Speaker 1 00:02
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 00:18
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and our guest today is Dr Gemma Parker, award -winning poet, essayist and academic, whose work has been published locally and internationally.
Speaker 2 00:36
In 2023, Gemma received a PhD in Language and Literature as part of the JM Coutet Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide. For her thesis, which she describes as a hybrid, creative, critical memoir that explores her experience of living across cultures, Gemma received an award for doctoral excellence.
Speaker 2 01:02
Congratulations Gemma and welcome to the programme. Would you begin by telling us where you grew up and what that place means to you now?
Speaker 3 01:12
Hi Kate, thank you so much for having me today. It's such a pleasure to be here. I grew up, I was born up in Gladstone in Queensland. That was up in the tropics and is very tropical. We had a mango tree in the backyard, really close to the beach.
Speaker 3 01:27
And then we moved down to the Adelaide Hills and I spent the majority of my childhood then growing up in the Adelaide Hills, which was very different. So the place that I grew up in Nan in the Adelaide Hills still means a lot to me now.
Speaker 3 01:41
I think we did a lot of camping as well and the landscapes and the eucalyptus forests and the smell of the Adelaide Hills in winter, with the wood fires and the cold mornings. I still have a very fond relationship with those things.
Speaker 2 02:00
Sounds beautiful, sounds idyllic. And your doctoral thesis explores your experience of living across cultures. Would you tell us about the places where you've lived and also your relationship to the languages of those places?
Speaker 3 02:15
Yeah, so once I finished high school I decided to move overseas and I went to London and I lived in London for two years working in a bookstore and then that just sort of started me off on this period of time living abroad.
Speaker 3 02:31
So I then studied in Paris, I went to a university in Paris called Sion's Po, came back to Adelaide for a little while and then moved to Vietnam and then had two kids and then we moved as a family to Japan.
Speaker 3 02:46
So in Paris I was studying at a French university but I was mostly studying in English and all of my friends were international students and so I spent most of my time in English but of course having to use French I was only just new to learning French, having to use French for the bureaucracy and anything that I had to do related to my visa or my bank account all had to happen in French so that was confronting at first.
Speaker 3 03:14
When we lived in Vietnam I again didn't know very much Vietnamese, I learned a little bit, I could order a taxi but I didn't learn the language and then in Japan my daughter and I learned the script, the hiragana script and some of the kanji together and so yeah I really like languages, I really really enjoy working with language.
Speaker 2 03:39
and of course it's easier for children to pick up a language so it would have been easier for your daughter.
Speaker 3 03:45
Definitely, definitely. She is bilingual because my husband is French and so she already had French and English And then she was just passionate about learning the Hiragana script I think she's very artistic as well and the fact that it's the kanji especially are like little drawings Was very appealing to her
Speaker 2 04:03
Brilliant. Gemma, you're an award -winning poet. Would you tell us about when you first started writing poetry and what drew you to that genre?
Speaker 3 04:13
I was thinking about when I started writing poetry and I think I was really quite young. I remember loving it at the age of 10 or 11, writing little poems and enjoying that. My dad had some poetry at home.
Speaker 3 04:27
He had a collection by Richard Brodergan and a collection by E .E. Cummings that I just loved. I thought they were so funny and playful and clever. And so I think I was attracted to how solitary it was.
Speaker 3 04:42
It was really something that you did by yourself. And also in order to be good it was clear. It was clear that it was quite difficult to be good and I think that drew me to it as well because it was a challenge.
Speaker 3 04:56
But also it's a very playful and rebellious form or genre I guess because you can do anything. You can do anything you want which is poets like Brodergan and Cummings show that. And so that was very attractive to me as well.
Speaker 2 05:13
Rebellious is an interesting word. I haven't heard that in relation to poetry. So you started writing when you were quite young?
