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Beaches and books

June 11, 2014

at the beachIt’s been such a busy time these past months…this the continuing mantra of my life. And the posts here are so infrequent when I had planned so much more this year.

In between the busyness, beaches and books have sustained me, my Instagram feed has mostly reflected the books I am reading and sights from walks on the beach. (Until recently heading to Japan and that’s another story to come!)

On the beach, walking, the sun setting, the cool sand and the water rushing or lapping depending on the day.

And the books, mostly Australian Women Writers lately though not exclusively – I’ve read Michelle de Kretser’s ‘Questions of Travel‘, Carrie Tiffany’s ‘Mateship with Birds‘ and Hannah Kent’s ‘Burial Rites‘ as well as Elisabeth Gifford’s ‘Secrets of the Sea House‘ plus enjoyed a reread of a gentle favourite, Rumer Godden’s ‘In this House of Brede‘. I’ve eagerly entered these worlds and stayed there for my 30-40 minute train journey on most days.

Both beaches and books have sustained me.

The beach grounding me as it always does, my feet in the sand, the act of walking, the water cooling my thoughts, my breathing calming.

The books keeping me connected to my love of words, my creative heart that is somewhat languishing. The part of me that wants to write more poetry and the novel that I imagine but cannot quite get to that other creative desk of the heart at present.

Words that have come to me lately:

The spirit of her invincible heart guided her through the shadows.

from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, and:

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

from e e cummings loveliest poem, ‘maggie and milly and molly and may’.

And my own beach walking poem on this theme:

 Narrative

She starts up high, facing north
towards slow mist,
watching the sea wash
into the rain’s drift below.

She is called to the beach
as if to a baptism, bride-like,
white as the air, stepping
down the rough rock stairs.

She narrates her life,
writes as she walks,
as if the sand and shells are
the bones of her story.

And the pieces connect her:
an imperfect white oval shell,
a fig leaf from a canopy,
the sketched black lines
of a creature’s moving home.

Cool and tight limbed,
she ends in another place,
as if washed by waves,
her contours, clear and shell-lined
as the Borromean grottoes
of Isolabella,
her white shining lights
coming home.

2 Comments
reading notes writing

Celebrating Australian Women’s Writing

February 24, 2013

awwbadge_2013

The ‘Australian Women Writers Challenge’ is one of my projects for 2013. I undertook this challenge in 2012 and had a wonderful reading and connecting experience and looking forward to extending and enriching that this year.

So what is the challenge? You can read more about it here but basically it’s a reading and reviewing challenge to lift the profile of Australian women’s writing. It was started in 2012 by Elizabeth Lhuede in response to an under-representation of women’s writing in Australian literary prizes being awarded. It has since developed into a strong, diverse group of readers and reviewers celebrating and sharing writing by Australian women.

You can choose your level of engagement in the challenge and there’s no pressure to complete as such, just a target to aim for. Last year, I aimed high (read 10, review 6) and in a busy year managed most of the reading and none of the reviews. This year, I am aiming a little lower (read 6, review at least 4) and hope to over-achieve!

So why am I signing up again and why is it important?

I have a great love of Australian women’s writing. My Australian literature bookshelf is about 80% women writers. This love developed naturally during my university literature studies and has endured. It’s my history, lineage and backyard; they are not the only writers I enjoy but they are the writers closest to my experience with all the local references, influences and language especially as it relates to the experience of women.

I am engaging with the challenge in 2013 again to broaden this experience further; in 2012, I learned about so many new Australian women writers and so many diverse reads. I have been enjoying deliberately seeking out writers that are new to me and genres that I don’t normally read.

It’s important because the profile of Australian women writers has been under-represented in terms of awards and book reviews, as surprising as this is. Read this post on the background to the challenge to get a feel for some of the issues. The AWW Challenge has done much to celebrate and raise awareness about Australian women’s writing and I for one am very grateful for the community and experience, as well as the profile being generated. The challenge has resulted in a powerful ground shift that has attracted national and international attention.

Reflecting on 2012

In 2012, I read 7 books towards my target of 10. Because I didn’t get to the review in 2012 and in case anyone is looking for potential reads for this year, I’ll list my reads and add a few brief comments.

Searching for the Secret River: A Writing Memoir – Kate Grenville‘s account of the research and writing experience of ‘The Secret River’ was always going to be an engaging book for me, being about a number of key interests: writing, family history, genealogical research, fact and fiction and the intersection between them. One branch of my family also settled in the area Kate was researching and writing about so it was all close to home personally and a fascinating read on how fact and family story came to be a work of fiction.

Sarah Thornhill – Kate Grenville followed on from ‘The Secret River’ so a natural next read and it didn’t disappoint as a close study of what is what like for strong willed women in colonial times with all its many challenges, especially in terms of culture and gender.

When We Have Wings – Claire Corbett was thrilling and a read that took me right out of the present to another world where people can grow wings and society is separated into those who can fly and those who can’t. Technically brilliant, especially in its descriptions of the experience of flying, and a well constructed story in a whole new space and time, I enjoyed ‘When We Have Wings’ thoroughly. This review by fellow AWW Challenge participant, Mark Webb provides more detail. Well worth reading – a fantastic debut novel from Blue Mountains based writer, Claire Corbett.

