Mirka's view (at Heide)
I wrote this poem years ago and it never found a home. Posting it here today in memory of the wonder-full Mirka Mora who made a new home in this city so many years ago and gave us new worlds.
Mirka’s view (at Heide)
On top of this hill we are close to the sky
a heart is carved into the garden
arms of the pomegranate tree
hold swollen pink fruit
dust settles on our hands and faces
nothing has an outline no buildings
anchor me to cobblestone streets
on a windy day we could float away
grass shimmers yellow and whispers dry secrets
I do not understand our interpreters here
the Reeds - tall bodies lean smiles
look they grew on the hill
their home contains us warm eggs fresh bread
wine stains on the wooden table
by day I blink through the back window
golden pear and generous oak soften the sky with shadows
at night all I see is my reflection
round face bobbing a ghostly balloon
beginning a new life here
we are like children
drawings spill from my hands
two headed creatures, many with wings
their eyes fat with terror and magic
gazing back at me
serpents flicking black tongues slip out
populate my room seeking gaps under doors
to leak out leave this haven where we’ve stayed a while
see if they can find a place down the hill
a new home in this city
to call their own
On Waiting for Godot
“Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now?”
These words, uttered by Vladimir in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot sprang out at me last night. Watching the Wits’ End production of this iconic play, currently on at the Eleventh Hour theatre in Fitzroy.
It’s a lovely production. Clearly made by people who love and understand Beckett. Yes there is the existential turmoil. The sense of having to carry on despite the absolute absurdity of being human. There is also tenderness. A kind of gentle co-dependence between the tramps.
But what struck me most about my experience last night was how strong the echoes of the Second World War are in this play. The devastation and destruction that seems to be just around the corner, to wherever Pozzo and Lucky are headed and from wherever they return, blind, mute and unable to remember where they were just the day before.
The tramps know something terrible has happened or is happening but they seem paralysed, unable to act. This doesn’t mean they don’t care. They are concerned about both Pozzo and Lucky and for each other. But they are waiting for Godot. A man with a beard who beats one servant and feeds another well enough.
How these themes resonate now. Still. Always. Did we sleep while others suffered? Are we sleeping now?
There is something poignant and prescient too about the cast in this production. Four white men, all older, all with grey hair and aging bodies. One blusters through with absolute assurance, whipping his beast of burden. He then returns, blinded and bewildered but carrying on nonetheless. Meanwhile two others watch on. They know they really should move on but they don’t know how.
I can’t imagine Beckett intended the play as an allegory for the demise of the patriarchy but something about last night spoke of this to me. Of the absurdity and the ongoing damage of violence inherited from those hungry for a certain kind of power. Of how that is completely unsustainable for humanity. Of how it is the ‘others’ who are now busy-busy and who are most definitely the way of the future (the active, activists, those non-white-haired-white-skinned-old-men). Meanwhile those men are bewildered. They have lost something and they don’t know what to do next.
It’s not that simple of course it’s not. Because men quite unlike Beckett’s characters are still in control of so much. Still perpetuating extreme violence on a grand scale. And it’s not those men who live in wake of current global devastations. It’s still the ‘others’.
But there was something for me in this piece. “Why don’t we hang ourselves?” About what might be sitting under the surface of all the angry men gripping so tightly to their positions of power right now. A sense of terror about what has happened (Yes, what you did or what you allowed, what you slept through) and even greater fear about what is to come. (Will there be a place for me, how will I know what to do, who will tell me?)
Many of us know it’s not Godot we are waiting for. Those tramps may well get left behind. I hope, in a sense, they do. Waiting for the ghost of authoritarian maleness while the rest of us step forward into new ways of being, new voices being heard, new structures to live by.
I love Beckett’s writing, the way it can lift and curl and take different forms depending on context. I didn’t expect Waiting for Godot to deliver this new vision of itself and of the world. This is why his writing persists, I think.
And also, much credit to this production that delivered the text with such a skilled and light hand. I have no idea if any of what I got from the last night was intended by director William Henderson and his team.
But this is what theatre can do at its best. Allow space for the audience to be in the room. To see what they see. To make new meaning of old words. To make way for new beginnings.
Waiting for Godot is on until Saturday 16 December at Eleventh Hour, 170 Leicester Street, Fitzroy. All details here.
The Waiting Space
That scratchy place between one project and the next
I have just finished a new draft of big play and now need to let it settle until a workshop later in the year.
A novel manuscript is out in the world, a few agents reading it, I’ve no idea what they will think.
