ANDY JACKSON AND JEN JEWEL BROWN
Interviewed by Peter Davis
Andy Jackson interviewed by Peter Davis
PD: When did you become interested in writing poetry and what was going on in your life at this time?
AJ: Actually, this is a really hard one to answer. I can't remember not writing. I was always quite an introverted, thoughtful child. I'd ride off by myself around vacant lots and imagine adventurous scenarios, or just sit in my room and drift off. I remember even trying to write a comic strip when I was nine (based around a sarcastic caged parrot, by the way). When I got to puberty, of course I wrote a whole lot of what I guess was poetry. Angst, confusion, self-oriented stuff. But at the same time, I was also very interested in music and in Christianity. Plus my spine was starting to curve. I felt really different. A few of the older kids at school would call me 'hunchback' and so on. It was pretty intense. I dealt with it in my own way. Back then, and even to some extent now, writing was a way of working out who I was, as well as exploring the possibility of reinventing or reimagining myself. So, when I look back, I think I've always written poetry - there have just been differing motivations for writing, and different levels of awareness that what I was doing was actually poetry.
PD: What did you enjoy reading in your high school and university law years? Who are some of the writers that have engaged you?
AJ: I have to say, White Hills Technical School isn't known for its commitment to exploring poetry, or even books in general. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I didn't read poetry until after I'd started reading my own writing out in public, having realized there was a huge world of poetry out there that I was fairly ignorant of. I started exploring journals and books, found the Collected Works bookshop, sifted through various anthologies. The world of poetry is still huge and largely unknown to me, really. But you can't know it all - it's like music - you can't expect yourself to hear everything, even everything within a genre. You just have to pay attention to what pricks your poetic ears up at the time. I've noticed some writers have really influenced me, though. I look back at my writing and can hear their rhythms and tone merging with my own, or maybe urging me on, stretching the limits of my own style. Writers like Sylvia Plath, Gregory Orr, Robert Adamson, Anthony Lawrence, Alison Croggon, Adrienne Rich, Frank O'Hara.
PD: Some of the themes relevant to living with Marfan Syndrome have been in your poetry. Could you describe this?
AJ: When I was 12 and 15, I was in the Children's Hospital in Melbourne for operations on my spine, so it wouldn't keep curving and cause problems for my organs. The first time involved the insertion of a metal frame around my spine, plus a week on a bed with weights hanging off my head and feet, followed by months in a back brace (great in summer!); the second time, my vertebrae were fused.
Still, I've never been hugely interested in medical terms and themes per se. I am intensely sensitive to the personal and relational impact of medical judgements and procedures. As a tiny example, I have strangers come up to me on the street and ask "what's wrong?" or "what happened?" - I tend now to say "nothing" or "this is me" or something like that. Language is powerful and subtle. My approach is to tell my own story, to try to suggest or imply perspectives other than victim or patient.
Four years ago I wrote "I have a hunch / that curvature / can be aperture / given that light, like water / does not travel in a straight line". I feel like I'm tiring at the moment of writing the story of my body and my self, but that sense of affinity with marginalized people persists.
PD: What was the process like for you, when writing such intimate poems about your family such as: "Cain resigns from secure employment", "Son's fall to earth" and "Birth certificate"?
AJ: It's strange, mining those who are close to you for "material", not that I really see it quite like that. My mum has both my books, but I don't know how closely she's read them. We don't have a fluid, intimate relationship - it's friendly, just not intensely close. Still, I can't be bothered writing (or reading for that matter) poetry that doesn't involve some kind of personal risk or investment. Even though they do put my family out there into the public domain (though it's not that public, it is poetry!), most of the exposure is of me. Especially the poems about my father. He died when I was two, so what I write about him is very much about absence, ignorance, gaps, questions that can't be answered - my questions.
PD: Was it difficult to meet other people with the same health condition living in Australia? How have you accessed other stories about living with Marfan Syndrome?
