Anne M Carson

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I have been a writer for over 20 years, publishing, broadcasting and performing my work for others. My childhood left me somewhat mute. When I found poetry-writing in my thirties I felt I had (finally) found my voice. This personal motivation intersects with my vision of the socially
responsible artist (to use a term coined by George Sand, my poetic biography subject), feeling keenly my responsibility as a white, well-educated, privileged woman to enact my commitment to social change for greater equity and justice for all, as well as taking an eco-stand in the current climate emergency.

 

I have not had biological children for a range of complex reasons including childhood trauma. I have one stepson who I have recently re-
engaged with, and he and his wife are pregnant, and I am so moved that I will be becoming a step-grandparent next year. Additonally, I cared for a woman with an intellectual disability for over 20 years who did not live with me. Devastatingly, my guardianship of her was ended by VCAT after multiple lies were told about me (I was effectively ‘cancelled’). Sometimes I speak poetically / go to the heart of the matter and say “I had a girl but I lost her”. This feels emotionally true, although she is not a girl, and hopefully she is not lost.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
I had always wanted to be a writer but actually becoming a writer did emerge from realising I wouldn’t be a parent. When I was deciding not to be a parent in my thirties, I felt that being an artist was the only way for me to have a meaningful life without having kids. I was desperate to find a way to have a passionate engagement with life and to ‘create’. Feminism has provided passion since then, but it took some doing to find the art form I could pursue. I went on an extended retreat, living by choice in a primitive mud brick cottage without electricity or mains water for seven years and somewhat cut off from mainstream society. Though I endeavoured to write, I didn’t have the skill or knowledge to move through self-doubt. I set up a boutique hand-made greeting card business and conducted that for a number of years before a pivotal meeting with a creative writing teacher led to attending her classes and gaining the skill to move past my blockages. I haven’t looked back.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
I engage in different processes of meditation / contemplation / body awareness / self-inquiry. These enable me to tune into and isolate embodied experience and memories, and can be the jumping off point for exploring their poetic potential. Once I have this beginning I attempt to put words and phrases, sometimes images to it. Sometimes a compelling phrase or image comes into my mind and that is my starting point. But words enable me to flesh out each of those experiences, enabling me to embody experience through the flesh of the words. It sounds biblical and I’m not religious at all but it is profound and meaningful and something of a scared act I feel privileged to engage in.
 

As the words accumulate, I begin to get a sense of a shape on the page – I tend towards couplets and symmetrical writing. For me there is something reparative in writing in a symmetrical manner. Somehow this aesthetic enables the dark material I may include in my poetry to be held in the body of the poem; the poem becoming a kind of holding container, a ‘hospice’, as poet Anne Elvey puts it or an alembic – a vessel for the holding of pain and suffering (human and otherkind). The alembics of the ancient alchemists facilitated the transformation of raw materials into something new – maybe in the vessel of the poem witnessing is transformation enough.

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
It is a profoundly challenging and ultimately satisfying series of creative acts. Being engaged in a writing process is the place (psychologically, mentally) I most like to be. I often enter a ‘flow state’, absorbed in the moment. Writing allows me to follow a thought thread, often taking me to
awarenesses I wouldn’t have otherwise had. Writing, as a famous author once said, allows me to know what I think and feel. More than this, as mentioned above, dealing with dark material for me – my own or someone else’s, or the world’s as it journeys through the climate catastrophe –
means I have to find the consciousness which can hold this painful material – not rise above or find a silver lining but, on some level, witness, be willing to see and feel, which seen another way is a form of consent. This is the balance I seek in my poetry.

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
It gives me access to flow states, imagination and altered states of consciousness, a means to have dialogue with the world, a way to explore my embeddedness in the world through an art form. It gives me an art form by which to process the painful happenings – not primarily or principally cathartic on a personal level but as a collective act, on behalf of the community. It gives me an identity, a daily structure and disciple, a community to belong to and a way to contribute to making the world a fairer, more just world. Everything really!

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
It has been significant for me to have work in print; to feel I have a ‘body’ of work feels significant. I don’t like to compare and there’s part of me that is quite separate from any need to compare – the life of a parent compared to the life of someone of NoMo status. But there are occasions or certain stimuli (school reunions or certain family events) where the comparison is activated. Sometimes I feel the lack of belonging to a family of my own creation acutely though I have a group of very close and supportive friends. But mostly I feel my body of work, my over 220 published poems ‘stack up’ against others who have taken a more conventional path of raising children. It feels a substantial contribution. I feel proud of what I have achieved: to have published four books and completed a creative practice PhD, based on my poetic art form. In fact, it’s the PhD which has done the most for freeing me from any remnant feelings of inadequacy for not having kids.

7. Tell us about the wider reception that you’ve had to sharing your story - has it changed how others have viewed you and your identity as a non-parent?
Apart from one published poem about not being a parent, being a non-parent has not been an explicit part of my writing. I feel my status as a published author is respected by the broader society (certainly by may circle of friends and family) although poetry is not held highly, generally speaking. It was this lack of valuing of poetry by society (lack of remuneration, status or other index of social valuing) that motivated me to undertake a PhD – I wanted/needed recognition for the skills I had developed and commitment I had demonstrated over two decades. Perhaps I was even more susceptible to these feelings of lack of recognition because of my status as a non-parent. I am extremely grateful that receiving my PhD, and an outstanding dissertation prize, has filled in many of these gaps.

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
The representation of childless women in literature has changed during the decades in response to the women’s liberation movement and other activists for change putting pressure on stereotyped representations. This is so much the case that I don’t have a particular radar for how
childless / childfree people are represented. I tend to notice stereotypes in general (rather than childless / childfree) and find them deeply unsatisfying and won’t continue to read such a book. I can’t remember a recent poor representation in literature but I remember (who could forget) the derision directed at Julia Gillard for her lack of children and notice from time to time social media posts protesting poor representation.

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
Like any group of people we want authentic, rich, detailed representations and not stereotypes.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
I have the makings of four books (three poetry and one prose) from my recently completed PhD in Creative Writing which I will work towards preparing for publication. I will continue to be an active member of the Melbourne poetry scene. I will continue to write poems / essays which I will continue to perform, publish and broadcast. I will also pursue other avenues such as conferences and other opportunities to contribute my voice and vision.