A Review of Subhash Jaireth’s To Silence

By Scott Halligan

Subhash Jaireth’s To Silence, published by Puncher & Wattman earlier this year, features ‘fictional autobiographies’—the author’s own description—of three long-dead but very real historical figures: Kabir, a 15^th century Indian mystic poet who was a hero to both Hindus and Muslims; Maria Chekhova, sister of Anton Chekhov; and Tommaso Campanella, a 16^th century Calabrian scholar, theologian, poet and astrologer. In the back cover blurb, John Hughes describes this little volume as a ‘tardis of a book’, and I’d agree. I intended to write a short review of perhaps four or five hundred words, but by the end of it I found myself with about a dozen pages of notes. In particular, Jaireth’s innovative and brave experimentation with genre and his surprising choice of characters opens up many doors for thought. I’ll try to act as something like a ‘concierge’ here.

Jaireth is not the first to explore the genre of fictional autobiography. The classic I, Claudius by Robert Graves was written in the form of an autobiography penned in secret by the emperor Claudius. To Silence is nothing like I, Claudius, but a comparison with Graves’ approach is a useful way to illuminate Jaireth’s stylistic innovations as well as how difficult it is to neatly categorise the book.

To Silence takes the form of three short monologues, but unlike that of Claudius, they are not chronological accounts. Instead, we find each character in old age, aware they are approaching their death, their narratives flitting in and out between the immediate concerns of their present lives and the memories sparked by that present, via photographs (Chekhova), songs and poems (Kabir), physical pain (Campanella), and so on. There’s even a moment near the end of the third monologue where Campanella, who has agreed to have his biography written by a literary friend named Gabrielle Naude, is given a set of keywords and asked to reflect on an aspect or episode of his life to match each keyword—an autobiographical device inside another one.

Also unlike I, Claudius, these autobiographies are not comprehensive accounts of the lives of Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella. Indeed, if one untied all the autobiographical loose ends given in each account and laid them out in chronological order, one would still end up with a broken,  unevenly clustered and quite incomplete outline of a life. But it was never Jaireth’s intention to write comprehensive, chronological autobiographies. This approach would have quickly become unwieldy and imposed an unwanted storytelling voice on the characters.

Instead, the monologues are meditative and confessional, almost taking on the form of soliloquies or journal entries. The writing thus takes on an intimacy and immediacy it would otherwise lack, and the reader is drawn into a very private world. I could quote many examples, but Campanella’s description of the child singer Pietro and the old man’s subsequent guilt under the eyes of an omniscient God gives a strong impression that these thoughts were not intended to be widely read.

There he is, the face a perfect heart-shape; nose straight with a slight upturned curve near the tip, almond-shaped eyes rimmed by arched brows, eyelids heavy, lips succulent of the colour of ripe pomegranate seeds, and chin smooth and soft asking to be touched and kissed …

I confess that I was blinded by the beauty of the innocent boy. I shouldn’t have been, because the beauty was undoubtedly Yours… I know this now but then face to face with Pietro I had somehow lost sight of the most obvious… To expiate myself I confess; to redeem my soul I confess; to remain vigilant of future indiscretions I confess; I confess because I am nothing but human asking for love and compassion. (pp. 89-90)

If the term ‘autobiography’ is problematic, this absence of awareness of the presence of a reader also prevents a neat classification of these monologues as memoirs.

Readers of this book, even just picking it up and reading through the blurb, will find it hard to stop asking: Why these three characters? Why, for instance, did Jaireth choose Maria Chekhova instead of Chekhov? What do the three characters have in common? In my case I also wondered what it meant, aside from conclusions that could be drawn about my ignorance, that I knew next to nothing about these people …

One reason for Jaireth’s choice of characters is that while they may not be familiar names to many readers, they belong to a special category of historical figures: the overall shape of their lives and their character is known, but most of the hard biographical details are either not known (Kabir and Campanella), or not previously considered interesting enough to give much attention (Chekhova). Research on Kabir leads me to dozens of stories about his life, some of them conflicting factually with each other, but scarce biographical information. And since Kabir was illiterate, even his poems and songs have a sense of ephemerality, passed down and written down as they were by others. Similarly, Maria Chekhova devoted her own life to documenting the life of her brother, and her personal life was only considered relevant as it pertained to that of Chekhov. That the three figures are mostly known to history ‘indirectly’ gives Jaireth much room to use his imagination.

Another clue is that these three people found themselves, whether they were aware of it or not, living in unusually close proximity to highly significant historical events, periods or transitions. Kabir and Campanella seemed to be lionised and victimised, respectively, by forces over which they had little control and which appeared to select them out for a life of notoriety.

As for Chekhova—and the question: Why her and not Anton?—she survived her older brother by fifty-seven years. Anton died in 1904, a year before the beginning of the most tumultuous period in Russia’s history. From her vantage point of the Chekhov villa in Yalta in southern Ukraine, where Anton spent his final years as his health faded, Chekhova observed the first Revolution of 1905, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions of 1917 and the ensuing years of bitter civil war, which the Ukraine was also tied up in. In the mid-1930s, when Chekhova was in her mid-seventies, the Stalinist purges began, and after the purges, Chekhova then lived through the Second World War, Nazi Occupation, and the Holocaust.

To use I, Claudius once more, Robert Graves used the miraculous Claudius, considered a harmless, disabled fool by his infamous family and thus left alone to observe them as they fell under the spell of absolute power, to indulge his deep interest and write a detailed account of the Roman Empire. Jaireth uses the ‘strategically ideal’ lives of Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella in the same way. He inhabits them, using their minds and bodies to explore the episodes of human history that fascinate and move him.

Jaireth has likened his approach to writing this book to a stage actor who performs multiple roles throughout the one performance. Jaireth imagines himself to be these people and writes their worlds from inside them, discovering as much as writing their thoughts and feelings, their pain, and what they see and hear and touch. The success of this technique is evident in how well Jaireth is able to conjure up vivid impressions of time and place and still maintain an inward-looking, meditative voice when ‘performing’ the three characters. Although there are passages of detailed description—an epic astrological ritual led by Campanella to ensure the re-emergence of the sun from an eclipse is a highlight—a specific example of this indirect evocativeness is hard to find, the effect achieved incrementally and cumulatively across each monologue.

