The Communicant and Other Stories

A new book, a new treasure

Helen Patrice's new book, THE COMMUNICANT AND OTHER STORIES, is being launched on Sunday 7th May 2-4pm at Knox Library, 425 Burwood Hwy, Wantirna South (Melbourne).  If you can't get there, look for it on Amazon, where it is already available.

I had the great pleasure and privilege of doing some copy-editing of this book – a sheer delight to read, a very easy edit, and she paid me as well! So I am able to tell you it's a little masterpiece of 'speculative fiction', with stories ranging from sinister through both funny and sad to downright beautiful (sometimes all at once). I am one of many who has been urging her for decades to PLEASE publish a collection of her wonderful stories. I’m ecstatic that she finally did. 

I don't love and admire Helen's writing just because we're close friends – but the fact that do I love and admire it so much is surely one of the many reasons we are close friends. The short story is my favourite form next to poetry; Helen excels at both. And spec fic (comprising both Science Fiction and Fantasy) is my favourite fictional genre to read, and hers to write.

When she finally did publish this collection, she did it professionally: using a great cover designer for instance, and asking for a blurb from a writer renowned in the genre, Elizabeth Moon, whose response was enthusiastic. Moon describes the stories as 'weird, strange, and absolutely brilliant' and the book as a whole 'as un-put-downable as your favourite pastry'.

It is also available in a Kindle edition for those, like me, who prefer ebooks. But I actually have it in paperback too as one of my perks for the editing, and I must say it doesn't disappoint. The tactile quality of physical books, which can't be reproduced on a screen, is one of the things we most love about them. This one feels very satisfying, from the glossy cover to the matte texture of the pages. It’s just nice to pick up and hold, and even caress. 

One of the things I love best about ebooks, on the other hand, is not having to struggle with print that's too small and/or pale. I'm glad to say the font in this paperback, though neither unduly large nor aggressively black, is both aesthetically pleasing and easily readable.

Can I find no fault or flaw in this book? Well, no, actually. It's a work of dazzling originality and rich variety. Even though I have been so closely involved in it and know it rather well by now, it's one I already delight in re-reading. I hope it gets the wide readership it so thoroughly deserves.

A Woman of Mars by Helen Patrice

A fascinating tale beautifully told

When preparing to write a review of Helen's latest book, THE COMMUNICANT AND OTHER STORIES, I realised I'd never reviewed this earlier book – instead I did an interview with her at the time it was published – so here goes: 

This is the most beautiful verse novel I've ever read. I don't mean a beautiful physical production – though it is that too, a nicely designed little hardback with artwork by Bob Eggleton. I mean that it is full of beautiful writing. And it tells a fascinating tale.

Perhaps I should call it a verse novella, as it's not very long – however, it does complete justice to its subject matter: a young woman in Earth's future who marries a famous astronaut and goes with him to be among the first colonists on Mars.

She experiences excitement, fear, homesickness, struggle, tragedy, love and wonder. The details of the colonists' survival on such a different world are entirely convincing.

Helen is an accomplished writer of speculative fiction as well as an excellent poet. Her combined talents make this an exquisite, haunting and very believable read. You don't have to appreciate poetry to enjoy this book – though those who do will be all the more delighted.

The back cover blurb is by the late great SF writer Ray Bradbury, who read this book not long before he died, and clearly loved it. As I do too. I don't know any reader who doesn't.

It was a limited edition by Stanza Press, on whose website I can no longer find it, but there are some used copies on Amazon. It has clearly now become a collector's item (deservedly) so the used copies are priced higher than the original price! But it is still affordable from some sellers.

Three Poets, One Book

Jennie Fraine, Helen Patrice and I are old friends who like each other's poetry. In fact we all met through poetry.

Once upon a time (in the early eighties?) back home from a few years living in Africa, Jennie turned up to a poetry reading at a pub in Collingwood, Melbourne, organised by the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union (as it was then). I was one of the organisers of the evening. We Union poets sat up and paid attention when this newcomer read. Hey, this is good stuff, this is really interesting! 

That was the beginning of our long and deep friendship. We even shared a house together for a while, when we both found ourselves surprisingly single after expecting to be partnered for life. We shared it with her young children too. (Mine were university students no longer living at home.) That was in 1992.

But before that, in the late eighties, Helen attended a poetry workshop Jennie was running. My first book, UNIVERSE CAT, was one of the teaching aids. Helen, a lover of cats as well as poetry, was impressed by my title poem and asked Jennie if she could have my address to write and tell me so. 

That was my very first fan letter for a poem. Of course I was thrilled. I wrote back to say thank you. Then I met Helen in person when I was a guest presenter at Jennie's workshop one night. Pretty soon we were great mates as well, and over the years have seen each other through all sorts of major life experiences.

(By a sweet coincidence, Jennie and Helen each have one son and one daughter, and I happen to be godmother to both their daughters.)

Jennie and Helen made their own connection, and after I moved away from Melbourne it was natural that, on my visits back there, I should sometimes meet with them both together.

Eventually facebook became a great way of staying in touch between times. And then a woman on facebook, Maggie Strongheart (what a wonderful name) got the idea of forming a group and inviting people to write about their relationship to the moon every day for a month and post the writings on the group page. This of course meant paying attention to the moon every night. She was interested to know if we would find reflections in our lives of what the moon was up to in the heavens.

