Fluorescent canola & paying attention

On Sunday arvo, somewhere just out of Port Fairy on Gunditjmara Country, I had to pull over. It had been a big few days, I was weary and just wanted to get home to the kids, but it wasn’t weariness that forced me on to the verge. It was the astonishing sight of a smooth green hill rising up out of a field of fluorescent yellow canola, the border sharp with dark green tree line. I’m not the only one who pulls over for such things (farmers, rightly, get frustrated), but the sight was so surreal, so magnificent. When I posted the photo (of course I did), someone commented that this was perhaps a ‘bowerbird moment’ (thank you owlbookhouse!) and yes, I think it is.

Canola field, green slope, blue sky with white clouds.

I bang on about paying attention a lot. Here in the newsletter, when I talk about my books, sometimes through the mouths of my characters. My gym-mate and I chuckled this week when our pilates teacher told us we didn’t have to do the harder move if it wasn’t ‘part of our practice’. My friend said she used the line all day - washing? not part of my practice. Cooking dinner - sorry - not part of my practice. And while I wish paying attention was always part of my practice - it often falls away, smothered by the general clutter of everyday life.

But I’ve been shunted out of everyday life recently - the highs of new people and places and moments that book tour brings, and I have been paying attention. If I’m going to take that extra hour to walk out to the lighthouse when I should really be getting home, then I’m going to pay attention with vigour.

Something popped up in my feed today and I followed the trail and was reminded of Mary Oliver’s famous line - Attention is the beginning of devotion (read more here and listen to Oliver’s wonderful interview with Krista Tippett in On Being - one of my faves). And yes, maybe it felt like a kind of devotion last night when I stopped in the dark evening between my studio and the front door because - my God - the scent of the jasmine flowers - on this first warm evening, smelling of anticipation and summer nights and laughter and swishy dresses - enough to make me properly pause.

Writers - Mary Oliver and those at the fabulous Port Fairy Literary Weekend (put September 2024 in your diary now!) - are good at putting ‘paying attention’ into words. I was transfixed as Robyn Mundy described sailing into a fjord in Svalbard on an impossibly blue sky day, the mountain that rose ahead of her, and the tiny ‘toy-like’ hut she spotted. That moment became a book - Cold Coast (which I adored) - filled with sublime and specific attention including the point of view of an Arctic Fox. Crime writer, Hayley Scrivenor (author of the excellent Dirt Town) spoke about the ‘gentle curiosity’ that feeds her writing. In a sparkling tent in the cold night, Susie Anderson read poems from her new collection the body country to a transfixed audience. So many moments to squirrel away in the writerly brain.

Paying attention is essential to writing practice - whether we call it that or phrase it some other way. And the gift of writing - for me - has been the opportunities for paying attention this writing life has granted me.

Last year I was invited to speak at another brilliant writing festival Verb Wellington in Aotearoa. Here is some of what I said responding to the opening night prompt - the Radical Possibility of Craft:

…The radical possibility of craft, for me, is the extraordinary moments and people and places and conversations I have the great honour of experiencing because of where the words I write have taken me, and continue to take me.

On Monday night I found out through my Michael King residency roomie - the brilliant and talented NZ writer Madison Hamil, author of Specimen -  that there was a gig in the bunker up on the hill near the house. I wanted to see inside that bunker so much. It was built in the 1850s when ‘the Russians were coming’. I’d stood atop it looking out from the maunga to the sea. I would have paid to see it empty. Instead, via conversation and an email, and because I was a resident of Michael King, I was invited to turn up at the door to get a spot in the sold out gig to see Scottish Australian singer Eric Bogle and his band. I had never seen Bogle play live, but his anti-war songs And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda and No man’s Land – (known in our house as Willie McBride) often played on repeat on the tape deck and then cd player at my grandmother’s house. The fact that he was playing 50 metres from where I was finishing my novel felt like a gift through time and space from my grandmother to me.

It was the best gig I’ve ever been to. I made new gig besties (who I’m fairly certain were twice my age) who insisted I take a front row seat. Maggie, in the seat beside me, was a writer too. We had a little weep together, and then she popped past the writer centre the next day to gift me her book and ask me out for lunch. The music was sublime. The kind of music that has you slapping your thigh one tune and then closing your eyes for the sheer beauty of the note, and the sound.

The radical possibility of craft  - for me – is the curious and astonishing portals the act of writing opens up in the world. For my last novel, I crewed on a yacht sailing from Darwin to Ambon, Indonesia and nearly caught a flying fish in my hand. For this current novel I’ve hung out in the cool room at my local butchers, spoken to meatworker union reps whose work has spanned 60 years of action, and walked through a working abattoir from bloody end to start with the third generation boss.

Writing is the thing that puts humans and volcanoes and crater lakes and adventures and new ways of imagining it puts in my path. The invitations to really listen and to hear experiences of the world that are not my own.

May the things you pay attention to this week bring you pause, and wonder.

K xx

Reading

• 36 Streets by T.R. Napper and re-reading Every Version of You by Grace Chan, who I’ll be in convo with in Artificial Realities this coming weekend at Write Around the Murray.

• Clare Fletcher’s Love Match - smart, funny queer rural romance with footy. TICK.

• Half way through and loving Briohny Doyle’s Why We Are Here - reminds me of Deborah Levy.

Listening

If you listened to this week’s ep of The First Time pod you’ll have heard me gush about Who S*** On The Floor at My Wedding - a brilliant and snort out loud podcast. Hard recommend. The other audio that’s kept me company on the road is Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You - Tartt’s The Secret History meets true crime podcast meets #MeToo - thoroughly enjoyed.

Coming Up

• So looking forward to Write Around the Murray this weekend! Along with the Artificial Realities event, I’ll be chatting to Kathryn Heyman, Irma Gold and T.R Napper about writing and publishing for The First Time pod, and with Paul Dalgarno about The Hummingbird Effect, along with getting to as many events as possible!

• After WAM, I’m road tripping with my youngest and my folks in South Coast NSW! So looking forward to bookshop visits and events and a bit of beach walking! Find links to events here.

  

• Looking forward to speaking to debut author Anna Kate Blair about her new novel The Modern on October 2nd at Beaumaris Library. Tickets here.

• The tour continues and lots more events coming up in Vic, Sydney and Tassie - check out all events here or keep updated via my insta.