Dancing with Empty Prams

I know it’s been a while between blog posts but I’ve been busy! My second book, Dancing With Empty Prams, is coming out soon with Walleah Press. Ralph Wessman, the publisher, has been a wonderful supporter of my poetry since I moved to Tasmania almost 20 years ago and I am so grateful and happy that he has applied his skills and time to helping me bring this book into the world.

Dancing With Empty Prams is a verse novel. It tells the story of a woman whose plan to have a baby carries her on a quest she never could have imagined. Six poems from it have won or were commended in state and national poetry competitions and nine have been featured in journals and anthologies, including the Australian Poetry Journal. It started off as a collection of poems documenting my own journey of infertility, and when I was awarded a Career Development Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2020 I was able to work with the immensely talented Dr Gina Mercer to turn it into a verse novel. I am proud of the end result and excited to share it with the world.

I had help from a creative group of friends in work-shopping cover style ideas and my friend Jen Lorrimar-Shanks designed the beautiful cover which you can see below. 

Esther Ottaway has been a fabulous support and we have decided to do joint book launches in Hobart on the 7^th and 8^th of July at Mathers House in Bathurst St – check out my Facebook page Susan Austin Poet for more details. I will also be doing a Brisbane launch at the Chermside library on Saturday 17^th June at 2:45pm. Because the novel is set in Queensland (Hervey Bay to be precise, close to where I grew up, in Maryborough), it is great that I can launch it there first.

I’ll share with you below some of the endorsements that I have received for the book. I will make it available to buy from my website when it is printed. We are getting close! Thanks for your support.  

"Susan Austin's Dancing with Empty Prams is a moving, involving account of a woman's fertility quest, and an inventive, carefully structured verse novel. The reader is drawn in to an emotional and physical ordeal across years of trying, miscarriage, and ultimately the gruelling IVF process. This book's significance is in its voicing of an experience not often represented so thoroughly in literature - a lonely journey made more challenging by taboos, ignorance, prejudices and opaque jargon. Anyone who has been touched by these issues will feel seen." Melinda Smith

 “It is estimated that as many as one in six couples in Australia have trouble getting pregnant – some who find it impossible to conceive naturally, choose the IVF journey which can oscillate seemingly endlessly (as it does in Dancing with Empty Prams) between hope and disappointment, optimism and dispiriting self-doubt.

Susan Austin’s verse novel on the subject is emotionally charged but avoids sentimentality by keeping it real. It is well-informed if not experienced and as such is an important book for the women who will personally connect with it, for their families and friends to better understand and appreciate the journey and for the general public who will find in Dancing with Empty Prams a human-interest story that is genuinely moving, educational and at times downright funny.” Jane Williams

 “The directness of the poems, exploring the most intimate aspects of human fertility, is matched by a ferocity of craft which kept me turning pages. This is powerful and important work - cogent and topical.

It is vital that women’s experience is added into the national cultural mix. For decades publishing has been dominated by heroic hyper-masculine quest narratives. This work subverts that tradition through a wry, poignant, punchy exploration of the quest for motherhood, a matter literally of life and death, played out in suburban bedrooms and clinics across Australia – and yet rarely documented or heard in the national conversation.”  Dr Gina Mercer

 “I have watched Susan Austin develop as a poet and a person since the late 1990s. She is committed to living life as a poet, and her poetry grows with all the other aspects of her life. She is also a charismatic performer. She brings both the poet and non-poet with her, often into difficult terrain. She is a poet who has something to say, and people respond to this.

