Article
Interview with Claire Potter
February 04, 2011
Michael Brennan: When did you start writing and what motivated you?
Claire Potter: The term writing here seems like Kafka’s axe, writing being the axe: on one hand there is the frozen sea of the pre-writing world, and on the other, the disquiet waters of the writing world.
Where to situate oneself, even if you could? I don’t remember starting to write, there never was a beginning or original scene per se, but my first formal writing situation was a job, so I guess there were economic reasons there somewhere. And my first poem published in the school magazine, so perhaps to make friends.
MB: Who are the writers who first inspired you to write and who are the writers you read now? What’s changed?
Claire Potter: Principal influences were two very early leitmotifs: my parent’s books and the art they had on our walls. As I grew older, these two things changed from the generic into the particular; I started to read the books, and copy the art.
It’s funny, but I never wanted to copy the books, Kipling’s The Jungle Book, for example I loved, but didn’t want to replicate. But an Australian landscape in oil, which sat over the fireplace, I must have tried to copy thirty times, failing each time. Then at school we started reading Australian poets – Henry Kendall, Judith Wright – and there was something I wanted to copy. So I started to rhyme everything and that to me was poetry: something like nursery rhymes. Something to tap your foot to.
MB: How important is 'everyday life' to your work?
Claire Potter: I suppose the everyday is how we make habitable the world we live in. We organise the space of the everyday, like Chantal Akerman depicts in her films, and we step through it tactically, like Michel de Certeau suggests. Everyday life, though, is a different thing, and by it, I am guessing you are alluding to tedious things like doing the dishes or calling the post office. These things are not in the least bit important to my work, but then everyone’s everyday life is different. There are things, however, in my everyday life which are essential to my work, such as reading, walking, sleeping, having an unexpected conversation, because during these times things turn over in my head, they switch off the conscious mind. I think it was A.D. Hope whose advice to younger poets was to desentimentalise the writing process – I have always remembered this, or at least it meant something to me, and so where I write is very much as a work space, where I can work.
MB: What is the role or place of subjectivity in your poetry?
Claire Potter: It depends what you mean by subjectivity. If you mean one’s feelings, then yes, feelings are in my writing. If you mean how I see the world, by placing the subject – myself – at the centre, in order to make sense of things and in order to explain my emotional experiences, then no, then the role of subjectivity is very limited in my writing. So I suppose the place of subjectivity is more interesting in that way, subjectivity has a place – as something that is always in abeyance, in jeopardy, in transit – and it is from these and in these untenable places that I write.
MB: Do you see your work in terms of literary traditions and/or broader cultural or political movements?
Claire Potter: I haven’t ever belonged to any school of poetry or politics. I studied politics for a year, but that was to understand a little better Solzhenitsyn’s Russia.
MB: What aspect of writing poetry and working as a poet is the most challenging?
Claire Potter: Reading one’s work.
MB: What reading, other than poetry, is important to your work as a poet and why?
Claire Potter: Fiction, lyrics, newspapers, Greek tragedy, philosophy, birds, plants, art. If I’m lucky, in these I sometimes find images and voices I correspond to, and with.
MB: What is ‘Australian poetry’? Do you see yourself as an ‘Australian’ poet?
Claire Potter: Most simply, I see Australian poetry, as distinct from Caribbean poetry, being geographically determined. But of course things are never so simple – hence the question – because for all geographical spaces, fence and shore-lines are not hermetic, as the work of writers such as Antigone Kefala attests to. I struggle with the word Australia/n, so find myself moving to try and make sense of it. I admire writers like Gerard Murnane, and Robert Adamson, who are able to stay, albeit I’m sure with some difficulty, but I can’t. I see myself as from Perth, more than from Australia; and if I am classifiable as an Australian writer it’s because that’s where I learnt to write, that’s where I started from, and where my writing habits were born so to speak.
MB: Don Anderson once described Australian poetry as Australia’s only “blood sport”. More recently critics have seen Australian poetry in terms of a “new lyricism” (David McCooey) and “networked language” (Philip Mead). What is the current state of play in Australian poetry? How do you think Australian poetry and discussions about Australian poetry might best develop in the next ten years?
Claire Potter: I think Anderson was talking about the factional fighting for funding/publication and so forth amongst poets and poetry bodies in Australia in the 1970s, so the comment was probably representative of such heated confrontations, not unlike some going on today. I’m not very sure about the two recent ways of describing Australian poetry – networked language or new lyricism – but I’m not familiar with enough current Australian writing to further comment. This is a question that perhaps would be better answered by the more experienced poets; they have the benefit of hindsight.
MB: How is poetry relevant or valuable to contemporary society and culture in Australia or at an international level?
Claire Potter: Perhaps a different way of looking at this could be framed by the following question: how is contemporary society and culture in Australia relevant and valuable to poetry? I don’t think poetry is relevant or valuable to society in any measurable way that can distinguish its effects. It’s concomitant to moment and experience, it’s too particular; and yet there is something collective – and connective – in its voice. On the other hand, contemporary society and culture in Australia, although young, are of enormous value and relevance to poetry, companies such as The Red Room Company, The Poet’s Union, various trust funds and universities – all significant parts of Australian public life – continue to support, encourage poets and poetry. At the same time, compared to other countries, France for example, poets and poetry in Australia are taken far less seriously. I suppose the asking of this question itself highlights poetry’s need for affirmation within the ‘Australian’ context. Would it be asked in other places? I doubt it.
