Judith Wright

Audio

Transcript

Ramona Koval:

'The Flame Tree...'

Ramona Koval: 'The Flame Tree', by Judith Wright. And the poems you'll hear tonight are read by Jan Friedl.

In her new book, Judith Wright tells of her reluctance to write about herself. Something which after all is pretty essential in an autobiography.

Judith Wright: I was looking at the path before me with a great deal of distaste. And I must have put the distaste into the manuscript somehow. I'm not happy with the autobiography, and I won't be happy with this second one, either-if I take on the second half. I don't find it easy to talk about me.

Ramona Koval: Distaste of what, exactly?

Judith Wright: Just that I'm not accustomed to it, maybe. Most people seem to do it quite easily. On the whole I think I'm a rather shy person, forced into the position of making statements I'm not quite sure of the truth of-and that's what it is.

Ramona Koval: For a shy person, you've certainly been in the limelight. Only last year at a demo in Canberra about PLR (Public Lending Rights) for authors.

Judith Wright: Yes, that's right. I just happen to have strong views. I may not be a forthcoming person, but my views are held strongly. And therefore when they're challenged, I tend to shout rather than sit down.

Ramona Koval: Much of your life's experience and thinking has gone into your poetry. Why the need to write out the story in prose, then, this time?

Judith Wright: Poetry is a different thing from prose altogether. And it doesn't necessarily follow that anyone who can write prose can write poetry or vice versa. Poetry was the way in which my inner feelings expressed themselves and prose is an argumentative vehicle, I think, rather than anything else. If I want to use prose it's because it's not a subject for poetry. But I gave up writing poetry when I was 70 because I didn't have the urge any longer. And I think that was a wise move.

I don't think I would have been able to write poetry along the lines that I'd been pursuing. I don't know that there's anything particular to say that anyone who can write poetry can write prose. I'm certainly not as happy as I should be with it.

Ramona Koval: Are there some things that a poem can't tell?

Judith Wright: Yes. The argumentative style of writing is not one that poetry is well adapted to. I've had a lot of argument in my life, being an environmentalist and pro-Aboriginal I've had more in my life of that. But apart from writing a poem or two about my experience with Aboriginal problems-or rather my experience with problems that we have with Aboriginals to be precise-I don't think I could really make it into a polemic. Poetry is not polemic and polemic is prose.

Ramona Koval: Could you talk more about you not having the impulse to write poetry any more. What is that impulse?

Judith Wright: That impulse I think is a form of love. And poetry is something that comes to you rather than your having to work out its form beforehand. Once you lose the impulse, as I did at 70 or thereabouts, you can really only write artificial poetry-which should be prose. So I stopped. I could feel it coming on me, so to speak and I didn't want to continue writing poetry after 70.

Love is a very important part of life and you have to give in to it. But after a while it ceases to be such an important force in life. And that's the time when you should give in to age and stop doing it, if you don't have the impulse any more.

Ramona Koval: You felt it creeping up, the loss of impulse: did it make you feel sad?

Judith Wright: I think through life you change all the time. Sometimes you know you're changing; sometimes you don't. Sometimes you just find that something isn't there any longer that was there. It isn't sad. It's just right. It wasn't worrying me at all. I realise I've been several different people in the course of my life, as we all are. And you've got to give in to that.

Ramona Koval: Who are those several different Judith Wrights?

Judith Wright: Well we all know how different we were when we were a child, and then when we were a teenager. There's all that tremendous drama of change in becoming grown-up. And then after that you gradually accommodate yourself to enjoy the sweeter aspects of life as you go. I don't think that all those Judith Wrights are surviving, but I do know I remember them.

'The Child...'

Ramona Koval: Your mother, who was ill in the dark, cool house of your childhood-I think it's Wollomombi-is contrasted with the feeling of space and the light which was outside. And this sets the tone for the discussion of the concept of inside and outside: the duality principle that many of those who write about your poetry point out. How did the inside-outside idea influence you as a poet?

Judith Wright: I think the inside-outside idea influenced me always as a child. Inside always seems sad to me still. I like to be in a place full of light and I like to be in a place full of plants and animals. That's what comes of being brought up in the country. I think it's most important for everybody's good health to have a proper outside. Particularly if you have to live inside, as at my age I have to do a great deal of. I don't have much inside here; it's a small flat. But I have got an outside view. And that is still an influence in my life. I think it's most important for everybody-particularly when you get old or ill-to have that communication with the outside.

Ramona Koval: You write about the death of your mother when you were eleven and she was thirty-seven. And you say, 'when at last she died, the end of my childhood was final. Apart from grief, I had guilt to contend with. I had not been able to comfort or help her through those dreadful days.' How did that guilt play itself out in your life as it developed-as you developed?