Another achievement of Jaireth’s stage acting technique is how intensely he is able to convey the emotions felt by those people, particularly their pain. Towards the end of the Chekhova monologue, Chekhova learns the fate of an old friend named Dunya Efros, a woman who was briefly engaged to Anton. Having not seen Dunya for many years, Chekhova can’t stop herself from thinking about Dunya and the place where she died, her head shaven, at the age of eighty-two: the Treblinka death camp. In the final paragraphs, Chekhova becomes overwhelmed by the guilt of the survivor and of the bystander, not just for Dunya but for the millions of others of her countrymen and women who died in the wars, revolutions, purges and the Holocaust.

But do I want to be consoled and comforted? I really don’t know. No, I want to suffer and grieve and carry the grief with me undiminished, until I die. Only death will bring me relief. Redemption I don’t want to think about. I haven’t sinned. My benevolent God, I’m sure, understands that, and the feeling of guilt which troubles my heart is also understood and condoned by Him. But my guilt isn’t strictly mine. I am guilty by association, guilty that I have lived in times unbelievably cruel and inhumane, and that I didn’t have the courage to speak up. I should have. I definitely should have.
Like others, I too was selfish, too concerned to save my own skin.
But—
I hate that word. All excuses begin with this terrible word. (p. 70)

Chekhova’s fortune was to live through all of this, for nearly a century, when so many others died. Her burden was to carry her country’s nightmares with her to the grave.

One aspect that initially seemed a weakness in Jaireth’s writing of To Silence is the similarity in the narrative voices Jaireth employs for Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella—even though each character has their own quirks, such as Campanella’s frequent asides addressed to God, which range from declarations of faith to paranoid apologies for perceived indiscretions. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realised that this consistency of voice is in fact a strength. It emphasises the shared humanity between the three very different characters, encouraging the reader to look past the obvious differences and ask what the three of them might have in common.

I will end this review with a reassurance: it isn’t necessary to know anything about Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella, or be a history aficionado, to get pleasure from this little book. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering the very different worlds of these characters, stumbling my way through them, piecing together the clues and inferring the historical context. I do however strongly recommend doing some elementary research into the lives and myths surrounding the three people, and the places and times in which they lived, and then give the book a second reading. Read in a new light with some background knowledge, it almost becomes a different book.

***

A lot more could be said about Subhash Jaireth’s To Silence; the meaning of the title, the supporting characters, and Jaireth’s personal motivations for writing the book are all equally as interesting as the topics covered in this review. Fortunately, Jaireth recently gave a talk at the IPCF book club on To Silence, which was filmed and uploaded on to YouTube in five parts. In the five videos, Jaireth not only discusses the aspects I’ve mentioned and many more, but also gives emotionally powerful readings from the book. Included below is the first video; the other four can be found here.

Subhash Jaireth lives in Canberra. Between 1969 and 1978 he spent nine years in Moscow. He has published three books of poetry, Yashodhara: Six Seasons, Unfinished Poems for Your Violin, Before the Bullet Hit Me, and he has had stories, essays, and poetry published in Australian and international journals.

When people pass on lessons on writing, they often choose between two overplayed yet sensible pieces of advice. The first is ‘show, don’t tell,’ and the second, which I plan to discuss here, is ‘write what you know’.

I woke up this morning wanting to write about feminist literature for the Ilura Gazette—but without a literature degree or a published novel, I asked myself if I could write a highly informative post on feminist literature in the span of a day. Probably not.

I decided to write about this need for authority instead. Can we publicly write about issues that we’re not experts on in blogs, or even in works of fiction? The rising trend of citizen journalism and personal blogs means more people feel they have the authority to write about their chosen topics. But does is this newfound sense of authority justified? Where does a writer’s authority come from?

Some fiction authors are able to write about large, research-heavy political issues and describe believably, if not correctly, details such as the pattern of the President’s bedroom carpet. They can write lengthy novels even if all they have is a daily subscription to the newspaper and a keen sense of observation. Before political-thriller author Tom Clancy published his first book, he had completed a literature degree and had run an insurance agency. His firsthand experience with the military was limited to being rejected from service after failing an eye exam.

Is authority just about undergoing enough research or having the right qualifications then? Let’s have a look at health articles. We’ve all seen them: lose weight in x days, or colourful ‘superfoods’, as though they were breakthroughs they hadn’t just been printed two issues ago. These are often written not by nutritionists, but by freelance writers whose only authority may rest in their having previously written five similar articles on weight loss. After a while, these writers become self-appointed authorities, the way Oprah or Tyra Banks know everything about people-problems without having studied psychiatry or without having personally gone through each episode’s life dramas. It has gotten to the point where it’s hard to discern between seasoned diet-experts (no pun intended) and amateurs beating doctors into recommending diet plans.

If we consider these articles, then authority isn’t completely dependent on research. While freelance writers probably don’t have the authority to tell me how much weight I should lose, I seem to have made the mistake of thinking that academic qualifications were the only source of authority. I thought that with only a marketing and creative writing degree, I couldn’t seriously discuss feminist literature—that anyway, these topics are already saturated with voices of authority, and I would be last in line as a valid voice. But then I began to take my own background into consideration: firstly, I am a woman; second, I have learnt through reading feminist texts the basic language in which to discuss feminism, and third, I understand the need for female empowerment and how it affects society. I know that like me, many women who have felt marginalised and oppressed by a patriarchal society, but who did not have a PhD, have published influential feminist zines. These women were completely justified in doing so because they had experience—and experience is as crucial as research.

Does authority, then, come from some combination of formal qualifications and experience, or is it still harder to define? Salman Rushdie, writing Midnight’s Children based on fragmented memories of his homeland while he was in London, asked himself whether he had the authority to write the book. He felt like he was an outsider looking in. ‘Literature is self-validating,’ Rushdie answers in his essay, ‘Imaginary Homelands’. ‘That is to say, a book is not justified by its author’s worthiness to write it, but by the quality that has been written. There are terrible books that arise directly out of experience, and extraordinary imaginative feats dealing with themes in which the author has been obliged to approach from the outside.’ I suppose not all autobiographical fiction would really make us read through to the end, and neither would all political commentaries on blogs. Sometimes it takes a story like Roald Dahl’s ‘The Sound Machine’ where plants are said to scream, or a well-written piece like Jenny Kleeman’s social commentary about the Philippines—such might not be based on firsthand experience, but the quality in which they had been written seems to really make up for it.