Got a short story rejection this morning after a few small wins. A reminder of that sting, oh yeah it’s not good enough, you’re not good enough.
For the first time in a long time I am not ‘mid’ a few big projects. I am waiting to see what will happen with them in the outside world.
I am not a waiter by nature.
This is probably why I write in so many forms and work on several things at once.
Right now I know I am at the start of a big new phase of work.
Ideas are scurrying inside my mind. I wrote each one down on a piece of orange paper the other night and laid them on my lounge room floor. Four potential novel ideas. Five new play ideas. Which to start on? Which has the pull? What should I consider? Having been in end-game mode on a novel and a play for a while now (into the polishing, the sending, the pitching, the re-drafting, the interfacing with the industry) I now feel stunted.
Stuck.
Can I just start a new project for the joy of it? Or do I need to plan now where it might fit, who might want it, where it sits within my bigger body of work. Which sub-sector of the publishing world or the theatre industry do I want to nudge towards?
Or should I just start and try to defer all those thoughts until later?
It feels like I imagine a phantom limb might. Something is bugging me, needs my attention, wants to be scratched but I don’t know what it is.
I feel distracted and incompetent and aware of the huge mountain of starting a few major new projects.
I feel like I don’t have the skills to make up anything new.
I don’t feel whole.
I know enough from experience to know that this itchiness, this discomfort is an important part of the process for me. It’s little things germinating but none solid enough yet to feel how they might grow.
So I tinker with old short stories, write notes about new characters popping into my head, start folders for projects that don’t yet exist.
It’s a kind of waiting but I fill it with activity.
I'm thinking, obsessing, over the best name for a new character, the best title for a non-existent new piece. I think while eating, while walking, while watching theatre, while working.
But it's not ready, yet, any of it, to really start writing.
I read a lot.
And sometimes I just wander around the house. Aimless. Restless. Not able to settle. Study. Kitchen. Lounge. Check the mail.
Aware that things will start to take shape, fall into place. Some of the seeds will sprout and I’ll know, soonish, which ones to nurture and move ahead with.
Until then, the prowl of the in-between writer. Vaguely scratching at thin air, waiting for clouds to form a picture, a mirage to firm up into view, the mountain to form so I can take the first step.
Feminist Literary Icon Double Act
On Monday 16 May, Melbourne put on a heavyweight feminist literary icon double act. I attended two talks, back-to-back and recorded some messy, immediate thoughts ...
Walking down the steps of Flinders Street Station I am hopeful. I’m booked in to see Gloria Steinem and Jeanette Winterson and I imagine these women, these writers, might have some words to inspire. I feel like I need it. A non-specific malaise has settled over me, within me. Partly to do with being between major creative projects, waiting to hear about a few outcomes and being not quite sure what my next new work will be. Partly a sense that no matter what I do, what project or piece of writing, it will never quite be enough. I will never quite be enough. In lighter moments of the heaviness I’ve phrased the question to myself: Is it genetics? Is it capitalism? Or is it just me?
To be specific, I’ve booked in not so much to see these two women, but to listen. And I think wow it’s a lot of pressure. For them. Hundreds of people like me scurrying along the city streets, clutching our printed out tickets and smart phones, eager to hear words of wisdom, to be reminded of why it might all be worthwhile and how we, as humans, might find ways to get it more right.
My boast post on Facebook about the feminism literary icon double sparks much interest and a few friends ask me to write about what these women say. I don’t take notes so this record will be imperfect. A gathering of paraphrases and recalled words. Probably I will get much of it wrong but I’ll try and capture an impression of the things that were said that hit me or moved me.
Gloria Steinem is in the Melbourne Town Hall. She gets a standing ovation when she walks onto the stage. The amplification on her lapel mike is not quite strong enough. So she takes the microphone off and holds it close to her mouth. She uses both hands to speak. She has long fingers. Elegant. Like a musician. Or an artist.
She speaks about #BlackLivesMatter being an effective grass roots movement that has as its philosophy, among other things, Low Ego and High Impact and Move at the Pace of Trust. And reminds us it was started by three African American women.
How violence against women is the root cause and concomitant cause of so many other forms of violence including racism and entrenched poverty. How the measure of how likely a country is to enact violence on its own people and on other countries connects directly with how much violence in that country is enacted against women. Whether that is domestic violence within homes in countries like USA and Australia, child marriage, genital mutilation, war rape, the murder of girl babies in countries where only boys are valued.