Judith Wright: I have always wanted to make up to people for the ills they suffer. That is one reason perhaps why I have always been interested or involved in what we've done to the Aborigines. What we've done to the Aborigines is definitely the worst thing we have done since we came here, and we've done plenty of bad things. And that, I think, just may be the result of my feeling for anything that is weak or suffering. I don't know. It seems likely though. I have always, I suppose, had that motivation behind my environmental work and the other things that I have done. An attempt to make up for something.

Ramona Koval: Do you think you've suffered from the lack of mothering in those early years?

Judith Wright: I suppose anyone who loses their mother early must suffer from it. Certainly, as far as I was concerned, because I didn't get on well with my stepmother, the loss of my mother was fairly deep. After it I was hardly at home at all; I went to boarding school, but nevertheless not to feel that you have a home that's somewhere you can retreat to is an important factor in anyone's life I think. I suffered from that very considerably I suppose, looking back on it. And that was why I think finding a man I could live with and having a daughter I loved have been so very much a factor in my life.

'Woman to Man...'

Ramona Koval: You write of the extraordinarily powerful relationship you had with Jack McKinney, an autodidact who was trying to get his philosophical writing published, a man who was pensioned off after the First World War; married with four children, destitute. It was a relationship that seemed to be hard for people to understand from the outside. But you've devoted a good part of this book to that relationship-and the contribution Jack made to the very way you thought and to the subjects of your work.

Judith Wright: The reason I put so much emphasis on that relationship was almost nobody knew Jack's work because it was published overseas and because it was philosophy, which hardly anybody reads. But the most important part of our relationship, of course, was his self, rather than his philosophy. And since he's been dead since 1966, it's hard for people to understand it now. I think anyone who knew us then understood what a strong relationship we did have.

He had been separated from his wife and family for quite a long time. That was during the war, of course, and separation as between states was a very potent factor in Australian life.

Those factors, of course, are implicit in the stuff I have written about him. The problem was then of course a very much more potent one. The thing that surprised me, looking back, is that everybody who knew us accepted it so easily. I think the kindness of people, their reactions to our relationship, indicates that they realised how important it was to both of us. And I think that the whole question has changed entirely since then. These days it wouldn't seem at all surprising to people. Indeed, I had a letter the other day from a woman in much the same position as I was. She was quite surprised that in my time it was so hard to accept. I think my relationship had been a strong factor in my being able to go on writing poetry.

The problem that I had at that time was the War. I'd been brought up with a horror of war. The horror of war has been always a big factor in my life. And at that time it didn't seem as though we'd ever get out of that difficulty. And when I met Jack and he was working to, as I say, in the end trying to get beyond the pugnacious side of life as it were and he saw some of the problems at least that keep us a warring people. I think that made just the difference that made it possible for me to go on writing poetry. I felt I had come to an end of writing poetry when I met him. And he stimulated a great deal more thought in me than I'd ever found with any man before.

Ramona Koval: And there were those who criticised the direction your poetry took at this time: they wanted it more emotional; less philosophical.

Judith Wright: Yes. Well people always want rather more than you can give, don't they? Actually I don't know that anyone understood what I was trying to do, what I was trying to get beyond. My earlier poetry, what I wrote in the first book, wasn't what you would call [nationalist??]. And in those days that was the accepted attitude to life, really. The ones that I wrote then were simple. They didn't go beyond the immediate. And later ones that I was writing later, attempted to go beyond the immediate and people didn't like that. They still don't. [laughs]

People don't think if they don't have to think. I see this more and more. Almost total silence on the fact that the environmental situation is becoming impossible to sustain much longer. Nobody talks about that. You'd think that even a rat in a cage would have some sense to get out, but we don't seem to do that, even. It surprises, me, I must say.

Well the philosophy behind the whole thing is obviously important, and I think that that is the reason why people don't like to think; to think these [...???] things you don't want to acknowledge. You like things to be light and easy. Things aren't.

Ramona Koval: Was this why Jack found it so hard to be published here, and why you worked so hard to have his work recognised?

Judith Wright: Yes. It certainly was very hard for anyone as unqualified as Jack was as a philosopher to be published in professional journals. They always addressed him as Dr McKinney when they wrote to him because they'd realised that he knew something at any rate. But it was very hard for him to do all this, because he was so poor and he had almost none of the books and had no position as a philosopher. There were, in those days, very few universities and very few philosophy departments here. It was a long time before there was any kind of acceptance of what he actually was: a wild philosopher.

Ramona Koval: How did he cope with your success and his relative obscurity during those years? A lot of men would have resented it.

