Chatting with poet, rapper and Invisible Thread author Omar Musa was ridiculously enjoyable. Omar is passionate, sometimes controversial, and always candid. During the interview he had his say on everything from artists leaving Canberra and then disowning their hometown to why (and how) he wants to dispel the myth that poetry is boring and irrelevant.
At the time of filming, Omar was about to head off to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival to sit on a panel that included four women — most notably Germaine Greer — reading from their favourite poets. Surprisingly, Omar was the only panellist to choose a female writer. Chatting after the cameras were switched off, he worried that it would appear deliberate, when in fact the poet he had chosen, Anne Sexton, is one of his all-time favourites.
You can hear him talk about Sexton’s influence on his writing in our interview, and a lot more besides. Keep watching until the end or you’ll miss Omar performing his poem (evidence of why he won the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam and how he could turn even the most reluctant reader on to poetry). Enjoy.
I meet Jackie French at Floriade on Gnome Hill, a grassy area peppered with a collection of porcelain gnomes. We walk across to a quieter spot beside a stream. She has come from giving a ‘Gourmet Garden’ presentation where she has managed to splatter herself with soup. ‘I never wear an apron at home,’ she tells me, but using unfamiliar equipment she has managed to make a mess of herself. Not that the evidence remains.
A bestselling author of children’s and young adult books, Jackie is also well-known for her books on gardening and cooking. She has published over 140 books in all, but today we are talking about Hitler’s Daughter, which is extracted in The Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of writing from the Canberra region. On a gloriously sunny day we speak about Hitler and the nature of evil. One of the troubling questions Jackie poses her readers is: when you’re a fourteen year old surrounded by evil, how do you know it’s wrong?
It’s the first time I’ve filmed an interview outdoors and this location presents multiple challenges. Before Jackie arrives, the cameraman, Dylan, tells me about the times he has filmed outdoors, entertaining me with stories of disaster, of intrusive drunks and unrelenting rain and teens desperate to get on camera at any cost. For us it turns out to be the buskers.
We find a spot under a pair of willows away from the streams of people. Halfway through setting up the camera equipment we realise that a lady with pigtails and a pink tutu is preparing for a show just metres away. There appear to be fire clubs and ladders and head mics involved. ‘This is our spot,’ she tells me. On we move.
Finding a location with a suitable backdrop that doesn’t intersect a walkway and isn’t overwhelmed by the pop music pumping from the main stage proves to be a challenge, but we succeed in the end. Setting up in our new location a dozen magpies decide we must be picnicking and strut boldly about our feet. When Jackie arrives Dylan mics us up and we perch on chairs that I’ve lugged from the car park, across the bridge, and through fields of flowers (next day I will feel as if I’ve been punched in the crook of both elbows).
Interviewing Jackie French it is immediately evident that she is a born storyteller. Every time I ask her a question she doesn’t give me an answer, she tells me a story. When she responds to my first question she touches on multiple areas that I intended to ask her about. ‘You were almost redundant!’ Dylan says to me afterwards. ‘She was amazing.’
Despite her natural gift, Jackie tells me that ‘parents, teachers and guidance counsellors always pushed me away from writing. They always said no one in Australia can make a living being an author — do something else when you leave school. But every daydream, every time I envisaged myself as an adult it was as a writer.’ Jackie pursued a ‘sensible career’ and writing became a ‘private, guilty indulgence’ until one day money forced her hand. Her marriage had broken down and she was living in a shed in the bush with a brown snake, a wallaby and a wombat for company. She needed $106.46 to register her car and only had $72 in the bank. A friend, knowing she was an amateur writer, suggested she write for money.
Using an old typewriter that she found at the dump, Jackie wrote her first manuscript. She submitted it to Angus & Robertson but it was so messy and riddled with errors that it was pulled from the pile and flapped about the office with laughter. They read it aloud, expecting it to be hilariously awful. Three weeks later she had her first publishing deal.
