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 Is it a little out of date with our female prime minister and governor-general in Australia?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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
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.
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