Speaker 3 05:22
Yeah, yeah, I mean I played around with, I remember, actually I know the first poem I wrote because my grandmother framed it because I wrote it when my grandfather died and he died when I was five and a half and I remember being told and having this overwhelming urge to sit down with my derwent so I had this beautiful set of derwent's that my grandmother had given me and to make something that was going to speak to my grandmother about this terrible thing that had happened.
Speaker 3 05:50
And I made the choice to do every letter in a different colour so it's a very slow, slow poem that I wrote. It was only four lines but she loved it and she framed it.
Speaker 2 06:01
beautiful story.
Speaker 3 06:19
Yeah, so because I grew up in the Adelaide Hills and we did so much camping, I do have such a strong relationship with, I don't know, stringy bark forests and sandfire meadows and just so much of the landscape of South Australia I feel I'm really connected to.
Speaker 3 06:37
The reason it came in and became part of my doctoral thesis is because of the pandemic really, I had first pitched the idea of what I was thinking of as a travel narrative. I was going to have these European thinkers and writers that I was working with and I was going to go back to Europe myself and sort of follow in their footsteps or explore the areas they were living and writing and thinking and I started my thesis in February of 2020 and so the pandemic really closed everything very quickly and a lot of the creative process for me over the next few years was this reckoning with not being able to go out into the world and to make do with what was in front of me, the local, the domestic, the familiar and to find beauty and richness in the landscapes that are here and so the flora came in through that project.
Speaker 2 07:37
And we mentioned in the introduction that your doctoral thesis is a hybrid creative critical memoir and you write on your page in WordPress that it is a hybrid collection of creative fragments and personal essays which interrogates language, motherhood, creativity, longing and purpose and engages with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as well as the writings of Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Elena Ferrante, Maggie Nelson and John Palahiri among others.
Speaker 2 08:11
Would you tell us about how you designed and then plan the focus and structure of your thesis to weave in all the elements that we've mentioned?
Speaker 3 08:21
Yeah that's such an interesting question because I first started off with Nietzsche and Camus and Beckett, that was my first proposition for my thesis, and then as the work evolved in relationship to the circumstances, as I moved through trying to use these writers and thinkers in the relationship to my own lived experience and the experience of the pandemic, I just found myself snaking outwards into other writers and into other philosophies and other writers became important to me in ways that I hadn't predicted, I had not predicted using Ferante for example or Lahiri, but I fell into these writers and became passionate about their work and the project, what they were engaging in and that was so exciting to me that it just came into the work, just came in and so how many elements came into the thesis I think was representative of how many things were interesting to me over the course of the three and a half years of the thesis.
Speaker 2 09:31
Can I ask you specifically about the language part of it? You talk about interrogating language and my background's in language teaching, so that immediately captures my attention and interest. Would you talk with us about that?
Speaker 3 09:47
Yeah, look, I am fascinated by languages and having two children who are bilingual has been fascinating for me. I've really, I've had a lot of fun watching what they do with language and how they're growing into two different languages.
Speaker 3 10:03
And so the interrogation of language is partly my own attempts to be fluent in French and to read in French. I made the decision that I was going to read Camus in the original French. And what that experience was like for me, I find it, I am much slower in French.
Speaker 3 10:24
And that's a fascinating experience when you've been reading in English all your life to suddenly be much slower than you are used to being. It was really interesting to me, but also because it's memoir and I was trying to talk about my life and the circumstances of my life, it had to be partly in French as well because conversations I have in my daily life with my mother -in -law, for example, are always in French.
Speaker 3 10:54
And so even though I'm making a stream of errors, it would be false to then represent that I felt in English. So there's a lot of thinking about language and thinking about how Beckett's using language, how Lahiri's using language, Ferante's relationship with her translator, all of those things are really interesting to me.
Speaker 2 11:17
They're all very interesting points because of course Beckett was a translator himself and Elena Ferranti has that relationship with her translator but also she's writing about Naples and there's some people call it a dialect, some people call it a language, Neapolitan language and Giumpaleiri of course lives in Italy and writes from that intercultural perspective.