AJ: People with Marfan Syndrome mostly just get on with their lives without feeling an intense need to network with others or jostle for research dollars or publicity. Especially in Australia, I think. I tracked down the Marfan Association of Victoria in my late 20s, when the weight of feeling visibly different was really getting to me. I wanted to connect, get involved, all that. What I did find was that they were just very ordinary people - their medical situation was no guarantee I'd have any connection with them. In fact, Marfan itself can be quite different for each person that has it. Each person approaches the exigencies of their body uniquely, and I think it's easy to overestimate the significance of your genes - what's been significant for me in how I'm received is my appearance not my DNA. I would, though, recommend an excellent local documentary called "Jabe Babe: A Heightened Life", for an insight into the life of another person with Marfan.
PD: Marfan Syndrome can alter the shape of the skeleton. You have approached this theme of remarkable transformation of body shape by using concrete poetry, such as in your poem 'The body shaped as a question mark', where the physical shape of the poem represents a body with remarkable curvature. As a reader, that poem seemed to represent the outer shape of a body and also a succinct yet powerful narrative series of emotions. What was it like to write that concrete poem?
AJ: The concrete shape of the poem was almost an after-thought. When I read that poem live, it has a definite impact - my body is part of the poem in a way. When I was preparing "Aperture", I decided to put the curvature into the lines themselves. It's not something I usually do, but it wasn't difficult, really. I'm a little embarrassed by that poem now - it seems a little self-indulgent to me now. It has some merit, though - I still think of my body as a kind of provocation, an opportunity for those who see me to reflect on embodiment but also on broader questions. Hence, the last lines, "what kind of regime / is this that pits us / against impossibilities?".
PD: You've just completed a new book of poetry Among the Regulars that was partly funded by a New Work grant from the Australia Council. How is that going?
AJ: I'm actually still editing this book, so I'm not sure I can have enough perspective, but I think I'm going deeper inside those themes, but also the poetry is more open, more inviting. I'm not as obsessed with myself or worried I'll be misunderstood. I'm also starting to write about other people. Overall, the poems have more open doors, more room in them, more exits and windows, if you know what I mean. The ideas are still there, but they're complex, inside the poems themselves, even if just as suggestions. I guess people should just read the poems in this issue to get a better idea.
PD: Was it different writing a book that had received a New Works Australia Council grant, albeit not a large sum of money?
AJ: It felt intensely encouraging and luxurious, to be honest. As the money started to run out, it was a bit stressful, but overall, there wasn't much pressure at all. It just felt like it came at the right time. And it gave me time not just to write, but to do the other things that help me write. Slow, human things.
I think I've generally resisted planning poems out. It's felt fraught to me. I've preferred to just read what I'm interested in, do what I'm drawn to, without thinking if there's a poem in it. So, I might read poetry or philosophy or theory, go for a walk, see a film, go out to catch up with friends, whatever - then when I feel the right energy inside me, I'll sit down to write. I'll sometimes do free writing, but often I'll try to figure out what subject or memory or person will match the energy I have, and direct the writing towards that. I also like to take breaks and drift, wash dishes or do something less cerebral - that helps sometimes. Oh, and I write best alert, which usually means coffee.
PD: Marfan Syndrome requires people to eat well (avoid animal fats for example) and not to smoke. This is due to the altering that can result to the connective tissue of the aorta (within the heart). Has it been hard sometimes performing live in smoke-filled poetry venues such as pubs? Also, what do you like most about performing live?
AJ: Apparently my heart is really healthy, and I've been a vegetarian for ten years for unrelated political reasons, so those health risks you mention have never been more of an issue for me than for anyone else. What I like about live poetry is that the poem attaches itself to the poet - their body, posture, voice, movement even. That can, of course, sometimes be a distraction, but I like to use it to my advantage.
PD: You self published your first two books of poetry. Did that allow you creative freedom in terms of both the poems and also how you presented, launched and sold the books?