Helen, Jennie and I, being poets, of course decided to do so in verse. We liked our own and each other's results so much that, at one of our Melbourne reunions, we decided to collaborate on a book. We all read each other's and our own moon poems and ticked those we thought good enough to be included – an easy way of arriving at consensus. 

The arrangement, the sequence, editorial suggestions to each other, the Foreword and 'About the Author' pages – all proved easy. Helen had a friend, John Davis, who had taken some wonderful moon photos and agreed to let us use one. We knew we needed a professional cover design, so we hired our friends at Content X Design whom Helen and I had worked with before. We were offered various options and all agreed on our preferences. We are very pleased with the resulting cover.

Then came questions of how and with whom to publish. The other two liked paper books. I persuaded them to try it as an ebook first. Smashwords seemed the best people to do it, because they're free, they offer some distribution, and they make the book available in a variety of formats to accommodate whatever device people are using. 

But formatting our manuscript according to Smashwords' preliminary requirements seemed like a major task when I looked at what it entailed. I had blithely told the others I would handle it, but after some procrastination I chickened out and we asked CXD to take care of that as well.

And so finally our book is in the Smashwords catalogue, available to buy for a mere $3.99 USD – which I think is a terrific price for something which is not a chapbook but a full-length collection by three different poets.

I read it through from start to finish today. It was months since I last did that, what with focusing on all the technical stuff, so it was almost like coming to it new. I tell you what – it's a really good book! We are all strong poets, with individual yet compatible voices. Although the poems originate with the moon, they encompass travels, love, memories, world events and personal adventures. They range over past and present, and sometimes foreshadow the future.

We say in our Foreword:

Helen and Rosemary are witches, so moon-consciousness was already part of their lives. Jennie, who describes herself as earth-bound and pragmatic, nevertheless lives her life open to possibility.

And yes, it did seem to me that my day-to-day life in some ways reflected what was going on with the moon. But perhaps that was natural, when I was so conscious of her every nuance.

For a sample viewing, or to give it to someone or buy it for yourself, click on this Smashwords link.

Three Cycles of the Moon

How exciting to have a new book out! This one is particularly thrilling, being a collaboration with two very dear friends and colleagues. Our book description at Smashwords says:

Three Cycles of the Moon is a collection of poetry by Helen Patrice, Rosemary Nissen-Wade, and Jennie Fraine. The poems were written over a month, and all to do with some aspect of or relationship to the Moon. As they move through the lunar month, their thoughts, inspirations, and responses move with them. Patrice was travelling for part of the month, Nissen-Wade, and Fraine moored in Australia.

It started on Facebook, when a woman called Maggie Strongheart invited people to spend a month writing every day about their relationship with the moon. She formed a group to share the results.

Jennie, Helen and I, being poets, naturally decided to do our entries in verse. We three are old friends who like and admire each other’s poetry. So we soon got the idea of collaborating on a collection of our moon poems from that month. We each selected those we thought were the best – of each other’s and our own – and used the ones with the most votes.

We decided to publish it as an ebook, and to use Smashwords. They make their ebooks available in a number of formats, to suit whatever device people are reading on. And because they are not charging us a fortune, we can offer the book for a mere $3.99 USD.

A photographer friend of Helen's, John Davis, supplied the wonderful image for our cover. We asked Delaina and Kristin of Content X Design for a cover design, as Helen and I had worked with them before. Then we found that formatting our book to Smashwords requirements was tricky, so we asked CXD to do that for us too.

And now here it is, listed in the Smashwords catalogue – just in time to miss the xmas market! But I’m delighted to note it’s selling already anyway. People must be wanting holiday reading. If you do too, just click on the smaller version of the cover pic at the top of the right side-bar here, and it will take you straight to the Smashwords purchase page.

It’s a terrific book and we’re very proud of it.

SHE TOO — an exciting collaboration

I've got a new book coming out! Not all by myself, though. WE have a new book coming out! Four of us: Helen Patrice, Leigh Spencer, Delaina Miller and me. Four friends, four poets, "four voices in (almost) harmony" as our subtitle says.

How did that come about? Thisaway:

Back in 1988 Helen read my poem "Universe Cat" and sent me a fan letter.  It was my first ever, and included a cat poem of her own. Touched, I replied. Shortly afterwards I met her at a writers' gathering. and that was the start of a long friendship. By now we have total permission to call each other on our shit, insult each other outrageously, demand to know intimate details of what's going on with each other (and get answered honestly), and request — and receive — all kinds of help or rescue at a moment's notice.

In 2008 Leigh and Delaina both attended a workshop at the University of Arizona and, as Leigh tells it, bonded afterwards over a 99 cent bean and cheese burrito the size of a football. That both were poets and feminists no doubt helped.

In 2009 Leigh and I both participated in one of the September poem-a-day challenges John Hewitt used to run at his Writers' Resource Centre website. I was enraptured by her writing, and at one point felt moved to hunt her up on facebook and make a friend request, accompanied by the message, 'I love a woman who isn't afraid to say "fuck" in a poem'. Then John Hewitt started the facebook group Free Verse for Fun and made both Leigh and me co-administrators.