Speaker 2 11:47
I'm fascinated by what you say about reading in French and what you say about the errors. Language teaching has changed, everything should change and evolve over time and when I first started learning Spanish there was an emphasis on accuracy, on grammatical accuracy in particular and I was very self -conscious when I spoke.
Speaker 2 12:13
Now I was fortunate to meet a number of people from Chile at the time who couldn't speak English so that really propelled me into using the Spanish that I knew. It's a bit like when you speak with your mother -in -law and you're using your second language and I do read in Spanish and what I've observed from that is that I read more carefully and I retain more when I'm reading a book in Spanish whereas if I'm reading in English I might daydream a bit, drift a bit but I focus in Spanish.
Speaker 2 12:48
It's fascinating the different ways we read depending on our relationship to a language.
Speaker 3 12:53
Absolutely, yes. I learned French, I started learning French when I was 24. So I think that's one of the reasons that Leheri's project was so interesting to me because being an adult learner of a language, it's very difficult to then become fluent I think, especially so many people speak English.
Speaker 3 13:12
If you have those opportunities, you have that special person with whom your language, your speaking of their language is better than their speaking of your language, then you really get the opportunity to make mistakes and keep going, which yeah, it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 13:28
Overcoming the fear of making mistakes is like 80% of the work.
Speaker 2 13:33
I think. It is, and you're right, I was 21 when I started learning Spanish. So there are those walls that we put up in our own minds and yet current thinking is communicating the message is what is important and the more confident you become in communicating the message, the more you're able to address any questions of accuracy.
Speaker 2 13:56
So it's really confidence and then correctness rather than correctness and then confidence in the approach. And I think we also notice in our teaching when we're working with other people and encouraging them, we really do encourage that communication.
Speaker 3 14:14
Absolutely, I teach English as a second language. I have been doing that for years and that's something that I talk to my students about. The difference between taking a risk, being courageous, making a mistake and being perfect and saying nothing is always better.
Speaker 3 14:29
Always better to give it a shot.
Speaker 2 14:32
absolutely always better to communicate and connect.
Speaker 3 14:35
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2 14:41
On Vision Australia Radio you're listening to our conversation programme Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Dr Gemma Parker, award -winning poet, essayist and academic. At last year's Writers Week and you can tell that I made notes, you referred to the excitement when theory and writing are in tension with experiences.
Speaker 2 15:03
Would you elaborate on that for us?
Speaker 3 15:05
Yeah, I did have this experience. The first year of my thesis, people talk about what you plan to do with your thesis and then the end product being vastly different. It can be comical how different what you imagine you're gonna produce and what you actually produce being, but I have always really enjoyed the work of the three artists that I picked.
Speaker 3 15:30
So I had always felt connected to and enjoyed a lot of the work of Nietzsche, Beckett and Camus. And when I went back into their work in the first year of my thesis, I found myself so regularly frustrated.
Speaker 3 15:44
And especially as a mother, I felt kind of denied, like Nietzsche was denying me my engagement with him again because I had gone off and done this very domestic, suburban thing. And so I felt this tension in all my responsibilities in the world, all my duties, all the ways in which I had to care for others.
Speaker 3 16:05
And then these kind of powerfully nihilist solitary figures that I was engaging with. And I found that very inspiring and exciting to work with.
Speaker 2 16:19
very complex and challenging as well. Yeah. Really forces you to look right within.
Speaker 3 16:27
Yes, I think there was a part of that project that I found thrilling. You don't often get opportunities in life to have a scholarship to really turn inward. And so that was very exciting, but it was also, as you point out, it was very challenging and it was exhausting at times as well.
Speaker 2 16:48
And I'm thinking about you writing your doctoral thesis and being a mother. Would you tell us about the day -to -day practicalities of your work? When and where were you able to write and how did you keep yourself on track with all the dimensions of your study that we've talked about?
Speaker 3 17:08
Yeah, so I started, my son had started kindy and so both children were out of the house for a certain amount of time every day and even though I did continue working and doing other things, there were blocks of time that were just for my thesis and for my research and so that was good and it was important.