AJ: There's definitely creative freedom in self-publishing, in all those aspects, but it's an exhausting freedom. There are also restrictions in terms of publicity and distribution, that "jack-of-all-trades" thing. Having only ever self-published so far, it's hard to know if I'd have any less freedom if I was "published" - given the size of the poetry publishing community, probably not.
About the Writer Andy Jackson
|
Andy Jackson was born in Bendigo, Victoria, in 1971, and currently lives in Coburg, Melbourne. Having grown up physically unusual, he has written poetry, fiction and criticism which reflects on the body, memory, sexuality, power, identity and spirituality. He became a visible presence in the Melbourne live poetry scene in the mid 1990s, and since then has been a featured reader at dozens of events and a number of festivals, including La Mama Poetica, The Age Melbourne Writers Festival and Overload Poetry Festival. He has self-published three books of poetry and short prose - Carpet Insomnia (1997, with Mandi Ashcroft), Hymns of Doubt (2000), and Aperture (2003). His writing has been published in established and obscure journals, both print and on-line. He has also appeared on radio (3RRR-FM) and television (Channel 31's Red Lobster). Andy was awarded a New Work grant by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Working with Klare Lanson, he curated and hosted the opening night of the 2006 Overload Poetry Festival, Takin It To The Streets. He has also collaborated with various sound artists and musicians - Aperture included a CD of poems set to music, and he has performed live with North Atlantic. He is currently working on a collection of poems called Among the Regulars, due out in 2008. |
[Above] Photo of Andy Jackson by Sean M. Whelan, 2004.
Jen Jewel Brown interviewed by Peter Davis
PD: Your first poetry reading was at La Mama in 1971. Could you please describe this experience?
JJB:
I was a 19 year old unemployed drop-out from Fintona Girls School with a drift of scribblings choking up my bedroom. I was rock and pop-obsessed and desperate for fun. I read about La Mama, which I knew as a brilliant radical theatre in Carlton, having open poetry readings. So I set out on the public transport odyssey to get there from North Balwyn. Betty Burstall, the founding mother, used to open up in those days. Garrie Hutchinson was also one of those tending the poetic fire that literally burnt in the little theatre's hearth.
Anyway, I remember all these whiskery, hairy faces all turning to stare when I walked in with knocking knees. And that was just the women. No, actually, I was the only female there. I read a poem about a guy who said "It's gonna be bloody," and how I wasn't sure whether he meant the revolution or the footy. When they laughed I felt enormous relief. At last I'd found somewhere I sort of fitted in. Although looking back at some of the male poets' memories you'd think it was an exclusively boys' club.
Gaz was great, and later the Judiths - Wright and Rodriguez - and the American poet Allen Afterman, whose slanted approach I really appreciated, and he really moved me. I also really enjoyed Charles Buckmaster's work and Michael Dransfield's, although Dransfield was a Sydney poet. Two big losses, the early deaths of those two. Michael Dugan did the T. F. Much Ballroom with King Hippo Poetry Band, which was cool. Some of us, including Gaz and I, and Kate Veitch I think, joined the Melbourne Arts Co-operative. I read before Daddy Cool went on one time, and with the jazz-rock band Lipp Arthur. I also remember reading to a whole bunch of guys in blue singlets in a factory. When the whistle blew, they voted on whether to hear more poetry. It was a goer. That was one of my prouder moments.
PD: Could you describe your voluntary involvements with Overload Poetry Festival in Melbourne?
JJB: I returned to my birthplace, Melbourne, in 2001 - after 14 years in Sydney and eight in Brisbane - in a very screwed-up state, I'm afraid, after the collapse of my second marriage. Soon enough I found my way into Shelton Lea's literary lair - his bookshop DeHavillands on Wellington, in Clifton Hill. Shelton celebrated me, as he did so many lost, stolen or strayed poets, in a cloud of rampant marijuana smoke, and reconnected me to the poetry grid. Before too long I was feeling much more cheerful, and was steered towards someone I "had to meet", Steve Smart, director (or "Overfiend") of Overload Poetry Festival.