Claire Potter: The term writing here seems like Kafka’s axe, writing being the axe: on one hand there is the frozen sea of the pre-writing world, and on the other, the disquiet waters of the writing world.
Where to situate oneself, even if you could? I don’t remember starting to write, there never was a beginning or original scene per se, but my first formal writing situation was a job, so I guess there were economic reasons there somewhere. And my first poem published in the school magazine, so perhaps to make friends.
MB: Who are the writers who first inspired you to write and who are the writers you read now? What’s changed?
Claire Potter: Principal influences were two very early leitmotifs: my parent’s books and the art they had on our walls. As I grew older, these two things changed from the generic into the particular; I started to read the books, and copy the art.
It’s funny, but I never wanted to copy the books, Kipling’s The Jungle Book, for example I loved, but didn’t want to replicate. But an Australian landscape in oil, which sat over the fireplace, I must have tried to copy thirty times, failing each time. Then at school we started reading Australian poets – Henry Kendall, Judith Wright – and there was something I wanted to copy. So I started to rhyme everything and that to me was poetry: something like nursery rhymes. Something to tap your foot to.
MB: How important is 'everyday life' to your work?
Claire Potter: I suppose the everyday is how we make habitable the world we live in. We organise the space of the everyday, like Chantal Akerman depicts in her films, and we step through it tactically, like Michel de Certeau suggests. Everyday life, though, is a different thing, and by it, I am guessing you are alluding to tedious things like doing the dishes or calling the post office. These things are not in the least bit important to my work, but then everyone’s everyday life is different. There are things, however, in my everyday life which are essential to my work, such as reading, walking, sleeping, having an unexpected conversation, because during these times things turn over in my head, they switch off the conscious mind. I think it was A.D. Hope whose advice to younger poets was to desentimentalise the writing process – I have always remembered this, or at least it meant something to me, and so where I write is very much as a work space, where I can work.
MB: What is the role or place of subjectivity in your poetry?
Claire Potter: It depends what you mean by subjectivity. If you mean one’s feelings, then yes, feelings are in my writing. If you mean how I see the world, by placing the subject – myself – at the centre, in order to make sense of things and in order to explain my emotional experiences, then no, then the role of subjectivity is very limited in my writing. So I suppose the place of subjectivity is more interesting in that way, subjectivity has a place – as something that is always in abeyance, in jeopardy, in transit – and it is from these and in these untenable places that I write.
MB: Do you see your work in terms of literary traditions and/or broader cultural or political movements?
Claire Potter: I haven’t ever belonged to any school of poetry or politics. I studied politics for a year, but that was to understand a little better Solzhenitsyn’s Russia.
MB: What aspect of writing poetry and working as a poet is the most challenging?
Claire Potter: Reading one’s work.
MB: What reading, other than poetry, is important to your work as a poet and why?
Claire Potter: Fiction, lyrics, newspapers, Greek tragedy, philosophy, birds, plants, art. If I’m lucky, in these I sometimes find images and voices I correspond to, and with.
MB: What is ‘Australian poetry’? Do you see yourself as an ‘Australian’ poet?
Claire Potter: Most simply, I see Australian poetry, as distinct from Caribbean poetry, being geographically determined. But of course things are never so simple – hence the question – because for all geographical spaces, fence and shore-lines are not hermetic, as the work of writers such as Antigone Kefala attests to. I struggle with the word Australia/n, so find myself moving to try and make sense of it. I admire writers like Gerard Murnane, and Robert Adamson, who are able to stay, albeit I’m sure with some difficulty, but I can’t. I see myself as from Perth, more than from Australia; and if I am classifiable as an Australian writer it’s because that’s where I learnt to write, that’s where I started from, and where my writing habits were born so to speak.
MB: Don Anderson once described Australian poetry as Australia’s only “blood sport”. More recently critics have seen Australian poetry in terms of a “new lyricism” (David McCooey) and “networked language” (Philip Mead). What is the current state of play in Australian poetry? How do you think Australian poetry and discussions about Australian poetry might best develop in the next ten years?
Claire Potter: I think Anderson was talking about the factional fighting for funding/publication and so forth amongst poets and poetry bodies in Australia in the 1970s, so the comment was probably representative of such heated confrontations, not unlike some going on today. I’m not very sure about the two recent ways of describing Australian poetry – networked language or new lyricism – but I’m not familiar with enough current Australian writing to further comment. This is a question that perhaps would be better answered by the more experienced poets; they have the benefit of hindsight.
MB: How is poetry relevant or valuable to contemporary society and culture in Australia or at an international level?
Claire Potter: Perhaps a different way of looking at this could be framed by the following question: how is contemporary society and culture in Australia relevant and valuable to poetry? I don’t think poetry is relevant or valuable to society in any measurable way that can distinguish its effects. It’s concomitant to moment and experience, it’s too particular; and yet there is something collective – and connective – in its voice. On the other hand, contemporary society and culture in Australia, although young, are of enormous value and relevance to poetry, companies such as The Red Room Company, The Poet’s Union, various trust funds and universities – all significant parts of Australian public life – continue to support, encourage poets and poetry. At the same time, compared to other countries, France for example, poets and poetry in Australia are taken far less seriously. I suppose the asking of this question itself highlights poetry’s need for affirmation within the ‘Australian’ context. Would it be asked in other places? I doubt it.
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