Speaker 3 17:27
I could have filled those hours up with other things but I really tried to keep them clear for the work. Yes, it's very easy as a mother and a teacher to fill your time. So that was important. I had some really nerdy timelines and also summaries of my work.
Speaker 3 17:47
I had constant lists of what needed to happen next and what I needed to read. Sometimes my lists would have something really basic on it like borrow this book from the library or do a word search for this term and so you get a sense of achievement from having these really basic bland little tasks to do but I did have lots of lists.
Speaker 3 18:07
Lots of lists, lots of deadlines, lots of timelines and I also ended up having a pretty religious hiking schedule as well and I think that kept me sane because you can't, I couldn't sit and read and write for eight hours.
Speaker 3 18:26
I could do a bit of thinking and then I would need a break or I could do a bit of writing and then I would need a break and the break of walking, we live near Brownhill Creek so taking any of those hiking paths I always found I came back feeling refreshed and sometimes I even had a solution for a problem that I'd been facing.
Speaker 3 18:49
So yeah, lists and hiking,
Speaker 2 18:51
a healthy approach to your work. So how challenging was it for you to decide what to include in your thesis and what to leave out?
Speaker 3 19:00
love this question. I, because I wrote creative fragments, I just ended up with this enormous pile of fragments and I had to think, because most of my craft is as a poet, I had to think really carefully about what my process was and I kind of had to invent a process for myself and what I decided in the initial phases was that everything belonged.
Speaker 3 19:25
If I had written it, it was going in and so my supervisors got 10 ,000 words of creative fragments and then they got another 10 ,000 words of creative fragments and I just kept moving through like that and when I went back and responded to their feedback or reread through the work, it would become clear that certain fragments didn't belong and they would go into a folder I called overflow and I just kept doing that.
Speaker 3 19:53
So at the beginning everything belonged and then as I went through it became clearer what had to be put aside. By the very end I had a strict word count and that was much harder because then I was culling but that process also there were some fragments that were speaking to the same point and I didn't need both of them so there were harder decisions to make at that point.
Speaker 2 20:18
Jim, you're one of the managing editors and co -founders of the South Australian Literary Journal, the Salt Bush Review, and what you've just described, your process working on your thesis, would help with editing a literary journal as well.
Speaker 2 20:32
Would you tell us about the Salt Bush Review and how our listeners can access it?
Speaker 3 20:38
Absolutely. So the Soul Push Review, I co -founded with another PhD candidate, Lynn Dickens, in 2021 and we wanted to create opportunities for South Australian writers to connect with the broader national literary landscape.
Speaker 3 20:57
We don't have any literary journals here at the moment. The Soul Push Review is the only one and it's a digital journal but we care for it and edit it and publish everything with as much care as if it was going to print.
Speaker 3 21:12
So we're very proud of it. We've got four issues out now and they're all themed so you can read the theme and the editorial about the theme for each issue and it's easy to find online at Soul Push Review.
Speaker 3 21:27
If you google the Soul Push Review it will come up straight away.
Speaker 2 21:31
Thank you. Jimmy, your page on WordPress includes links to some of your poems and short stories. Would you read one of them for us now?
Speaker 3 21:39
Yeah, okay so I've chosen to read a poem of mine called Forest Fragments. Forest Fragments. One, as usual the forest forgets that it has a job to do. Two, each shaking blue wildflower heats the wind.
Speaker 3 21:59
Three, nothing can be built in this forest but the forest still contains everything that has four. A young boy climbs a fallen tree with a rope in his teeth. Five, the forest is too cold to live in. Six, every fern frond is the same shade of green, only the afternoon light fractures them like shale into bronze, ochre and quartz.
Speaker 3 22:31
Seven, the forest is terrifying and it will make you ready. Eight, there is nothing profane about a forest, it has no sides. Nine, in a forest everything happened, everything is still happening. Ten, the forest does not trade in negations.
