#CrashawPrize The shortlist in profile: Julie Maclean

Biography

Born in bombed out Bristol, UK, now based on the windswept Surf Coast, Australia, I go back every summer to see my mother in Bath, and friends from school and college days.

When I heard the word charabanc at the age of three, I fell about laughing. That was it; the beginning of a love affair with language. My folks kept me (not only from children who were rough) but also from newspapers when they discovered I could read at four, thanks to Dick and Jane, Pip and Spot.

I progressed to nonsense poetry at 5 (thanks, Spike) and won my first prize at 9, when I memorised GM Hopkins Spring and recited it in front of the class. Still can, never get asked.

Teaching English, Dance and Drama was the obvious career choice because I was a show-off and party gal. I knew the words of every Shirley Bassey number and Sound of Music lyrics by the time I was 12.

When the price of cigarettes went up in 1976, I came to Oz on a whim. I joined theatre groups, playing dubious women like Eliza Doolittle, Dulcinea from Man of la Mancha, Lady Macbeth and Elizabeth I. Too often a dancing girl in cabaret shows.

When my son was a baby I left teaching but later worked for a community group that had me recruiting the long term unemployed in the manufacturing industry, and later working with new arrivals, refugees and disadvantaged youth. Now that my son is at uni, I’ve been able to go back to my first love; poetry. I also write love stories for couples marrying on beaches along the Great Ocean Road, as a celebrant.

The Interview

So where did the book begin for you, how did the book come to be written?

Poems in Burlesque have been written over the last 15 years, the majority in the last five. I enrolled in a Creative Writing course where my poet teachers were inspirational. When I submitted poems to journals and they were selected I was encouraged to keep going but sadly, my personal life was in trouble.

What was going on in your life while you were writing it?

Misery around the breakdown of a relationship and the fact that I had a young son to care for had contrasting outcomes. I produced a turbo-charged blood jet of writing, but had to go back to full-time work and give up study. I stopped writing for a few years.

What do you think were the real driving elements within the book — the things that moved it all forward for you?

A busy life and curiosity have always provided plenty to write about, but the greatest boost that got me going again was having a poem selected for Best Australian Poems 2008 (UQP). I didn’t appreciate how significant that was at the time, too busy worrying about my teenage son enjoying his own colourful private life. It wasn’t until 2009 that I got serious, and decided to start performing and blitz competitions. I performed at several slams and Poetry Idol final with Les Murray watching on and learned that slams are not my style. I much prefer reading to an audience that appreciates the word and not the act. My son settled into study like a good boy.

How long did it take to bring it all together?

In 2011, I had enough finished pieces for a full length collection. It took weeks to order, cull, edit and decide on a title. So many incarnations. So hard to kill your darlings. And can I ever be happy with it? No. I want to put all my new stuff in it and fiddle.

Who was important to you in developing your writing life?

There have been many inspirations apart from men, friends, stupidity and dead things. Mum, who helped me with the first nonsense poem. Dad, who walked me to the library once a week. Winning the Oxford Book of Verse when I was 9 took me to my love, The Lady of Shalott, and delight in The Night Mail, all rhythm and begging to be read aloud.

Then Plath, McGough and Beckett, ahhh! Beckett. Wrist-slashing with a smile.

Ania Walwicz and her streams of consciousness affected me deeply. Now I read so many beautiful new poets.

I have to mention my old English teacher, Miss Pittaway, who liked my hippy poem in year 10 and now, Dr Cassandra Atherton, a dynamic poet and writer who encouraged me to put the manuscript together last year and get it out.

Where do you think you’ll go to next in your writing — what are you working on now?

Continuing to write poetry, some short and longer fiction. There is also a script I’d like to develop in which Plath and Hughes reunite on the Queen Mary 2. Homage with humour. Also reading in preparation for a study tour to Scandinavia in June.

In the background I’ve been thinking about a multi-genre autobiography for my disinterested son but perhaps a poetry manuscript is memoir enough. He won’t read it until I’m dead. He knows he’ll get a shock.

“This is me and the other, stained with red wine, in usual happy state, and nasty collection of dead, weird things.”

Kathy K

First appeared in Wet Ink in 2007. Selected for Best Australian Poems 2008 (UQP Editor David Brooks).

she milks twelve cows in the bare-arsed raw,
pays the plumber’s bill with a grimy rut
on tie-dyed sheets
breeds two stud boys
to ‘see how it feels’
and with the delicate hands
of an aristocrat
gathers her hair into a comb

driving home alone through ghost gums
3 a.m. New Year’s Day out of Castlemaine
her foxy dog catches the whiff of
kebab wrapper under the accelerator and
with the reflex of a hunter short
on thrills, leaps into a role play

she tries to brake, takes the bend too fast
and whacks into the nearest tree
it’s legend for Miss Bush Tragedy and
in the words of someone not close,
‘I don’t believe that story about the dog,
I think she was pissed.’

and now she stands there, and not there
in the same crepe dress
cherokee hair, terracotta skin.
‘There’s something jarring between you and I,’ says the Lady K.
‘You’re dead,’ I say.
but from the next room
I hear her sigh.