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

Undertow launch speech by Gina Mercer

Launch speech by Gina Mercer

Launch Speech!

From: http://walleahpress.com.au/LaunchAustin.html

(Also go here for some great photos of the launch by Ralph Wessman:  http://walleahpress.com.au/Susan1.html

GINA MERCER

Launch speech: Susan Austin's 'Undertow'

HOBART BOOK SHOP, 5.30 pm, OCTOBER 11, 2012

I want to start with two toasts (while you still have wine in your glass). First to Janet and Christopher for creating this haven for book-lovers, they’ve made such a wonderful space in which to celebrate the birth of Susan’s first book. To Janet and Christopher. Second to Ralph for his exciting publishing program at Walleah Press. It is such a boon to all of us, that Ralph is dedicating so much energy to bringing out books like Susan’s. I have a bit of an idea about the amount of work that goes into producing a book. How many have you produced this year, Ralph? Around 10 in 12 months, is that right? That’s an amazing achievement. If the government hasn’t already slashed the award, I think we should all join together to nominate Ralph as a National Living Treasure. Don’t you agree? To Ralph.

Now to talk about, and toast, this marvellous book, Undertow. Rereading it for the 4th or 5th time in preparation for tonight, I understood something vital. Susan Austin is a dancer. Her biographical note declares her to be an occupational therapist and an eco-socialist activist… but truly she is a dancer. This collection of poetry is actually a dance performance. In this book Susan performs dance after dazzling dance. Hers is a delicious and potent performance: deft, precise, sensuous and elegant.
The topics Susan writes about are engaging, serious, insightful, funny. She ranges from: the beginning of a new relationship; to the grief she describes on the death of a mother; to the inescapable guilt one feels as a first world traveller in a developing country. Want to read one of her poems: read ‘When dreams run ahead’.

When dreams run ahead

From one date and three text messages
I imagined a whole relationship …
us in a warm bath, legs entwined,
on a holiday in France, maybe
visiting your sister and her kids.

From one date and three text messages,
I knew we were compatible,
pictured drinking with your friends,
being driven to the movies,
you beside me
not nervous.

In one date and three text messages
I discovered real intimacy,
saw us exchange gifts at Christmas,
sip red wine on the sofa,
slide under the duvet on my bed.
One
date
and
three
text
messages.
It took a while to get over,
that whole relationship.
 

Lovely, dry wit here, isn’t there? We can all relate to the topic of the ludicrous fantasies we run in our heads when we meet someone new. It’s easy to connect with this poem, it’s accessible, familiar. It makes us smile and reflect wryly on our recurrent foibles. It makes its observations and its point in a pleasurable way. But how does the dancer achieve that, achieve a performance of that calibre in just 24 lines? Too often as readers and critics we focus on the content of a poem without looking at how the poem is working, how it is crafted. We stay with the simple (and sometimes simplistic) question of ‘What is the poem about?’ without going further to ask questions about how the poem works in and on us.

This interests me for two reasons. Firstly, I’m intrigued by our capacity to split the poetic performance so neatly into questions of content, arbitrarily separating that aspect from questions of technique and form. For a poem to be successful we know both aspects must work together. Just look for example at the clever way Susan uses repetition here. She seamlessly analyses the true nature of fantasies: how they recur and persist (on the flimsiest of evidence ie: ‘one date and three text messages’). She does this through her deft deployment of that simple technique: repetition. This synergy of technique and content is what makes a poem lift from the page, gives it the power to transform.

When we watch a dance performance, we don’t do this splitting so readily, do we? We may be moved by a dance performance, but we are also continuously conscious of the skill of the dancers as they perform those moves which transform and move us. Is it the presence of the dancer’s body which forces us to attend to the matter of skill at the same time as we immerse ourselves in the emotional experience?

The second reason I’m interested in this capacity is because after decades of reading reviews and literary criticism, I’ve observed that there’s something going on here. It has to do with the body of the poet. In the majority of cases where critics review the work of a woman poet, they will comment at length (and sometimes exclusively) on questions of content. Only rarely do women poets have their technique, their craft, discussed by reviewers and critics. The splitting of these two aspects of poetry is much more marked when women poets are the subject. That interests me enormously.
 

So, now I’m going to speak a little about Susan’s skill as a poet, to discuss how she dances us to different realms, makes us laugh, makes us reflect. How does she do that? Let’s look at the poem I read earlier. First, let’s admire her succinctness. This is a vital aspect of poetry: to say and do a lot in very few words. Whenever I teach poetry, this is one of the tasks with which students grapple hardest. The tendency to prose is very strong. Susan’s dancing poems show us how it is done. Her economy with words is remarkable. Her word choice is careful, precise. Like a dancer spinning on point, she balances and pivots without appearing to move a muscle. There is no strain or groan of effort here. But look carefully at each of her poems and you will see the skill that has gone into making them so deft and apparently effortless.

This is why I used the word elegance earlier. Dancers take our breath away as they leap and pirouette across a stage. When you read Susan’s book, Undertow, allow yourself to be immersed in and transformed by the complex ideas, the wit, the intelligence and emotion of each poem. Do that by all means. But don’t forget to also draw in a breath of admiration for her remarkable dexterity as a wordsmith. Take note of the brilliance of her dancing performance, her subtle images, her sustained metaphors. She may make it look easy but that is the mark of the true dancer, the true crafts woman.

I want to finish by reading a poem which could be set in this very room: ‘Bookshop capers’.         

Bookshop capers at night, behind locked bookshop doors
words sneak from their pages to mix with others

the aisles host a disco of ideas …
elegies hobnob with cocktail recipes

clever sonnets disband, mingle
and reform into villanelles

a pantoum shakes her booty beside self-help clichés
busy tending to each other

vulnerable haiku rush to adopt more words
free verse cruises, chatting up abandoned rhymes

heroic couplets leap from shelf to shelf
idylls cower in their archaic clothes and venture nowhere

rap practises its rhythm as loud as permitted
without waking up Your First Baby

ballads can-can all over the place trying to
jingle everything into a logical tale

as the night goes on, limericks attract all sorts
to their stand-up sessions at the back

while the dictionaries and thesauruses
quietly make out in the corner.

See how Susan takes a simple conceit and dances it across the stage, the page, to make us laugh and reflect and delight in her supple mind? Many poets resist the impulse to write humorous poetry. They worry that it will make them seem less serious or somehow lightweight. But Susan is a serious and confident poet, one who knows that the dynamic quality of lightness is at the heart of the dance. She writes poetry that is as elegant and agile as ballet, as erotic as belly-dance, as strong and gutsy as stomp dancing. Please join me in toasting the dazzling performance that is this book, Undertow. To Susan, the dancer.

---

Gina Mercer has taught creative writing and literature in universities and communities for over 20 years. She was editor of the Australian literary magazine, Island, from 2006-2010. She has published four collections of poetry: The Ocean in the Kitchen (Five Islands Press, 1999); Night Breathing (Picaro Press, 2006); Handfeeding the Crocodile (Pardalote Press, 2007); andSeasoned with Honey (with 3 other women poets, Walleah Press, 2008). She has published a novel, Parachute Silk (Spinifex Press, 2001) plus two academic books, one of which was a critical analysis of NZ writer Janet Frame: Subversive Fictions (UQP, 1994).

 

 

Video of my Undertow launch speech

 

 

11th October 2012, Hobart Bookshop