Helen asked if I knew any online poetry groups worth joining, so I added her to that one. She agreed that the members are the real deal as poets, not the "bunch of wankers" she'd found elsewhere, and entered in with cries of relief. And at some point Delaina joined too, and we started taking notice of her words. We discovered we're all very much on the same wavelength. We're mad about each other, and about each other's poetry.

John Hewitt doesn't do the September challenge any more, but there are various April challenges in conjunction with National Poetry Month in the US (which, online, has become international). This year, after we all participated, and shared the results on facebook as well, Delaina suggested we join forces to produce a book of our April poems for 2014.

So we did, and it's been a lot of work — which has taken place in great harmony, all contributing according to our strengths.

We're starting to get it up on various ebook sites and are planning the virtual launch, with all sorts of goodies to give away to those who buy the book then.

Stay tuned for date and details!

PALAEONTOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS by Helen Patrice

I've been waiting impatiently for this book! It is all I hoped and more.

Here is my review. It is also my Introduction to the book, which I was honoured to be asked to contribute.

This book is well titled. Helen Patrice is good at digging below the surface to turn up the bones of the past. She is good at fitting the fragments together to create illuminating pictures and stories. She digs deep, and brings it all out into the light. From memory and hindsight she creates insight, and shares it with us in ways that make it both warmly familiar and startlingly new. Above all, she engages our emotions.

We met through poetry decades ago and became lifelong friends. We have found many things in common, not least our love and respect for each other's poetry. I've seen Helen's writing mature into the confidence and power she exhibits here. The originality of her voice was always there.

I think she's a master of metaphor, e.g.

The year turns over in bed,
ready to become dark,
sleek with fat,
marinating itself deep within,
while its bare bones of oak and willow
beg the sun to return.

That's typical of her command of language — heightened and musical while at the same time clear and accessible. These poems don't put on airs, or yell, "Look at me, I'm so clever!" They're beyond clever: they are deep, brilliant, and totally authentic, whether she is writing of sexual desire, mothering an autistic son, or waxing humorous about her cats. She does humorous very well, by the way, as readers of her columns in Nova will recall, and has no trouble marrying it with the serious. (And yes, the verse I've quoted is a mixed metaphor, if you like — but not in a careless, messy way. Instead it's a progression, a segue from one image to the next, deliberate and effective, carrying the reader along with it.)

She can be uncompromisingly realistic too, as in

I catch my reflection.
Head to foot loose mismatched green,
with unintended bustle,
hair awry,
wild eyes.
My poetry writing look.

While Helen's poignant verse novel, A Woman of Mars, is one of my favourite reads, I've long wished she would compile a more representative collection of her poems. I'm delighted and honoured to have been asked for this introduction to the strong book she has produced.

-- Rosemary Nissen-Wade
poet, editor, writing workshop facilitator, and former publisher


My regular readers at this and other blogs will know that Helen Patrice and I are friends — a friendship which began through poetry. I would just like to make the point that I am not waxing enthusiastic about her poetry just because I am her friend. On the contrary, one of the many reasons I am her friend is because I am so enthusiastic about her poetry.

It's a beautiful production physically, too. The publisher has done justice to Helen's brilliant work. The book is available from Amazon.

The Next Big Thing

A few years ago I came across Banana the Poet, author of some of my favourite wickedly funny poetry. Her Fifty Shades of Blue, a verse spoof of a certain novel, topped poetry sales on Kindle recently. She followed it with the illustrated version, also in paperback, Fifty Shades in Clay. She is aka Michele Brenton, who writes very good serious poetry too. If you haven't discovered her yet, give yourself a treat.

She says her next big thing is a novel for young adults.

And, as part of a literary web chain, she has interviewed me about mine:

Michele: What is the working title of your book or project?

Rosemary: Life After Death.

M: What sparked it off?

R: I found myself widowed — which I knew was inevitable given my husband's state of health, but I hadn't expected it quite so soon. Writing is one of the ways I'm trying to deal with it.

M: How would you describe this project?

R: It's a chapbook of poetry about loss and grief, but also about finding that life — my own, and life in general — does go on ... and the ways in which it does. At present the manuscript is being workshopped by my trusty writers' groups, WordsFlow which meets at a local Neighbourhood Centre, and Poetry Design Studio on facebook.

M: How long did it take you to find your own style and voice?

R: Maybe I always had my own distinctive voice. I didn't know I had one until other people told me it was recognisable, but now when I read back, even as far as to poetry I was writing as a child, I think it was always there. Style is another matter, and has altered over the years. It is now quite plain, I think, as a result of engaging with haiku for the past six years. I wanted to learn how to write in that powerful, economical, understated, evocative way. I love haiku, and the attempt to master the form will surely be lifelong — but I embarked on the exercise primarily to bring those qualities to my other poetry, and I think I'm getting there.

M: In what ways do you think 'writer you' differs from or has similarities to the everyday you?

R: I'm a little more polite in my everyday persona. My writing is no-holds-barred. Not that it's always rude or outrageous by any means, but if that's called for it will be unequivocal. Everyday me is not in the least bothered by blunt language, but does take some account of what others consider appropriate. Writer me also has fewer qualms about hurting people's feelings. Writer me will say anything! Everyday me then decides when, how, why or whether to publish the more outspoken or controversial pieces.

M: Who or What makes you pick up that pen or start typing at the keyboard?

