Archive | Capital Files RSS feed for this section

UNEXPECTED GIFTS: Verity La interviews Irma Gold

10 Dec

The last time Verity La chatted to Irma Gold, in July this year, her collection Two Steps Forward was almost but not quite published.  Back then, she said, ‘Writing is such an isolated process that small comments can take on exaggerated importance. There is a kind of vulnerability – a sense of exposure – that comes with publishing work and opening it up for critique. It’s nerve-racking. I was recently speaking with a writer who has published more than 20 books and has another about to come out. I was heartened that for all her experience, she too felt nervous about how it would be received.’  We’re glad to report that Two Steps Forward has been very well received indeed, by critics and readers alike – go on, put it in someone’s Christmas stocking and make their day.  But how does Irma think the collection is going?  More importantly, how is she?

Nigel Featherstone: Congratulations on your collection Two Steps Forward, which has been published by Affirm Press as part of the Long Story Shorts series, and reviewed here at Verity La. It’s your debut publication, and you’ve been working on these stories for many years, sending them out, having them published, including in journals like Meanjin, Island and Going Down Swinging. You told me recently that you wanted to wait until you found the best possible publisher. What’s it like having these stories bound together at last and put out there for all to read? And what did you mean by ‘waiting around for the best possible publisher’?

Irma Gold: It’s a very personal experience having a book released into the world. Fortunately the response to Two Steps Forward has been very generous and affirming.  It’s been awkwardly lovely having people talking to me about the characters, what they thought of them and which stories they loved most. I say awkward because it’s strange to have people dissecting (even in a good way) characters that are like real people I know and care for. At a literary event one evening two brilliant writers whose work I admire very much began passionately debating the subtext of one of my stories. I felt like I was eavesdropping; it was surreal. When they eventually turned to me to ask me which one of them was ‘correct’ I truthfully said that what I thought was irrelevant. Once it’s in the hands of readers it becomes theirs to interpret, so in a sense they were both ‘right’. Readers bring their own life experience to the book and find meanings and nuances that sometimes I didn’t know were there. That’s a wonderful discovery for me to be privy to.

And then there’s the object itself. That glorious wedge of paper with its new book smell and my name right there on the cover. Nothing quite beats the moment you first lay eyes on it, hold it. I still have the note from my publisher folded inside that very first advance copy, now creased and stained. There is something momentous about it and I don’t think it will ever find its way into the bin. As to your question about waiting for the best possible publisher, unless you’re already a well-known author it is pretty much impossible to interest one of the major publishers in a short story collection.

Publishers don’t like short stories because they think they are economically unviable. I wrote a post about it for Overland recently because I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about the underappreciated short form since my collection was published. It’s only the smaller independent publishers who are willing to take a risk publishing short fiction by lesser known writers. So when I was looking for a publisher for Two Steps Forward I knew it would need to be an independent.

Independents mostly operate on limited budgets with a small number of staff required to do a huge amount – everything from design to marketing – and some do it better than others. I wanted a publisher that was going to edit, design, market and distribute the book well. As a writer you want to be read. There’s little point publishing a book if no one’s going to read it, and although it sounds superficial the truth is we all do judge a book by its cover. So before I submitted my manuscript to Affirm Press I looked at the books they had published to see what their production values were like. I was impressed. And the experience I’ve had with them has borne out that initial research. The Long Story Shorts books are beautiful objects that do the contents justice, and (I think) make people want to pick them up. That’s half the battle with sales. What’s more they have a rigorous editing process and are damn nice people to boot. The whole process has been a great experience.

NF: I’m interested in your comment about how ‘momentous’ it is to write and publish a book, and that the physicality of the book makes it so very real and tangible. Established writers talk about ‘the silence’ – they work so hard to get books out into the world, there might be a launch, some reviews, maybe an award or two, but in general there’s this terrible non-reaction. No matter what we write, no matter how well we write it, life does have a habit of just going on its merry way. Surely even the best of writers think, why do I do this when in the end it seems to have little impact? Have you experienced this?

IG: In a way it’s been the opposite. I suppose because I’m used to having individual stories published in journals which really do get swallowed up by the silence. If you’re lucky the journal gets reviewed and your story gets singled out as a favourite, and perhaps another writer mentions something nice about it, but mostly these stories disappear into the ether. Oddly enough that has never bothered me. Once I receive my copy I tend to file it away and forget about it. By the time it’s published I’ve already moved on to the next thing (life does go on its merry way!). But of course the difference between publishing an individual story and a book of them is that the latter feels more significant. You’ve invested so much, and you want it to be received well.