She speaks about how important laughter is. This is in relation to her relationship with an indigenous American friend and leader who died recently. Gloria spoke of how much more this woman knew about history than she did. And in particular the history of how much knowledge and power women have had in many indigenous cultures. And how important laughter is because laughter is the only free emotion. You can force fear on people and even love, but not laughter. And laughter is like prayer because it is about the unknown and in fact prayer cannot happen without laughter.
When asked what feminism has got wrong, how it might have failed us, she says: We have been too nice. Because, as women, we are socialised to be nice and make things easy for other people.
She speaks about wombs and how patriarchy is, by definition, about controlling the means of reproduction i.e. wombs and the people who have them.
She also speaks, finally, about how it would only be possible to perpetuate the strange notion that one kind of person is ‘less than’ another if those considered ‘less than’ have somehow internalised that idea. And how then, if people from that group refuse to wear that identity, they may be pulled down, by both men and women, all of whom have internalised the notion of ‘less than’ and ‘better than’. And how in fact we need more of that and more. All of us refusing to wear particular identities that we have inherited and taken inside. And how we must support each other, all of us, to speak out more and stand up more and refuse more.
And how unhelpful binary and bifurcated ways of viewing human identity is.
Did you know Gloria Steinem is in her 80s?
She encourages us all to talk to people in the crowd that we don’t know. She is a big advocate for talking circles and what can be achieved when people come together and act. Her overall message is about externalising and refusing and creating alternatives.
She has a gentle but passionate way of speaking. She met earlier today with young people from the Fitzroy High School Feminist Collective and says they were fan-fucking-tastic.
I leave while the applause is still resounding.
Down the stairs, out onto Collins Street, into the Athenaeum Theatre, up some more stairs, to sit and listen to Jeanette Winterson.
She walks onto an empty stage, carrying a book. Over the loudspeaker we hear a male voice. He seems to be reciting Shakespeare. We join the dots and assume the speech must be from A Winters Tale, as Jeanette’s new book – the one in her hand – is a novelised version (a ‘cover’ she calls it) of this play.
Jeanette talks us through the first act of A Winters Tale and speaks of how unusual it is for a play of that time. It is one of Will’s later works and is notable for two things. One, is that women of three generations play key roles in the play and are all alive at the end. Two, is that it is a play where the action is driven by the internal, not the external. It is about what a man imagines his wife and friend are doing, not what they are actually doing. In this way, Jeanette says, it is a Freudian play written several hundred years before Freud.
She says the play is like Othello on speed. That everything that happens in Othello happened in this play in the first act. She speaks about the trajectory of the story (a baby banished because the father cannot be sure she belongs to him, the baby taken in by a shepherd and his son, fast forward to sixteen years later, the baby is now a teenage girl) and how there can only be three outcomes: tragedy, revenge and forgiveness.
Jeanette posits the notion that this play is striking because it takes the third option and it seems likely that the reason it can take the path of forgiveness is because of those three generations of women alive at the end and how they choose to forgive rather than punish or seek revenge.
She goes on to speak about this same choice in all of our lives. And how the only way to forgive ourselves and others is to be conscious of what it is we need to forgive. And of how painful but how very necessary it is to be conscious. Rather than to simply suffer in our re-telling over and over of the past. I sense that this is what creativity is for her. For all of us. The capacity to imagine and re-imagine our way into consciously being human, with all of our flaws and failings. Not to fall prey to fantasies – or realities - of tragedy or revenge.
We are then treated to a spectacularly theatrical reading from the novel. It goes for about twenty minutes. There are sound effects. Eleven sound cues to be precise. We know this because at the end Jeanette berates the tech team – with a light touch – about how they managed to fuck up even such a small number of cues.
The language is mesmerising and her delivery a lesson in poetic narrative and crystal clear story telling.
It is question time and she is jovially merciless with a slow speaking audience member who wants to say thank you but has no actual question. Only 14 minutes to go! Jeanette cries. Let’s keep it moving!
She is asked about arts funding, here and in the UK. She extemporises with unabashed passion. The arts are integral and essential to every human being. They are not elitist. They are not disposable. The story of austerity and how we can’t have hospitals and education and roads AND art is just that – a story. A narrative made up. It is not the truth.
She speaks about the human imagination and how it is the beginning of everything. Of all things that happen. And how we need to feed that imagination with books and plays and music and art and all of these things so that the imagination is rich and varied and well nourished. How the more language we take into ourselves the more language we will have with which to express ourselves. How robbing people of language (by taking away their access to art and books and words and stories and theatre) is what disempowers people because then all they have is rage and sadness and anger. And without the language to express these things, people will act out their rage and sadness and anger. Acts for which they can be put in prison. Given language, humans can – and will – articulate what is wrong and ask for what they want.
