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.
The Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of writing from the Canberra region, will hit bookshop shelves on 22 October. In the meantime I’ve been very busy working with a filmmaker on a series of interviews with the authors. Today the very first of them has been launched. Chatting with Bill Gammage, one of Australia’s most eminent historians, was such a delight. Just back from a trip to Europe he was still suffering from jet lag, not that it was possible to tell. Listening to him talk was fascinating.
While we were setting up the cameras and doing sound checks he revealed that he tells his PhD students not to take longer than three years to complete their theses even though The Biggest Estate on Earth took him 12 years. ‘I tell them to ignore my example,’ he said with a smile.
Those 12 years certainly paid off. The Biggest Estate on Earth is a groundbreaking work, one that should be prescribed reading for all Australians. While overseas he received notification that he’d won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History, the richest literary prize our country has to offer. Other awards have since followed, and no doubt there’ll be more. They are all well deserved.
An extract from The Biggest Estate is included in The Invisible Thread, and I spoke with Bill about his book, why our current land management strategies are inept, and why he hopes his book will increase respect for Aboriginal achievements.
Crowd-funding is the new big thing, and it’s raising big bucks. Not surprisingly, the notoriously under-resourced arts sector has been quick to recognise the opportunities it offers to access a new kind of funding. Pozible, Australia’s largest crowd-funding platform, has only been going since 2010 but it has already supported over 1300 projects and raised over $2.5 million dollars in funding.
So how does it work? Individuals or organisations post a project on their website, set a target and a deadline, and then hit social media calling for donations. Here’s the catch. If the target isn’t reached by the campaign’s end none of the donations are processed and the organisation doesn’t receive a cent. So setting realistic goals is important.
The Queensland Literary Awards is one example of a successful Pozible campaign. When Premier Campbell Newman cut the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards in order to save the comparatively small sum of $240,000, the literary community was stunned. In response, a passionate group of writers launched a Pozible campaign to enable the awards to continue, albeit with reduced prize money. The public have enthusiastically supported their campaign and with just days left to go they have already exceeded their $20,000 target by over $8000.
Further afield, one campaign that is looking less likely of meeting its goal is St. Mark’s Bookstore in New York City. They are aiming to raise $23,000 via crowd-funding site Lucky Ant. It’s tough times for bookshops and in order to survive St. Mark’s needs funds to relocate their store and develop a more sophisticated online presence. As I write this they have only a week to go and are still short by $8000. St. Mark’s is an iconic bookstore and we need to prevent these havens of bookish goodness from disappearing, so fingers crossed there’s a late rush and they meet their goal.
Meanwhile I’m concentrating on our own Pozible campaign to raise funds for The Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of writing by authors who have a connection with Canberra, edited by yours truly. The book has already received support from the ACT Government, Centenary of Canberra and National Year of Reading, among others, but we are still short of funds to cover printing costs and pay authors for appearances at our scheduled events. We’re hoping that we follow in the Queensland Literary Awards’ successful footsteps. At just $5000 we think we’ve set a realistic goal. We have already raised over $3000, and with 31 days to go we’re quietly hopeful. 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, a forthcoming event of words and music with readings from our authors and music from the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.
So head on over to Pozible and check out all the wonderful projects that you can help make a reality. There are feature films and exhibitions and debut EPs to support. Oh, and a little book called The Invisible Thread. Supporting that one would make a certain person very happy indeed.
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.
