Now that Verity La is up and running, and 2010 is careering to its end, we thought it’s probably about time to introduce ourselves as co-editors of what has become – we hope – a place on the internet where you can find words that are alive. Rather than both of us produce an editorial, we thought we’d take things a little further by sharing with you a conversation, because conversations – in the broadest definition – is what we’re on about: dialogue between writer and reader, engagement with ideas, maybe even a conclusion every now and again. All in the context of what our mast-head calls being brave. So let’s do it.
Nigel Featherstone: Alec, it seems hard to believe that Verity La has only been going for six months (the first post, a poem of yours, was on 20 June 2010). What made you want to become co-editor of an on-line creative arts journal?
Alec Patric: You can’t fight evolution. Extinction starts nipping at your ankles if you try. Books might get to be like dinosaur bones, bought only in specialty stores. I work in a bookstore so I’m not as insouciant as I might sound. Just yesterday I vowed to never buy a Kindle, iPad, etc. but I made a similar promise to stay faithful to records when CDs first came out. I suppose I’m just another dodo looking for better wings. I started a blog about a year ago, but before that, the internet was Disneyland. I was more than happy living with Guttenberg’s toys. I could point out that a book already is a kind of technology and that it took hundreds of years to develop and perfect, but who’d listen? We’re all rushing towards online air, and so far, I’m reveling in the new skies for my dodo wings.
To answer your question more directly: it hadn’t occurred to me to be an editor of anything, online or otherwise, until you asked me to join you on this lil’ flight of fancy Nigel. I’d been intensely involved with Overland, blogging for Sparrow & Co. a few times a week for six months or so, and Verity La was a natural progression. More to the point, I should ask why you wanted to start an online journal and why ask me to join you?
NF: I too am reveling in these new skies for my own ‘dodo wings’. Up until last year I didn’t even have the internet at home and was more than happy not being connected – sometimes having your head in the sand is quite comfortable. But then, in 2009, I spent a month as an artist-in-residence at Bundanon, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s gift to the Australian people, and I saw first-hand how other artists had engaged with the on-line environment. I committed myself to at least getting the internet put on, and then within six months I had a website and then a blog – it was an e-avalanche!
After blogging for a year (I never set out to be an actual blogger; I just wanted to post pieces I wrote for other media, mostly newspapers), one night I was happily watching High Fidelity – great book by Nick Hornby, good movie – when I thought, wouldn’t it be good to be able to foster other writers, potentially through free blogging software. Twenty-four hours later I had the name (it’s a laneway that up until recently I walked past on a daily basis), the basic concept of the thing, the on-line format, but wanted this to be much bigger than one person. I’d interviewed you for a piece for the Canberra Times on blogging and appreciated your thoughtfulness and honesty, and decided that I might have found a potential co-editor. I purposely didn’t over-think the whole caper, because I knew that if I thought about it too hard I wouldn’t go ahead with it at all. I’m glad we did: just scrolling through the contents page gives me a warm inner-glow: here’s a stack of writing and thought and creativity that might not otherwise have seen the light of day. Perhaps more importantly, it’s rewarding to be involved in this DIY movement: writers doing it (sisterly) for ourselves!
We’re six months into this Verity La journey (love how that word is a cousin of ‘journal’), what are you getting out of being co-editor?
ASP: Some writers spend a long time in exile. This can begin early and last most of a lifetime. That’d be the tone of my bio up until the last year or two. I grew up in an environment where a literary life was something glimpsed between commercials, in a distracted reference on some tele-movie about a sporting hero – the mad uncle that was a writer. Entering the workaday world you hear about writers being a dime-a-dozen, but that was far from my experience. Of course, there are those people you run into that dream they’ll one day write a biography or novel, and might have written a poem or two while on holiday in Bali, but for me, writing came with the daily devotion of religion, and I wanted to find people who had that kind of sensibility and commitment. If I’m now a part of literary culture, through Verity La, blogging or publishing, there’s that sense of exile that renews the experience for me constantly.
Six months of Verity La has been filled with poetry, prose, visual art, and interviews. What have been the highlights for you?
