Salmon ponds

After sharing some of my recent poems about parenting with a fellow poet of mine, she said she was surprised at the tone and content of them, that the photos I posted on Facebook gave off a lovely, smiling, happy impression of our lives and she would never have guessed I was finding motherhood challenging. I laughed and then shared the following poem that I had written about the difference between a photo on Facebook and the underlying experience. Facebook is a strange, complicated thing and I won't launch into a discussion about it here, but I thought I would share that poem. When I read it at the Seasonal Poets event a few people came up to me afterwards and told me they could relate :-) 

Salmon Ponds

gorgeous sibling Facebook photos

matching navy track pants,

one with pink beanie and pom-pom on top, one with white wispy hair

arm around the other’s shoulders, looking at the camera, smiling cutely

it was freezing

my hands turned to ice in ten minutes

it was day eight of husband being away for work

it was an outing planned for the sanity-salvaging forty-five minute drive there and back

it was the morning after being up through the night with toddler teething troubles,

woken early by daughter with phantom wet undies

it was after toy pram fights and three time-outs before packing the bag

on the way there, after wrestling son into seat with some force,

after stopping numerous times to cajole him to put arms back in straps,

after he removed shoes and socks which had been a struggle to put on,

after he ripped a page out of my favourite childhood book,

it was pointing out cows and swans,

explaining paper mills and singing along as the frog jumped out of the pond

on the way home it was relieved silence as they both slept and I wondered

how to resuscitate my mood, where to suture my patience,

how a simple outing could have been so onerous.

it was only the small things,

the fights over fish feed,

pellets flung to the ground as one snatched a cup from the other,

the anxiety of watching a toddler saunter close to the edge

the slow-motion response to my “Look! A fish jumped!”

“Look! A fish swimming, see its colourful tail swishing!”

my pointing and exclaiming

which failed to assist them to ever spot the fish

the fact that neither ate their treat – maple syrup pancakes –

so I ate them all and felt sick and bulky,

that son started pulling apart the already-ripped back of his highchair

and wouldn’t desist,

that he cried out repeatedly to be let down when I was still sipping my tea,

that they took turns banging their spoons on the table,

the trip to the loo with me wrestling him away from bin, toilet paper, tap, soap,

grabbing him up as he commando-crawled across the dirty floor to evade me,

the second trip to the loo thirty minutes later which resulted in no more three-year-old wee

just more two-year-old wrestling

the fights over sandwiches, drink bottles

the leisurely walk along the creek where I was hoping

to stretch my legs, get a slight pace going to warm up,

but where I had to stop every metre

because son refused to sit in pram,

wouldn’t walk in the right direction

or actually follow any instructions to leave the gate open /

don’t climb through the creek fence / hurry up

and daughter refused to hop out when I did finally convince son to hop in.

It’s just little things, over-reactions,

inflated expectations, taking things too seriously,

but look, here are my adorable children

smiling sweetly at the camera, her arm around his shoulders

beside the glistening pond –

(at least I got a good photo)

imagine if you will, the lovely time we had.

I'm still here!

Wow where has time gone over the last four years? I’ve now got a four-and-a-half year old daughter and a son who is turning three next week, I guess that’s where the time has gone! It’s also been buried by mountains of colds, flus and bugs that seem to chase little children and their families around relentlessly. I’ve written a poem about what I’ve been doing, called “Have you been doing any writing?” and it was chosen by the Communion Literary Journal and included in Volume 6, December 2016. You can find it here, if you scroll down past my “interview”. https://walleahpress.com.au/communion6-Susan-Austin.html

I really enjoyed being a featured reader at the Seasonal Poets event at Hadley’s Hotel in May this year, alongside Gina Mercer and Ben Walter. It was good to present some new work and get some positive feedback on it from members of the audience, and it was special to share the stage with two people who I very much admire and who have helped me enormously on my poetry journey. It was great to hear that this fantastic quarterly event is going to continue despite the loss of Tasmanian Writers Centre funding. Hopefully as the kids are getting older and my husband is travelling less often for work, I might be able to get along to more of them!  

I’m also happy to have joined a new poetry workshopping group and am finding the monthly meetings very inspiring and productive. Hopefully I’ll be able to devote more time to poetry and post more often as the intensity of the early years of raising small children begins to lighten a little.

Beaconsfield Festival of Golden Words

On the weekend I attended the first Beaconsfield Festival of Golden Words (in Northern Tasmania) as a guest poet. It was a great writer’s festival – well organised and with lots of interesting sessions. I loved the fact that most of it was free, thus enabling anyone to attend. It was also good to go somewhere different and to support the local economy in a struggling area, although not really that practical as there wasn’t much accommodation around and we stayed half an hour’s drive away – making the logistics a bit challenging for my partner to look after our 6 month old baby in between breastfeeds (not a common issue for attendees I suppose!)