Jeanette too, speaks about the absurdity of binaries. Black or white. Male or female. Hospitals or art. How reductive and ridiculous this way of labelling the world is.
She speaks of how difficult times can shape us, how they shaped her, the strange oppressiveness of the woman, her adoptive mother, whom she refers to as Mrs Winterson. Who wanted Jeanette to be a missionary. And asked Jeanette why (now famously), when Jeanette left home at 16 because she was in love with a woman, Jeanette would choose to be happy when she could be normal.
And how this shaped Jeanette because here she is now, a missionary, preaching to us, her audience, about art and imagination and creativity. That she sees it as her job to inspire us and give us something to take away. A kind of hope or purpose.
And so these two women have presented a kind of yin and yang and given me two hours of energy. They both spoke about the liberating moment, in their youth, of realising they did not have to live the life laid out for them by society or family. They were – I muse – blessed with the insight, fortitude and circumstances to see that they could choose another way. And they did.
They take their mission seriously, both of them, and they have lived up to the pressure I had placed on them as I walked down those Flinders Street Station steps.
I leave feeling connected and energised. They have given me a way of re-imagining my own imagination and creative life that is something other than the heaviness I have been wearing. The heaviness of: is it enough? Am I enough? A reminder that this very way of thinking is something I, we all, have inherited or internalised and it is just one way of thinking. A story that doesn’t suit and never fitted.
I arrive home. Buoyant. My tax return has arrived in the mail. For the first time in years, I owe the government money. How will I pay that off? I don’t have a spare few thousand dollars to give. Why should I when they are so intent on ripping money from the arts to stop funding our so-called artist lifestyles?
My buoyant bubble bursts.
I recall another thing Jeanette said, about contemporary life being so very focussed on the external, the superficial. That of course we all need to earn money and pay bills and watch the nightly news.
But that much more importantly, we need to pay attention to the life of our imagination. Our internal world.
A final question she was asked: Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? She takes every question seriously. She says yes and no. Because, she says, sometimes the urge and the expression is conscious and sometimes it is not yet conscious but it is still there. She says she likes this phrase: the unthought known, rather than the unknown thought. That there are things we know that aren’t yet ready to be articulated in thoughts and words.
But they are still there. The knowns. Inside of us. Waiting to be discovered.
Without Excellence, Then What?
I was delighted to be invited to contribute to Amateur Professional Magazine by artist Vanessa White as part of her exhibition of the same name. She asked me to reflect on this notion of amateur / professional when it comes to making art. My immediate response was to think about the language used by former Federal Minister for the Arts George Brandis in 2015 when he slashed money from the Australia Council and announced the (short lived) National Program for Excellence in the Arts.
Here are the first few paragraphs of the essay, a video that shows the very gorgeous magazine and links to the exhibition details and where you can buy the magazine and read the rest of my essay!
Without Excellence, Then What?
A Meditation on How We Know Whether Art is Good or Not
By Emilie Collyer
The National Program for Excellence in the Arts promised to be a beacon of hope. After all none of us seeks Badness, Hopelessness, Not Very Goodness or Shitness in the Arts. Do we?
Its arrival, heralded by a man who so much understood the important of Branding in the Arts that he had it embedded into his own name (original spelling, unconfirmed, thought to be Brand-arse), brought sighs of relief to Art Makers, Art Producers, Art Presenters and Art Consumers throughout the Land.
Finally. Finally. Someone had heard our cries. For up until this point it was a long acknowledged (if under discussed) truism that Excellence was the key ingredient missing in about 98% of Australia’s artistic output, well over 130% of our arts training institutions and up to 14,755% of our federally funded federal arts federally funded funding bodies ...
To read more, buy the magazine here
To see the magazine in all its glory, check out this video
To see the full exhibition, come here
On the Cusp - a theatre response
This is a lot longer piece than I usually post but I wanted to share. I saw Yours the Face by Fleur Kilpatrick as part of Theatreworks FLIGHT Festival of new writing. Fleur, a playwright and arts writer, had written a wonderful response to Dream Home and she invited me to reciprocate. So I wrote this:
On the Cusp
A response from Emilie Collyer to Yours the Face by Fleur Kilpatrick and the audience in attendance on Friday 7th August 2015 at Theatreworks in Melbourne.