R:  1. Maybe it's God, or my Higher Self. It's a calling, a vocation, the thing I can't not do. Come the Apocalypse, part of my mind will be composing some lines about it as I disintegrate.

2.  If for some reason I don't write often, I get mighty cranky, and that in itself can be enough to take me back to it. If I don't have any immediate inspiration, I use a prompt or try a form.

3. Going for a walk out in nature is a sure source of inspiration — even when it's a path I've taken many times before.

M: Imagine someone waved a magic wand and you were only able to write one book in your lifetime and you knew it would be perfect and say exactly what you intended and be understood and appreciated by everyone; what would you write about?

R: This reply would astound everyone who knows me, but it would be prose rather than verse, although it might possibly include some poems. It would be about other-dimensional realities and universal energy, written in such a way that everyone would finally get it and see the light. (Which presupposes that my own understanding of these matters is perfect, lol.)

To continue the chain, I've put the same questions to two other writers:

Poet and activist Odilia Galvan Rodriguez is also a translator and editor, a creative writing teacher, and the author of three books of poetry. I first met her on MySpace in its heyday, and fell in love with the beauty and passion of her work. 

Poet / novelist / columnist / memoirist Helen Patrice is one of my closest friends. I would adore her writing even were that not so. And I'm not the only one. Her extraordinary verse novel, A Woman of Mars, which deserves to be much better known than it is, carries an admiring blurb by the late, great Ray Bradbury.

On December 11, at their respective blogs, Odilia and Helen will tell you about their next big things. 

Interview with Aussie writer, Helen Patrice

Helen Patrice is the author of one of my favourite books, the verse novel A Woman of Mars, of which the acclaimed SF author Ray Bradbury says: 'Helen Patrice's poems are little love letters not only to the Red Planet but also to the sense of alien wonder that is so often missing from imaginative fiction and poetry. Bravo to her!' 

She is also known for her columns in NOVA and Living Now (Australia) irregular appearances in Circle Magazine and Sage Woman (USA), and has had poems and articles in a variety of other publications —literary, magickal and mainstream. Currently she shares her poems with the private facebook group Free Verse Weekends.

As well, she is one of my best friends — but I would think highly of her writing anyway, I promise, and trust the same goes for the nice things she says (below) about mine. In fact, the appreciation of each other's writing caused the friendship, not the other way about.

I asked the questions I personally wanted answered, thinking that they would probably be the same ones to interest others.

Rosemary: I’ve long known you as a naturally gifted poet, columnist and blogger who has also written some lovely short stories. What form of writing did you start with, and how old were you then?

Helen: I was in primary school when I started writing, likely about nine years old. I know I was playing word games then, and forcing my best friend to play them with me. We’d select our favourite ten tv programmes, and take it in turns to write five lines of a story, each time adding in another show. A lot of fun. My friend noticed that I was pretty tough on character continuation, and following through a plot line. She didn’t care, but I sure did. If I mentioned Dr Who in the first five lines, I sure wasn’t going to just forget about him in line 55. It was a natural progression to start writing my own stories, and some fan fiction. By the end of primary school, I was showing my stories to the librarian, Dawn Bursey, who bless her, encouraged me. So, fiction was my arena for many years.

R: Was it always your goal to be a writer, as in your primary occupation, or did you have other career ideas when you were growing up?

H: From age nine, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Astronaut came in maybe a year earlier. I went so far as to apply to the air force when I was about to graduate high school, on the basis that NASA’s astronaut qualifications base was: American citizenship (I figured I could marry some Yank, no problem), air force training, and ten thousand hours of flying time. Sure, I could do all that. Several problems: I didn’t know any Americans, the air force didn’t want me, I wore glasses and that precluded flight training, and at that time, the air force didn’t let women fly the planes. Writer seemed easier after that. I never gave up hope however, and sent my resume to NASA once a year up until they retired the space shuttle programme. I can’t tell you how many rejection slips I had from them, telling me to go get a science degree.

R: How have you supported yourself while trying to ‘make it’?

H: Let’s see: checkout chick; public servant; leaf polisher for the public service; clerical work; teaching creative writing, tarot, belly dance, meditation, yoga, palmistry, and astrology; doing tarot readings; working in a crystal shop; integration aide; house cleaning; ghost writer; one dreadful night on a sex phone line; child care worker; professional declutterer; belly dancer. If there’s anything else, it’s been lost in the mists of my mind.

R: This is a digression, but I’m sure everyone else will want to know too — what was so dreadful about the sex line?

H: I put the kids to bed, and clocked onto the sex line. I was dressed in old pyjamas, and fluffy slippers, and had the ironing board set up. I had a set of headphones on, and within minutes, the first call came through, and I found myself telling the man that I was wearing black cut out lace knickers and bra, and that I was restless and hot. It was erotic auto-pilot, while the guy had a heavy breathing attack down the line at me. This went on for several hours. I got through the ironing, chopped up vegies for a casserole the next day, and then I started getting tired. I'm not a night owl. I had two small children who had to get to school and kinder in the morning. I was supposed to log off the sex line around 5am, and I knew I'd have to get my kids up around 7. It was 1am. I was tired. Some bloke phoned up, and wanted some ridiculous scenario, which I blathered on about. We were meant to keep the guys on the line as long as possible. The sex part was over with fairly quickly, and you moved on to building a fantasy life with them. Where you'd live, what sort of life you'd have, where you'd holiday, what sort of shower you'd have so he could peek in at you each morning, blah, blah, blah. I reached the end of my creativity, as I sat watching some evangelical tv show with the sound off. I wanted to go to bed. The guy on the phone wanted to know what I was doing right that minute. I sighed. "Sitting on the couch, watching religious tv," I said, and hung up. I phoned in, logged off, and never went back. I couldn't do it.

