Uncategorized

I met with my agent yesterday in London and had dinner with him and his wife the Chinese writer Xinran. We had some very interesting discussions about the world literary scenes in different countries, and he made some observations about my current fiction writing and how to make it more palatable to the Western publishing market. I am still digesting this- so will write more about it when I’ve decided how to use his feedback in my work. Xinran and I had a fascinating conversation about writing from an Asian perspective to a Western audience and she asked me what I found most challenging about doing this. I said at the time that it was challenging for me to have to explain certain concepts and deeper meanings in my work- but I think having to articulate myself so often makes me reflect on what I’m doing and gain more insight into my process and bicultural background.

Being in London has given me the opportunity to see a lot of theatre and art which has really fed my muse. I have found myself responding the most to Surrealism and Impressionism in the exhibitions I have seen here. It has engaged my attention and I’ve realised that the aesthetics i want to achieve in my work are twofold- to capture the wonder of the world (mindfulness) and also to depict madness with its vividness and shock. I want my words to bleed off the page- and I also want to be able to conjure up the magic of it too. In my fiction at the moment I’m trying to depict mindfulness- and with the help of Simon Charles my artistic collaborator on “I could be you” the play we will be depicting madness through text, music and live feed video multimedia.

In other news as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival I will be mentored by a theatre director to realise our vision for the play.

I also will be giving a talk at Melbourne Girls Grammar on the 25th August about “Culture and Identity” and how it affects me as an artist and its influences on my work. I will put the speech on this blog once I’ve written it.

Just had my portrait painted by Elizabeth Greisman – a Canadian artist. There is a lovely bunch of women artists here for my last week at Tyrone Guthrie who have great energy around them. They include Juliette Bressan, a YA writer and doctor, and Michelle Jackson her collaborator on a book “What women know”which will be published by Hachette Ireland in September 2010. and Jacinta O’Reilly who does abstract landscapes. Unfortunately I cannot take pictures of their art but hopefully will get their websites when I leave on Friday.

“I could be you” the play is unfortunately becoming more topical. I cannot believe a woman PM Julia Gillard would pander to xenophobia by building a detention centre in East Timor. I’m disappointed, angry and depressed about this.

I have been meditating with Janet Pierce and this has restored my peace. Annagmarkerrig itself with the lake is a nurturing place for any artist to visit.

Here is a poem for my last week- which is on display in an open studio at Tyrone Guthrie Centre.

ANNAGHMAKERRIG

- for the women I met here

Women’s spirit infuses bright colours

Invoking landscape, trees and grasses

From home and other lands

Women’s warmth

Buoys up the emptiness

Sharing souls with wine

Flowering the divine

Glowing fertility and rain

Brings forth life and renews

I capture in the palms of my hands

My heart, and hope to bring myself home again.

This poem is inspired by a woven grass mummy created by Christina, a bavarian artist staying at Tyrone Guthrie.

tears gather under the surface

grief unformed like the child not born

accompanies me into silence.

I found the first few days of this residency challenging because of the jetlag- and the silence that you fall into when all you have to convene with is your muse day in and day out with no distractions. It has really made me hone in on what I want to write about and what drives the stories I have worked on so far in this residency.

There are some really inspiring musicians, poets and artists in residence this week. They include Moya Brennan who is a famous irish singer with three of her companions who have been described as the queens of irish music by the irish artists that are here. They sing for us around the table every night and in return I have sung “waltzing matilda”- badly.

Upcoming public presentations by me:

Thursday 29 April at Monash Caulfield Building H Room 1.16 at the Vietnam Inheritance Symposium

I’m presenting a paper on Vietnamese-Australian diasporic writing- namely Nam Le, Dominic Huc Golding and myself. For more details view:

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/psi/vietnam/

Saturday 29th May at the Emerging Writers Festival, Melbourne Town Hall, Yarra Room at 11am

I will be on a panel called “The gentle art of persuasion” and will be talking about how I constructed the play ‘Silence”from six interviews with Vietnamese-Australian women aged 23-65.  For more information on the festival: www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au

I’ve just given a seminar paper for my doctorate in creative writing. As well as reading out a sample from the novel I am working on “The Lady of the Realm” I also discussed Vietnamese diasporic writing and how it is a form of resistance against Western stereotypes about Vietnam. Vietnam and Vietnamese people are often portrayed as exotic beautiful and mysterious, passive or like the yellow peril- a form of orientalism – by Western authors. I’d like to think that Vietnamese-Australian (and Vietnamese-American, Vietnamese-French etc) writers write against these stereotypes and portray Vietnamese characters in more sophisticated way. For instance in Silence I wanted to portray the strength and the diversity of Vietnamese Australian women’s lives- I did not want to portray the stereotype of a Vietnamese outworker (Ma works in an office).

I met up with Michelle Cahill from Mascara magazine another asian-australian literary journal. We are hoping to do a joint event with Asialink and UWS. We talked about Asian diasporic writing and promoting that as a global world literature rather than just Asian-Australian writing. Knowing that you are part of a global movement helps transcend boundaries and genres not only in writers minds but readers minds as well.

The anthology “The Perfume River” will be released by UWA Press this month and contains writings on Vietnam by Vietnamese diasporic writers including Nam Le, Vincent Lam, Chi Vu and myself. I hope that it does well.