Words Out: Paddy O'Reilly at The Moat

I met Paddy O'Reilly on the day her new short story collection, 'Peripheral Vision', was released. I was surprised that she'd suggested we could meet for a coffee that day, thinking she'd be busy walking bookshops checking that it was on the shelves and celebrating with champers and good friends. But that's probably a reflection of me and what I would have been doing. As it turns out she hadn't realised that it was Publication Day, so I got to introduce myself with good news and (I hoped) some indication that I do have a finger on Melbourne's short story pulse.

Just on the shelves

If you're interested in talking about or listening to others talk about Books, Writing and Ideas, then you've no doubt been under 176 Little Lonsdale Street to The Moat. It's lamp-lit and cove-like, an escape from winter chills and 40 degree north winds. The bluestone walls, bookshelves and striped wallpaper have hosted night readings and breakfast clubs, writing groups, Christmases in July (that was me with some old work colleagues and a slow-roasted, aged lamb shoulder) and of course happy hours leading in to late night drinking sessions.

At lunchtime, when I met Paddy, it was full and we may have been surrounded by people connected with the State Library of Victoria, The Wheeler Centre and its resident organisations, writers and readers and publishers and tourists on the Melbourne literary trail (or completely unaware of the significance of the venue).

Paddy was already settled at a window table and when I joined her we quickly found synergies - our love of short stories, laughing, big cities, Melbourne's coffee snobbery and valuing time spent with people who love talking about books, reading and sentences as much as we each do. Most of her work happens at home, "in the dark" - she has tried writing in cafes, walking down the street and on trams but works better when no-one is looking and she can go out in her garden to think in the company of her free-range urban chickens, Toni and Guy (named after their plumage).

I like her sense of humour in person as much as on the page.

Writing under two names, Paddy O'Reilly and P A O'Reilly, gives her scope to experiment and have fun with her writing. Creating Norm and Loretta - a character who first appeared in a short story but wouldn't leave her author alone - for 'The Fine Colour of Rust' was entertaining and I can imagine a great relief compared to some of her other stories. Too often humour can be dismissed in 'literary' publishing, and I loved hearing Cate Kennedy and Michael Cathcart, in a Radio National interview with Paddy, talk about how much their partners and families laughed through Loretta's Gunapan dramas, and surely that makes it a valuable addition to books that expand readerships.

It's fitting that we met in The Moat where above us Kate Larsen is doing an amazing job at extending Writers Victoria's program, events and opportunities, and beside us Lisa Dempster is curating more and more diverse events for Melbourne Writers Festival. There's so much work going on to broaden the demographic of writers and readers and I think Paddy's writing range plays an important part in this.

Her novels and short stories happen in rural cities, urban density and, in 'The Wonders', an "accelerated world of human artifice". I love her descriptions and details and that she's equally compelling writing from the male and female perspective, in first and third, past and present tenses.

"The woman was wearing a large, floppy hat of aqua terry towelling that completely covered her hair and partly obscured her face. Her upper torso was quite slim and she swivelled like an office chair on her heavy hips…" (from Deja Vu)

As an exercise for myself I've written down all of the opening paragraphs and endings in the stories in 'Peripheral Vision', and done the same with my own works in progress. It's a categorical demonstration of Paddy's skill setting up a story - sometimes with an opener that drops you smack in a setting, sometimes feeling like humour or far lighter than how the story then progresses - telling and finishing the story in a way that achieves the writing tip I have as my screensaver: "Wherever possible try to tell the entire story of the novel in the opening line" (John Irving).

"I live in a suburb where no politician lives and therefore the trams run infrequently, often late and without proper brakes." (from 'The City Circle') 

"Two days after the windows imploded, the first cracks appeared in the walls. We had taped up the glassless windows with gaffer and cardboard and at night the wind moaned as it nudged the torn edges of cardboard, trying to get in." (from 'Breaking Up") 

When she's not writing, Paddy enjoys giving technical support to her writer friends. If she hadn't been a writer she may well have been a coder - as she tells me it too is all about creativity and attention to detail I think that, like short stories, it might be another art that is under appreciated. You might find her hammering things together, assembling Ikea furniture or running workshops where she loves watching enthusiasm build in a room and seeing how much can happen in just four hours. Whatever she's doing there's an underlying dedication to celebrating stories.