With Two Steps Forward I’ve been doing radio, and interviews like this one, and there have been a healthy number of reviews, so I feel like I’ve got a lot of feedback. And the response has been pretty wonderful. I haven’t had a terrible review yet which is, frankly, a relief. But if there’s one sentence in a review that is even slightly critical that’s the one you focus on. It niggles at you. The review can say dozens of positive things but it’s the one criticism which you turn over and over and over. I wish I was the kind of author who didn’t care about reviews (I have heard they do exist!) but it’s difficult not to.

That said, there are certain people whose opinion matters far more than even the most influential reviewer. One of my closest friends heads up a prestigious publication and given her line of work she’s reading books all the time. She’s a highly discerning reader and I respect her judgment, so naturally I wanted her to like my book. No, let’s be honest, I wanted her to adore it. I knew if she didn’t I’d know immediately. When she told me that she loved the book and what a relief it was to be able to genuinely say that, I also breathed a sigh of relief.

But I’m meandering off the track here. As to agonising over ‘why do I do this when it seems to have little impact’ I can honestly say that I don’t think about it in those terms. I write stories because I feel compelled to do so. Because I love the writing process, everything about it. Well, maybe not those agonising moments where I know something is wrong but I can’t figure out what needs to happens next and begin to wonder if it’s possible I never will. But then something snaps and everything falls into place and that’s glorious.

What’s more the response of even just one person can make the whole thing seem worthwhile. When I was talking about Two Steps Forward on Triple R with writer/radio presenter Alicia Sometimes she told me that one of the stories (‘The Third Child’) made her cry her eyes out. To know that a story has connected with a reader at that emotional level is quite something. And then a major prize-winning author sent me an email saying he was envious of my gift for metaphor. I couldn’t quite believe that coming from a writer I so admire. All these little pieces of feedback are like unexpected gifts. And that’s enough for me.

NF: I’d like to talk a little more about reviews. You seem to be having a dream run with Two Steps Forward, but I was wondering if you have a philosophical approach to reviews. For example, I know one established writer who says that she gives herself 24 hours to bask in the glow of a good review but then she must simply move on; she also gives herself 24 hours to commiserate over a bad review but then she must simply move on. Have you formed a way of ‘coping’ with reviews?

IG: Every writer, no matter how brilliant, gets a bad review at some point. The process is so subjective; there’ll always be people who don’t like your work. So it’s just a matter of time, and there are still a couple more reviews that I’m aware are due to come out. I’m always prepared for the worst (can you tell?!) so when it’s not borne out I feel relived. I did have one review in The Canberra Times that I’d describe as lukewarm. It was neither overly negative or overly positive. Oddly though a number of people congratulated me on it. And I thought, Are you reading the same thing I am? I’m not sure if the disparity is that others are impressed solely by the fact of the review itself, or if I’m being overly sensitive as the author.

Recently I saw an interview with Yann Martel on the day his book received a bad review in The New York Times. It’s a very raw response, I think every writer can relate to it. He said: ‘You give everything to art … so when your story is rejected, it hits you right here … Art, just like religion, it’s who we are. So when you get a bad review, it’s your entire being that is negated. And that hurts.’

Years ago I remember a writer saying, don’t believe the bad reviews and don’t believe the good ones either. I’ve always thought that was good advice. If you allow the good ones to boost your ego then the bad ones will crush you. It’s not easy to do though. The 24-hour rule is a good one that I try and follow. I find that physically filing the review away makes it easier to achieve this. Put it away, forget about it, move on. Richard Ford apparently has a different solution. After Alice Hoffman gave him a bad review he took one of her novels outside and shot a hole through it. Thankfully I haven’t yet needed to resort to the use of firearms.

NF: So, where to from here?

IG: I’ve just had my third kid’s book accepted by a major publisher but it’s still under negotiation so I probably can’t say much more about that.  I’ve also been working on a novel in a very part-time way for the last five years. It’s almost finished but I’ve been so busy with other projects that it’s been sidelined for months. But this January I’ve rented a little nook of a space where I intend to hibernate. There’ll be coffee, chocolate, a well-thumbed manuscript and me wielding a red pen. I can’t wait. I feel like my characters are a bunch of old friends I’m dying to catch up with.

I’m also editing an anthology of 100 years of ACT writing. The anthology will be released at the end of next year as a National Year of Reading flagship publication and will then be part of Canberra’s centenary celebrations in 2013. The Advisory Committee has just read through all 300 shortlisted works and I’m now going to spend some time making final selections. There’s so much brilliant writing and only 250 pages to fill so it’s going to be quite a challenge, but I’m excited about the book finally taking shape after several years of preparatory work.

