On writing

It was at that moment that I knew the newsletter had crossed over from a curious experiment into a practice that was integral to who I was as a writer.

‘Coiled loops of time.’ (Tim, part two of an undated letter, possibly begun before xmas 2019, part three finished 4…

Salesses asks what forms of fiction writing, and hence ways of being in the world, are marginalised in conventional understandings of craft? Conversely, how do different ways of being in the world – that is, not being part of the culturally dominant population – express themselves in a writer’s craft?

I’m interested in crossing cultures – with sensitivity. There’s a risk of ‘appropriation’ or ‘projection’ and, with those camels, of a corny anthropomorphism. But without taking and managing such risks, we’d risk killing off the very possibility of fiction and the chance it offers to give an empathetic voice to creatures, human and animal, that for various reasons, have not had one.

The original meaning of the word novel meant to bring news, and I cling to the old-fashioned, realist, meaning of the novel: bring news.

When I tell my publisher I might be late on delivering the last essay of the book, the real book, the one I have under deadline, she is understanding and commiserative.

Despite the patchiness of my career, I have tried to maintain a writing practice in regional Australia over a substantial period – through many rejections for poetry, manuscripts, and funding applications for writing projects. Undeterred, I am still trying to carve out a place in the rich writing ecosystem for my very diverse practice.

The call lasted six hours. My father dipped in and out the room, took cigarette breaks between pouring bourbon and cokes and laughing with the gallery when another person’s camera froze on an unfortunate facial expression. I felt guilty for being seventeen kilometres away from my family.

I learn that I have not made the interview stage for the role I had been performing for years prior. I walk to Campsie to meet with J, a former housemate, for a sauna, to sweat and swear. Like G, J has taken a ‘voluntary separation package’ from a different institution, and seems transformed since absconding from the academy. We strip off and I vent my spleen in the steam.

In a colony where blatant police brutality against Indigenous people is the norm, where we suffer the continued desecration of sacred land, live within a health and mortality gap, and a government that seeks to undermine sovereignty in all its forms, we need poets that can see all this – and still celebrate the joy, resilience and love of our community.