Paddy won't talk about what she's working on now - she attributes being terribly superstitious to her Irish lineage - but on this day of publication she feels extremely privileged to have a second collection of short stories published. I'm also grateful to UQP for publishing 'Peripheral Vision'. I hope that the sentiment 'not enough people love short stories' is really 'not enough people know they love short stories' as that's something we can overcome.

Thanks so much for your time, Paddy. You made me laugh and were happy to talk on tangents - like how unfair it seems that your name doesn't automatically entitle you to an Irish passport when I have one; and who are all these young people (the youff) who seem to be able to spend hours in cafes on weekdays; and why is it that people think it's okay to interrogate writers about how much of their writing is based on their own experiences, when it's released as fiction, because how can a writer's personal experiences be more important to talk about than the work itself? - while you tried to enjoy some lunch in between appointments. Talking with Paddy felt like being with "my people" - proud love for the short story form, Melbourne and most of all for celebrating writing. Oh, and I owe you a coffee.




Words Out: plotting Melbourne's future literary map

Words Out - Mark Brandi at Abbotsford Convent

I was a volunteer at last year's Australian Society of Authors and Writers Victoria 'Literary Speed Dating' event. The Wheeler Centre was full of writers with copies of their manuscripts, prompt cards for their pitches and, understandably, plenty of nerves. I spoke with many people during the course of the day, including Mark Brandi. In a noisy room his poise and composure really stood out, and when I was preparing the February 'Brag list' for Writers Victoria and saw that Mark was shortlisted for Seizure's Viva La Novella 3 award it prompted me to research his work.

Mark's been published, broadcast, shortlisted and successful in journals and competitions both locally and overseas. Originally from Marche, growing up Italian in a rural Victorian town influences much of his work - from 'To Skin a Rabbit'

"Winter came in a squall from the south, rising over the jagged, ancient stone of the Grampians and across the flat Malleee farmland."

"'We keep the liver for your mother,' he said, picking it from the pile. 'Best part, good for bolognese.'"

One of four boys whose parents bought and ran a country pub for 30 years, the professional paths they've all taken is a bit of a family mystery. You'll find Brandi men in the Victorian Police criminal records and prosecution departments and one's a forensic scientist with the Federal Police. After starting a few courses Mark graduated from a Criminal Justice degree and his career includes roles as a policy advisor and project officer in the Department of Justice.

As readers we can thank a couple of unusual events that made Mark switch paths to take on writing as a full-time occupation: a professional development course and a cycling accident near the corner of Brunswick St and the Edinburgh Gardens.

Mark was one of a group selected to attend a retreat that included careers counselling, profiling and taking the Myers Briggs personality test. The end result? Not the outcome his boss was looking for. Mark realised that he didn't want to do what he was doing anymore, that his ambitions lay elsewhere, and started what would be his professional withdrawal by going part-time.

A hit-and-run driver just missed running him over and while recovering from broken ribs and two operations to his shoulder, Mark decided that if he was ever going to give this writing thing a go he "needed to put more on the line".

Since then, in just a few years, Mark has accumulated a series of significant writing achievements, which he describes as "lucky that he's had a couple of things go his way".

Throughout our conversation he consistently expresses gratitude to people who have guided and inspired him: tutor Ania Walwicz who taught him to provoke the subconscious, to write without thinking too much about it; conversations with accomplished writers Gabrielle Carey and Des Barry at Varuna; the Pan MacMillan assessment of his manuscript and his agent at Curtis Brown for working with him to develop his novel, which has gone from 70k words to 43k words and is growing back again.

Mark isn't comfortable talking about himself and doesn't have great affection for his own writing, but is eloquent and passionate talking about other writers and their work. His favourite writers are humanists, people who love people and want to explore life's big philosophical questions. 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus is a book that he rereads and Helen Garner's 'Joe Cinque's Consolation' was a "I'd never read anything like it" book, a witness reporting on a story but bringing in their own personal biases, sympathies and changing opinions.

