I’m thinking a lot about poems. About poems that I remember remembering. About the stinking hot afternoon in the portable classroom behind the library when Mr Lewis first read “Skunk Hour” out loud to us and something hard and sharp turned over in my mind. More on that later.
In the meantime I was stopped in my tracks by this, from Elizabeth Bishop (to whom, spookily, “Skunk Hour” was dedicated):

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world…

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

(From “At the Fishhouses” from The Complete Poems 1927-1979)

Today is the day my first book, Ocean Without End, goes into the shops in New Zealand (26 April in Australia).
Thank you to everyone in Australia, New Zealand and Malta who has helped me research, write, and finally publish the first Swashbuckler book.
Bless her, and all who sail in her.

In the case of pirates, say, I would like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows.
– Herman Melville

The Australian newspaper has posed the question (again) of whether the literary novel is dying a feeble and unrecognised death.

Author and academic Mark Davis recently conducted research that shows the number of home-grown literary novels produced by Australia’s mainstream publishers has almost halved since the mid-1990s.
In a paper on the decline of the literary paradigm, published last year, Davis concluded: “The project of the 1960s to the late ’90s, in which publishers competed for prestige, of constructing a national literary canon, has otherwise ended … It’s reasonably safe to predict that the activities of reading, studying, writing and publishing literary fiction will increasingly become – if they aren’t already – the preserve of a rump of ‘true believers’.”

Shona Martyn, publishing director at HarperCollins (and a person with impeccable taste in books – like mine), has a slightly different take, and suggests things have never been that great, unless you happen to be Tim Winton or Peter Carey.

She says: “It’s tragic to see how many of our most awarded and talented writers sell in Australia … under 1000 copies.”
Books short-listed for the Miles Franklin literary award, the nation’s most respected literary prize, often sell “well under 5000”, she adds. Sales of books that win premiers’ awards can languish in the hundreds.
“Australians are not buying a broad range of literary fiction,” Martyn says. “And in terms of buying an unknown Australian author, they’re very, very sceptical.”

I suspect she’s got a point there. Lots of people have always sold just a few books, and a few people have sold lots of books. The problem arises when only certain kinds of books ever get to be published.
I recently heard an industry panel on Ramona Koval’s Books show on Radio National claim to be shocked (after seeing the new Nielson Bookscan figures) at how few local writers ever sold more than 5000. They’d been in the business for years and had no idea things were that bad.
For many authors, that’s not about a lack of promotion, or local loyalty, or cultural cringe – or even that it’s a bad book, although some undoubtedly are.
After all, I remember the good old days when major publishing houses still produced several volumes of fine new poetry every year. Ah. Nostalgia.
I don’t think it’s peculiar to Australia. British writers report similar numbers (even more dismal when you compare the population levels). Kiwis say much the same.
Cause for depression? Perhaps no more than usual, although in this market it means that the buying, distribution and shelving policies of the ever-growing big bookselling chains become that much more critical.

Oh.
You can hear Langston Hughes explain about writing ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ here, courtesy of the Academy of American Poets:

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

How are we to say what we see in the crow’s flight? It is not enough to say that the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow’s flight, the bare-faced bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gypsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the downstroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness – you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpsed knowledge of the world of the crow’s wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying.
– Ted Hughes.

If you don’t live in Australia (and perhaps if you do) you may be unaware of the so-called History Wars that have been raging over the past few years.
I’ll go out on a limb and summarise it as a politicisation of history and historians in the battle over the analysis of European settlement of the continent, and over post-colonial reckoning – or otherwise – for the dispossession of the indigenous people.
It began as a right-wing backlash against the movement for reconciliation between black and white Australians, and became the perfect storm.
Conservative historians questioned the research and credibility of fellow academics; politicians, including the Prime Minister, waded in, accusing “chardonnay socialists” of having a “black armband” view of history; the Left and the liberals (perhaps we should say, humanists) struck back; and it’s all been a complete and very public schemozzle.
Floors and swords have been crossed, family dinners have erupted in arguments. I don’t often agree with Robert Manne, but in the middle of it all he wrote: “No reconciliation is possible unless we can discover a version of Australian history that can be shared.”
Of course, God and the malleable statistics are on everyone’s side. Intellectual rigour has sometimes been replaced with personal rancour, babies thrown out with bathwater all over the place, and the public left either confused or with their worst prejudices confirmed.
Me? I’d rather wear a black armband than be part of a whitewash any day. If only there was a proper Left left to carry on the debate…
But never mind about that. We’re now up to the second wave (or perhaps I missed a few ripples), in which novelists and historians are debating whether historical fiction might be more credible than history texts. You can tell it’s another wave, because journalists are writing lots of salacious stories about it, as if it were the Coronation Street of Australian intellectual life.
Novelist Kate Grenville claims her award-winning The Secret River is as close to the truth of early colonial settlement life as we’re likely to get. Historian Mark McKenna wonders if the public has lost faith in historians and placed it instead in the hands of writers of historical fiction. Other commentators take even more extreme views, as always.
McKenna’s right in one sense: the History Wars have undermined confidence in some historians and perhaps in the field as a whole.
But it hasn’t stopped the books selling. People clearly still have faith in Henry Reynolds, whose estimates of Aboriginal deaths after British colonisation were questioned by conservative historian Keith Windschuttle. Every Tim Flannery book is a best-seller. David Day is doing quite well. So, for that matter, is McKenna.
So people do want to read well-written, accessible, rigorous, interesting history. They want to understand, forgive, remember. If it comes in the form of soundly-researched historical fiction, that’s nothing new. Many of our greatest and most popular writers delve into the past (think of Peter Carey or David Malouf, Robert Drewe and Tom Kenneally). If it comes in a brilliantly written Inga Clendinnan history – splendid. For that matter, it might be more readily digested in a Judith Wright poem. Or a memoir. Or Manning Clarke’s magisterial History of Australia … If only he was still alive to bang some heads together.
McKenna is one of those engaged in the wars but apparently trying to effect a reconciliation before it all gets just too silly. After all, the dignity of his profession and the value of history are both being undermined. But he has a political point to make, too. He wrote recently in The Australian:

In this country, still so uncertain and divided about its past, we are at risk of creating a culture in which our literature and history is too often judged for its usefulness as an agent of national unity.

Only weeks after celebrating her 70th birthday, one of NZ’s official national icons, Margaret Mahy, has another excuse for a party. She’s just won the prestigious Hans Christian Anderson Award, children’s literature’s Nobel Prize.
An international panel of judges selected her from a field of 25 nominated authors from around the world. The panel described Mahy as “one of the world’s most original re-inventors of language”:

“Mahy’s language is rich in poetic imagery, magic, and supernatural elements. Her oeuvre provides a vast, numinous, but intensely personal metaphorical arena for the expression and experience of childhood and adolescence.”
“Equally important, however, are her rhymes and poems for children. Mahy’s works are known to children and young adults all over the world.”

I’m back on the island this morning after ten days in Melbourne. Presented family members with their copies of my book, Mum cried, and I blushed a lot as it got shown to everyone of our known acquaintance (and probably a few strangers on the train or innocent passers-by down the shops).
While I was away, I got my first review: from Erik Steller, aged 10, who reviewed the book for the Chatterbooks Kids’ Bookclub, said it was “a great read” and gave it a ten out of ten. I’m chuffed.
I’m particularly pleased that a boy reviewed it and liked it, as general publishing wisdom tells us that boys don’t read books about girl protagonists.
Then my young friend Liam read it, was beside himself with excitement, and had to ring up to ask a million questions and posit a few very interesting theories about the various incomplete plotlines (he can’t believe he has to wait for book 2).
So hopefully, if the boys can get beyond the purposely androgynous cover illustration and the blurb which tells them it’s a book about a girl, they may enjoy it. They ought to – it’s got as much sword-fighting and sailing and swearing as any “boy’s book”.
Emily Bazalon provides her take on the issue, as a mother of two sons, on Slate this week: “The conventional educational wisdom holds that boys don’t like to read about girls. If a book has a girl on the cover, it’s toast, no matter how adventure-filled or well written.” Interestingly, she argues against “boy-friendly” books as suggested by teachers and librarians:

To my relief, I’ve found that most advocates of boy reading aren’t so narrow-minded. They are not trying to direct boys toward a list of masculine titles – in fact, they’re refreshingly skeptical about assigned reading in the first place. Instead, their aim is to enliven the standard fare for both genders. What they have discovered is that many boys like so-called “girl” books, but for different reasons than girls do.
Ever since Nancy Drew outperformed the Hardy Boys in the 1930s, it’s been clear that boys will read some stories about girls. Publishers have marketed titles to take advantage of this fact.

Well, sure. It’s one of those “my experience is the exception that proves the rule is false” articles – a common style of argument, particularly on the web, but not the kind of logic likely to really prove anything.
The research is fairly solid on boys’ reading, and I think it’s reasonable to argue that more boy-friendly books are going to make for more male readers.
While I was away I finally caught up with Catherine Jinks’ brilliant Pagan’s Crusade – or rather, it caught me, because I then got hooked and had to read the next two in the series. That’s what boy-friendly writing ought to be: a street-wise, fluently abusive young male voice who just happens to be a street Arab (literally) in Crusader Jerusalem.
It’s a controversial approach, but it works for me, and I hope Emily Bazalon’s boys get to read it one day.

Sport’s really very tiring. I’m worn out.
I’ve been to the MCG to the athletics twice, spent most of a day down at Docklands by the race-walking course, basketball finals tonight, squash tomorrow, more athletics the night after that.
Screaming and clapping takes it out of you. There’s been the odd tear shed as well, especially after the women’s marathon.
Then when you’re not actually there, you have to be glued to the TV until all hours, even though for once in our lives we’re in the right time zone. It’s compulsory in our family.
Good thing this only happens once every four years (well, two years if you count the Olympics).