***

Visit Irma on Facebook by clicking on this magic button.  You can see the book-trailer for Two Steps Forward here.

TWO STEPS FORWARD – an interview with Irma Gold

2 Jul

The world of literature is filled with personalities.  Yes, that’s an inane sentence, but let me explain.  The world of literature – perhaps the arts in general – is jam-packed with people trying to be someone, trying to be an artist, a ‘creative’ (why is that term so bloody irksome?), to stand out, to be significant and, the greatest crime of all, important.  We’re all guilty, no one gets away scot-free.  Except Irma Gold.  Irma just goes about her business, and it’s a supremely multifaceted business, not putting herself ‘out there’, just working away, writing well, very well indeed.  Her gigs include having her short stories published in Australia’s best journals, blogging at overland, freelance editing, managing a wide variety of publication projects, and that no small matter of raising a swag of young kids.  Did I mention that her first collection of stories is being published by Affirm Press later this year?  Recently Irma Gold and I chatted via magic-mail.  This is the transcript of what happened.

Nigel Featherstone: You may well be the busiest person I know. Before we talk about the millions of things that you do with your life, can you tell us about your forthcoming short-story collection, Two Steps Forward? Has there been a key motivation behind the writing of the book?

Irma Gold: The book has taken several years to come together. I completed the manuscript and then it sat there idly for some time. Short story collections are notoriously difficult to get published, but I wanted to find the right publisher. In the meantime some of the individual stories were published in places like Meanjin, Island and Going Down Swinging and so I decided I’d rather the collection wasn’t published at all if I couldn’t find a publisher that was the right fit. Then along came Affirm’s Long Story Shorts series to publish six short story collections. I liked their philosophy, the series was an exciting opportunity, and I submitted my manuscript along with 450 or so others. Lucky for me (and let’s face it, there’s so much luck involved in publishing) they liked the collection and agreed to publish it as the series’ swan-song. A lot more work has gone into Two Steps Forward since then, and I’m really pleased with the way it’s shaped up.

As to what it’s about, I’m interested in the lives of ordinary people facing difficult situations and how they find their way through that, how they achieve some kind of happiness. When I met the designer, Dean Gorissen (who has created a fabulous cover for my collection), he confessed that one of the stories he was given to read before he started work on the cover, ‘The Sounds of Friendship’, made him cry. To hear that a reader has connected with the work in a meaningful way is so gratifying. That he was able to enter the world I had created and really feel for those characters. I found it interesting that in person I didn’t match up with the way he’d envisaged me because he was sure that I must have lived that world in order to write about it, that I was in some sense a character from that story. For me, that means I must have got something right, that the world I created feels authentic.

Writing is such an isolated process that small comments like these can take on exaggerated importance. There is a kind of vulnerability – a sense of exposure – that comes with publishing work and opening it up for critique. It’s nerve-racking. I was recently speaking with a writer who has published more than 20 books and has another about to come out. I was heartened that for all her experience, she too felt nervous about how it would be received.

NF: Vulnerability and exposure – perhaps that in a nutshell is what a writer aims to achieve.  To make readers feel vulnerable to the essence of what our lives are, or what our lives could be.  And, of course, writers aim to expose the truth, to get to the core.  As your collection is close to being published, what are you telling yourself about how your work might be received?  Is it simply a matter of letting go?

IG: Exactly. It’s definitely a matter of letting go, although it’s not necessarily that simple, is it? You’re so invested in the work, you care deeply about how it is received. And if you don’t feel vulnerable and exposed you probably haven’t risked enough. It’s no wonder writers often compare their books to babies. Although they’re really more like adult children, aren’t they? You’ve prepared them as best you can, nurtured them, but then you send them out into the world and they have to stand alone. Once the work is in the public domain it is, in a sense, no longer yours. Readers will find and shape their own meanings. You have no control over that; it becomes theirs. Lionel Shriver recently wrote about her brilliant book, We Need to Talk About Kevin, which has polarised readers over whether the mother’s ambivalent feelings for her child turned her son into a monster, or whether he was just born evil. But Shriver says she never gets involved in that debate because what the book means is no longer up to her. Your original intention is no longer relevant. Seeing what readers make of your work is both nerve-wracking and exciting.