R: For much of your adult life you have been a single mother to two profoundly deaf children, one of whom is also autistic. I know something of how this has impacted your life; how has it affected you as a writer?

H: For many years, I didn’t write at all. The shell shock of it was profound, and I felt I had no voice any more, nothing to say that wasn’t the stuttered words ‘deaf’, ‘autism’, ‘help!’. When I did begin writing again, my foci had changed greatly. It was as though, at long last, I’d been touched by life. I’d been down in the mud where it gets gritty and real, and my characters had more to them, I’d seen the good and bad in people, and I’d seen the amazing bravery of my son, trying to be with us through the miasma of autism and hearing impairment. Finally, I wrote about it. I’ve written one unpublished memoir about my daughter’s hearing loss, up until age twelve when she received her cochlear implant. I’ve written poems about autism, and several articles. The memoir about my son is still to come, if I’m brave enough to write it. Sometimes, when my writing feels fragmented and doesn’t make sense, I can feel autism sitting in the back of my own head, watching, and I understand all over again how it must be for David.

R: How hard has it been to persist in (a) writing (b) trying to get published?

H: You’re speaking to someone who’s just announced dramatically on facebook that they are quitting writing, knowing full well that I’m only on hiatus. Persisting through everything has been both curse, and lifeline. I’ve felt dragged from my family by the urge to write, and dragged from writing by the guilt that pulls me back to parenting. When my brain happily rewired itself to move from fiction to poetry, apparently with no going back, I thought I’d lost said mind. I wondered what on earth was going on. I wanted to quit, sure that I’d gone mad, or that I’d just lost it completely. Then I saw that I’d been a poet all along, and that it was no wonder my short stories were so very short, and that my characters were light brush stroke sketches.

In terms of getting published, persistence and an unattractive thick skin help. I was once proud of my huge collection of rejection slips, declaring that they proved I was a working writer. After I had the kids, and suffered post-natal depression, I became very sensitive to criticism and couldn’t bear to look at the rejections or suffer too many. I stopped submitting.

I’m now happily medicated. I don’t mind saying this. I think clinical chronic depression is a bogeyman that needs to have the light of day shone on it. I have depression, have apparently suffered from it since my mid-teens. After I had the kids, it became chronic and very bad, and I never ‘picked myself up’. In 2008, I was diagnosed, and the doctor and I found the right pill, and I have not looked back since. I still have my bad times, but I know a lot more about managing them, and making allowances, and am slowly starting to submit again in volume.

Getting my book published was luck. I’d made no submissions of the manuscript. My girlfriend Marianne Plumridge thought the collection was good, and through her husband Bob, a well known science fiction artist, she knew publishers and editors. She showed it to the right one, and boom, a few days later, he said he was publishing it!

R: I was in total agreement with Marianne. I’m very glad that she had the contacts to do something about it, and that our judgment has been so beautifully vindicated. If I may back-track a bit, when did that rewiring of your brain happen? Was it recent? (I thought you wrote some charming short stories early on.)

H: I would estimate about eight years ago. My short stories kept getting shorter and shorter, with little characterisation. I was having less and less success in the traditional short story field, with a beginning, a middle and an ending, with plot, character, theme. I found myself honing in more and more on a single vision moment in a story and just wanting to tell that bit, with the rest as window dressing. Then I stopped writing for a couple of years, and found myself absolutely exhausted at the idea of building a short story, finding it way too much effort.

R: Sounds a bit like me as a novelist. The few times I’ve tried it, I’ve bored myself stupid very quickly.  So, what happened next?

H: I had lunch with Earl Livings and bemoaned my non-writing status. He prompted me to get The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron off my bookshelf and actually do the 12 week programme to recover my creativity. Now, I'd had this book for a few years, read it and thought 'Yeah, yeah, sounds good, one day maybe'. The day had come. I started it, in the middle of winter, where the view out my bedroom window was grey concrete, a strip of clover grass about three feet wide, a dead lemon tree, and the grey back fence. I did my morning pages in bed each morning, exploring my depression(and getting the first inkling that perhaps I was chronically depressed and that this was perhaps not normal), exploring my ailing relationship, exploring what I might want from my life.

Then, out of nowhere, the poems started. Pouring out of me, sometimes three each morning, coming directly out of the morning pages. Once the twelve weeks finished, the poetry died for a little while, and so I attempted a short story that just died in the first page. Try as I might, I could not progress the story, and finally realised I didn't want to. I wanted to concentrate on a single moment in the story. So, I told that and had a paragraph from a short story. I messed around with it, trying to pull it out, like taffy. No go. It took weeks before I realised that it wanted to be a poem. So, my life as a poet began, and I remember sending you my monthly poetry output for your opinion.