A lot of what Mark writes and reads examines the complexity of people and the "social context of crime". His first novel, set in a fictional town, explores the darker side of living in rural Australia. "Things happen in small towns and are normalised very quickly." Mark's reflections on these, perhaps coupled with his habit of reading detailed judgements of court cases, are strong motivations.

Photo: abbotsfordconvent.com.au

When I invited Mark to meet me as part of 'Words Out' he nominated the Abbotsford Convent as one of his significant Melbourne places. Most of us go there for the vast green space so close to inner-urban density. I've enjoyed concerts, markets, meals and a wedding there, only associating it with positive experiences. Mark appreciates all of this but is also interested in its conflicting history. Some of the women who were sent or brought there early last century enjoyed the stability and manual labour tasks like gardening, but for others laundering wealthy neighbours' dirty sheets made it more like a prison. In both Mark's writing and here, escaping from his study, he is an explorer, trying to understand people, context and social experiences.

I think that the calm I'd first noticed in Mark is that of someone who considers without judging, who has taken risks to go after what it is that he really wants to do, and though his writing days can be torturous at times this is clearly the occupation that best fits him.

It sounds like his second novel may follow the writing path of his first, from full-length through a cull of anyone/thing extraneous and then a thorough rebuild to tell the story that really matters.

When I drove away on that cold, clear Autumn day, I thought about our conversation and the ground we had covered. There are many positive terms that describe Mark Brandi, but if I was allotted only two they would be: humanity and humility.

I hope that his dedication and conviction help Mark continue to enjoy "lucky breaks" and look forward to reading his published novels. Soon.


Words Out - plotting Melbourne's future literary map

 

Sitting In - shorts@fortyfive downstairs

Monday night. Flinders Lane, bluestone walls and large leadlight windows. Basements and juliette  balconies. It might be Autumn and getting cool at night but it's still spritely in the city. Not knowing our $20 ticket included a glass of wine, and enjoying being in town on a school night, we sat outside by the parked cars and had a carafe of Beaujoulais from Cumulus, and watched as people arrived for the second shorts@45downstairs.

Program theme: Conflict & Identity
Paddy O'Reilly, Gregory Day, Elliot Perlman and Maxine Beneba Clarke

I've read some Paddy O'Reilly stories (and don't mind admitting I was pretty keen for her to like my submission to the Overland Story Wine Prize last year) and though I hadn't seen her live before I couldn't miss her arriving. I'm not sure if it was her blonde hair or the gorgeous ankle boots, but I interrupted my partner to say there's Paddy O'Reilly because I am embarrassingly like a writer groupie.
Which reminds me, if anyone knows Tony Birch please let him know that I apologise for staring at him a couple of times in Readings last Thursday. He really should be able to shop without a stranger listening to him asking one of the staff to show him where to find a book.

Eliot Perlman has been a writer hero since 'Three Dollars' came out (1998), and though I didn't see him arrive I spotted him in his seat inside straight away.

Maxine Beneba Clarke I've had the pleasure of seeing a few times, and as guest editor for Overland Audio II she accepted a poem of mine. I'd also volunteered at her 'Coping Techniques' Writers Victoria  workshop on Sunday, so I clocked her (and her deep green feather earrings) when she turned up.

Our fourth reader, I'm ashamed to say, I hadn't read and wouldn't have recognised. In fact when we went inside he was sitting right behind me but it was only when he was introduced and approached the stage that I realised that. I may not have known much about him before Monday night but I'll not be forgetting him now.

Day read from 'The Madeness' (new material, yet to be published) which is a layered collection of stories set in contemporary South West Victoria. The notes I made during his reading make little sense - I was clearly impressed with how he grounded us in the setting as I've jotted a couple of lines that include bark, melaleucas, ti-tree, wind and moonah bushes. For some reason garfish appeared amongst this, perhaps because I loved the specificity of the male protagonist announcing that he's going garfish fishing.

The narrative wove through an afternoon where a father takes his daughter fishing and the wife/mother is home trying to write about Gunter Grass' second volume of his memoir. She'd found his writing 'too damn neat' and almost enjoyed the first volume of his memoir for finally showing the truth of him as a man, and not a very nice one. She stops frequently, focuses on key words and thinks about her association with them. I remember deciding in Year 10 that 'indelible' was my favourite word. I can't remember what I was reading when it appeared in my mind, but it's stayed with me ever since. Day's character arrives at 'insouciance' and ponders it. She remembers falling in love with it as a teenager and first associating it with Muriel Spark. It's such a simple trait yet reveals so much about character and Day's skill with subtlety like this kept impressing me.