It’s unusual to see a group of teenagers in the front row of an independent theatre show on a Friday night. I sit behind them with a twinge of apprehension. Will they squirm, talk, or be hostile? I’ve read on social media that performer Roderick Cairns shares my apprehension. No mean feat to perform a solo show full stop. Let alone a solo show described as ‘gender bending’, containing full frontal nudity, to a school group, with most of them sitting in the front row. The show starts. Cairns strikes several model-esque poses. The students snicker, wriggle, settle in.
This shouldn’t necessarily be the focus of my response to Yours the Face, a play written by Fleur Kilpatrick, directed by Sarah Walker and performed by Roderick Cairns. It’s not a piece about how young people behave in the theatre. But this is what’s so wonderful and – at times – terrible about this form. We don’t watch in a vacuum. Our response is tainted by that of those around us. The giggles, restless legs, guffaws, silences, the latecomers, the person who really must eat that foil wrapped lolly because they apparently have no way of getting through a one hour show without sustenance – it’s all part and parcel.
I couldn’t help but partly watch Yours the Face through the eyes of the young people in front of me. I was aware this was an unusual, perhaps foreign experience for them. I have theatre audience training. I know what to expect and what to do with my body and my reactions if I am moved or startled or bored by a piece of theatre. What is so scary and brilliant about being in an audience with a group of young people is that they’re not yet quite as savvy about the rules.
The first character we meet is Emmy, a nineteen year old model. She’s American. So Cairns is playing cross gender, cross culture and cross accent. He does it without a hint of irony or apology. It is gentle, sinewy and subtle. The students in front of me are all boys so my frame for consuming the first five minutes of the piece is adult woman / teenage males / adult man / teenage girl. We’re all performing our roles, some of us safe in the dark, Cairns in full view.
This initial moment captures for me what is powerful about Yours the Face. There are many tangible, theatrical things to engage with in the work: writing, performance, lighting, choreography, sound, image. But what strikes me most is how the work as a whole facilitates a fluidity of experience. Its form is its content. It invites us to question what we see, how we create our frames, where we put our gaze. The structure of the show and Cairns’ performance demands this. In this way it offers the best of what theatre can do: provoke a lived experience in our bodies as we watch and therefore provoke a shift in how we see the world outside of theatre. Once we leave the space we are changed, simply by virtue of having our perceptions of reality (male / female / face / body / beauty) mixed up and messed with for an hour.
When Cairns flips to the second main character in the show – male photographer Peter – there is a palpable rumble of relief from the front row. They were fine with Emmy, they took her on board, but here, with Peter, they are more comfortable. Peter is blokey and direct. He’s funny. I’m pretty sure Cairns eyeballs a few of the front row. This is smart. Whether he does it in every show or his actor instincts kick in and he knows it will work in his favour to make a genuine, human connection with those in the audience least sure of how to react and what their relationship with him should be.
From here the show rockets along. As a writer I relish being witness to Kilpatrick’s skill in character creation and storytelling. In this regard there is something delightfully old-fashioned about the play. I don’t mean outdated or irrelevant. I mean ‘good old-fashioned story telling’ – create characters audiences connect with and put them in a situation where we want to know what happens next. Yours the Face is beautiful story telling. It’s warm and human. It has body and blood. It isn’t cynical or despairing or cold or clever for the sake of it. I am in a room with a writer who likes people. I sense her genuine curiosity about what makes us tick. She cares about us humans. She wants us to do well while being well aware of our flaws.
Kilpatrick writes about the fashion industry and the world of modelling in both a very obvious and a completely surprising way. The beauty, the emptiness, the photographer in love with beauty, the older man having sex with the young woman, these are things we expect or are at least familiar with via other narratives we see of this world. We can situate ourselves. We bring our own baggage and prejudices. We like beautiful images too but we know that what lies behind them can be ugly. We are in an arena that is part and parcel of our daily, image saturated lives.
What surprises is the humanity. The simple and fierce survival instinct of Emmy, the pragmatic romanticism of Peter. The hints of their lives that got them here and the waves of possible futures planted in the last few moments of the play – this is the stuff that lifts us, sideswipes us, takes us somewhere else. This is the stuff of all of us, regardless of what we do for a living or how much our faces are worth. We all try to connect and find a place to belong. The play doesn’t slam the fashion industry, it doesn’t judge the people who work in it. We are presented with moments, images and pictures that allow us to build our own meaning.