NF: I reckon you’ve nailed it when you say ‘seeing what readers make of your work is both nerve-wracking and exciting’. One of the gazillion literary activities that you’re currently involved in is coordinating an anthology of writing from those with a connection to Canberra for the centenary of that city, in 2013. Tell us more about that project, and also about your experience of being a practicing writer and being able to explore this treasure-trove of writing that comes from one particular place.

IG: It’s an anthology of work that spans the last century of ACT writing, and we’re thrilled that it will also be a flagship publication for National Year of Reading 2012. The book is really long overdue. Despite our small population Canberra has so many nationally and internationally famous and award-winning novelists and poets. Those of us who live and work here know that Canberra is the perfect place to write, with the benefits of both bush and city, yet to outsiders our city is generally regarded as a boring place of politics. As an ex-Melbourne girl I’m regularly asked, Why on earth do you live there? And then of course I defend the richness of our cultural landscape. In literary terms, there is so much exciting work being created here. I really hope this anthology exposes Australians to what a vibrant literary tradition we have.

I am currently immersed in the reading and selection process for the anthology. Connecting with so much work created locally is a rewarding experience. With an advisory committee of respected writers and literary experts, we have the massive task of considering the oeuvres of 150 writers. Some of those works are set in Canberra, many aren’t. And yet the place we live in shapes us and filters into our writing in ways that are not as immediately obvious as setting.

Take my two cities, for example. For me, Melbourne is full of buzz. It’s a city pumping with life, full of fabulous cafes and bars, and streets of lovely messy chaos. Being there injects me with a particular kind of energy. Canberra, on the other hand, is a place of space, both in a physical and mental sense. It is a mass of sprawling suburbs intersected by mountains and lakes that lacks the density of Melbourne. And it’s a place of contradictions, of both order and disorder. Where polite, neatly groomed public spaces sit alongside legal prostitution, for example. I love both cities, and both places effect my writing differently. It’s been interesting working on this anthology and thinking about how the spaces we inhabit infect our writing in ways that even we are not aware of.

NF: ‘The spaces we inhabit infect our writing in ways that even we are not aware of’. Of course, writing infects us in ways that even we are not aware of! You’re officially the busiest writer I know – developing your own work, attending residencies, editing a range of projects, blogging over at Overland, as well as raising a family, including, currently, a new-born. How on earth do you juggle everything? And what sustains your writing life when it all seems like it’s about to go arse over teapot?

IG: My life is definitely crazy but in a beautiful kind of way. Being a full-time mother to three kids and a freelance writer and editor does mean I’m juggling lots of balls all the time. I blame it on my parents really who drummed it into me as a kid that I should always pursue work that I love. The trouble is, lots of things fit that criteria, and I’m determined to make room for them all. I used to be a terrible procrastinator but since having kids I don’t have that luxury. Every minute I get to work is used. I also have a very supportive partner who does countless hours of child duty while I work.

The trick is, as you say, amidst all this, how to sustain my writing life? It’s easy to prioritise paid work when there are deadlines to meet. I’ve found the only way to ensure time for my fiction is to be disciplined, to set aside specific days and times every week and then stubbornly refuse to let anything else interfere. It’s really about creating a mindset. Those hours then become sacred. So, for instance, every Wednesday my husband comes home from work early and I go and sit in my favourite café and write into the evening. I’ve been working on a novel for the last four years and Wednesdays are my novel time. It’s become so ingrained that no matter what other projects I’m working on, when I get to that café I slip straight into the space of my novel.

That said, my writing routines have by necessity changed over the years. I’ve had to be flexible as my kids have been at various stages, and now with a new baby I’m readjusting again. Of course there are times when it feels like there are too many balls in the air and things get a bit stressful. But mostly it all seems to work and I’m grateful that I get to do what I love.

NF: All the very best for the months leading up to the launch of Two Steps Forward.  We’ll be sure catch up with you again later in the year to see how you and the book are going.

HOPE AND RISK – Verity La interviews Omar Musa

25 Jun

Every city has a folk hero or two, and Omar Musa is one of the ACT’s folk heroes, although to be accurate he’s one of Queanbeyan’s folk heroes, and yes there is a difference. Plus he now lives in Melbourne, so we shouldn’t forget that. Musa is a rapper, spoken-word performer, and poet. In 2008 he won the Australian Poetry Slam in 2008 and in 2007 the British Council’s Realise Your Dream award. According to his bio, while living in London in 2008 he recorded with award-winning British rapper Akala. His first hip-hop record, The Massive EP, recorded in Seattle, was released in 2009 to critical acclaim. He has been a featured guest at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Singapore Writers Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival, as well as touring in Germany, Indonesia and around Australia. He also published his first book of poetry, The Clocks, in 2009, and has worked as an actor for the Bell Shakespeare Company. He released his full-length album World Goes to Pieces in 2010. So all this makes him a bit of a folk hero of…everywhere, really.