But if research, background, and quality still aren’t enough, let’s not forget that we currently live in ‘the age of engagement’. At the publishing conference, O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) 2010, Arianna Huffington said, ‘for the first time, news consumers and book readers don’t just want to read, they want to engage with what they’re reading. They want to talk back.’ Literary authority no longer seems so daunting to writers with the knowledge that writing is not about preaching but rather engaging with people. There is no doubt I’ve failed to cover issues here in this post, but there are people who will make them known. If blog posts overlook details or fail to properly address an issue, there is a community out there that is ready to engage in discussion. Even for fiction, the engagement of readers is vital. Readers fill in the strokes that complete what is essentially an unfinished circle, as a text is nothing without readers there to interpret it. Besides, in fiction, there is space for the imagination to prop up the otherwise unknown. Nabokov once said, ‘great novels are above all great fairy tales … literature does not tell the truth but makes it up.’

I’ve reached the end of an article that I felt that I had no authority to write, and it’s likely that I still don’t have the authority. Perhaps I’m my own bad example, having failed to possess the proper research, experience, and writing quality to have been a proper authority to write about ‘authority’. However, there is room on this blog for engagement through comments, and where I fall short in my knowledge or understanding, someone like you might be able to fill-in the gaps.

My favourite thing about Melbourne is that wherever you go, you’ll always find a bookstore. I’m not referring to franchised stores like Borders, Dymocks or Angus and Robertson that somehow find themselves clumped together within one hundred meters. Independent bookshops, secondhand bookshops and even remainder bookshops are hidden everywhere, down laneways in the city, connected to coffee shops in Richmond, St Kilda and Carlton, or even behind markets. Having worked in an independent bookshop for two years, I’d always preferred them to franchise stores, appreciating the loyalty of customers, the dedication of staff and the special selection of texts. 

Having recently been in London, I felt the same sense of literary culture creeping around every corner. There was an entire laneway in Soho of secondhand bookstores. Some had books that cost thousands of pounds, and others were more affordable. In the Portobello markets, almost every second stall was selling hardback classics. The main franchise bookstore there is Waterstones. It’s not as predominant as Borders and Dymocks in Australia, and had the same feel as Readings Bookstore.

New York, however, shocked me. In the city, I saw only two Borders and a Barnes and Nobles, which was closed at the time for renovations. The streets I ventured didn’t have second hand or independent bookshops, although I’m sure in other areas there would be. I expected New York to have the same literary vibe as other main cities. Then I got to thinking about my dream to open a bookshop. Would an independent bookshop be more successful in a city like Melbourne that is filled with them already, or in a city like New York where the main stores are large franchises?

I graduated from high school in 2004, and I can barely remember learning any grammar while I was there at all. Although my attention wavered often in class, I’m confident that this gap in my learning is a result of a genuine lack of grammar being taught at my school. I only formally learned about the parts of speech, dependent and independent clauses, finite and non-finite verbs and all those other wonderful things when I took a Professional Writing class at university.

Most people won’t take a class like that at university, even Arts students, so how much can we ‘get away with’ not knowing the technical stuff? An enormous amount, I think. For example, we can read perfectly well without it, although if we can’t read something we might not be able to explain why; we would just say that it just looks and sounds wrong, and maybe wave our hands around a bit. Although it certainly helps with some genres, it’s not a prerequisite for writing either. We just know which order the words go; in many cases we can ‘feel’ if something is grammatically correct or not. Plus, there’s the handy grammar checker that comes standard on our word processors (what’s a sentence fragment?) 

So we can be literate readers and writers (that is, more or less proficient using so-called Standard English) without a formal understanding of how our language works. We can obtain a working knowledge of our language through listening, speaking, reading and writing, and this will be, most of the time, more than enough to get us through our lives.

But perhaps it’s time to go ‘backwards’ in terms of school curriculum, to reverse the trend, get a bit old-fashioned, and revisit grammar. I think the above argument applies for previous decades, but not anymore. It’s pretty clear that our language is changing faster than it ever has before. The majority of Generation Y now does most of their reading and writing online. There’s a lot of great writing on the net, and many conventions and styles of writing, such as journalism, have made the transition from hardcopy to digital without much change in language. But most young people don’t read that kind of writing online. Most of their reading and writing is done on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. This is significant because the English used here is very different to ‘standard’ English.

There are no formal writing conventions for using Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, although for the latter each ‘Tweet’ is limited to 140 characters. There are informal conventions though, and the urge to write a certain way is very strong, even for older users. We all know what this looks like: “hii! how hav u bin goin? ive bin sooo flat out wiv work n skool n everything omg its crazyyyy lol hey wat r u doin 2nite u wanna go out” This a fictional example, but it’s not particularly exaggerated. In fact, it’s very common. It’s true that it’s less common for people who came to social networking sites after they had already established their basic reading and writing skills, at university or even later, but even then, many of these older users adapt the abbreviations, lack of punctuation and deliberate misspellings that characterise the social networking style into their writing.

The question is why does this social networking language look the way it does? Why do people write like that? I’m not sure. It’s not convenience. While there is a limit to how many characters one can use in a text message (therefore making abbreviations functional and useful) Facebook and MySpace were around before Twitter’s 140 words per Tweet limit, and these sites set quite generous limits on word length.

That kind of language is so predominant partly because social networking language memes (abbreviations such as lol, wtf, and omg; and conventions like extending the vowel sound of a word by repeating the last letter instead of the letter/s which forms the vowel, like crazyyyyy instead of craaaaazy) spread so fast that people want to show others that they are part of the ‘in’ crowd, that they get the joke. Not using them makes someone look uncool and out of date, just as it did in the playground or on the street.

But my guess is that social networking language is more than anything else a deliberate reaction against more formal language. It’s not really functional, and it’s not that much faster to write or to read. Instead, it’s political. It’s a rebellion. Not only is there no language arbiters (teachers, work superiors, editors) to correct the language in status updates and comments, but there is complete freedom to experiment. Young people are simultaneously throwing out and making new rules in English. And these changes happen extremely quickly. A particular language fad can be invented and become common usage across the world within a few months. Conventions are invented precisely because they are at complete odds with what is taught, or perhaps more profoundly (but something we won’t explore here), what is rational or logical. Writing “crazyyyy” instead of “craaaazy” doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the point. It’s a reaction against sense. Throwing out many standard English rules, such as punctuation, makes the language harder to understand, but in the world of social networking language, if there’s a breakdown in communication, the fault is always the reader’s.  If the reader doesn’t understand the new rules or the lack of standard rules, that’s their problem.

Maybe this is a good thing. Young people are experimenting with language and inventing a new world through new language. They have taken ownership over a new medium and are making it their own. But I’m worried. There is and will always be a need to read and write in Standard English, whether it’s in journalism, academia, technical manuals, or legal documents. I mentioned before that most people can learn Standard English by ‘feel’, through simply being exposed to the language constantly, even if they don’t learn it formally. But if young people are not only not being taught the language formally, but are doing most of their reading and writing in a literary environment, where rules are thrown out the window and new, deliberately (and rebelliously) irrational rules come into vogue every few months, standard English may become unfamiliar to a generation, like a foreign or obsolete language.