My front row friends continue to react verbally and physically through the show. Yes they squirm a bit when Cairns takes off his clothes. But not for long. The strength in the writing, the direction and Cairns’ performance leave no room for awkwardness. Here is a body, we are being invited to look at it. Again, form and content marry. In popular culture the male gaze is privileged. Images we see, from fashion pages to cinema, from catalogues to billboards, television ads to product endorsements have been, still are – on the whole – created by and seen through a male lens. To be specific (although perhaps less so in high fashion than other more commercial endeavours) a male, white, cis lens.
During the nude section in Yours the Face, the audience is cast in this role. We are gazing at a male body as it morphs between a male and female gender. This body is appealing to look at. It’s long, lithe, and muscular. The key difference between this interaction and our usual interactions with images is that in this one the subject – Cairns – is active, not passive. We are consuming him but he is in control of how he presents his body. This kind of nudity invites connection not objectification. He is three dimensional, not flat. This is theatre, it’s live and it’s a conversation, a dynamic, between actor and audience. We’re in it together.
The characters we meet in Yours the Face are not queer. But the very fact of watching the two (and more) characters inhabit one body invites certain shifts in awareness and gaze. We see that of course a vulnerable female energy can be present in a male body, a male face with hair can voice the pain of having sharply beautiful features. The form and the embodiment of the piece opens up alternative ways of seeing and experiencing gender.
As the play enters its final third something shifts in the audience. I put it down to three key elements. The first is that we hear the characters talk about a couple of key moments in their past. We are once more in the world of ‘old fashioned’ story telling. It’s powerful. We’ve come to know these characters through their actions. At just the right moment Kilpatrick then deepens our connection with them by allowing them to reveal something of their past. In each of the stories there is a moment that shows a weakness, a vulnerability or an act of cruelty.
Second is that one of the characters, in the here and now of the play, performs an action that also has elements of cruelty, selfishness, amorality.
Third is that the ending is left open. These two people have met, they’ve impacted each other, but that’s it. A moment in time. Any kind of future might unfold for these characters.
The thing that shifts in the audience? The students in front of me are all leaning forward in their seats and they are completely silent. They’ve been invited in. I don’t know if they are conscious of it, but the play and the performance are generous enough to make space and say to us: You are part of this. There are gaps in this narrative for a reason. Theatre is where we start conversations but we don’t finish them. I sense that by the end of the play the young people in the front row really care about these characters and they want to know what will happen to them. I also think they care about the actor. They respect what he has done and want to show their appreciation for that too.
After the show I try to catch some of the conversations between the students. One stands out to me. A young woman telling her friend that at the moment when Peter was describing how he let a bee sting him and then photographed it as it died, she thought that in the play, at that moment, it would be revealed that Emmy was dead. I could hear her excitement at making meaning from the image, and the fact that the play offered, time and again, these clues and then subverted them delighted rather than frustrated her.
I don’t think Yours the Face was specifically written with young people in mind. But by the end I see it is a perfect piece for this audience. Teenagers are smart and they live so fully in the world. They have opinions about models and beauty, fashion and images, sex and love. They also have bodies and they are right on the cusp of those bodies becoming part of the adult world, of work and trade and value and betrayal and ambition. This play pulls no punches and offers no easy answers. Rather it opens up a plethora of conversations and meditations on what all of that might mean.
As I leave the theatre I am happy to have been in this audience on this night. It makes me think that this is how we should always approach both making and attending theatre. As if we are on the cusp of change, as if transformation is possible, as if a new way of seeing the world is about to open up.
Autopsy of a Comedian e-launch
Today my second e-collection of short stories with Clan Destine Press launches!
I'm celebrating by holding an online launch and releasing audio snippets of the stories via Facebook and Twitter.
I've gathered them all here for your listening pleasure, just click the titles to listen. And if you'd like to buy the collection, you can get it here:
http://clandestinepress.com.au/ebook/autopsy-comedian
Audio teasers:
A forensic pathologist is confronted with a case that gets under his skin and inside his mind.
A private detective – down on his luck, whose daughter is missing – has an unexpected encounter with the living dead.
They’re the perfect couple with the perfect life, until one day when the mysterious pods start arriving.
For a has been artist, now teacher, one final chance for artistic glory comes at a price.
And as a bonus track, a teaser of the lead story in my first collection, the award-winning:
You can buy that collection here: http://clandestinepress.com.au/ebook/clean-job
Last game of the day
A short story!
This spec fic story of mine appears in the sci-fi and fantasy magazine: Allegory. First few paragraphs here then click the link to read the rest of the story ... Hope you enjoy :)
The last game of the day
The problem wasn’t so much in the game. The problem was in the aftermath of the game. We were always spent and wanted to knock off. But the Playground was usually a mess.