I was a little disappointed that there was only one panel on poetry in the main program, out of about 32 sessions. Although there were also two poets’ breakfasts, they were at 7:30am in the morning on Saturday and Sunday, a bit of an ask for people staying a distance away to get to. Also they were at a café with only limited seating, whereas the non-poetry events were held in big marquees. Is the marginalisation of poetry at these events because poetry isn’t that appealing to people or do the organisers underestimate the interest that there might be, were the events to be included in the main program? It was an issue with the Tasmanian Writer’s Festival last year too I felt. But as this was only my second writers’ festival (aside from the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, where there is a feast of poetry on offer and no marginalisation to be had!) I don’t know if this is a trend.

Anyway, I enjoyed the poet’s breakfast (and was sad to miss the Saturday one). Cameron Hindrum did a fab job at organising and MC'ing as usual and I got some nice feedback on the poems that I read, including the new one I wrote about baby-gazing. Ben Walter and Gina Mercer’s poetry was excellent as always, and it was great to experience the quirky and energetic poetry of ‘Fakington Wilde’ for the first time – I loved his poems about money, about the girl and dog on the scanner ads and mobile phone culture. I bought his new book even though the title (Space travel for idiots) and the cover (fried eggs and bacon) were not appealing!

I enjoyed the other sessions I was able to get to. I saw most of the ‘Poets do it differently” session with Tim Thorne, Sherryl Clark and Cameron Hindrum. This inspired me to read more verse novels and look up some of their favourite poets which were mentioned.  

‘The Author-Editor Relationship’ session was interesting. Apparently editors are underpaid and under-recognised for the work they do. I’ve been interested in learning more about editing and so was pleased to hear them explain about the different aspects of it, like development editing, structural editing and line editing. Picking up subtle repetitions of words or phrases, slightly incongruous pace changes and other issues throughout a manuscript would take some practice and training, and a bit of an obsessional personality. It seems like some authors have great communication and trusting relationships with their editors whereas others run into conflicts and issues.

I saw a bit of ‘Tasmania – the tipping point’ with Rodney Croome etc, although having read the Griffith Review book, didn’t pick up much that was new.

I saw half of Alex Miller’s interview. He came across as a very interesting person. I was impressed with his courage in giving up his career to become a full-time novelist, basically becoming as he termed ‘unemployable’ by letting his resume take a dive into piecemeal unskilled evening work so he could write during the daytime, not knowing if he would succeed or not. His books usually take years to write although the last one just took 10 weeks. He doesn’t sketch out a whole plot or anything beforehand, but sees where the characters and the story take him as he goes along.

I really enjoyed the session ‘The Internet is your friend – I think’ with Wendy Harmer, Danielle Wood, Matthew Lamb Sherryl Clark and the chair, Tristan Banks, who did a fantastic job. The pros and cons of web technology were discussed with lots of humour and energy from the panel. Basically it can be very useful to writers when it comes to research and marketing and interacting with readers etc but it can also be overwhelming and a major procrastination problem. It sounds like managing the news blogsite ‘The Hoopla’ is loads of work (and it sounds interesting – wish I had more time to read blogs and online news/discussion sites).

I saw a little bit of Philip Nitschke’s interview, when he encouraged everyone in their later years to go and get themselves some of the euthanasia drug before they get into a situation where they need a loved one to get it, thereby putting the loved one at risk of prosecution after the act. He spoke about having to help someone die and how harrowing that was the first time. He talked about the trouble with developing criteria for who should be able to access euthanasia and how if someone was making an informed, rational decision to die (like the woman who was adamant she wanted to kill herself when she was 80 and the woman who wanted to die when her husband did), then they should be allowed to. As a mental health professional who has spent a lot of time trying to prevent people from suiciding, I found this kind of argument very confronting.

I don’t have much to say about the ‘Why Tragedy Attracts Us’ session with Hannah Kent, Rohan Wilson and Poppy Gee. I have read Rohan’s book (and been on a panel with him before, therefore have heard him speak about his book before) and am interested to read Hannah and Poppy’s books.

‘Our Black Past – Aboriginal stories that had to be told’ was interesting. Dr Kristyn Harman spoke about her book which looked at the way some Aboriginals, Maoris and native South Africans got trapped in the convict system. She said that Aboriginal convicts often suffered and died quickly after being imprisoned, so much so that in the 1800s there was a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in custody which recommended that they be released as soon as they showed signs of being sick. Also interesting was the discussion by Henry Reynolds about how preposterous it was that so much commemoration goes on in Tasmania about the Boer War but officials do not recognise the war that went on between the white invaders and Aboriginal peoples. Professor Peter Stanley explained that he had tried to get the National War Memorial to acknowledge these wars but because they did not involve official Australian soldiers, they refused. Discussion included teasing out the issues around why there is so little acknowledgment of these wars, and one main reason is that this would mean highlighting the fact that Aboriginal people never gave up their sovereignty and a proper treaty is needed.

Well, that summarises the main things I got out of the weekend. It was great to have some time to consider some big issues, see some famous authors, mix with some lovely poets, see somewhere different, and what’s more, baby Kate slept all the way there in the car and almost all the way home!

Thanks to Session for the pic.