I discovered Overload was a sprawling nebula of semi-organised events that draws poetic souls from all over. From the look of the website, it's going to reappear like a comet over the horizon in August 2007 for its sixth anniversary. Overload runs for around 10 days in August. Since 2004 I have had the odd hand in organising workshops and running events, going to meetings and voting. In 2005 I ran Screen Queens at Loop in Melbourne city, featuring Allan Boyd from Perth, Azhari from Aceh, Indonesia, Klare Lanson, Ian McBryde and myself. VJ Emile Zile mixed sound and vision as we performed.
In 2006 I ran a tribute gig for Shelton Lea, who had sadly passed away the previous May. That was at Heide, with Jennifer Harrison, Australian Somali poet Yusef Sheik Omar, Steve Smart, Anthony O'Sullivan, Amelia Walker, Rebecca Louise and myself. Unfortunately Ken Smeaton was too ill to make it, but it was a beautiful afternoon.
Overload makes us revel in our strengths and grind our teeth over our inadequacies. Collectively the mass of volunteers involved have pulled off some truly soul-bending and edge-wrecking gigs over the past three years though… continuing to help build Melbourne's rep as the poetry capital of the Southern hemisphere, that's for sure. Opening and closing nights have been terrific, in particular. Usually some of the poets from interstate or even overseas decide to join the critical poetry mass in Melbourne by the festival's end. The range of poetic styles and performances is quite striking, and there's generally a lot of interactivity with other art forms such as music, dance, theatre and film. It's culturally vivid, and multilingual.
PD: You co-edited Shelton Lea's final book of poetry Nebuchadnezzar (Black Pepper Publishing) recently with Gig Ryan. Could you describe that process?
JJB: By early 2004 I had developed the habit of dropping in on Shelton for a yarn about people, poetry, politics, events and more poetry on a regular basis. He was looking pretty lean and had a nasty cough, due to all the smoking. One morning I rolled in and he said, "Ah, just the woman I wanted to see!"
He sat me down and with his customary tongue-in-cheek overview explained that he'd just been given a diagnosis of "Jack Dancer" with a prediction of six months to live, but "we did a deal. I wanted a year. We settled on eight months". Shelton couldn't see or type much at this stage. He'd been tinkering with this idea for the last decade I gather. Michael Dugan had helped some years back but nothing had come to fruition; although Nebuchadnezzar was to be his ninth book, counting chapbooks.
Gig Ryan had looked over most of the writing previously. Her main input -and it was a vital one - was to suggest bringing Shelton's many powerful poems about Aboriginal characters and concerns together at the front of the book. I worked quickly on getting everything found, ordered, corrected, typeset and basically laid out, and occasionally gently bounced one or other of Shelton's million and one guests, who came for socialising and feedback on their work, in order to meet our deadline. With Shelton's encouragement, I also highlighted in red type anything that struck me as Not Quite Right. In some cases this led to lines being rewritten or omitted. Sometimes, on reflection and/or on Shelton's comments, I realised he'd been right. Most poems were perfect. Some were cut entirely, and one very long one, "autistic man" - one of his very best - had its stanzas completely rearranged by me to reflect natural sequential time. This made the poem easy to understand, allowing it to deliver its powerful, thumping lines with maximum impact. Shelton liked that. It was a joy to work on poetry with such character, such soaring scope and enduring quality. Just like its writer.
Shelton had spent much time, after running away at 12, in boys' homes and jails as a ward of the state, running into many Aboriginal boys. He felt a brother to them. Many were like Shelton - who was adopted - in that they had no idea who their real families were. Because he was an eloquent writer who could cross from the back alleys to the height of society with ease, and because it fired him up, Shelton took it upon himself to write about Aboriginal characters and perspectives. He's been criticised for this, but if various writers hadn't taken it upon themselves to write from other viewpoints, many of our greatest books would never have been written. He got permission where appropriate, and I made sure this was noted in the book. He never stopped other voices - no, he was an important mentor for many of us. Shelton loved people, and saw himself as a 100% professional poet, and would announce this loudly and with pride, which we loved too.