Susan Austin brings her verbal acuity, sound ethical concerns, charm and humanity to this current project. She makes compelling poetry. I have rarely read a poetry manuscript, such as this one, that I can’t put down but need to read in a sitting. She is an important voice in poetry, especially Tasmanian poetry.” Liz Winfield

Susan’s verse novel, Dancing With Empty Prams, is one of the most keenly observed poetry works I have read in recent years. It lays open the suburban life of a couple to expose the piercing, intimate, bleak, and intensely lonely experience of infertility. The experience for the reader is emotionally deep and gripping: it is a book which, as it progresses, becomes impossible to put down. I cried at the end. Susan’s craft in this work is masterful, and the issues she raises, compelling and relevant.” Esther Ottaway, 2022 Tasmanian Literary Awards winner

Ready for more than nursery rhymes

My poem "Ready for more than nursery rhymes" is the opening poem in the beautiful "Quicksilver water - Oasis Women Poets" anthology which was launched yesterday at Hadley's Hotel in Hobart. I read at the event alongside many wonderful women, and what was very special to me, was that my daughter had her first poem published in the book and read it alongside me. Here is my poem.

Ready for more than nursery rhymes

Poetry,

I’ve kept my distance from you for three-and-a-half years

and that’s ok

because I was making new people –

two of them –

and really, life trumps poetry.

But without poetry,

life lacks some kind of empathic resonance,

percipience and depth,

so I am edging back to you

in between nappy changes and lullabies,

liquid Panadol and my own lonely pillow.

Poetry,

forgive me for snubbing you.

Remind me how to observe

more than the swollen gums of the next tooth,

more than the yearning for sleep-ins.

Come and save me

from the repetition of the weekly vacuum,

the dreaded bath-scrub, the urgent late-afternoon question

of what to cook.

I know some things, like these indescribable

love-blossomed smiles from my babies

are outside your scope of practice,

but I need you to rescue me from burnt meatballs,

temper tantrums at the kitchen gate

and this chasm between experience

and words.

Poetry, I’ve taken advantage of your patience.

Will you have me back?

- Susan Austin

Competitions and an agent

2021 was a big year for me and poetry. Since my last blog update in October, I was delighted that two more poems from my verse novel Dancing with Empty Prams, submitted as one entry under the title “The intimacy of needles; the poise of liquid nitrogen” were Commended on Sunday in the Woorilla Poetry Prize 2021. Judge Nathan Curnow commented: “This is an honest account of IVF treatment. It’s a long journey of a couple who are yearning for pregnancy, who are managing amid expectation and exhaustion. It’s finely handled; it’s a sensitive piece about hope, patience, absence and anticipation.” You can listen to the comments and hear Nathan read the poems (from the 1:42:30 mark on the replay of the live-stream video of the award presentation below.) https://www.facebook.com/woorillapoetryprize/videos/195652459334347

 

In November I was excited to announce that I signed a contract with a literary agent, Fiona Johnson from Beyond Words Literary Agency, to guide my verse novel manuscript Dancing with Empty Prams out into the world. https://www.beyondwordsagency.com/

And I was happy to round out the year with the news that one of my poems, “and then I catch myself”, received a Special Mention in the 2021 Colin and Norma Knight Memorial Poetry Award competition facilitated by the Fellowship of Australian Writers Tasmania. Judge Karen Witek (Knight) commented that my poem had a “Great title, descriptive imagery, reminiscent of some of Whitman’s thought processes." She also wrote: "I liked how the writer took us into their private world of short term escapism, a walk through mindfulness, memories and beauty.”

Undertow price reduced! Now only $18 with free postage.

I had the pleasure of walking to South Cape Bay on the southern edge of Tasmania a few weekends ago (see photos below). It was our family's first overnight bush walk. As we were walking along the spectacular cliff tops beside the ocean, my husband said it made him think about my poetry book, Undertow. The cover photo on Undertow shows me sitting up on those cliffs looking out to the great Southern Ocean, when I last went walking there with my friend Jenny.

If you haven't yet read Undertow, now would be a great time to get a copy, because I've reduced the price to $18 and will post it for you for free. Just click on the PayPal Buy Now button on the right hand side of the main page of this blog, enter your details and I will get it in the mail for you. Or if you're using a phone, find the Buy Undertow option in the drop-down blog menu. Thanks for your support!

Prizes, buses, workshops, interviews and publications - what a week!