If this is true, then soon adults will enter the workforce without really knowing the difference between writing a status update or a ‘Tweet’ and writing an essay, a report or a business email. They will know that it needs to be different somehow, but they will have to guess, not having come across the kind of language they will be required to use before. There was, at least for most people, quite a large jump in sophistication required in reading and writing at university level compared with high school before students did most of their writing on social networking sites. This jump will only become larger. And while it’s true that many adults use social networking sites and are at least broadly familiar with social networking language (and many indulge in it), many are either not familiar with it or reject it outright. A growing disparity could therefore open up between those whose natural language is that of social networking sites and those who feel uncomfortable straying too far from Standard English.

So maybe a return to teaching grammar (and correct spelling) seriously in primary and secondary education is important. It could act as a kind of counterweight to the lawlessness and experimentation of social networking language, help close widening gaps between the reading and writing skills required at university and the workplace, and help make sure that there is a common language with which we can  talk to each other. The goal is not to stop people, especially young people, from using written English however they want; it’s to make sure, at the same time, that they are given the tools to communicate using Standard English for when they need to use it. No matter how ‘digital’ we go, there will always be that need.

A good writing group can be crucial to a writer. We might prefer the more heroic image of the writer building an empire with his/her own hands. But the act of writing is one of the most fundamentally communal processes a person can involve themselves in.

If you’ve ever read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol or Chekhov, you’ll know there’s a constant reference to what it means to be Russian, and that there’s a dialogue between all of these writers regarding that idea. If they were looking to understand what a modern national character might mean for them in their day, they were also asking each other for better ways to understand the human experience. All of these men were of that empire building heroic tradition, but from Pushkin onwards, this communal sense of a greater literary project fuelled them. It’s amazing how little was accomplished before Pushkin and this sense of a literary community.

The Beats are another example of a group of writers who took upon themselves a set of literary/social values and crafted a new literary movement. It’s easy to get caught up in the mythology that arose afterwards, but I love the early black & whites of Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg, captured in the midst of talking about what they were doing. Workshopping their ideas before they turned into social artefacts like Junkie, On the Road, and Howl.

I can’t say I see any comparable movements in Australian literature, but as much as what we do is composed of singular acts, there is a communal environment within which they are collected and shared. These communal spheres open up in various ways throughout the literary landscape. Much of it will find connections on the internet through blogs and blogging forums, and will continue to stretch out, in any and all available directions.

Connecting and disconnecting, generating communal clusters ceaselessly.
The most basic communal unit is the writing group. You might not be able to find a Chekhov or Ginsberg to share your work with, but there’s still this crucial aspect of communication we need to be involved with. Of course it need not be formalised as an official group, but then there’s something to be said for presenting your writing to readers who aren’t your friends. Who will only know you in the way a reader will.

That might sound basic, but how often do you read a convoluted piece of prose that seems to have no justification for its existence outside of proving the author can string together a few lovely images? How often does the message get presented as a lifeless specimen of logic, functioning to inform us that the required research has been done? Even with established writers, you might feel a gradual disconnect, as their work becomes less aware of the reader; more and more self involved and self referential. There are so many ways for writing to drift away from its target, there’s a need for constant calibration that comes only through getting a variety of responses to your writing.

Robert Giroux wrote of Flannery O’Connor, that when he first met her, he couldn’t understand her Georgian accent, so he got her to write down what she’d just said. It read, “My name is Flannery O’Connor. I am not a journalist. Can I come to the Writer’s workshop?” Giroux described this giant of American short story writers in those early days: ‘Flannery always had a flexible and objective view of her own writing, constantly revising, and in every case improving. The will to be a writer was adamant; nothing could resist it, not even her own sensibility about her own work. Cut, alter, try it again…’

Not all writing groups are the same of course. In their most basic form, they are support groups for people who don’t really have the time or energy to rigorously practice the craft at a high level. Whatever their ambitions, sharing words can be rewarding, even if it doesn’t lead to publication. Other writing groups can form vanity gatherings in which writers primp and preen each other’s delicate word embroidered egos.

Solid working groups of writers do exist of course, and sometimes bring unbelievable commitment and care to each other’s work. It’s about as difficult to find one of those as a great band if you’re a musician, but it’s worth the search.

Introduction to the series

Constantly, changing technologies bring to those of us who wish to express our creative vision three major challenges:

• The first is the ability to adapt and learn the techniques of new technologies.
• The second is to create work that astounds the consumer or audience and moves them to engage with and purchase the works.
• The third is to not be so consumed by the technique and technologies so that nothing is left for the imagination and vision which creates art that uplifts the human spirit.

Technology itself is like art in that it is also the outcome of creativity and invention. Yet, it is a tool, a vehicle which can be both uplifting and degrading to the human spirit in the final outcomes. My thesis is that technique is the servant to message and that technology is not guarantee of success. Art is about what you want to say, not just how good the technology which you employ is to create what you do. You can become a better artist by participating in both real and online communities, especially by emerging yourself in the process of gaining knowledge of technique and yourself. This post deals with the first of these challenges.

© ‘Gumboot Girl’ by June Perkins, all rights reserved.

Adapting and Learning Through Flickr Treks
(Part 1 of 3 posts)

Art is about what you want to say not just how good the technology which you employ is to create what you do. You can become a better artist by participating in both real and online communities, especially by emerging yourself in the process of gaining knowledge of technique and yourself.

My Story

I did not go to art-college. When I was ten I was given a simple Kodak camera that had no settings except click and take. I once had access to a decent camera when I took a short course in black and white photography at high school. I was so excited when my photographs were being processed and went to collect them only to find that the teacher had not bothered to print them for me and had thrown out the roll of film. I was shattered, for my artistic heart had been slashed even before it began to beat. Why teach us to take photos and not develop them? My photography was sporadic after this.

It picked up a bit when I had children and wanted to take photographs of them. I was overwhelmed by the technology to take photos that were astounding and didn’t consider going further than the simple snapshot.

Now, however, I am part of a new generation of self-taught photographers, armed with a digital SLR and wishing to push arts practice to the limit. I document community events and friends’ happenings, long for a new lens for my camera, and to talk photography with similar others. I have been inspired to find out about women surrealists in art, and to keep exploring my artistic practice, to move beyond my initial image and work with digital manipulations to heighten the expressive capacity of an image. My photography accompanies my poetry and I think it may be time to make digital stories, as many other poets are now doing.