PD: In 2003, your performance poem "Unwilling" was televised on both Channel 7 and Channel 10 news. This is a poem you developed as a direct response to John Howard's declaration that Australian forces would become part of the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. Could you describe "Unwilling"?
JJB:"Unwilling" was a one-word performance poem. It was less than a week in planning. Working with a photographer, Kerrie Allemand, who took stills you can see on my blog Flaming Hoop (http://flaminghoop.blogspot.com/), I went to Federation Square steps and without permission, stood on a big Australian flag, tipped 10 litres of tomato sauce all over myself and stood for 10 minutes to reflect the muffled voices of those not willing for war. I was silent, but I'd painted the word "Unwilling" in red paint on a canvas strip I tied round my head and on a sheet of paper at my feet. My press release faxed to the media just beforehand had also used the title with a brief explanation, which was then read by the news announcers on Channels 10 and 7 that night. Three camera crews arrived and two ran with it. Neither of them scoffed. It ran in each case alongside other art news stories in the main bulletin. It was an education in the power of audacity and belief.
PD: Your first published book of poetry was Marsupial Wrestling (Outback Press 1975) illustrated by Neil Curtis. Could you describe that experience?
JJB: Outback Press were a spunky quartet of young blokes; Colin Talbot, Morrie Schwartz, Fred Milgrom and singer/songwriter Mark Gillespie. They sprung up as an attractive alternative to the more stuffy publishers of the 70s. They were part back yard, part outlaw, part savvy, far-sighted operators. They applied for the more generous literary grants available to poetry and experimental publishing in the literary Camelot of Gough Whitlam's era. They used these to put out books like Marsupial Wrestling for me, and Mother I'm Rooted, a doorstop of a women's poetry anthology edited by Kate Jennings, as well as A Book About Australian Women, featuring the brilliant photography of Carol Jerrems, who also supplied most of the classic shots in my book Skyhooks Million Dollar Riff, which sold 20,000 copies. Unfortunately that one went out through Outback's Dingo books imprint, which went broke, failing to pay me the bulk of the royalties.
However, working with both Carol Jerrems and the illustrator Neil Curtis, who did the cover of both my books there, and all the cheeky drawings throughout Marsupial Wrestling, was inspirational and satisfying. They really helped make the books ... I always prefer images with words.
However, if I'd known then what I know now, no way would I have approved Curtis's cover of my first poetry book. I star as a fat, nude, pink blob being pawed by a bunch of degenerate, drooling marsupials in 50's clothes, looking decidedly like Daddy Cool. People looked past the cover luckily. I still get good feedback on that book. Certainly we were aiming to make poetry a fun ride; to escape the bonds of the predictable, the maudlin, the pretentious. We got away with it, I think. As far as themes go, there's heaps of rock, anthropomorphism in a surrealist sense, verbal experimentation, as much rhythm and musicality as I could muster and probably a fairly zestful, lusty approach to life. It's full of hungry longing for an absent lover. I've also been told it was a striking feminist work. If it was I'm glad.
In Million Dollar Riff, Carol's shots really show Skyhooks, warts and all, and the tragi-comedy that is pop music. I was delighted to begin my 2006 poetry book gutter Vs stars with "Down To Zero; written for her, opposite one of her extraordinary photographs, printed posthumously sadly. She is my all-time favourite photographer (followed by Tracy Moffatt). Again, lost far too early. The very fine documentary Girl in a Mirror is about Carol.
PD: You have a diploma in visual arts and are both a painter and a cartoonist. While living in Brisbane in 1999 you won the Nona Metcalfe Award for painting. Is your creative diversity something you have both relished and relied upon and if so, why?