I won’t rehash the interview here since you can watch that for yourself, but after the cameras are switched off we continue chatting. Jackie asks me about what I’m working on next and I tell her about my debut novel, which I have just finished, and my kids’ book, Megumi and the Bear, out next year with Walker Books. She offers all manner of invaluable advice. I feel as if I could chat to her all day, but eventually we part and I am left with the impression that Jackie French is possibly the most natural storyteller I have ever met.
A version of this post was first published on Kids Book Reviewhere.
If this arrived on your doorstep would you feel terrified? Because I did. Terrified and excited all at once. Why? Because I knew what was inside that little parcel sitting innocuously on my doorstep. Advance copies of The Invisible Thread.
Inside I place the parcel carefully on the dining room table. I pick up the scissors, and cut.
The first emotion I feel when I open it is a little bit relieved. The cover looks just as I imagined it would from the proofs, better even. The texture of Judy Horacek’s illustration invites touch. And I do, holding it in my hands like some foolish, lovesick teen.
Then I feel a little bit proud. Of all the unseen work that has gone into this book. The days, nights, weekends I’ve invested in it, sometimes even working in my sleep. And all the others (so many of them) who’ve worked in different ways to transform this book from a bold idea into a tangible object with that delicious new book smell.
And right now I’m trying not to feel a little bit trepidatious. Because copies will soon be boxed up and delivered to bookstores around the country, sent out for review. Come 22 October this anthology will be public property. In the meantime I’m trying to enjoy this private moment. To simply feel grateful that I’ve been part of such an incredible project.
There is a myth that nothing happens in Canberra and, I must confess, sixteen years ago when I arrived here I credited that myth.
My first memory is of driving along Northbourne Ave, past Civic. ‘That’s the city,’ my brother thumbed. I looked out of the window and experienced mild panic. Where? I thought. I can’t see anything. I grew up in Melbourne but had spent the last three years in England, a cramp of a country with a leaden sky that had pressed against me for far too long. My arrival in Canberra marked a blue sky soar of a day. The sun tap danced, the woolly hills unfurled gracefully. And there was so much space; something I had been craving. Yet I wanted more from a city than what appeared to be a bunch of blank-faced office blocks, a centre that blurred past in a matter of mere seconds. I wanted vibrancy and art and boldness. This place looked bland and lifeless.
I was soon to discover that Canberra is adept at trickery. On the surface it can appear to be one way, but look a little closer, delve a little deeper, and something entirely different is revealed. Canberra is anything but boring. It is a place of ideas and imagination and experimentation. In 1999, I started working for Muse, then Canberra’s monthly arts magazine, and by 2001 I was its editor. I was out most nights of the week soaking up all the arts and cultural practice that this city had to offer and I couldn’t possibly get to every theatre show or exhibition or book launch. Canberra was, and still is, a richly creative city.
I left Muse long ago and the magazine has since folded, but now I find myself once again inviting readers to experience the diversity of artistic practice that comes from our region, this time through The Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of Canberra writing.
In 2009, both Melbourne and Brisbane produced anthologies of work from their cities. At the time I was talking with Anne-Maree Britton, then director of the ACT Writers Centre, about how Canberra really needed an anthology of its own. For its small population Canberra punches above its literary weight and yet so often our city flies under the radar. It was time we did something about it.
A few days later I happened to receive some promotional information about Canberra’s 2013 centenary celebrations. The timing couldn’t have been better; the centenary offered the perfect opportunity to make an anthology happen. An advisory committee of local authors (Marion Halligan, Alan Gould and Adrian Caesar) and literary experts was assembled. Halstead Press came on board, and we secured funding from the ACT Government and the Centenary of Canberra. Everything began to roll from there. The committee spent one year reading through the work of over 150 writers to create a shortlist from which I made final selections. The Invisible Thread, is different in both purpose
and scope to the Brisbane and Melbourne anthologies. It includes fiction, nonfiction and poetry, giving readers a taste of the diversity of work to emerge from the region during the last 100 years. Writers such as AD Hope, Roger McDonald, Bill Gammage, Judith Wright, Kevin Gilbert, David Campbell, Jackie French, Humphrey McQueen, Jack Heath, Rosemary Dobson, Clive Hamilton, Manning Clark, Omar Musa, Marion Halligan, Alex Miller, Les Murray, Kate Grenville and Garth Nix. The list goes on and on.