The journey from average family documenter to passionate self-taught photographer with strong artistic leanings began when I moved to Northern Queensland, further away from my family than ever before. I wanted to capture the images of my new home for my blog. I soon realized that my very cheap digital camera was not allowing me to capture this Northern environment the way I wanted it to.

For my birthday a couple of years ago I received a digital SLR, a Nikon DX40. Revelation! I had to discover how to use my camera. I did try to read the manual, honest, but it was not much help. Instead I began to play with my camera and I joined flickr. I did work out, of course, what was happening with light, speed, close-ups, and zoom, and now laugh at my limited knowledge at the beginning of my journey.

© ‘Leaf Hand’ by June Perkins, all rights reserved.

Flickr , launched in 2004 by Ludicorp based in Vancouver, is an image and video web hosting site, an online community (or more accurately a collection of online communities), which is widely used by bloggers. It was taken over by Yahoo in 2005. I came to flickr shortly after blogging and found it useful for embedding images into my posts.

Uploading photographs to flickr allows bloggers to reduce their storage space on their blogs and enables use of applications for editing, like picnik (online editing program) and experiments in bighugelabs (online community/program for making things like magazine covers, trading cards, paintings and collages with your photos).

Flickr has developed my photography:

• By being the photography school I never went to – with groups that focus on technique, colour, bokeh (the blur), colour, less is more, rusty things (and so on).
• By providing a place to virtually meet other photographers – some professional, some self-taught like myself – and learn why they take their photographs and about their home environments and art.
• It provides a forum for social interest groups who use the image to highlight social issues around the world. flickr provides its full services to these groups for free now.

Some of the challenges with flickr are the sheer volume of images, 4 billion in October 2009. So where do you start? How many people are genuine? Are there unsavory types and images there? Will your images be ripped off even with copyright attributions written on them? Where did I start?

I started by surfing through groups and adding contacts. I looked for images that captured me and then explored a little more.

© ‘Ripple’ by June Perkins, all rights reserved. Not digitally manipulated.

Favourite Flickr Photographers

Here is a selection of my favourite flickr photographers, with a little bit about what each has taught me.

1. Image Peace
(10 testimonials, 546 contacts)

Also known as Janet Tallarigo-Murphy

Based in California, USA, Portrait Photographer and Conceptual Artist.

She photographs Our Beautiful Earth, The Flow of Her Creation, No War Yes, Peace, The USA and Family and Friends.

© ‘Self Portrait’ by Janet Tallarigo Murphy/Image Peace, all rights reserved. Permission kindly granted for use on this blog.

Image Peace has taught me that you can make art out of photography, and have a social conscience as you post on flickr. She is perhaps the person who appeals to my social sensibilities the most, with groups on tranquility, peace and other themes I find important. She amazes me with her manipulated creations. I feel I have come to know her family, her philosophy and outlook on life.

2. Notley Hawkins
(61 testimonials, 3221 contacts)

Based in Missouri.

Originally trained in painting and drawing.

He photographs people, rural, seasons, small towns, festivals and fairs and other events.

He captures the blue hour and sunsets, gas stations and many more arenas within his main collections.

© ‘Jess Hall Redux’ by Notley Hawkins, all rights reserved. Permission kindly granted for the use on this blog.

I find I gain such a sense of place, although at time he makes our world unworldly and it’s just like being in a Doctor Who Episode. It must be something about the colours.

In my flickr treks I find myself thinking how Notely would photograph the buildings, gas stations, cane fields and creeks near where I live. He is audacious in seeking out the occasional interesting person to photograph. He makes me realise that rural life can be incredibly interesting to photograph.

3. Livhouse the paronmeister
(9 Testimonials, 219 contacts)

Scotland, Working in IT, Carer- also known as Danny Letham.

He photographs the world as he sees it and nothing is off limits, the titles of his sets are quirky, whimsical and political. With sets like Election 2010, Songs without Words, Sunshine Breakfast, he experiments with digital manipulations like Negativity.

© by livhouse paronmeister, all rights reserved. Permission kindly granted for use on this blog.

I wonder how Livhouse would sardonically comment on some of our local newspaper headlines, as much as he would photographically contemplate a misty night or mountain. He is happy to photograph a computer screen as much as a delicate blade of grass. He is also a Tonmeister, a person with a thorough knowledge of sound recording, according to Andrea Kitten, one of his regular visitors. Livhouse has taught me to have fun while titling my pictures, and to photograph produce at the local shops when I was revisiting Tasmania.

4. Farl
(66 testimonials, 1000 contacts)

Homebase- Cebu, Phillipines, Chemist, Husband, Father, Photographer, Traveller

He photographs, Indochina,  East Asia , His Bali Wedding, US, Phillipines, Indonesia and  Tanzania.

Farl inhabits a world that fascinates me, although I have not yet travelled to many of the places he depicts. His flickr space is filled with photographs of his family and we all know how the wedding went, what his Mum looks like and where he has travelled to. The posts under his pictures are thoughtful and informative, of both camera method, and culture. It is not surprising to me that Farl is also an active blogger, sharing his photos with even more notes.

I love the colour, culture, movement, energy, and family reflected in Farl’s photographs. He seems to keep track of the work of many his contacts, and always returns a visit to his photostream with a comment on one’s own.I often scroll through whole sets of his photographs, and he has taught me a lot about compiling a varied and interesting set to depict a social or cultural event.

© ‘Flower Rush’ by Farl, all rights reserved. Permission kindly granted for use on this blog.

Original link to Flower Rush

5. Adrian’s Art
(53 testimonials, 1211 contacts)

Homebase England, Wildlife Artist, Photographer, Covers Racing Events amongst other things.

Adrian photographs notable nature-orientated photographs, such as misty weather, trees, horses, as well as landscapes and people.

© ‘Two Horse Power’ by Adrian’s Art, all rights reserved. Permission kindly granted for use on this website.

Every time I go to check my flickr pages there’s another image from Adrian that just grabs my attention. His capturing of sunrise, sunsets and all those things people love to see is simply inspiring. Yet, he takes it to another level, pushing himself to make his photography into art. I keep promising myself that when I have some spare cash I would really love to buy one of his horse photographs for my daughter.

6. Sam’s Exotic Travels
(7 testimonials, 1433 contacts)

Home base-Hong Kong (originally from North America),Traveller, Photographer, Business man

Sam, like Farl, is another traveller who photographs.