JJB:
Greg Macainsh told me I will always do everything at once, so I shouldn't worry about choosing. I felt relieved. It does often seem inspiration chooses me. But I admit the matter of targeting which arts to tackle has often been difficult. As a teenager I desperately wanted to act as well. I have spent certain years dedicated to painting and drawing and certainly accelerated there when I did; many more dedicated mostly to writing. Generally I am a sporadic visual artist and often wish I could live two concurrent lives to address this inadequacy. Painting allows you to go into other worlds, which is why I love it so much, but it's an expensive business to try to enter. I don't feel I rely on any of this, although I probably do. I have several blank canvases accusing me from the hallway at present while I concentrate on poetry, fiction and a non-fiction book project as well as journalism. That said, I got a sudden flash as to what I wanted to paint next while in a cake shop with the kids two days ago. Yes, I relish this endeavour, although I often feel myself to be a blunt instrument in an operating theatre.
PD: Being a songwriter and poet, do you have two separate approaches for the way you write in both these forms?
JJB: I co-wrote two songs on O Zambezi by Dragon, "Politics" and "Company", with my first husband, Dragon's bass player, Todd Hunter. Many of my other co-writes have ended up on various singles, albums and TV projects. If I hang out with friends or partners who write music, I will generally be inspired to co-write with them, because I love it. Lyrics demand far greater constraint, predictable and repetitive rhythms and sounds. Poetry is really another tank of yabbies. You can go for broke - as long as you can pull it off. It's a highly experimental medium. But seeing and hearing your songs performed live to crowds of people, maybe they dance, or sing along ... or on TV or radio - being part of platinum records - that is a buzz poetry rarely gets near. When I was writing songs prolifically in Sydney I managed to put out a poetry book, Alleycat - the one Michael Leunig so beautifully illustrated with little black and white paintings. So I guess they can co-exist without much trouble.
PD: Could you describe your voluntary involvements with Get Up and what this organization is able to achieve?
JJB:
I'm not sure of the first campaign I joined. I soon found GetUp! tackled major Australian problems, like Howard's push to put children back into detention centres, the David Hicks affair and global warming, in an intelligent, courteous and assertive way.
In these time-starved, difficult days of the early noughties, huge national marches (100,000+ marchers in Melbourne alone!) have twice received no respect or recognition whatsoever from the federal Howard government, on: (1) the war in Iraq (Valentines Day, 2003), and (2) the ironically named "Work Choices"(November 15, 2005). So, many people have lost faith in the power of marching feet as an effective means of change at the moment. However cyber action, using individual written messages in petitions, can influence VIPs in a highly energy-efficient and productive manner. So I sign and circulate messages for GetUp!, and also Aavaz.org, CODEpink, Greenpeace and various animal rights and environmental groups.
I'm in awe of the volunteer dedication and clever stratagems used by these cyber activists in their stretch for a better world. Feeling impotent in the face of unwieldy, incompetent and slow politics is a major contributor to depression, I reckon. We have to get past it.
After an enormous Aavaz petition recently, G8 President, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, agreed to make global warming the number one priority for the 2007 G8 summit in Germany. How inspirational is that? Power to the people ...
About the Writer Jen Jewel Brown
|
Previously known as Jenny Brown (while on staff at Planet, The Digger, Rolling Stone and Nation Review), Jenny Hunter Brown (on staff at Sunday Telegraph and RAM - Rock Australia Magazine and Zesta (Nation Review). Brown's first poetry reading was at La Mama in 1971. She's currently on staff with Mediaweek and freelancing. Her performance poem Unwilling (2003), televised on Channel 7 and 10 news, was a response to John Howard's announcement that Australia would join the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. She co-edited Shelton Lea's final book Nebuchadnezzar (Black Pepper Publishing) with Gig Ryan. Brown currently lives in West Heidelberg, Melbourne, with her two kids and two dogs. Brown is working on a first novel, which seems interminable, among other things, and dreaming of both stars and gutters. |
[Above] Photo of Photo of Jen Jewel Brown by photographer unknown, 2007.
I Next I
Back I
Exit I
Thylazine No.12 (June, 2007) |