A tension builds throughout the story as it gets late, and dark, and there's no sign of her husband and daughter, and we learn slowly of the daughter's intellectual disability and quickly feel the vulnerability. During a battle through the bushes to get to the fishing spot Day gives us the horrible sequence of thoughts that charge with fear - blame and anger, picturing worst-case scenarios and remembering different family members' responses to her daughter at birth. She's our eyes and insight and the downstairs room was filled with people barely breathing for the last few minutes of this story. You know it's powerful when everyone is still after the last word, needing an interval to breathe before their applause.

Continuing my groupie shamelessness, as Day returned to his seat I turned to say something, and not knowing quite what to say I said thank you, congratulations, that was so powerful. A gentleman, though he probably needed some breathing space himself didn't show it, he nodded and smiled at me and I turned back to the front.

As Mary Lou Jelbart (Director and Founder of fortyfive downstairs) told us we'd be taking a short break the word 'artless' appeared in my mind. My appreciation is 'artless'. I feel inept at handling my response to writing I admire, but hope that at the very least 'sincerity' is a word that is associated with me.

What I Loved: Love Begins In Winter

I'm not surprised that according to Goodreads I've been "currently reading" Love Begins in Winter (Simon Van Booy) for a year. It is a collection that whispers, 'Take your time. Savour me.' It's subtle, considered, and I stop all the time when I'm reading it.

"Grief is a country where it rains and rains but nothing grows. The dead live somewhere else - wearing the clothes we remember them in." 

I have to stop and think and appreciate prose like that.
And this...

"Los Angeles is a place where dreams balance forever on the edge of coming true. A city on a cliff held fast by its own weight."

And that's just the first story.

In the title story each chapter could stand alone as a short short - they feel complete - so it's almost a bonus that they flow to build the story they do. That the POV shifts feel natural but not contrived. This is a writer I will go back to again and again and notice new things each time.

I feel like I need to absorb each sentence that van Booy gives me, and it makes me want to write myself. He makes me want to strip whole paragraphs, pages even, right back to the essence that is poignant, significant and provoking.

As I was reading I was reminded of Vienna, thinking that was where I first started this book. I was alone sitting on a bar stool on a busy Friday night, and at one stage I ordered a drink in Spanish. The Austrian waitress answered me in fluent Spanish as though it was natural. When I'm away and alone there is marvel in everything foreign - supermarkets, train stations, a menu. I started Van Booy in Austria, but his observations and simple, succinct language helps me to see the details where I live with the same wonder.

Nicole Hayes shared a writing prompt with Writers Victoria recently: to write your way out of not writing by writing what you're not writing about. I've used this and found it really helpful for getting me  back on track with something that's stuck. And now I have Van Booy to help me start when I have no idea what I'm not writing about. I read a few pages and look at photos on my wall or people on the tram or in the cafe and I'm in the creative zone where everything is art and deserves to be captured and I want to be the one who does it.

I've just realised that I spoke Spanish in Innsbruck, not Vienna. And though I have now read the Love Begins in Winter collection,  I don't think my status on Goodreads will ever change.

If you need more convincing to get your hands on a copy, the Praise on IndieBound should help.

Oh okay, you can also read a hearty extract of the title story thanks to The Guardian, but you really should get a copy.


What I Loved - work I have read and must share

Sitting In…Indigenous Places with Tony Birch

Last Wednesday night I sat in the front row of the 176 Little Lonsdale St performance space. Evaluation sheets had been placed on each seat, and I realised that I didn't have any expectations.

Truth: I only heard of Tony Birch a few months ago. Nicole Hayes, my writing tutor, brought 'Ghost River' to our group to study, and that set off a series that seems to happen organically once you've noticed something. 'Blood' is in a collection I was reading to research Paddy O'Reilly, who is judging a competition I'd like to enter. A friend in London tweeted about the Frank O'Connor shortlist and I landed on the longlist, and there's Tony. He's the writer in residence on The Wheeler Centre's Weather Stations project, which is enjoying enormous publicity. And there he is on the Writers Victoria program - Author talk. Indigenous Places.