He has photographed Iran,  Cambodia, New Zealand, Turkey, China, Philippines, Spain, Singapore, and the United States.

© ‘Face from India’ by Sam’s Exotic Travels, all rights reserved. Permission kindly granted for use on this blog.

Every time I go to Sam’s photostream I really want to pack up a kit bag, take my camera and travel, but for now Sam can do it for me. Like Farl, he is also informative and likes to do a travel log under his photographs. Sometimes people comment that Sam’s photographs are as good as any published in National Geographic, Sam humbly says he has had ‘one picture used by National Geographic for a book entitled Sacred Places of a Lifetime. Sam told me it can be quite difficult to make it as a paid travel photographer, even if you are very talented and have the opportunity to do it. Some of Sam’s most visited photographs are to be found in the favourites collection.

Sam also adds: ‘Flickr is a great site – if you are active in any of the groups and offer comments, the group members will also visit your posts and make comments as well. If, however, you just don’t take the time to stay active and make comments on others, you will find that your new postings get minimal or no viewings, let alone comments. But I guess this is as it should be, as it is better to give than receive.’

There are others who I hear from time to time as I flick through my modest contact list, but I find the vast flickr world is like a large party room, where my personality means I end up in a corner talking to my favourite ones. I must admit I am a more active blogger of late, and have not visited the flickr groups enough.

Self-Taught Photographer’s Quick User Guide to Flickr
 

1) Join groups that have titles that appeal to you and pick a range that will help develop your technical and poetic skills. Don’t join too many as it is crazy to keep up with them all.

2) Check out their rules and regulations and comment on others’ photos when you upload, not just your own. People who never comment on anyone’s work at all are not engaging in dialogue, but just showcasing their work for admirers.

3) Place copyright in words under your photos (yes the internet is full of rip off merchants) and add watermarks if you can.

4) Be selective with your contacts, some may come from the blogging community who you know also through their writing.

5) Seek inspiration from the ones who seem to really know what they are doing and what they want to say with their images.

6) Seek inspiration from the technically skilled who are prepared to share that.

7) Browse using tags on photographs, looking at interestingness.

8 ) If someone is not allowing you to see their photographs but has added you as a contact block them (they look like trouble). Do not be afraid to block people who make you feel uncomfortable with what they photograph.

9) If you are serious get a pro account, but remember you can get these free if you are a not for profit group.

10) Do compliment talent when you see it!

Now I am about to show my work more publicly in my local community with other photographers who I can talk to in ‘physical/real space’ not just the virtual/cyber space. I am exploring the world of digital artists, and finding out about the history of the camera. I am about to Image Peace for a feature interview.

I am not as involved in the flickr community but will return from time to time to see what is going on, and explore the latest interesting images, and maybe find something truly astounding that makes me add a new contact and push my own artistic expression further.

My next post will be on why we need astounding images to call ourselves photographers not just snapshot artists.

Thanks so much to Imagepeace, Notley, Livhouse, Farl, Adrian’s Art, Sam for permission to share their images. Please take the time to visit their sites and leave comments on their work.

Sam Says

Adrian’s Art

Farl’s Blog

Livhouse the paronmeister

Notley Hawkins

Image Peace

Gumbootspearlz

© June Perkins, all rights reserved, for article and her own images. All other photographers retain rights to their own image.

There are some authors who write as though they’re searching for new ways to create stories. They could instead do what most writers have done, and just look for a new story to tell, using tried and tested means. Tobias Wolff is the kind of writer claimed by both the pioneers and homesteaders but there is unanimous agreement that he’s a master of the short form.

In his PEN/Faulkner winning novella ‘The Barracks Thief’ he explores men, ‘young, dumb, full of cum,’ being prepared for Vietnam. It is written in radical shifts of perspective and narrative technique, past tense to present tense, third person to first with instances of second person. Meanwhile the whole thing is entirely natural and does not announce itself as experimental in any way. With every Wolff story there is a balance of startling innovation and traditional storytelling; there is always a search for a new way to break through.

Wolff won the O. Henry award for one of my all time favourite short stories, ‘In the Garden of North American Martyrs.’ It couldn’t be more different to ‘The Barracks Thief’ or any number of stories that might be told about the fading hopes of an old maid being put out to pasture. I know that doesn’t sound interesting. It sounds catastrophic actually, as far as story ideas go. It is a testament to the versatility, and virtuosity, of Wolff the storyteller, that it moves well beyond a summary of narrative features.

‘In the Garden of North American Martyrs’ is a story that breaks your heart in ways you don’t expect; and it lets in that rarest of human emotions, human pity. There might be billions of songs, poems and stories dedicated to love, a great many to hate, jealousy, vanity — but pity is one of those experiences we’d prefer to avoid. For a writer it’s certainly far easier to appeal to any of those other experiences, or if taking on the subtleties of pity, smother it in humour so that we barely need to taste it.

Perhaps it is so very rare, that we forget how vital it is to our humanity, this experience of pity. Wolff shows the reader with a masterful hand, which pushes aside maudlin appeals and avoids sentimental platitudes, that pity is perhaps the most vital of all our impulses. In this way, there is a surprising gift that Wolff bestows on readers lucky enough to find this story.

“Ilura Press is a boutique publishing house and there is nothing glamorous about what we do.”

This was the response I got from Christopher Lappas six months ago when I emailed Ilura Press about becoming involved as an intern. I’d seen Etchings at bookshops and had been told about it by tutors at university. I’d just started third year doing a major in Creative Writing and was looking to get experience in order to get a place at RMIT, doing post graduate studies in Publishing and Editing. I met with Christopher for a ‘non-interview’, to discuss my possible involvement at Ilura Press. Six months later, I must say, my experience has been nothing short of glamorous.

At the start, I said I was willing to experience everything to do with publishing. I wasn’t sure yet where my interests lay and thought that trialling all aspects of the industry would be most beneficial in finding my preferred area. At the same time, I expected to do coffee-runs and the admin work that everyone is always trying to escape. However, rather than doing only what is asked of me, I find myself working more often on projects that I’ve created, and being brought coffee by Christopher or Sabina (Sabina Hopfer is co-founder of Ilura Press and Managing Editor of Etchings).

