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‘Silence is My Habitat’ : Judith Wright, Writing, and Deafness
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 243-253) 'Judith Wright, one of Australia’s most loved and popular poets, developed otosclerosis in her 20s and became increasingly deaf over the following decades of her life. Despite the long span of time which she lived with her disability, little critical attention has been paid to its impact on her craft. This chapter redresses this gap in scholarship on Wright. It illuminates how deafness influenced her decision to become a writer, contributed to her prolific correspondence, and shaped some of the content and themes of her work such as her attentiveness to the non-human world, her pleasure in and use of the trope of vision, and her awareness of the limits of language. The chapter concludes with a plea to readers to actively listen to and contemplate the voices of deaf writers.‘I don’t remember any interviews in which [my deafness has] been regarded as something that people … wanted to know more about,’ Judith Wright observed in conversation with Heather Rusden in 1990 (‘On Being Deaf’ 27). Thirty years later, little has shifted in this regard in literary scholarship on one of Australia’s most famous poets, even though the loss of her hearing affected her for 63 of her 85 years and, as Wright acknowledged in the same interview, deafness has ‘really reached into all the interstices of my life, it’s been part of the conditions I live under’ (21). Notably, it also reached into Wright’s writing, guiding her towards her vocation and shaping her style and themes. Silence, for example, is prevalent in her oeuvre, as is her awareness of the limits of language. As someone who needed to strain constantly to hear, Wright also knew that meaning could easily break (one would need only to hide one’s lips), and that there were always conversations happening, whether between humans or other-than-humans, beyond her hearing which she could not access. In addition, having lost one sense, Wright’s perception of the world through her other senses was heightened, as becomes evident through the sensory detail in her poetry. She was also an inveterate writer of letters, as this was an easier mode of communication for her than listening on the telephone.'
Source: Abstract
-
‘Silence is My Habitat’ : Judith Wright, Writing, and Deafness
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 243-253) 'Judith Wright, one of Australia’s most loved and popular poets, developed otosclerosis in her 20s and became increasingly deaf over the following decades of her life. Despite the long span of time which she lived with her disability, little critical attention has been paid to its impact on her craft. This chapter redresses this gap in scholarship on Wright. It illuminates how deafness influenced her decision to become a writer, contributed to her prolific correspondence, and shaped some of the content and themes of her work such as her attentiveness to the non-human world, her pleasure in and use of the trope of vision, and her awareness of the limits of language. The chapter concludes with a plea to readers to actively listen to and contemplate the voices of deaf writers.‘I don’t remember any interviews in which [my deafness has] been regarded as something that people … wanted to know more about,’ Judith Wright observed in conversation with Heather Rusden in 1990 (‘On Being Deaf’ 27). Thirty years later, little has shifted in this regard in literary scholarship on one of Australia’s most famous poets, even though the loss of her hearing affected her for 63 of her 85 years and, as Wright acknowledged in the same interview, deafness has ‘really reached into all the interstices of my life, it’s been part of the conditions I live under’ (21). Notably, it also reached into Wright’s writing, guiding her towards her vocation and shaping her style and themes. Silence, for example, is prevalent in her oeuvre, as is her awareness of the limits of language. As someone who needed to strain constantly to hear, Wright also knew that meaning could easily break (one would need only to hide one’s lips), and that there were always conversations happening, whether between humans or other-than-humans, beyond her hearing which she could not access. In addition, having lost one sense, Wright’s perception of the world through her other senses was heightened, as becomes evident through the sensory detail in her poetry. She was also an inveterate writer of letters, as this was an easier mode of communication for her than listening on the telephone.'
Source: Abstract