‘Day’s not over yet, people. Clean up duty. Now.’
He was blonde, lean and dressed as a security guard. None of us could tell at that moment who was Halo and who was Human. It was hard enough any time, but straight after a long game, judgement was particularly impaired. Blondie was holding a gun so we gave him the benefit of the doubt.
‘Sunday tomorrow. Family day. This place has got to be spotless for the little kiddies.’
I tried doing a head count, wanting to know how many we’d lost today. But there was a bunch of us and my eyes kept jumping. It was late, already dark and we were all exhausted.
I’d noticed two new Gamers but only picked up one new name. She called herself Didi.
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Blog Hop!
So I've been invited to blog hop by Beau Hillier who blog hopped last week. Thanks Beau! You can read Beau's post here. In turn, I have invited two wonderful writers, Demet Divaroren and Andy Jackson to join the hop. So go visit their blog pages in the next week or two and see how they Hop To It.
My answers to the 4 Blog Hop questions are below:
What are you working on at the moment?
The main thing at the moment is a new play for Melbourne Fringe Festival called Once Were Pirates. It's a dark comedy about two men who used to be pirates but are stuck in the real world now and have to figure out how to live. One way to describe it would be a cross between Samuel Beckett and Pirates of the Caribbean. Other than that I am currently in the midst of a novel called The Looking Glass Spy which is about an ordinary woman who falls into a spy novel and finds she is the main character.
How do you think your work differs from that of other writers in your genre?
Well you can see a theme in those two works - crossing genres and mixing fantasy with reality. Nearly all of my work has a speculative bent and I like to blend, mix or twist genres. For example I like playing with pop culture genres when writing theatre (in 2013 I wrote a sci-fi play called The Good Girl). I explore existential questions via my short stories, plays and novels. I dig deep and try to stretch myself and the reader to question how we look at the world and why. I think genre is a great way to do this. It gives me a framework to start with that I can then push the boundaries of. It's also a lot of fun to find new ways to create worlds and bend rules.
Why do you write what you write?
I write from a place of asking questions. Often these start with: What If ... and that's where the speculative element comes in. Some of my writing comes from a deeply personal place of questioning my own life or things that I've experienced. But I also respond to the world around me, moral and ethical questions, social trends and mores. I want to connect with people. I want to ask questions that I don't know the answers to. I want to create imagined worlds where characters and readers can play.
What's your writing process, and how does it work?
I am usually working on several pieces at once, either in different forms and / or at different phases. I write pretty quickly and try to complete whole drafts of things then I go back and re-draft and re-draft. In that re-drafting phase I may also plan a little more carefully - especially for longer form works like plays or novels. It takes me a draft (at least) to work out what it is I am exploring in a piece, where the heart is and what the shape of it should be. I'm interested in shifting how I work and experimenting with more planning up front to see how this might affect my work. I try and write every day but not in a regimented way, more to ensure I am keeping my skills honed and also that I am staying connected to the pieces I am working on.
Thanks for reading! And remember to check out Demet and Andy's posts in the coming few weeks ...
Demet Divaroren was born in Adana, Turkey and migrated to Australia with her family when she was six months old. She writes fiction and non-fiction and is the co-editor of the anthology, Coming of Age: Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014). Demet’s writing has appeared in Island magazine, Scribe’s New Australian Stories, The Age Epicure, The Big Issue, and was commended in the Ada Cambridge Biographical Prose Prize 2013. Her first novel, Orayt?, was shortlisted for the Australian Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.
Demet is the recipient of an Australia Council Artstart Grant, a Rosebank Residential Writing Fellowship, a Varuna Fellowship for a Writing Retreat and a Glenfern Grace Marion Wilson Fellowship. She is the Artist in Residence at Deer Park Art Spaces and has appeared as a panelist, guest speaker and workshop leader at literary festivals, universities, and schools across Melbourne. Demet is currently writing her memoir, aided by an Australia Council Jump Mentoring Grant. She is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agents.
Andy Jackson has performed at dozens of events and festivals (including The Age Melbourne Writers Festival, Prakriti Poetry Festival [in Chennai, India], Goa Literary & Arts Festival, Australian Poetry Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Clifden Arts Festival [Ireland], Newcastle Young Writers Festival and Overload Poetry Festival), had poems published in a variety of print and on-line journals, been awarded grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria, been the recipient of an Australian Society of Authors mentorship, and self-published two collections of poetry. He has been awarded residencies from Victorian Writers Centre, Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre (Perth) and Asialink. He is also an infrequent collaborator with musicians, sound artists and other writers.