An average day at Ilura usually runs as follows:

• Interns arrive at different times, drop their bags and go straight to the coffee shop across the road. Exchanges include the usual, ‘how’ve you been?’ and ‘how’s your writing going?’
• This is often followed by a staff meeting, talking about what we’re going to be working on that day and new projects we’re developing. Staff meetings often go off on tangents (including staff dressing up as vampires, karaoke, our love lives, and addictions to chocolate!)
• Next, we get down to work. This involves writing emails, frantically meeting deadlines, giving feedback on possible upcoming book covers, publicity work, and write ups for the website/newsletters (*cough* which all often leads to side conversations, *cough*).
• Lunch (from across the road at the coffee shop or Christopher’s homemade tofu and rice) has been known to involve the female interns sitting in a cluster on the floor getting advice on love and romance from older interns, as well as talks of Jeff Buckley, literature and other the latest novels and journals.
• After lunch we go back to work on emailing, meeting deadlines, proofing, faxes and phone calls, and our own individual projects.

One of my personal projects was assistant editor on our first poetry collection The Crooked Floor. That involved working with Christopher and the author, Tim Collins, during the editing and selection process, assiting with cover and layout, and being involved with much of the publicity and promotions. I even had the pleasure of putting together an interview that I did with Tim about his career and opinions on writing.

There are many projects in the pipeline, and always something new to learn, but at the moment I seem to be drawn to Etchings. I see it as a labour of love. Like all Ilura Press tiles, everything we do for Etchings is part of a nurturing process, and trying to develop Etchings into the best possible journal it can be. I’ve been able to experience all the hard work, passion and dedication that goes into such a publication.

When I started at Ilura Press, I expected to make connections in the industry. I never expected to meet such incredible people, to feel like part of a family, and to make friends that I know I will have forever. Christopher and Sabina have in no way felt like ‘bosses’. They treat all interns as equal to themselves, prioritise our comfort and take an interest in the different ways we are all growing into the industry. The other interns, too, have been so friendly and open. In such a competitive industry, I thought there would be staff rivalries and politics, jealousy or inner-competitiveness. Instead, everyone is open and encouraging. We share news of publishing opportunities, competitions to enter and job positions opening.

My highlights of the past six months have been helping with the launches of Etchings 7 and 8, taking initiative by creating and following through with projects, getting experience in the industry first hand, being constantly surrounded by people with the same passions for the written word as me, and – above all – getting to know everyone at Ilura Press.

Christopher truly underestimated the inside workings of Ilura Press from an intern’s point of view. It’s been intense, often challenging, and always glamorous.

Pictured (from left to right): Interns -  Amanda Louey, Eliza-Jane Henry-Jones and Lana Rosenbaum after the launch of Etchings Indigenous: Black and Sexy.

Everyone interested in writing is asking themselves the same questions; ink on paper might soon be only for antiquarian merchants to trade in and the bookstores we so love to browse, might soon go the way of video store. We know what the literary past looks like but the future bares little resemblance to that world.

So you can’t help but consider these changes to the way words get from you to the world at large. We’ve seen blogs become an integral feature of all literary endeavours but their value to a writer is still abstract at best. The eBook is a seismic movement of major proportions throughout world publishing. We’re all eager to get a better view of what the new territories opening up in literature will look like but it’s clear that we’ll have to navigate by the stars for a little while longer.

Nigel Featherstone has been exploring these ideas of late. He took many of these abstract queries and thoughts and mapped them out into a set of cogent questions. He asked writers and bloggers, Sophie Cunningham, Charlotte Wood, James Bradley, Kerryn Goldsworthy and me to answer these questions for an article he’s written for The Canberra Times .

Nigel Featherstone(NF): For how long have you been blogging?
Alec Patric(AP): I went to the Overland Master Class for Progressive Writers in July last year. At the time I didn’t know much at all about blogs or bloggers. On an abstract level my estimations of what blogging meant couldn’t have been lower, but basically, I was entirely oblivious. I’d literally never seen a blog. It was a territory within the internet landscape that I’d never wanted to explore.

NF: What was your original motivation for establishing a blog?
AP: The people in that Master Class actually. Angela Meyer of Literary Minded fame was in that class with me, also Simonne Michelle-Wells and Maxine Clarke, both of whom have significant blogs as well. It was through meeting these three women that I approached the idea of blogging with any kind of interest for the first time.

This coincided with some publishing success that I’d had, at least in terms of literary journals. In 2009 I had nine pieces published, none of which was due to blogging, but an immediate motivation for me to start a blog was to take these disparate publications and bring them together into one frame of reference.

In a way, it was also to repossess my work. The word ‘piece’ for me implies that there’s an ongoing process of creation in word and phrase, it doesn’t matter whether it is blogging, essays, poetry, short stories or novels. Every part of the work fits into a larger pattern that the writer is not an architect for. The writer functions more like a bricklayer, but of the type that goes out into a difficult landscape, sometimes burrowing miles underground, and brings back just the right stone for the next part of his wall, floor or staircase.

NF: In what ways has blogging informed/influenced your creative writing in terms of process and content?
AP: What’s been interesting is the way certain ‘bricks’ fit the blog best, so I’ve developed a series of pieces that I wouldn’t have written if it wasn’t for the blog. The unique thing about blog writing is the particular structure it gives a writer to work within. I’m essentially a novelist (as this long-winded response to these questions will testify) so it’s the pressure to find vivid concision that inspires me to keep writing for my blog. I recently read a publisher’s submission suggestions asking a writer to imagine a reader with their finger poised on the button of a mouse when writing.

NF: Why have you kept going when so many blogs – perhaps the majority – die after only a few months?
AP: The question as to why so many blogs die after a few months is probably best explained by why so many writers in general give up writing. Or why so many write only sporadically with many months (or even years) passing in literary silence. It’s a choice of life that is one of the most difficult to actually live by. There are not many careers that are more challenging to the totality of an individual the way writing can be. Some writers think starting a blog will make some of that easier but give up a few months later when they realise that it only makes the challenges different.

NF: Some bloggers appreciate the rawness and rush of this kind of writing, while others take it as seriously as writing an essay for a journal. What’s your approach?
AP: In terms of rawness or polish, there’s really only the distinction of readability. If the writing comes off half-cooked and unfocused then it’s not going to be read by anyone. If it’s overly ‘literary’ or academic it won’t be readable from a blogging perspective. It’s not that it can’t be sophisticated and polished, but blog writing thrives on momentum, passing from one day to the next, always more short film or news bulletin than feature length documentary.

NF: People say a blog lives and dies on comments? Does it matter to you how many comments you get and whether or not your posts create a response/dialogue/debate?
AP: There are some superb blogs that barely get any comments and they’ve been going steady for years. It’s not always an indication of how healthy a blog is but often just how connected a writer is within the blogging community. Conversely, there are some terrible blogs that get huge amounts of comments.

