Tag: Alison Whittaker

Pocket thanks

SoutherlyBlog

by Alison Whittaker     Dunno if you remember me, tid. You and me went to school together in 2005.   I’ve got these vignettes of you in my head. First we walked together on a tour of the school grounds like fluffy juvenile magpies – except it was so hot we were slick, drippy and dragging. Then, we sat at the front of English class together and didn’t speak. I remember you doodled in your corners and I anxiously marked out a margin (three centimetres; parallel to the page edge; red pen).   Year 7 is hard enough. We…

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Talking about: talking about

SoutherlyBlog

by Alison Whittaker   ‘In conversation’ is the lie I tell myself to get to a venue where I’ll talk about writing.   Harmless little chat. It’s a harmless little chat.   Here’s the real harmless little chat, twenty minutes before: From there, a writerly discussion event is just projecting some tight-packed, thought-out writerly version of myself at someone else and a smattering of people who watch on.   I think: ‘Don’t look at them. Probably shouldn’t look at them.’ I also think: ‘Chin up, gut in. Surely you know what you’re talking about.’ I think: ‘On brand.’ When was…

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Writing and

SoutherlyBlog

by Alison Whittaker   The writer and the writing life, two off-cut conversations that have planted themselves anew in 2017.   On the Southerly blog last month, Roanna Gonsalves breathed The Double Lives of Writers, a sobering bulletin that etched out the invisible financial and labour roots that give water to even prolific writers. Katerina Bryant in Overland wrote Have You Thought About Law?, on the tensions between practice and prestige and the ‘day job’ in writing. Both are relatable; I bring in most of my money through working in law and legal research. While this continent descends into another…

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Sovrenaissance

SoutherlyBlog

by Alison Whittaker Wangal land, in the memory of colonial records at least, has never been hotter. Today while I write, its sky is some thick full-handed slap of cyan on an unwilling canvas. Every new humid day that it’s like this, I’m reminded that we’re heading towards some new series of precipices even as we cross the last. Sitting in this office chair, lazily sweating and glowering at a close and motionless tree, there’s the tug of momentum under my pelvis. We’re rapidly headed towards something. Hottest year to another hottest year and some accelerating heavy panic that the…

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