R: It was mostly terrific stuff even then! Your natural aptitude seems to be for free verse, though I know you write haiku too. Apart from haiku, did you ever study form or did you just bypass it? (I always thought one needed a good grounding in form in order to write free verse well, but you appear to give the lie to that theory.)

H: I did do some study of form, under Jennie Fraine, at Frankston TAFE, back in 1988. I joined her poetry class and she took us through practice of various forms, before we moved to free verse. I was never much good at form, though, didn’t like the constrictions, and was relieved when, after one term, we could do as we liked. Every now and then, Rosemary, you’ll mention a form that sounds interesting and I’ll have a disastrous mess with it in my journal, before deciding all over again that ‘fuck this shit, it’s back to chopping up sentences’.

R: Your poetry is a lot more than merely chopping up sentences! You seem to have a sure instinct for line endings, natural rhythms and so forth. How much crafting do you do at the time of writing? (For myself, a so-called first draft might be more like a tenth, only it all happens as part of the initial creation.)

H: How much crafting do I do at the time of writing? Very little. I work with the breath when it comes to line endings, where I want the reader to pause. Or where I can see a play on words, or two possible meanings if I break a sentence where I do. Most of the poems you see on Free Verse Weekends are written on the site, as is. No work, beyond the initial idea, and wanting to say it. I think this is why most of my poems are short. That 'small river stone' of an idea that just has to be said economically. Sometimes, when I come to the page, or the group, I have no idea what I'm going to say, thinking 'surely this time I'm all tapped out', yet something appears. I can't say it's always good, but it's mostly first draft. I don't analyse too much what I do, for fear that if you analyse what is in the cake, it no longer tastes as nice.

R: I hate you. Well, no I don’t; I like playing with form sometimes, and wouldn’t want not to be able to. All the same, to get results like yours so easily … ! Despite your strengths as a poet, I always thought your great dream was to be a successful fiction writer. Do your recent verse novel, A Woman of Mars, and the new one in the pipeline satisfy that urge, or do you still long to get a prose novel published too?

H: My great dream WAS to have a prose novel published. I saw myself having written a best seller of some sort (who doesn’t, really?) and appearing on the Don Lane Show. I wanted to tell him that I too would like to punch James Randi out. Never happened. The Don Lane Show was cancelled, I never wrote the book, and then, last year, Don Lane himself passed away. I believe James Randi is still going strong, so there’s hope I might get to punch him out.

I have to admit that I’m simply not prepared to do the work in terms of a novel. I’ve written four novels now, all through NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where you write 50,000 words over the course of November). Chicklit, murder mystery set in Melbourne’s belly dance community, science fiction, dark urban fantasy. I’ve never rewritten any of them. Once I’ve told the story, I’ve told it, and have little interest in going back over it.

Rewrites, and the thought of line edits, and galley proofs make me want to be sick. So, unless I can produce a perfect novel in the first draft, it ain’t gonna happen. Not unless I get locked in a room for months on end with nothing else to do but rewrite my stuff.

A Woman of Mars does not quite satisfy that urge, but it will have to do.

R: At present you’re working on a ‘salacious memoir’ about the men in your life, and have begun a series of poems about them. Will this memoir be all in verse, or will it include prose passages too?

H: Oh, the prose part was just too hard. All this dreadful whiny, angsty stuff came out. In poems, not so much. I could cut to the chase, my perceptions of how it all was. So, now I have around 25 poems, with a few more to add from my files, and will likely end up with around 35 poems all up, to be put together in a chapbook, and then, if I get brave, perhaps marketed as an ebook. I doubt any publisher would be willing to put their hand up and say “Hell, yeah, sex poems from an unknown!”

R: Are you writing the memoir as catharsis for yourself, entertainment for others, or both?

H: All of that. I didn’t look on it as catharsis, but what a great thing it’s been to be as bitchy as I like, knowing that it’s first draft, knowing that I’ll change the names, knowing that considering how uncharitable I’ve been in some cases, the guys are not likely to put their hands up and say: “Hey that’s me in poem 24, hey, everyone, look, look what she said about me, I’m gonna sue!”. And, when I’ve shared the poems, there’s been a certain amount of giggling, and gasping.

R: What I’ve seen of it is often very funny, yet serious at the same time. I can hardly wait for the completed volume. You were recently chosen as one of only 12 poets to participate in a weekend workshop with the legendary Marge Piercy, whose work both you and I greatly admire. Was she formidable, inspiring, nurturing, all of the above ...?

H: Marge Piercy is my poetry goddess, and when I applied to the workshop, I doubted I’d get in, and was greatly surprised when she replied less than 24 hours later, in an email saying: “I want you, but CAN you get here?” I stared and stared at the screen, thinking ‘Holy crap, the Goddess emailed me!’ You betta believe I could get there, any way possible. I didn’t care if she lived in Outer Mongolia. Marge said come, and I went.

I was terrified before the workshop, wondering if I was THAT good, or THAT bad and Marge needed to tell me in person. “Hello, I really must tell you that you are crap, and to stop writing straight away. Please, do the universe a favour.”

When I found out that applications were in the hundreds, and that only 12 were chosen, I was gobsmacked.

Then, on the first day of the week-long workshop, I saw her in the foyer of the Seniors Centre, in Wellfleet. Short, stocky, a wild frizz of black hair, and, well, I have to say it, a rather dowdy outfit covered in cat hair. She has glaucoma and thus cannot see her clothes that well, and I daresay, even if she could, she would not give much of a damn.