What on earth makes Omar Musa tick?

Nigel Featherstone: You’re a young bloke straight outta Queanbeyan, New South Wales. How did you get into the worlds of rap and poetry? What was the original motivation?

Omar Musa: Poetry was always seen as a good thing in my family. My father was a poet in Malaysia and my mother came from a theatre background and would often quote playwrights and poets. I remember getting an assignment to write poetry from my English teacher in year 5 and finding that it came very naturally to me. I loved that it was very boiled down and you could use a single image or line to capture an entire situation or story. It was a private thing though – I would go out and play soccer and shoplift and do all the other stuff young scallywags get up to, but then come home and draw or write poetry. I had a lot of time to do so because I was an only child.

NF: The boiling down of language – surely that’s one of the tasks of poetry. Perhaps even THE task. Who were the writers/artists who inspired that younger version of you who’d go out and play soccer and shoplift? What was it about their work that got you going?

OM: As far as I can remember, poems I liked in my early teens came to me randomly – from teachers, from my parents. I liked poems that told stories and used strong, simple imagery to get the message across. I loved ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Byshe Shelley. ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ by Robert Browning. I stumbled across ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot and dug that. Looking back on them now, these poems were deceptively simple and I didn’t fully understand them, but something affected me. I could be reading too much into it, but I seemed to like fairly tragic poems about flawed individuals, even at that age. I remember meeting famous Indonesian poet W.S. Rendra and my parents told me that he was so popular that in his home country that he would perform to packed stadiums and rallies. I never forgot that. I was frustrated that poetry wasn’t alive in that way in Australia. As much as I loved the poets I mentioned before, they seemed reserved for the page and not people I could completely relate to. Then I came across Wu Tang Clan and Public Enemy and Ice Cube, and I realised that hip hop was a modern form of poetry and storytelling that was for and by young people, that people actually listened to.

NF: I like your idea that the poems ‘of the canon’, as they say, are reserved for the pages and were not written by people who you could relate to. When I listen to rap or hip-hop I’m always struck by how much craft is in the words, that the key tools of the trade are rhythm and rhyme and meter – this is indeed poetry, and, sometimes, it’s as thoughtful as the poetry that we might read in literary journals. Why did you go down the rap/spoken-word path and not the ‘poetry for the page’ path? What is it exactly about performance that so interests you?

OM: I think at a basic level it’s as simple as the fact that I like writing and performing equally. Also, I am an extrovert, so I like getting my words out there directly to people and (hopefully) moving them with the combination of flow, tone and words. I think slam poetry and hip hop is so strong because it wrenches poetry off dusty, sometimes pretentious pages and onto stages, smack bang in front of people. I think this is necessary at a time in Australia when many people, particularly young people, see poetry as very boring. Having it back on stages and having young people doing it is important in that it will hopefully weave poetry and a love of poetry back into the cultural fabric of this country. Having said all that, I love writing poetry just for the page and reading it. It’s necessary to have all these different facets – it’s all about a love of language and expression.

NF: Speaking of expression your album, World Goes to Pieces, came out last year. Can you tell us about the recording process, and what are some of the key themes of that record?

OM: I thought this album was going to be my first and last, so I wanted it to be brutally honest, my lasting testament. I wanted to capture the light and the shade of my life and of my personality and do it in a direct but poetic way. I have said before that the best description of the album is a depiction of a young man caught between activism and partying, love and depression. It’s about complexity and contradiction. There is a deep melancholy that runs through the album. I recorded the album entirely in Seattle, USA with Geoff Stanfield (Sun Kil Moon). It was intense. He is an epic producer and a madman and provided me with these outlandish sound-beds and beats to put my rhymes over. I tried to write every song there and then, as soon as I heard the music, doing a song or two a day. I had to be very focused, almost in a trance. My hope was that by being so spontaneous I would be more honest. This is a risky approach, and as a result, I sat on the record for a while after the initial recordings then came back to the USA and changed certain things and cut some new songs. All in all, it was probably only about two and a half weeks in the actual studio, but – this is totally clichéd – it was a lifetime in the making. I am so proud of this record and think it was/is ahead of its time.

To see Omar Musa in action, doing his classic ‘My Generation’, go here.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 135 other followers