A lot has been happening for me in the writing space lately. The Poetry in Motion project chose one of my poems to go up on a bus in Hobart. The project involves displaying 40 different short, 3-lined poems on 40 different buses around Hobart. My poem was inspired by the Dark MOFO Winter Feast, when we were able to sit around fire-pits, enjoy an amazing variety of food and drink and be grateful we were not in lock-down like other states. Let me know if you have spotted it!

I also found out on the weekend that I won First Prize and a Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Tasmania 2021 Poetry Prize! Both poems come from my yet-to-be-published verse novel, Dancing with Empty Prams.

Here are the comments made in the judge's report about my poems:

First Prize:  Reproduction, the ocean’s arc

This poem is so sad, and fascinating in its twin unfurling narratives and undercurrents of distance and complex envy/love. Its metaphors are perfectly matched to the emotional tone, and the poem is deft in its craft and so crisply rendered that it offers a direct window into an otherwise deeply private experience.  

Highly Commended: The dance of infertility:  Deeply, precisely raw, with a vivid narrative. Both sections build to the emotional reveals of their endings.  

On Tuesday I ran some workshops for Mental Health Week on the topic of Creative Writing for Mental Wellbeing. 

I was interviewed by Ryk Goddard on ABC Hobart radio about these workshops and my writing. It was early in the morning, first day back after holidays, so I wasn't firing on all cylinders, but hopefully inspired some people to pick up a pen and write when they are feeling stressed, anxious or down! You can listen to my 9 minute interview here: ABC radio interview.

And lastly, I am excited to share a new poem of mine, 'Sonnet for Lost Lasts', which has been published in Communion Literary Journal along with Esther Ottaway's beautiful 'Sonnet for fifteen' and my response to it. Check it out here 

My review also includes a link to Esther's brilliant new collection which I highly recommend. 

Who's my favourite poet?

When I was interviewed by Cameron Hindrum on City Park Radio on 28^th March this year, as part of the final session of the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, he asked me two questions which had me a little stumped. “Who are your three favourite poets?” and “If you could sit down for a cup of tea and a chat with any poet in the world, living or dead, who would you like it to be?” 

It was at this point that I realised that my two favourite poets, Gina Mercer and Jane Williams, were both Tasmanian, and both easy to catch up with. Who else would make my favourite poet lists? Afterwards I thought about Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Ada Limon and Hollie McNish. Not to mention Maya Angelou – wouldn’t it be amazing to sit down with her? 

While I tend to read a fair bit of poetry from here, there and everywhere, I mostly collect books from Tasmanian authors who I know, or whose launches I attend. When I came home I looked through my poetry collection to see how weighted it was towards Tasmanian writers. It turns out I own books (sometimes several different titles) written by thirty-five Tasmanian poets as well as seven collected anthologies of Tasmanian poetry. Books by twenty-eight poets from other parts of Australia were sitting in my bookcase, thirteen were from other countries and there were twenty-seven miscellaneous anthologies occupying space on my shelf.  

We have such a rich community of poets here in Tasmania that I often feel like I don’t need to look too much further afield. But I am relishing snatches of time I have to focus on poetry this year and maybe by the end of the year I will be better able to answer Cameron’s questions. Narrowing the list of poets down to three is going to be very hard though.  

Who are your favourite poets?

Stocking up and mindful writing

A few months ago I stocked up on more copies of Undertow, as I had almost depleted my supply. I can easily pop one in the post if you want to order one through this blog site, using PayPal. 

I also shouted myself a new journal last week, and it's so beautiful I almost don't want to write in it! 

I ran a workshop for the Women's Poetry Oasis in May. I guided participants in mindful writing exercises, including ones that focused on tuning into our different senses. We wrote poems using our senses of smell and hearing. I explained how tuning into our senses can be a way of grounding ourselves in the here and now as well as finding new potential and stimuli for our writing. Participants came up with some fabulous work - on the spot - including some very funny pieces in response to the scent of an orange and the sound of birds. It's always surprising what is produced and where you end up when you gather a group of poets together in one room.