The Light Between Oceans – M L Stedman was one of the books I picked up and bought from reading the back blurb when looking for a new Australian Women Writers read in 2012. It soon emerged that this book was gaining interest all over the world and with good reason. Set against a wild West Australian coastline, featuring a remote lighthouse and with a twist and turn plot and gut-wrenching life decisions, it was a highlight for me in 2012.

Poet’s Cottage – Josephine Pennicott was another book purchased without any prior knowledge as part of AWW2012. Set in Tasmania, with a family history to uncover, a murder mystery, some wonderfully eccentric characters and an inherited cottage with secrets, it’s another atmospheric read.

The Engagement – Chloe Hooper – spooked me completely one night. It’s a suspenseful, intense and mysterious ride, with the engagement as much with the reader as between the two main characters who form a dubious connection that takes on a life of its own on a remote western Victorian property. Read for its sheer intensity.

Disquiet – Julia Leigh is a tight and very disturbing novella about an Australian family returning to family and chateau in France, escaping turmoil but arriving to just as much dislocation. Everything is like a film still, the language sharp and fresh; it’s aptly titled.

What have I learnt from 2012?

  • AWW is a great journey; read outside your usual genres, discover some of the Australian Women Writers – recent or past – that you haven’t encountered up till now
  • You don’t have to review in the order that you read and you don’t have to review everything.
  • Don’t over-complicate the reviewing; I started by researching the background of novels for my reviews and I made it all too complicated for myself. Revisiting all the furore that surrounded fact and fiction in ‘The Secret River’ got me all confused. In the end, I had to remind myself, it’s not an academic treatise for university.
  • The AWW reading and writing community is fantastic. You can connect on the blog, through twitter @AusWomenWriters or hashtag #AWW2013, through Goodreads; there are readers, writers and reviewers from all walks of life reading so diversely and widely, it’s a treat. Even though I didn’t review, I tweeted and blogged and contributed in that way – it was fun, I made some valued connections with like-minded readers, I found a whole host of book bloggers I didn’t know about and I learned a heap.
  • The consolidated reviews are excellent and highlight the work of AWW readers and writers across all genres. Check out the review listings here – with reviews all neatly sorted by genre, there’s plenty of inspiration and information.

What am I planning to read (and review) in 2013?

I’m currently reading ‘The Scrivener’s Tale‘ by Fiona McIntosh, classified by AWW as ‘speculative fiction’, a genre I haven’t engaged with extensively. Other books on the list are:

  • Sea Hearts, by Margo Lanagan – there have been some fabulous reviews on this book, especially Elizabeth Lhuede’s review and want to experience this book for myself
  • Fishing for Tigers by Emily Maguire – loved blogging buddy Liv White’s review and interested in the Vietnam setting
  • Sydney by Delia Falconer – this book is physically exquisite and about my home town; I loved Delia Falconer’s ‘Service of Clouds’ and her celebration of the Blue Mountains in that novel so I am sure ‘Sydney’ will also celebrate its heart
  • Joe Cinque’s Consolation – Helen Garner – because I love Helen Garner’s hard-hitting analysis in her non-fiction works and I haven’t read this one
  • The Secret Keeper – Kate Morton – loved her previous books and Kate is enjoying high praise including as top voted Australian writer in a recent booktopia poll.

Well, that’s my six books, for now anyway – I am sure many more will vie for my attention this year. It’s such a rich field of pleasure, the work of our Australian women writers, so let’s celebrate and document it.

A special thanks to Elizabeth Lhuede for initiating the challenge in 2012 and maintaining the hard work of holding it all together for the benefit of us all.

I hope you’ll join the challenge!

My #AWW2013 reads lined up and ready to go!

My #AWW2013 reads lined up and ready to go!

3 Comments
creativity introversion

Gems #18 Creating sacred space

October 9, 2012

Living and working away from home for a while recently has made me reflect on space, the space I inhabit, the space I share, the nexus between partnership and independence, and between time together and time alone.

As an introvert, who is in a highly interactive, people focused leadership role, I need time alone to re-energise, ground myself and get in touch with my creative side. This time enables me also to feed my creativity with valued reading of books, blogs and other sources to shape my own developing thoughts and ideas. Or to interact with creative others through social media and blogs to also link and inspire.

It all comes back to making sacred space. Here are some gems on creating sacred space:

Defining your sacred space

Todd Henry, author of ‘Accidental Genius’ makes the case for having a sacred space and encourages us to find our ‘bliss station’ or:

a physical place where your only job is to pursue the things that ensure your sense of wonder and prod you towards the unexplored.

Quoting Joseph Campbell from interviews collected in ‘The Power of Myth‘, Henry celebrates the power of this type of sacred space in ‘creative incubation’:

[A sacred place] is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.

Love that place and that thought, and holding onto it. Read Todd’s great article for more thoughts on sacred space and its value.

