AustLit

Estelle Castro: When did you start writing? Or, when did you start writing fiction?

Terri Janke: I used to write when I was about 12 years old. I started writing stories about when I was a kid, even though I was only young then. And when I started high school, I was starting to put together like short short stories. My stories often dealt with things that happened in my childhood. One of the first stories I wrote was about a cat that we had that got run over by my father accidentally, and it’s in the book [laugh], in "Butterfly Song". It’s funny how a thing that impacts on you at a young age finds form in your writing… And I’ve always enjoyed writing. I went to a Catholic girls’ high school and in year 12 I did a creative writing elective in the English course and the teacher told us: ‘always keep a journal’, so I’ve done that and I kept it for about 20 years. So, I was writing, but I didn’t get published until – or seriously think of getting published – until after I finished law school in my late 20s, probably thinking I’m looking for a creative outlet, and I started submitting works to be published.

EC: What made you decide to write fiction? You write poetry as well, so do you have a genre that you prefer, or is it just how it comes to you?

TJ: I think I prefer the fiction. The poetry is more reflective. I find that I might write a poem about something that is going over and over in my mind. It’s hard to explain. Often I try and focus on writing prose because I like fiction but sometimes it just comes out like a poem and that’s it. It’s really strange but… For me the two overlap.

EC: Have you been influenced by other Aboriginal writers or some other writers?

TJ: Yeah, I’ve been influenced by some of the early Indigenous writers. I was really inspired by Kath Walker/Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetry… I just love it. At the time that she was writing she brought political force to the Aboriginal rights movement. She was writing in 1967 and calling for Indigenous people’s rights. I heard her speak a couple of times in the 1980's. I think I was also extremely inspired by Sally Morgan’s "My Place", which I read as a teenager. It was just amazing to see a book like it, because it got a wide audience. Everyone was reading it. Not everyone read Kath Walker or Jack Davis. Sally Morgan’s book was on the best sellers list for ages. The others, like Jack Davis… I had read one of his plays, "No Sugar", but we certainly never learnt any at school. I don’t think there were many Indigenous writers studied when I was at school. Maybe there was a poem by Kath Walker as she was called then. When I was a teenager, there was a time when I did not read for a long period because I was too busy living and going out. But when I got back into reading, I loved it and I started writing. I got inspired to show my writing to others by my friend Dr Anita Heiss when she started giving writing workshops and also publishing her own books, particularly her first fiction work "The Diary of Mary Talence". I thought that was beautiful. There was also Jackie Huggins who wrote a book called Auntie Rita, about her mum. I really liked the way it was written by Jackie and also her mum, like two parallel oral stories. I really loved that. That was groundbreaking. Even though that’s not a genre that I write in, it was inspiring. Glenyse Ward’s "Wandering Girl" was another good one. I have read some of the books by Vivienne Cleven, I just laughed my head off. I think I was starting to really get into writing "Butterfly Song" when her book was coming out and she won a few awards. There was also Larissa Behrendt’s book, "Home". I never knew that she wrote fiction and all of a sudden there was this fantastic novel. We went to Law School together, and she has done so much academically and in the legal profession. So when her book came out it influenced me to focus on writing too. I went over to Canada in 2002 for a law conference, but there was an Indigenous writing exchange program, Honouring Words, that was on – it had Indigenous writers from Canada, New Zealand and Australia talking about writing and reading their work. I just loved listening… Kim Scott was another influential writer. Both his adult fiction books "True Country" and "Benang" I just loved. I think I’ve been so inspired by many Indigenous writers. I was just reading Lisa Bellear’s poetry the other day, revisiting it again, and I was thinking how beautiful and clear her work is.

EC: Being a lawyer, do you think that fiction allows you to deal with issues that are important to you, but in a way that is freer than if you had to write about it in… like, in a law document?

TJ: You don’t have to do footnotes for fiction! Fiction is a way to explore the emotions around an issue. I like developing issues around the morals and ethics of a set of facts. In a story, what I really love about fiction and about creative writing is that you can operate it at so many different levels. I like the way that fiction can explore all the different issues and levels to do with a particular legal issue. "Butterfly Song" explores legal and ethical issues with property ownership and it links into land. In this way the brooch becomes symbolic and is operating at the level of Indigenous land ownership. Tarena is going to Law school in the year of the Mabo case. Her family wants her to take the case to reclaim the brooch and she’s not sure about her ability to do this. The whole connection to land and belonging is explored through fiction. I don’t think you could get too many people to sit down and read the Mabo judgement but they might read a story. In fact, I had some people write to me about "Butterfly Song", that could relate to the story as a person going to law school. They weren’t Indigenous but they could relate to the alienation. I also had property law lecturers comment how they wanted to use it in law exams to explore issues of legal ownership.

EC: Have you got a particular audience or readership, or do you think you’re writing for everyone?

TJ: When I wrote that book, I thought I was writing for young women, theirs were the faces that I had in my head when I was writing. I think I was trying to write to myself as a young woman because I had written a lot of the stuff in journals when I was confused and needed encouragement. I was probably trying to write for that character, you know, the young twenty year old. I was writing to her, which was me, you know, all those years ago. And it was like that was my audience. It’s like revisiting yourself. I thought my audience would be largely Indigenous, but it is wider and I know that other people read it and connect to it too. That’s really been a great response.

EC: And you got published by Penguin?

TJ: I just was lucky to get the people interested in it. Colin Golvan, a barrister I was working with, said: ‘your book sounds pretty amazing.’ It had already been accepted by an Indigenous publishing house. We had not worked anything out; they hadn’t formally put an offer. And then he said: ‘Debbie, my wife’s an agent. Do you want her to look at it?’ And she did and ended up getting me the Penguin deal.