She was lovely. Nurturing, direct, honest, and not formidable in any way, except in terms of her steel-trap mind which remembers everything it reads. Her knowledge is extraordinary, and it’s no wonder her poems are full of such beautiful detail. She knows the name for everything, and has the curiosity of a kitten. She is opinionated, passionate when she feels she has been wronged, and was gently encouraging of the only man in the workshop, joking on the first day that he was brave.


R: Were you the only non-American in this workshop?

H: I was indeed the only non-American. There were several from Alabama, a couple from around New York, one from Colorado, one from Minnesota, and oh, I can’t remember where else now. I do know that Melinda, who has the most delightful southern accent, would beg me to read anything from an English poet, in my ‘English’ accent. I sounded English? I don’t bloody think so! In turn, I wanted her to read just about anything.

R: What in particular did you gain from your attendance?

H: I think most writers go to workshops to find out if they’re any good. They want to hear that what they’re doing is not crazy person nonsense. I got a wide exposure to American poetry, and an introduction to ‘Poets and Writers’ magazine, which I’d not encountered until then, but is a marvelous tool for those wanting to publish in the States. I got reassurance that I was indeed a poet, and a pretty good one, which is nice to know. Since then, I’ve carried a little kernel of confidence inside me. Even now, when I’m feeling discouraged about the publishing side of things and feel it’s all too hard, I know that I am a good writer, and that I am just not appreciated. Does that sound martyred and wanky? Yes. It’s more that I’m a good writer, but just not willing to play the right games, curry favour, and network myself sick. I go to science fiction conventions, forget completely to schmooze editors and publishers and attend the right parties, and instead spend my time buying steampunk costumes, talking with random people, and acting the goat at the Baen Books room party.

R: Who are your favourite (a) poets (b) fiction writers?

H: You know, I hate this question, because it can depend on the day, the phase of the Moon, or whether or not the kitten is being nice to me. I will thus list the mainstays, and ignore who I might be passionately in love with this week.

Poets: Great Goddess Marge Piercy of course; Carol Ann Duffy for her marvellous ‘The World’s Wife’ collection of poems; Mary Oliver for seeing the sacred in the ordinary; Jennie Fraine for bringing Africa alive for me; yourself dear, for your wide vista of topics and for being both tough and gentle; Billy Collins for his humour and insight; Naomi Shihab Nye is a recent addition, as is Kim Addonizio.

Fiction: Connie Willis. I adore her screwball take on science fiction themes, as well as the heart she brings to some very clinical subjects. Arthur C. Clarke’s earlier works before he got into sequels. Asimov’s short robot stories. Nina Kiriki Hoffman is writing some wonderful fantasy that is gripping and human. I love Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde series, but she says there will be no more because they don’t sell enough. A pity.

R: I agree with you about quite a few of those! Honoured to be included, and fascinated to learn why. Thank you. Who are your biggest influences as (a) a poet (b) a prose writer?

H: As a poet, my biggest influences are Marge Piercy, Rosemary Nissen-Wade, Carol Ann Duffy, and the writing books of Natalie Goldberg.

As a prose writer, I have to look back to Erma Bombeck, Charles de Lint sometimes, Connie Willis, and, of all people, John Birmingham. Whenever I get jammed up, I go read ‘He Died With A Felafel in His Hand’ and realize that anything goes.

R: Well, thank you again, for putting me in such company! Certainly both Piercy and Goldberg are among my influences too, and I also love Bombeck and de Lint. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

H: Write, write, write. Get off facebook, get off twitter, myspace, angry birds, and whatever else is holding you in thrall. Put down the Wii, and go to the computer or the blank page and start. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t have to be good. What it has to be is words on the page. Write everything – poetry, fan fiction, prose, snatches of plays, whatever. Have a go at everything, hold nothing back, be brave. And when you’re not at the page, get out into the world, stand still, be silent, observe and ask ‘Why?’ Wait for your own answer.

Read voraciously, and not just what you think you’ll like. I used to go to the library and if the author I wanted wasn’t available, I’d often pick the next book along, on the off-chance that maybe a typo in filing meant that Lawrence and Laurence were the same person and I’d find more goodness. I did find goodness, but also some icko stuff as well, and I learned from that too.

R: Good advice! Where can people (a) read your work online (b) buy your book?

H: NOVA magazine, published by Sunrise Publishing, have a fine backlog of my articles. I was their ‘centrefold’ for around five years, writing an article a month for them on their theme. Some of them can be found on the NOVA website.

I also have my own website, which is run by my friend Yvonne Hintz.  There should be some new stuff up on there shortly.

As for my book, ‘A Woman of Mars: poems of an early homesteader’, it is available through PS Publishing, Stanza Press, in the UK. If you go to the site and have a hunt around on there, you should find it. [I've linked direct to their Poetry page. - R.] For those in Australia, I also have a number of copies for sale, and those interested can contact me via my website. $25 excludes postage. Cover by Bob Eggleton, and back cover blurb by none other than Ray Bradbury.

R: I'm very glad to learn of the NOVA website. The magazine has sometimes been hard to get in the small country town where I live. I'm now having a lovely time catching up with all your articles.