It’s that community though that is the fundamental feature of blog writing, and what makes it a unique form of literature. There’s a proximity between writer and reader not seen anywhere else and it’s that direct relationship that often guides a good piece of blog writing. A writer often writes for an Ideal reader and that serves well enough for every other form of writing. It’s the ongoing relationship with fellow writers that gives blogging its eventual character when considered sui generis and as a literary form.

NF: In You are not a gadget: a manifesto, Jaron Lanier says ‘Anonymity brings out the worst in us – the ‘inner troll’. What are your thoughts on using your real name in the blogging environment?
AP: I’ve never commented anonymously and have never had an anonymous comment on my blog that I can recall. Being somewhat pessimistic when it comes to human behaviour, I’ve always been surprised by how little troll activity I’ve actually seen. I often feel that there’s too much kindness with comments actually, with everyone mostly saying things that are glowing and encouraging.

NF: Some writers have abandoned their blogs/blogging due to the negative impact on ‘the main game’. As a poet and novelist, what pitfalls do you see in blogging?
AP: I haven’t really felt blogging affect work on my novels, my poetry or short story writing either. I’ve incorporated blog writing into the rest of my writing practise. Some writers find blogging a distraction and a drain so they drop their blogs. A pitfall is going the other way and devoting too much time and energy. Passing readers rarely move beyond the first few entries, let alone ‘page’ through into the archives of a blog, so there’s a ‘yesterday’s newspaper’ value given to work done on a blog. If hours, days, weeks, months and years have gone into all those corners of cyberspace it really can be an appalling waste.

The kind of writing I put up on my blog is work that I’ll be reclaiming for future collections of poetry or short stories. There’s very little that would be blogging waste if I was to delete my entire blog tomorrow so I never feel like I’m wasting my time. The thing I’d be most sorry about is some of the wonderful contributions fellow writers have made in the comment boxes. There have been considered thoughts and shared experiences, there have been insights into writing and even poetry on occasion.

NF: And perhaps my key question is this: with blogging now in its second decade, what do you see as the future for this platform? Is it here to stay? Could Barack Obama be right when he said it could end up being all ‘shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding’?
AP: The future of blogging will see it grow from a curious organ on the literary body, resembling the appendix, to a point at which it will replace the whole nervous system. Print media will continue to shrivel away over the next decade but most of the critical thinking and opinion making has already shifted to literary blogs and related internet sites. The Obama quote struggles to show an understanding of the new landscape. The void has opened up within the established mediums as they all wonder what the advent of eBooks will mean and as sources of knowledge and insight grow beyond their control and influence.

“Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge how privileged I am to be invited to launch such a fine publication in this magnificent venue in front of such stellar people. It certainly beats micro-waved chicken Kiev whilst watching season three of Family Guy again.

I must say the first aspect that strikes me about Etchings 8 is the high quality and presentation of it. From the cover to the type-set through the photography and the overall feel of it, this journal is world-class, top shelf and high minded. I’m genuinely chuffed to see the resurgence, through Etchings and other literary journals, of an importance placed on merit to serious tomes of art and thought. Finally, they’re being given the red-carpet aesthetic they deserve. There is a place for zines and the Xerox-fresh, letter-press, DIY staples’n’tape style of spreading our words, most certainly. But it became more the usual than an exception for some time there, in my mind it can never compare to the weight and promise of a brain-fed, heavy and heaving collection such as this. The measured hundred-weight and 10 pound of literary life, loved into existence.

It is no small feat that Melbourne is the only city in Australia, and one of the few in the world, where the printed word is on the increase. We’re a city that produces such intelligent artists and is also blessed with the editors, designers and workers to bring that artists vision to fruition, this fact is surely worth a pat on the back. So, if not just for Illura Press and the good captains who guide her, but also for the ocean of artistic Melbourne on which she sails, a round of applause.

The second thing I was drawn into thinking about was the theme. Dusk till Dawn. And how that theme can be such a common thread woven through all of us as artists and visionaries. As an artist myself, and to directly steal from Robert Frost, I have been ‘one acquainted with the night’. It seems to be accepted universally that the darker hours are peopled by artists of all types, patiently going about their trade and letting what needs to come out do so in that curious trickle or terrific combustion you grow to condone.

Partially, I suppose this has to do with the practicalities of life. Less than 2% of those who consider themselves writers, both of fiction and non-fiction, manage to make a true living from it. This is a fact my mother never allows to slip from my knowledge. And so I have a day job, as do the great bulk of my creative-type friends. The art that fuels me, the writing that is my reason, tends to seep into my day-life, a line from conversation, an image from the world around, will burrow under my Regular Joe facade and itch some. But the time to come at my art is always late, at my lemon-lino kitchen table, dishes stacked behind me, wine glass cheeky and full. Now, in the age of facebook and twitter, you can keep a running tally of those “Others” up researching and whittling away at words or thoughts, designs or drafts. Instant messages across the city “I’m finishing chapter 6” or “The kids are asleep, I’m free to type a while”. We create when life is most allowing.

But also there is the transient and pensive nature of the night. It can bring thoughts of romance or mere lust, sinister and lurking things abound, the realisation of separation from that which you most want, be it sleep or sex or a cigarette. We are never more alone than without the sun. As Mabel Yu so beautifully shows us in the story that opens this collection, at night a short walk out your own front door can invite a stranger to pull at the very core of you.

And there are the great, enduring image-scapes of night. Jack Miller, in his poem from this collection tells us “on the first cold night of late summer; numb stars shivered to shed their light”. There is the haze bought on by rain or the sick-yellow glimmer of street lights or both.

A good friend of mine and a great poet, Nick Powell, has spent the last 3 years living in Northern Finland, experiencing periods of almost darkness for up to 4 months. He tells me it has done wonders for his writing, all that time by candle light, not worrying that the sun will come and send you off to bed. Sadly, I struggle to think of anyone I would less like to spend a third of a year in darkness with than myself. There is, of course, solitude inherent in both the hours after dark and in the creation of art. It fosters a sense that you are somehow one step removed because your conversation is passing across darkness and even then is only being heard by the page you are addressing, the language barrier impossibly dense.

But, after all the maddening time spent baiting and cajoling our private art, lonesome as a duck-hunter, the pay off, the point and the purpose is nights like this. When we come together, drink and laugh and celebrate our solitary work at the coalface and the works of our many thousand siblings. So without further adieu, I ask you to raise your glasses, prepare your hands, stomp your feet and spark your lighters as I officially launch Etchings 8: Dusk till Dawn.”