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.

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.

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.

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! 

pigeons

Diamonds

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