Poets and Painters

I was privileged to be invited to take part in a fantastic exhibition which paired 32 poets and 32 painters together to create art and poetry. The works were displayed at the Bett Gallery in North Hobart for a few weeks in August. The launch was a memorable event - the little gallery was heaving with people who squeezed inside and spilled out onto the pavement on a cold and rainy winter's night, and the power went off for ages (as it did for the whole block) so people were using their phones as torches to look at the works and most of the speeches and poetry readings were held in the light of a couple of battery-powered lamps. I was paired with the talented painter Amanda Davies, who ended up creating a vibrant work using colour panels to reflect the emotions and images in my latest collection of poems.

You can read a review of the exhibition (which kindly mentions me) by Adonis Storr on the IslandMag.com here: Poets and painters

and you can see the artwork by Amanda Davies here: Amanda Davies and the poem I wrote which accompanies it here: Things that make me happy

Rochford Street Review reviews Undertow

You can read the review of Undertow by Lisa Wardle here: Something for everyone: Lisa Wardle review ‘Undertow’ by Susan Austin

An Interview via a Facebook daisychain

This post continues a project commenced by poet Ivy Alvarez, whereby writers are tagged to answer questions, as below, about their current or next writing project. I’ve been invited to participate by fellow Tasmanian poet Cameron Hindrum. I’ll contact four of my literary fellow travellers and ask them to continue the ‘dasiychain’.

What is the title of your book?

Undertow

What genre does your book full under?

Poetry.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

It’s a collection of poems inspired by my travels, my relationships, my work and my glimpses into the poignant moments and deep emotional undercurrents of other people’s lives.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

After I filled up a 220-page exercise book with poems written from between the ages of eight and twenty-five and had numerous poems published in journals and other publications, I started to believe that I might be able to see my own poetry book published one day. When I carefully put together a collection of my favourite and most polished poems, and sent them off to the IP Picks competition and received a commendation and some great feedback, I knew it was a project that was worth pursuing.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The poems were mostly written over the last ten years, so I guess you could say it took a long time! And each poem had generally been edited many times by myself, then work-shopped with my poetry group or in a poetry course. Gina Mercer was kind enough to work with me on some final polishing of many of the individual poems as well as refining the collection as a whole. We worked together over a two-month period and Gina was particularly helpful when it came to sequencing the poems so that there was a somewhat cohesive flow throughout the manuscript.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

People. The book is largely about people and how they relate to each other. How they flirt, play, yearn, disappoint, hurt, love, miss and grieve for each other. I’ve always experienced emotions very intensely and found poetry to be an essential way of processing life. The book is inspired by challenges and events in my own life as well as in the lives of others. If you asked me to choose between writing a poem about a blue fairy wren or a poem about how someone feels when they are being driven home by their drunk boyfriend, it’s an easy choice for me. Maybe it’s because I work as a therapist and deal with human emotions and behaviours all the time or maybe I just gravitated towards that work because I find people so fascinating. Even the travel poems in the book are about the ways that the traveler interacts with local inhabitants of the places they visit, rather than being about the places themselves.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Ralph Wessman has kindly taken the plunge and published Undertow as part of his impressive Walleah Press catalogue. Since I moved to Tasmania and started getting involved in the literary scene down here, Ralph has been a great supporter of my work, particularly through his previous project, Famous Reporter. He has helped me bridge the divide between being an ‘emerging’ poet and a published author. Although maybe I’m still ‘emerging’ – I feel like I have a bit of work to do to reach audiences and readers on the other side of the Bass Strait.

What other books would you compare this book to in your genre?

This is a hard question for me to answer! As I have only just had my first book published I don’t feel as though I can compare my book to those of the more established poets whom I admire. What I can say is that I really enjoy the poignancy, fluency and character/ emotional depth in books like Jane Williams’ City of Possibilities, Gina Mercer’s Handfeeding the Crocodile, Louise Oxley’s Sitting with Cezanne and Liz Winfield’s Too Much Happens.

What actors would you choose to play the characters in a movie rendition?

I think there would need to be a lot of actors as there are a lot of characters in my book! Although I wouldn’t complain if Nicole Kidman and Orlando Bloom turned up on set to play some of the key ones J   

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I have had stacks of positive feedback from people who have bought and read Undertow, with quite a few contacting me to order another more copies for their friends, so that bodes well … and I was chuffed with the review by Lucy Alexander in Verity La http://verityla.com/deftly-anchored-in-experience-susan-austins-undertow/ People have said that my book is easy to read and makes writing poetry look easy, which suits me just fine as I don’t like clunky, obscure poetry that mystifies the reader. People don’t need to know how many hours were spent slaving over each word, line or stanza to create that impression J

Note: Cameron Hindrum's answers can be found on his blog at: www.brokenfrog.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/the-next-big-thing/

Undertow reviewed in Verity La

The first official review of my book, by Lucy Alexander, has been published in the online literary journal Verity La! 

http://verityla.com/deftly-anchored-in-experience-susan-austins-undertow/

Read the review here