Speaker 3 22:55
Eleven, there is no version of you in the forest that does not know what to do.
Speaker 2 23:03
Beautiful, thank you so much. Gemma, you're also one of the curators of the brilliant monthly No Wave Poetry series, which is held at the Weachief Hotel in Thebeton and was featured on this program last year.
Speaker 2 23:17
We have a very vibrant live poetry scene in South Australia and you've also performed your own poetry live on many occasions. Would you tell us about curating the No Wave Poetry series and also what's special about live poetry?
Speaker 3 23:32
So No Wave was created by local poet Dominic Symes and it was run by Dom and Banjo and Olivia, Banjo James and Olivia De Silva, who are all now interstate. And so when Dom mentioned that he didn't think he could keep curating No Wave from Melbourne, a group of us got together and decided to take over and we run it as a kind of committee model now.
Speaker 3 23:58
So each month is curated by a different poet and it's been really wonderful to keep it going. No Wave has such a strong fan base here in Adelaide and it's a beautiful venue and it's a really respectful audience.
Speaker 3 24:12
So it's just a lovely, lovely poetry reading to have here in Adelaide. I mentioned before that I've drawn to poetry because it's very solitary but there's only so long that I like being by myself making things.
Speaker 3 24:27
I really, really enjoy the community aspect of the literary community here in South Australia. That's one of the motivations for starting the Salt Bush Review and for taking over No Wave. It's great to listen to other people perform their work.
Speaker 3 24:44
It's really humbling to witness the amount of courage it takes for people to read. Reading poetic work is really different to giving a speech or teaching a class or leading a meeting. You're doing something very, can feel very vulnerable.
Speaker 3 25:01
One of the beautiful things about No Wave is poets are often trying out new work just to see if it works, to see how it goes and that's really a beautiful thing to be a part of as well, to see people workshopping their creative work.
Speaker 3 25:16
You're witnessing part of the process. I'm a very nervous performer so I love seeing people who are really confident as well. I feel like oh maybe one day, maybe one day I'll be that cool on stage but yeah I really love No Wave.
Speaker 2 25:31
what really appealed to me was the warmth and the collegiality. You know, people were there supporting one another, been to book launches there as well and the community comes out and it's always that incredibly supportive environment and there've been people who've read for the first time ever and they get applause and cheering and congratulations.
Speaker 2 25:57
So although it is, as you say, makes people vulnerable in one sense, in another sense, it's such a kind and caring environment that it's the best place really to make a start in sharing your own work with others.
Speaker 3 26:15
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 2 26:17
As well as editing Saltbrush Review and being part of the team creating No Wave, would you tell us what you're working on now?
Speaker 3 26:26
Yeah, absolutely. So I was very fortunate to win one of the fellowships from Writers Essay and the State Library. So I have an emerging Writers Fellowship that I'm undertaking at the moment. And I'm working with this idea of the Spider Mother, which initially came from a piece of art by Louise Bourgeois called Mameau, which is the French word for mother, which is what my children call me, which I had never anticipated they would call me.
Speaker 3 26:56
But of course, because my husband spoke to them exclusively in French, he always referred to me as Mameau. And so they grew up calling me and still call me Mameau. They call me mum or mother sometimes as a joke.
Speaker 3 27:09
But because she's got this beautiful big sculpture called Mameau that is currently at the Gallery of New South Wales. I was really excited by that and by the idea of mothers as spiders, spiders as mothers.
Speaker 3 27:22
So that's my project.
Speaker 2 27:26
Sounds fascinating. We'll have to invite you back to hear more about that. Thank you so much, Gemma. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Dr. Gemma Parker, award -winning poet, essayist and academic.
Speaker 2 27:41
This program can be heard at the same time each week on Vision Australia Radio, VA Radio Digital, online at VARadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio Podcasts where you can catch up on earlier episodes.
Speaker 1 28:08
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Speaker 2 28:19
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