Judith Wright: He always regarded my poetry as important, and therefore, especially since in my poetry I was expressing some at least of his own philosophical ideas, he welcomed my being successful. What worried him, of course, was that you don't get paid as a philosopher, and therefore while he was working far harder than I was, we had to subsist on what I was writing. Beyond his pension, he had nothing.

'Nothing is so far as truth...'

Ramona Koval: One of the notable comments that Judith Wright has made publicly is that she doesn't want her poetry taught to schoolchildren. Why?

Judith Wright: What I object to is being turned into an instrument of torture for children. [laughs] And that, unfortunately, is what often happens in schools. If people don't like poetry, they don't like poetry; and there are some people who can't appreciate poetry. I know that very well. Particularly boys... And that's why I don't like the idea of making money out of selling my poetry to schools. Nevertheless, everybody ought to be introduced to poetry I do think. But I don't think they should be penalised for not liking it. And quite a lot of boys don't like it and thinks it's sissy. Well, I don't mind being called sissy.

Anyway, it's hard to make some people respond to poetry, and not all teachers are capable of it. But a good teacher can introduce people to poetry in a very rich-reaches them immediately. I think that's an important point.

Ramona Koval: What does the teaching of poetry do to poems?

Judith Wright: Well I do think that they turn a poem into an object of study rather than something you respond to naturally-which is what poetry ought to be. If you like poetry you can find in poetry a resource which will stay with you all your life. I still love reading poetry. I still read and buy poetry. And I think it's important to be able to do that even if people who are forced into it at school can turn, as people often do, to end up in the opposite emotional direction in later life. Poetry can help them and I think it's very important to realise that the emotions, while not always welcome in schools, are themselves a major part of life. Emotion is something that we all suffer from-or endure, as the case may be. I think that the whole question of what the teaching of poetry does is a personal one.

Ramona Koval: You often wrote about emotion. Even the way you described a flower or a tract of land was embued with emotional meaning. How have these emotions been tempered by getting older?

Judith Wright: Oh, I think it's most important that the natural is life is available to everybody. I worry very much about cities. I think that cities are - well, I'd better not say it to a city-dweller - but certainly if I weren't to have any external stimulus from things of which I was fond emotionally, I'd feel most deprived. And I think some people never get that sense of being in tune with the natural. They've never been introduced to it. And cities are not helpful at all in that respect. Incidentally, just recently I've heard of some work done by environmentalists which indicate that if you are ill and have an operation and there is no communication with nature in your hospital (and very few hospitals have any communication with nature) you recover more slowly than if you have some kind of - you're able to be outside with plants and live things - and that has apparently quite definitely been proved. I think that we cut ourselves off so much from the natural, that it's hard for us to respond to our own emotions as we should do. We tend to wipe off all that side of life and that is not good for us at all.

'I was born into a coloured country...'

Ramona Koval: You said that you still read poetry. Who do you read now?

Judith Wright: Oh, I read a lot one way and another. I need that sort of stimulus and I think that there are some very good poets around. Les and I don't always get on the best. Nevertheless I admire his capacity very much indeed when I read his poetry. And possibly he even reads mine, I don't know. But then I haven't written poetry for a long time and Les is still working.

Ramona Koval: Actually, Les Murray says that it's high time you should be governor-general of Australia, and that how could a national treasure not be an ornament to the country's highest office.

Judith Wright: Heaven forbid! Being governor-general of Australia is the last thing I'd want. Practically the last. I'm totally deaf; I'm lame and I'm 84. And it's quite time I was left-that particular slot, I can't think why Les should have imagined that I'd want it. There was a suggestion under Whitlam that I was supposed to be doing something of that order. I retired so quickly that I don't think anyone kept on with that idea for very long. I don't think I'm a suitable person for that, and I don't see why poetry should qualify one for anything beyond poetry.

Ramona Koval: You once said that many writers would envy you being deaf because they wouldn't have to listen to others; just the concentration of their own thoughts. But now you're affected both by deafness and by failing vision. How has the limiting of these senses affected the way you think as a poet?

Judith Wright: Losing one's responses to the world must always be a painful thing. I had several occasions in which I thought I was going blind. I had two operations: two capsulectomies, if you know what they are. I didn't when I had them. Fortunately there's now this laser operation which really does work. And so I still can see and I still can read. Without being able to read or to see, I think I would probably prefer to be out of it altogether. Losing your senses is a difficult thing to adapt to. I could hear with a hearing aid until about five years ago, I think it was. It was quite sudden. All of a sudden I couldn't hear anything at all. The hearing aids had ceased to be able to operate. It was a very great shock to me and a very great deprivation. But I'm accustomed to it now. I don't think it's something that one would expect to have happen to one, but then those things have always happened to me for some reason or another. Anyway, the eyes are operating well on account of modern technology-and that's something I definitely have in favour of modern technology. And the ears-I learned to train people to write their thoughts down. That might be helpful to them too, for all I know.