I had no expectations, I just wanted to see and hear him speak.

Because there was a sort of lectern, a Dr. on a stage and we were seated in straight rows, I felt like I was at the start of a lecture, and subsequently that I should take notes. But quickly that compulsion moved from obligation, because I was fascinated, and (importantly) prompted to think. Several times I wandered off from what was being presented because it sparked so much for me to look into later.

At one point I wrote in my notebook, "Awkward eye contact with TB. I think he thinks I'm a stalker starer. Should have sat further back."

But I was in the front row, and I was writing ideas about how to explore issues in my writing; how to explore my place through not just my own, but others' experience of it. I caught myself eye-locked, mouth pursed and nodding thoughtfully, and thought I must look like a complete wanker, but really I felt awake in the way only intelligent, provocative, considered and interesting conversation creates. I felt as though I'd been taken as a plus one to a dinner party and fortuitously sat beside a compelling and sociable guest, and I didn't want to be interrupted.

The overwhelming message I left with was the value of telling stories. That everyone and everywhere (even Glen Waverley) has a story, and we have a responsibility to pass these stories on. Many of the things that connect us to place, and each other, may be small but they are significant. So my notebooks and collages of observations - a man reading a Feng Shui detective novel on the tube to Arsenal; the French girls playing Trivial Pursuit at my local, certain that the English word 'seal' was the correct answer to the question, "What kind of animals are the main characters in Watership Down?" - I felt a validation for continually noting these sorts of things, and my efforts to construct stories around them.

My notes from the session appear as a random set of unrelated topics - from Hiroshima to ACMI and digital storytelling - but they all have hours of meaning for me to rummage in.

At 6.30pm Tony had spoken of Tanderrum, a Wurundjeri practice where the host has to give their guest something of great value. In a sense, participants at Wednesday night's session should leave feeling they had got more than their ticket price's worth. At 9.00pm I sat on my tram, writing, and drew a box around: Tony Birch is an extremely generous host. I knew I'd wake up feeling as though I had more than "got my money's worth". And I missed my stop.

* * *
Sitting In is a series I've started of my experiences at writing, and potentially other, related events. Like my Time Out tracks and Book Comments, these are not meant to be reviews, but reflections.

I'm always interested in feedback or suggestions.

On being back

I flew back to Melbourne on a one-way ticket a week ago.

Last February I visited for a month after my job 'finished'. I loved it - spending time with my family, reading, swimming - but I remember looking out the window as I drove interstate or caught the train to the other side of town to visit a friend, thinking I just couldn't see myself in Melbourne. I couldn't see where I'd live or what I'd do.

I was ready to return home to London.

Thanks to some vigorous encouragement by my good (writer) friend Amanda Saint, while she established and built-up Retreat West, I moved writing out of hobby status and got involved in the writing world. It started with this blog and Twitter (using Books for Dummies and a healthy vocabulary of swear words), as well as reading more widely, studying as I read (it was a good excuse for the time I spent doing it), and producing more and more of my own work.

By the end of 2013 I'd been to Word Factory UK and Spread The Word events, retreats by different fabulous people in Sheepwash, Exmoor and Portugal, and almost met my 25k word short story collection target.

And I'd decided it was time to move back to Melbourne.

Lots of things went into that decision, and yesterday while my dad was driving me to another appointment, I said to a friend how strange it is to look out the window and feel the thrill of being here. A sense of belonging again.

Tomorrow I'm going to listen to Lisa Dempster, Director of the Melbourne Writers' Festival, query a panel of experts on 'Writing Now.' Next week I'll be at The Wheeler Centre to hear David Vann and then I'm meeting at Writers Victoria to talk about volunteering with them.

And on Saturday I'm going down to a beach house where there's no internet. I'm going to read, write, hopefully throw away the crutches (finally) and fall into the salt water, and feel like I'm home again.

Last year was a significant one for me, and it feels now like it doesn't necessarily matter where I am, so long as I'm writing and around people who love words as much as I do. I can't wait to get involved with, and share my experience of, the writing world down here.