*********************************

Update, 2018:

Sadly, Helen's work can no longer be found at the NOVA and Stanza Press links, but some copies of A WOMAN OFMARS are available from Amazon. They are now priced as collector's items, but from some sellers are still affordable.

Meme: 5 of my strengths as a writer

This blog has a reader, a real live reader, one I actually know about!

My reader is The Cerebral Mum and she has tagged me for the meme: Name 5 of your strengths as a writer / artist.

The most accurate way to find that out might be to ask other people! How I show up "out there" could be very different from what the inside of my own mind tells me. However, the meme asks the writer / artist to self-evaluate, and that has me looking not at the qualities readers perceive in my writing but at the strengths I bring to it, which enable me to write well (when I do).

When I say "writer", I of course mean poet. I do also write articles, had a couple of short stories published long ago, and last year completed the first draft of a rather lame NaNoWriMo novel – but poetry is my passion and my calling.

1. I know my craft.

I was brought up on poetry. My parents loved it, and my Dad often used to read poetry to my little brother and me for bedtime stories. We had the whole of The Song of Hiawatha as a serial, and loved it. I think I imbibed poetics by a sort of osmosis.

As I got older, whenever Dad brought home the latest issue of Meanjin – still Australia's foremost literary journal – I could hardly wait for my turn to devour all the new poetry. (How magical it seemed, decades later, when contributors whose work I'd loved – Philip Martin, Judith Rodriguez, Gwen Harwood – became my colleagues and friends.)

I've scribbled all my life but it was only in my thirties that I decided to try for publication. I felt that demanded more serious attention to craft than when I was doing it as a private self-indulgence. In those days there weren't all the workshops and writing courses there are now. I trained myself by reading a critical history of poetry in English and composing in all the different styles in turn. I discovered that the years of self-indulgent scribbling had actually given me a fairly good grounding already, because I had always played around with form, often making up my own.

I actually like free verse best, though I don't always write that way. I think there's much truth in the saying that you have to know the rules before you can break them successfully. I fondly believe that I don't write chopped-up prose, as many free verse "poets" do, and I'm sure that's because I spent so much time when young exploring the formalities. That being said, I do know excellent poets who have seldom if ever strayed into form. Which leads me to my next strength, which perhaps they share:

2. I have a good "ear" for poetry.

It's like an ear for music – in which I am sadly deficient, unfortunately. But I can hear instinctively, as if naturally, what distinguishes poetry from both prose and bad verse. (And btw some prose is poetry.)

I'm not sure that I could always analyse the distinction, but I know I can hear it. I don't know whether this faculty was inborn or learned. All that early exposure to poetry might have done it. On the other hand, I come from a long line of versifiers on my father's side, and my Mum also wrote very good poetry when she tried her hand at it late in life, so perhaps there is some genetic predisposition too.

And how do I know my ear is so good? Well, for one thing, I have been an independent publisher of other people's poetry and some of those books have won or been placed in important literary prizes.

3. I say my poems out loud before deciding they're finished.

It's the only way to be sure the "sound effects" are working as well as the content. If I'm undecided about different word arrangements, speaking them aloud will be the deciding factor.

4. I work hard to make my poems clear and accessible.

I hate obscurity and obfuscation. Though some people might find some of my poems hard to understand, I maintain that they are understandable. This doesn't mean everything is spelt out; there can be mystery. And I love both paradox and ambiguity – if I use a word or phrase that could be meant in various ways, be assured I mean them all! But I don't make things difficult just for the sake of it.

5. My best writing comes from the heart.

Stating the obvious, you think? But there are poets who try to be clever, and/or write in an intellectual way at the expense of feeling. When I do that, it doesn't work; I need my heart to be engaged too. If I write from the head only, the poetry is hollow. I have always cherished the recollection of an outburst from the late jenny boult (aka MM Bliss) at a poetry conference in Melbourne back in the eighties. There was a panel session about what was essential for the creation of poetry. It went on and on with no resolution. People got more and more pompous and abstract, until finally jenny (who had a cold at the time) boomed hoarsely from the floor, "Deeply felt, for God's sake, deeply felt!" As I remember it, she halted the whole discussion. Talk about cutting through the crap, lol!

******

A second opinion

I thought I would ask someone else too, to try and see myself as others see me, and chose my friend Helen Patrice. Because we have a mutual mentorship scheme, she has been very familiar with my work for a long time. She replied:

"Five of your strengths as a writer: honesty; sense of the right word; true appreciation of others; breadth of consideration of topic; ability to bring humanity and the personal to any subject."

(I did ask some others as well, but no-one else has responded yet. How ominous is this?)


Later

I spoke too soon. Here is a response from Leah Kaminsky:

"Lush femininity, depth of soul, simplicity of language which is all the more powerful because of that, accessibility of meaning rather than obscurity, playfulness of language, dedication and devotion as a writer, generosity to other writers - me especially!!!!, child-like eye for detail and magic of ordinary things."

Leah and I are two-thirds of a writers' support group which has existed since 1991, even when we all lived in different countries for a while. The other person is Jennie Fraine, whose own response to my question is:

"Sensuality, you have the reader walk flat-footed with you through a picture to a bitey ending, ability to write on an endless array of topics."


I am tagging satyapriya, Savvyology, Muse du Jour and pearl.