Ramona Koval: There's such music in the speech of people, in words being talked around you. Can you still hear the music of words in your head?

Judith Wright: That's a difficult one. When I read poetry I can hear it, yes. But most of the time it's just a blank wall. There's nothing going on much except my thoughts, and therefore-yes, I [may decry it] I think, really. Nevertheless, life's always worth living.

'Nameless flower...'

Ramona Koval: You've devoted a lot of time and thinking to causes like the Environment Movement, nuclear proliferation; and of course the relationship between Aboriginal people and the land; reconciliation. Your book offers an apology for trespass. What are your thoughts about these issues and how we stand in relation to them at the end of the century under the present government? Are you optimistic?

Judith Wright: [laughs] There's something very deep in our reaction to Aborigines. It isn't - it's a sort of shame mixed with misunderstanding. Until I met Kath Walker, as she was then, and she became my greatest friend, I had always had this problem myself. We were all brought up, I think, with the feeling that anyone who wasn't our colour was in some way inferior. A ridiculous idea from the very beginning. And we all ought to have known, but it was a very deep-seated reaction. And I think that being able to relate to Kath, as she was then, in the way I did was a most important part of my life. It changed my whole reaction to other people and it made a great difference in many other ways.

Most people when they really become reconciled to that split between peoples and find themselves able to relate on a deep level to people who aren't like them-you will always have a big dream somewhere; or more than that: more big dreams. And I had a very big dream when I first became a friend to Kath-or she first became a friend to me. We met halfway. It was an important dream to me and you should follow the way your dreams point. I think you will always find that something big has been overcome at an unconscious level and that allows to cease this kind of dreadful reaction to the Aboriginal side of you-because you do have one; everybody has: there's the dark and the light in them. And the dark is as valuable as the light. There's a problem always with relating to the unfamiliar, and that is why people are still liable to abuse Aborigines for their own shortcomings. You in some way project all your own problems to the other side, and that is why we have this problem with reconciliation.

Reconciliation isn't a word I like. It's about the only word, unfortunately, that fits. But they, I think, have more of a problem reconciling with us because we are the ones who did the deed. And the fact that they can do this speaks very highly indeed for their own capacities for forgiveness and understanding. We don't have that. That's because we do have this problem in ourselves: a kind of guilt that stands in the way of understanding. That is a very important part of our development as a people, and until we come into a proper relationship with the Indigenous peoples, we can't be in a proper relationship with ourselves.

Ramona Koval: You put a block on some of your poems being anthologised: poems like 'Bullocky'. Was this related to the matter of Aboriginal-white history and reconciliation?

Judith Wright: Yes, in a way it was. That poem came from the nationalist era in which I was only able to write from a white point of view. Now that I can see what that has done to us, I refuse to allow Bullocky to be anthologised any longer because of the way it got taught. It's a perfectly good poem in itself, I still stand by it as a poem. But it was being used in a way I disapproved of. And the funny thing was, of course, that there were teachers who wrote to me in a fury: 'You can't do this. It's not possible for you to do this. We've been teaching it this way for so long.' They were teaching it as though it was an aggrandisement of the whole invasion. And it was a very bad example of bad teaching of poetry. The only thing I could do was to argue that it shouldn't be put into anthologies at all. And that, I think I kept to fairly well. It was a great illumination to me of how poems can be misinterpreted simply because the idea is opposite to what they should be.

'At Corella...'

Ramona Koval: I read an interview with you when you were seventy, which talked a bit about you facing death, and now you're eighty-four, fourteen years later. How do you think now about the end of life?

Judith Wright: Oh, it can come as far as I'm concerned, because I can't stop it. But I enjoy life very much, nevertheless, and I hope it doesn't come too soon. Losing Maurice West was a sad blow, I think. Novels of his I admire very much, and to lose him just like that was sad. But nevertheless that's the way he did, because he was still working, still able as it happened to do his work, and that's a really important thing to him, I think. He managed to escape life without having to go through the mill of a rest home and all that end-of-life problem. And that, I think, is a very good way to go.

Ramona Koval: The poet Judith Wright, speaking to me in her flat in Canberra, on the occasion of the publication of her autobiography, Half a Lifetime, from Text, at $34.95. And thanks to Jan Friedl for reading the poems.

Publications

Title: Half a Lifetime

Author: Judith Wright

Publisher: Text