After years of work the anthology is now ready to emerge. As I write this the book has been typeset and the cover design is underway. The Invisible Thread will be in bookshops in October and will be launched at the National Library in November as part of the National Year of Reading’s Legacy event. It’s exciting times.
And yet we still have one hurdle to get over. We are short of funds to cover the final portion of printing costs and pay authors for appearances at our scheduled events. Last month we launched a fundraising campaign via crowd-funding site, Pozible. We’ve already raised over $4000 of our $5000 target and we have until 9 September to secure the remainder. The way Pozible works is that if the target isn’t reached by the campaign’s end none of the donations are processed and we don’t receive a cent. But the great thing about Pozible is that it’s not all one-way. There are rewards on offer for those who donate, including advance copies of The Invisible Thread and VIP invitations to Woven Words, an event featuring acclaimed authors Alex Miller, Alan Gould and Sara Dowse, alongside music from the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. So if you value literature and reading please support our Pozible campaign and help us get the word out to the nation about how fabulous Canberra really is.
Today is Red Nose Day, a day to raise funds to help to save the lives of babies and support bereaved families of miscarriage, neonatal and infant death. So it seems like an appropriate moment to reflect on how The Sound of Silence, a collection of women’s stories about miscarriage, has been received. It was published nine months ago (I’m sure you see the irony) and the response has been everything we hoped it would be and more.
Editing this book was an emotional experience and the launches in Canberra and Melbourne were unlike any others I have attended. At both of them strangers — women and men, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and sisters — came up to me to tell me their intensely personal stories of loss, the reasons why they had come to these launches to buy this book.
Since then I have received many emails from readers thanking me for the anthology and telling me how it has helped them. These messages have been humbling. Like this one from Charmian:
I have just sat and read this book from cover to cover! As a mum of two (six, including my angel babies) these stories touched my heart and soul in a way that no other books about pregnancy loss have. I experienced miscarriages when none in my circle of friends had, and felt alone as I waded through loss and grief. The final three miscarriages were particularly hard, given they all occurred in seven months. We have not gone on to have more babies, and I still feel my family is not quite complete. Thanks again for this wonderful resource.
I have just finished reading The Sound of Silence. I must admit it sat on my bedside table for a couple of days before I found the courage to open it. I was anxious about the emotions it might stir up within me. It is a brilliant book, it allowed me to realise I am not alone in my grief and the feelings experienced are so normal.
One of my regrets is that despite our best efforts to encourage submissions from men we did not receive any. Men are often forgotten in the grief of miscarriage, so I was disappointed that we weren’t able to represent their stories and perspectives. It was, however, heartening to receive emails from men, like this one:
Thank you for publishing The Sound of Silence. While it is mostly written for females, it is also an excellent book for (potential) fathers to read as well — some of them also experience similar emotional symptoms when their partner miscarries 🙁
When I wrote a post for Mamamia about the anthology and my own miscarriage it received an overwhelming number of comments. There are so many women and men out there who need to talk about their experiences. Today I’m remembering Rafael, the baby I miscarried at twelve weeks. I no longer feel sad about his loss, but blessed that he was, and is still, a part of our family. I am also thankful for the three beautiful children I was able to bring into this world, and conscious that there are many couples who are not so fortunate. These stories are the ones that break my heart the most.
At the Melbourne launch a woman told me about her daughter who she has watched go through seven pregnancies, none of which have made it to term. As she told me this story, and the emotional toll it has taken on them all, she wept for her daughter and her lost grandbabies. Her story is one of many. If you know someone who has had a miscarriage, who may still be struggling through grief, today is the day to reach out. All it takes is a simple ‘How are you?’ and the willingness to listen.
Chatting with poet, rapper and Invisible Thread author Omar Musa was ridiculously enjoyable. Omar is passionate, sometimes controversial, and always candid. During the interview he had his say on everything from artists leaving Canberra and then disowning their hometown to why (and how) he wants to dispel the myth that poetry is boring and irrelevant.
