehow subverts the proclaimed melodrama of this bizarre but witty and hugely enjoyable book. The early twentieth century voice holds the improbable events and bizarre characters we meet in its pages together. We willingly suspend our disbelief as the characters and plot devices of high melodrama are revealed: almost twins abandoned to an aloof guardian who in turn leaves them at a series of isolated farms in western NSW; a lost promissory note; a wealthy grandfather who builds house after improbable house leaving behind a journal of his adventures in architecture and exploration; blood on the boards from protracted theatre wars; a First Critic with a court of Critics-in-waiting, Apprentice Critics, Pages and a Cook buzzing around him.
Musgrave, a critic himself, intersperses the narrator's autobiography with excerpts from the grandfather's journal and, a twist on the theatrical themes in the book, a script of the First Critic's dinner conversation. The grandfather is allowed to present his architectural dreams and their realisations for himself. His grandson stands in for us seeing the physical representations of the journals and following in the steps of his grandfather's peregrinations across the country. We are also able to witness the grandfather's mental collapse from within while we see the effects on his wife through the grandson's eyes.
A brother, who after an accident becomes a musical savant, parallels the mental coning down of his grandfather into architecture, an enormous housekeeper prefigures the gargantuan critic with the comedic name Basil Pilbeam, various sycophants, lost lovers, stolen Aboriginal children, actors and plodding policemen make up an entertaining cast. The script subverts our notions of sanity and normalcy, while inviting us to see how artificial and ridiculous our own societal norms and aspirations are when seen from a distance.
I highly recommend a romp through this book. Spare a few moments afterward to reflect on the truths melodrama and indeed any good comedy expose about our own culture.

Welcome to the Bloggers' ball

Welcome to all the SheWriters dressed in their feathers and finery for the Bloggers' Ball! Hope you enjoy the little knees up on Wordmusic where I celebrate music of words, music in words and everything in between!
Back to the Bloggers Ball

Crafting the personal essay

I read Dinty W. Moore's Crafting the Personal Essay immediately after mailing my honours thesis in last year. Academic writing had wrung me out and left me unable to write anything less than formal prose. Dinty Moore soon turned me around and whet my appetite for more learning and writing. 
Crafting the Personal Essay is a very readable and motivating book on writing the personal essay. Moore covers the nuts and bolts of writing the humorous, nature, travel, lyric, spiritual and food essay, providing numerous examples and tips. This is the first time I have heard essay writing defined as chasing "mental rabbits' but that is exactly what it is: a "hunt, a chase, a ramble through thickets of thought, in pursuit of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth". He exactly describes the essay-writing process, how to work through ideas and feelings and nail them to paper. 
There are plenty of exercises to get the writer's pen to paper and build a fund of ideas and starters. Highly recommended!