His first full-length collection of poems, Among the Regulars,was published by papertiger media in 2010 – this book was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry (the Kenneth Slessor Prize) and Highly Commended in the Anne Elder Award. A collaborative puppetry-poetry performance with Rachael Wenona Guy entitled Ambiguous Mirrors won the City of Yarra Award for Most Innovative Work at the Overload Poetry Festival in 2009. He won the 2008 Arts ACT Rosemary Dobson Award for Best Unpublished Poem for Secessionist. In 2013, he won the Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize. The resulting collection of poems – the thin bridge - has just recently been released. Another collection – Immune systems: Poems and Ghazals on India & Medical Tourism – is forthcoming in 2015 from Transit Lounge.
Andy has the genetic condition Marfan Syndrome. He is currently based in Melbourne.
The Poetry of Lists
It's been a while since posts. To celebate my upcoming week of multiple poetry events, a few words to get into the mood:
The poetry of lists
I just want to feel better.
I say that and he laughs and tells me to put it in something, a character who throws her arms up in the kitchen.
I mean I sit around in one room.
Then I stand and move to another room.
I want so bad to turn to the TV on.
The house is full of books I haven’t yet read.
The Americans make such good TV drama, when they do it right they really do it right.
It’s autumn and we all eat more bread than we should.
The comfort of gluten fills our mouths and bellies.
Are you really in pain? he asked once, or are you just needy and neurotic.
I bought two brown pears but we didn’t eat them.
They turned sour and spurted fluid into the fruit bowl.
I wiped down the apple, it’s okay, but I might peel it first.
I wrote a poem about my failed novel.
It was about grieving something that never existed.
If we’re going to monitor what people say and do on the internet we should ban happy holiday photos.
That would be a start.
I have no car right now and the empty space out the front of our house is sort of exciting.
I’ve planned the train I need to catch and I’m ready to go.
It’s raining, it’s been raining so much, hence the spoiled pear and the damp wooden floor in the laundry.
And the need to take an umbrella with me today and wear sensible shoes.
Working from home
In the morning I have a shower, get dressed
and eat breakfast, usually tea and toast,
I brush my teeth and leave the house.
I turn around and walk back through the front door
say hello to my co-workers, the plant,
the other plant, my boyfriend if he is home
(not so much a co-worker as a co-habitant in my building).
At morning coffee time I stand near the kitchen sink
- it's the closest thing I have to a water cooler -
and talk to myself about what I watched on TV last night.
When it is my birthday I buy myself a cake.
When it is not my birthday I buy a cake anyway
as it is probably somebody's birthday somewhere.
At the end of the working day I shut down my computer
say good-bye to the plants (and the boyfriend if he is around)
and leave the building.
I take a deep breath of the refreshing evening air
then turn around and open the front door,
I greet my plants and my boyfriend
pleased to be home after a long day.
A Clean Job and other stories
Merry end of 2013 and happy 2014!
As a little combined update and teaser about my last few months writing, below is the opening of my 2012 Scarlet Stiletto Award winning story: A Clean Job. It's just been published with Clan Destine Press as part of my first e-collection of short stories.
Enjoy! And look for the links at the end if you'd like to read more.
Happy New Year :)
A Clean Job
Up and at ‘em. High level activity in South Precinct. Up for it?
The message dragged Fitz from a deep sleep. On auto-pilot she punched a return message: There in 20.
She blinked her eyes into full focus. It was 9.48 pm. Not too bad, she thought. She’d had over two hours sleep; proper, restful, undisturbed sleep. If she got that twice a day she was doing well.
Her heart skipped when she saw who the message was from. It was a sure sign she should have calibrated. The customised dose of chemicals, delivered via skin absorption technology, was recommended at least once a day. Calibration levelled emotions, keeping the mind clear and relaxed – the ideal state for optimal function.
Some days Fitz just wanted to keep her edge, rather than smooth out every emotional bump. This often got her in trouble, but her innate skill and position as an elite operative was born from her daring attitude. And even though she knew that it could lead to danger and loss of judgement, Fitz liked the buzz she got when she saw Maxine’s name on her screen.
Fitz zipped up her jacket and pulled on her boots. In the kitchen she splashed water on her face and sculled a cup of cold, black coffee. Then she checked and packed her mobile calibrator and the tranquilizer. Lastly, she slipped Marilyn into the holster at her belt. High level activity usually meant danger.
You can read more about the collection of four crime themed stories here, or download it from the Clan Destine Press website here.