NF: That whole creativity-and-exile thing is interesting, isn’t it. The more I create and write and persist with what at times – often – feels like a completely ludicrous activity the more it feels like a peripheral activity. Each time we decide to spend some hours writing, it does feel like a disconnection from the world, a running away, a push to the edges, except really it’s the exact opposite, it’s a burrowing down into truth and reality.
So rarely is the act of writing – of creating anything – properly valued. Going to the gym is valued. Going to the movies is valued. Spending an evening at the pub is valued. But locking yourself in a room to write? That’s what a crazy person does. And society exiles crazy people. So I think you’re right that it’s all about finding a community. I’ve never been interested in book clubs, nor have I been interested in writers groups (I did establish one which ran for a year, but the rule was that we absolutely couldn’t bring our own work to discuss – our discussions had to be broader than the stories we were working on).
What Verity La offers is a space – a place – for work to appear; in some ways it feels like an intersection of practice and outcomes, of hopes and realities. Every time I receive a submission – as you know they come almost daily – I realise how there’s a hunger for work to be read, particularly good work, and by good work I mean writing that’s been edited and put aside and edited some more and put aside again and then, finally, when the writer is absolutely convinced it’s ready for airing, it’s finally submitted, a process that can take years rather than months. It’s a highlight every time I open a submission and I feel engaged and then, ultimately, moved. It’s a highlight when a writer accepts the feedback provided, works on a story, and submits it again. It’s been a highlight to interview established Australian writers – invariably they’ve been generous with their time, very open, not stuffy in the slightest.
What’s ahead for Verity La, do you reckon?
ASP: I’m a believer in necessity. We value that which is most necessary to us. So I think Verity La will grow into what our literary community needs it to be. If it’s actually superfluous, then it will evaporate like most of the other content on the internet. Well, since we’ve been archived by the National Library of Australia, we know that everything on Verity La will be protected in perpetuity now, but its continuing relevance is still that necessity. I know that sounds grandiose, but I was sincere when I said that the questions central to literature are religious to me. I don’t mean in relationship to some kind of divine meaning, but that there is indeed an element of life and death at the core of what we do. Something worth investing our entire lives in and worth the sacrifices we all make simply to be a part of Literature. An example of that necessity is in the interviews you and I have made a core feature of our journal. Verity La has become one of the few places where local writers are able to come and talk about the central elements of their writing lives and the most vital aspects of their craft. The Verity La reader is a Writer, and he or she will find our content, to greater or lesser degrees, necessary to wherever they are in their careers.
How do you see the future of Verity La, Nigel?
NF: I like that ecological idea that important and necessary things survive, while the superfluous and irrelevant wither away. So the key will be to not be superfluous or irrelevant. I’m not sure I ‘see’ anything for the future of Verity La, because I barely know what’s going to happen in my life tomorrow let alone see anything in particular for a little on-line journal that thinks it can. I do, however, have some hopes. I hope Verity La continues to develop as a place for brave writing, and by ‘brave’ I mean writing that challenges.
Only this week I was reminded of Oz and what it set out to achieve back in the 1960s, which was to be a ‘magazine of dissent’. Whilst I don’t see Verity La going anywhere near of what Oz achieved, perhaps it would be good if we could shake things up a little more, because we’ll be relevant and important and necessary if we’re dangerous – if what we collectively produce is a matter of a life and death. I’d like to make it very clear that by dangerous I don’t mean ‘adventurous’ or ‘experimental’. Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho isn’t adventurous or experimental, but it is dangerous. Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man isn’t adventurous or experiment, but it is dangerous. They are dangerous because they tell the truth. And if writers must do anything, it is to tell the truth. Bring on the writers of truth!
ASP: I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the poets, writers and artists of Verity La. I’ve been stunned time and again that so many people have been willing to give fistfuls of their hearts with such grace and generosity. If Verity La has come to occupy a space within the shifting spectrum of the internet and to find a place within Australian literature and art, just six months ago it really was nothing more than a statement of intent; just one more blogish shape in a computer-generated wasteland. It’s because of these initial contributions, all of them acts of faith, all openhearted gifts of time and talent, insight and passion, that a vibrant identity has emerged, not to mention a lasting cultural artefact.
Thanks to all our contributors. It really has been an honour and privilege that I’m most grateful for.