Cirrus@Austlit

'The other day someone told me one of those amazing German compound words: Waldeinsamkeit. It means the feeling of being alone in the forest, in a calm and peaceful way—communing with nature, if you like.'  (Introduction)

'Here we are, in a freezing valley covered in grass and edged by snow-bothered mountains, sitting nearer to the bottom of the world than just about everyone. It’s a still winter day—fog blocks the morning and the air is nearly tactile. We’re not far from Hobart, but every hill between us is another door opening to chilled air; just like the airport, to come home is to step outside. We’re that much closer to the wet and windy south-west, where muddy buttongrass plains give way to tangles of green scrub and an audience of endless peaks. We’re a long way from the major urban centres, and glad to be. The air is worth breathing, the high places worth climbing and the world is worth touching with our hands. But what does this mean for our writing?' (Introduction)

'For the longest time, the Australia I knew was all myth. Early reading didn’t dispel this languid stereotype because part of that upbringing was made possible only by the claustrophobia of the culture itself. It was a narrow existence, filled with outback hardship or romance novels, bush memoirs (how embarrassing that I appear to have done the same thing) and writers from America or worse, England. In short, the authors I knew were not a representative sample of this country. This is not a problem if your range is bigger and broader, but to the extent that my range left my cultural Umwelt at all, it stopped at Not Without My Daughter. Life, then, is about pushing back the borders of our observable universe. Especially when such a quest reveals much about the place we call home.' (Introduction)

'There was a Facebook message from Hetti Perkins, which was an odd coincidence. I was working on a poem about her late father Charlie for a collection, which I would later abandon as I grew aware that I lacked the precision for poetry. The early interest I had attracted leading to these opportunities was more about a literary industry driven to uncover diverse new voices than an acknowledgement that with hard work and patience I might become a great writer. Attention that provided motivation but pushed emerging writers in directions at once exhilarating, confusing and premature. At the time I was considering using the title ‘Peeling’ for the poetry chapbook when I noticed her message. The poem was about her father’s role in the Nancy Prasad incident, where a five-year-old Fijian girl was deported to Fiji, symptomatic of Australia’s racist immigration policies of the 1960s.' (Introduction)

'A little while ago a friend of mine shared an anecdote concerning her father when he was her age and attending the University of Sydney. In the retelling, he’s marching alongside a misaligned peer—a young politician—who objects to (then) recent cuts to education funding. The image is not unlike that of a scene written and directed by Shonda Rhimes (a truly dramatic TV-series concept that must be optioned immediately). The contingent press forward, bunched up together as they riot and pound the campus pavement, righteously projecting their voices outward. It’s a typical slice of Australian #stupol history and still resonates. At family dinners her father now shares a very different sentiment: ‘If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.’' (Introduction)

'Writing and risk is a topic that has preoccupied my thoughts for at least the last few years.' (Introduction)

'On a wet and squally September day in Sydney, being greeted by Deborah Mailman is a tonic. Wearing reading spectacles and a black tracksuit top with white stripes, she steps away from her laptop in this ABC office to smile radiantly with both arms extended for a handshake. Then she throws her head back, claps her hands and laughs when I recite her salty dialogue as a senator in Total Control, the stormy political television drama series directed by Rachel Perkins.'  (Introduction)

'When I told a cultivated London friend that we were planning to go to Berlin in the autumn, he was delighted, told me the Gemäldegalerie was a remarkable collection with hardly anyone there and that he and his wife go as willingly to Berlin as they once went to Paris. Most artists look to Berlin as the place they need to know. Nothing and nobody beats the beauty and splendour of Paris, nor its food, but Berlin’s diversity and accessibility make it a no-frills, no-fuss pleasure. From Bitburger Lager to Augustiner, the beer lives up to its reputation. We made a logistical mistake and took the train from Amsterdam. I wanted to look at the landscape of the northern tier of Europe. You don’t see much of interest and it’s dark by four o’clock.'  (Introduction)

'When I was a ten-year-old I started going to The Sun Theatre in Yarraville all the time. It was a big old art deco building that had fallen into disrepair in the previous decades, but around 1997 it was resurrected as a film society. It had an enormous 1000-seat auditorium, one screen, and barely anyone ever went. The film society only showed films on the weekends, mostly black-and-white stuff. Films such as Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) and The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950). I saw Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970) and soaked it up like a cinematic sponge.' (Introduction)

'The pigeon flew above the street with the fruit stands, the women in headscarves and tracksuits soaping away dog shit, the angel statue holding sleepy pigeons and the double-parked Fiats. It shat on a diamante-encrusted shoe, spread a brief shadow on a plastic table, dove towards the low rising sun and into the bicycle spokes of English teacher Anastasia.' (Introduction)

'When the visions begin, I reach for my µατι. Gripping tight, I feel the glass eye heat in my hand. The pupil marks a dot in my palm as jagged edges of light shimmer across my eyes. I’m not enough of a believer to think that the µατι fully protects me as I am awash with illness, but holding on to something in this moment where the world feels light and wispy is a comfort I cannot bear to part with.' (Introduction)

'A long time before I thought about becoming a mother, I read about a boy named David Vetter. He lived until the age of 12 in a sterilised space in a hospital in Texas. He had an autoimmune disease that made contact with pathogens for him fatal. I took interest in his story out of curiosity and pathos, but with relatively easy remove. I shut it away with stories I had read of the tallest man in the world, of the moon landing.' (Introduction)

'On Mondays and Fridays my work day starts in the same flustered and awkward fashion. I attempt to enter the palliative care unit of the hospital. I’m juggling my guitar case, music satchel and fancy homemade lunch. My lunch swings and lurches across the side of my guitar case in a plastic bag hanging from a cramped finger. I never seem to have enough hands. I’m always running late for work and there is never anyone to help me enter through the secured side door of the ward. I usually have to put something down on the cold wet concrete path in order to pull my swipe card from my pocket. Clumsily, I manage to pull the card out, coins and guitar picks bounce across the concrete. I try to minimise my losses.' (Introduction)