‘A Room of One’s Own’ – Virginia Woolf

One of my favourite books that sits on my rolltop desk always, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ makes a clear case for both physical and intellectual space to write especially for women. Walking us through the history of women and those who have paved the way in making space for creativity, Virginia Woolf’s classic book is full of gems that remind us of the value of space to be able to create and express one’s unique vision and work:

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me – and there are thousands like me – you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.

More quotes from Goodreads here from ‘A Room of One’s Own’, or dive back into this wonderful essay and read it in all its sinuous and intelligent entirety.

And finally, my own poem celebrating sacred space:

Poem without silence

I want to write a poem
without the word silence.
The allure of its sleek long vowel
fights to identify this
late night sensation,
wise without sound.

After the traffic
punctuating rain,
the music I become,
beyond the reach of reading
all that marches past my eyes,
the exterior collapses
to a page to hold
the chatter
I confine.

And there though this loophole
of assonance or in its role
defining that breathless space,
the secret finds its way,
this pleasure I make.

2 Comments
poetry transcending writing

Poetry: Into the Light

June 3, 2012

I’ve always loved poetry, read poetry and written poetry, on and off and over many years. It is the great life-blood of transcendence: celebrating the small moments; recording how you or others uniquely see and link ideas; connecting with the highest joy and worst of grief; and making sense of the deepest pain and anger so it doesn’t stay with you, in that form, forever. It’s the working through to light, mostly, though this often involves working through some elements of darkness. It’s the reworking of feelings and perceptions in order to understand them, hold them in time for a moment and then move on.

As Sage Cohen writes in ‘Writing the Life Poetic‘:

Poetry gives us an opportunity to experience our lives twice. First, as it happens, in real time. And second, in heart time. The poem gives us a kind of cosmic canvas to savour a moment, make sense of it, put a little frame around it, and digest it more completely. It also gives us a way to travel profoundly into experiences that are not our own and, if we are lucky, alight on a  moment of truth about the human condition now and then. (p1)

So here’s to bringing my poetry, and the poetry of others, into the light here as part of a journey and record of transcending.

Image

 

Narrative

She starts up high, facing north

towards slow mist,

watching the sea wash

into the rain’s drift below.

 

She is called to the beach

as if to a baptism, bride-like,

white as the air, stepping

down the rough rock stairs.

 

She narrates her life,

writes as she walks,

as if the sand and shells are

the bones of her story.

 

And the pieces connect her:

an imperfect white oval shell,

a fig leaf from a canopy,

the sketched black lines

of a creature’s moving home.

 

Cool and tight limbed,

she ends in another place,

as if washed by waves,

her contours, clear and shell-lined

as the Borromean grottoes

of Isolabella,

her white shining lights

coming home.

 

Previously published on the net at Sage Cohen’s ‘Writing the Life Poetic’ – Poetry for the People student poems.

In what ways has poetry helped you move into the light?

7 Comments
blogging creativity writing

Silences

January 29, 2012

It’s been a long time since I wrote here. I reached a 12 month milestone, celebrated it and then not long after, for some reason I cannot fathom, stopped cold dead, suddenly and completely silent.

What happened? Work took over my life in the main; a very busy and demanding work role, things to solve that could not be satiated, consuming the creative part of me. At night and on weekends, there was little left. It was definitely hard to create in this space. Some poor life choices too, like too much television, but sometimes it was all I could do. The reading, writing part of me I treasure so much languished sadly in this interchange.

This blog as for many, is a tool to keep me writing. In the post celebrating the first anniversary of ‘Transcending’, I spoke about my sense of achievement in keeping at it, ‘writing, researching, tuning in and reading others’, the value of writing, the process and the product. When I look back and read that post, it celebrates so much that is central to me, then comes to that screaming halt, one more post later and 180 days ago.

So time to transcend the silence, move on. It will take some doing; the work role remains insistent. I’ve reached for Tillie Olsen’s ‘Silences’ to help interpret it all. But in the end,  I can spend more time analysing the politics of it, reading about it, trying to understand the reasons for stalling but maybe it is best just to accept it happened for circumstantial reasons and move beyond.

As Anne Lamott exorts us in her article, ‘Time Lost and Found‘, it is really most likely to be an issue of choices, priorities and time management.

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

I’m reading Kate Grenville’s ‘Searching for the Secret River‘ and am reminded through that journey of Kate’s writing experiences of the need for stealth and commitment.  Kate uses a whole arsenal of mantras to keep herself writing: ‘never have a blank page,’ ‘don’t wait for the mood’, ‘fix it up later’ and ‘don’t wait for time to write’. She further writes:

I learned to work in whatever slivers of time the day might give me – one of my favourite scenes in ‘Joan Makes History‘ was written in the car waiting to pick up Tom from a birthday party, on the only paper I could find, the inside of a flattened Panadol packet. I had slivers of time, so I wrote in slivers of words: a page here, a paragraph there. Eventually the slivers would add to something. (p145)

It really is so important, as Chris Guillebeau reminds us, to start with what you have, not wait for more and generally just to keep moving. So I begin again here and elsewhere, in slivers of words, in slivers of time, to counteract the silence of the blank page, moving on.

4 Comments

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