EC: And that’s good! When you signed my book, you wrote that ‘stories keep culture strong’. Do you think that storytelling is something that is important in the written form as well as in the oral form, as some people still tell stories?

TJ: I think both are really important. I guess in my family, the stories have been always the oral storytelling... I mean, even the written stories. My dad, my mother, my sister, and my brother have all written stories. I think the writing is connecting.

EC: Do you think it’s a continuation?

TJ: I do.

EC: Or do you think it’s a different form?

TJ: I think it’s a continuation. I think that it’s a form of expressing culture. The oral form of story is that and now that I just have such a love for the written word, I can relate the story in the written form. Yeah, I think that’s a continuation. Indigenous people have such a strong oral tradition and a performance tradition. I see many new Indigenous writers just moving into the art of writing and making it their own. I tried to be a bit freer in the style of writing in "Butterfly Song" to allow Indigenous modes of storytelling to form. I didn’t just want to fall into western methods of telling a story in a linear time frame. I also wanted to mix the art forms. In the novel, there’s a song which is pivotal to the plot. I also like to write bits in smaller bites so that the reader can hear a strong oral voice. I use the ‘I’. I like to write in the first person to bring that oral sort of story-voice. I think that is a continuation of the oral storytelling. I tried to write the book in the third person and it just didn’t hit home to me. It felt a little bit distant. Although parts of the narration, there are some sections that refer to the past, are told in the third person. But the present is written in first person to bring it closer to the reader.

       Yeah, the song is one art form, but there’s also the poem at the beginning and end. The chapters are short because I wanted to entice a readership of people who wouldn’t tuck into a big book. So, I was trying to give them space. I wrote with the short shifts of time with the headings because I thought people who aren’t used to a reading culture would find it more accessible. I’ve had people, friends of mine, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, but specifically Indigenous people who said: ‘I never read books. I’ve never read a book without a picture or a comic.’ They said: ‘but your book... I could read it because it wasn’t so daunting to pick up.’ And if you look at the layout of it, I was really trying to break it down for that and move into an oral story, an oral practice to a written practice. People will move with you on that.

EC: It’s interesting what you said about the title, because for me reading it – and being used to reading written forms, stories, written stories – I thought the titles were keeping the suspense going. They do break down the story and you feel like continuing… you see the title and you want to read what comes after. So to me, it gave a really fast pace to the narration.

TJ: Oh that’s good!

EC: It achieved something different for me.

TJ: Because a lot of people said they read it quickly. Yeah, they said: ‘I could not put it…’ I thought that’s a good thing. I liked to write in the short sentences, because people talk short.

EC: Even the titles work that way. You’re finishing one page and you see the next one and you see the title and you want to know what’s happening. [laugh] I couldn’t put it down!

TJ: That’s good feedback.

EC: You have performed the song that is in the book. You performed it: you sang it and you played music as well?

TJ: Yeah. I wrote a song to it. Because the "Butterfly Song" is part of the evidence for the case. It did not start off as being in the story. As I was writing, the song came to me. The song wasn’t finished but it came together as the book came together. I found the music and finalised the lyrics.

EC: So you don’t see yourself as a performer?

TJ: Not really. I have performed in the past, but it’s so much practice that you have to do, to do that. I sometimes sing at readings and people can – especially people who’ve read the book – can get an understanding of it. It’s an interesting thing. To stand up and say: ‘Oh, I’ve brought my guitar’ at a writers’ reading. But then I come from a family that sings and plays the guitar, and everyone would get up and had a big yakkai singing. It is actually my grandfather there on the cover, he was a musician. Music from the Torres Strait is really strong. It’s very much a gift to give to people to sing with them and to sing to them. So you have to see it as giving people a gift or an insight rather than being so polished at singing.

EC: On tradition… On the cover it’s written that the book is a story of love. But I think it’s also a story of place, and a story of tradition. And I think you explore this notion of tradition, when Essa says that ‘singing should be done with drums, and in language’ and not with the guitar. Or when one of the characters says that they couldn’t sing the songs when they were kids because it was forbidden. In the book you’re exploring tradition in different ways.

TJ: I wanted to explore issues of cultural heritage and the sort of influences that come from outside a culture but then get incorporated and strengthened and become very much almost a part of it. The guitar is not a Torres Strait instrument, but some of the best guitarists I have ever heard have come from the Torres Strait. They have their own sort of way of strumming but the guitar is not a traditional Torres Strait Islander instrument.

EC: And like in your poem ‘Journey’, it seems that the journey in Butterfly Song is really about self-discovery as well as going back to a place. It’s also what’s in your poem, you know, the going back to a place. I thought the book was about self-discovery, and discovery of one’s past, or the past, and sort of restoring the past into the present.

TJ: You’re probably right.

EC: That’s what Tarena says, every time she says: ‘I was always waiting for my mother to say more.’ It seems that it’s the link that she’s trying to have with the past.

TJ: Yes, and like she expects more, because… she wants more. But there may not be more, or it’s not the door that is opened. And I understand that. A lot of Indigenous people understand that for whatever reasons, that’s not there. And I just have some people whose commentary on how stories should be written about Indigenous or people’s lives – they want them to be really intense. They want some secret uncovered or something. But sometimes that is the thing, the secrets, it’s like that’s a secret for the grave. You’re never going to know and it’s probably not… it has been sheltered from you. To not know. At a particular level. I don’t know…

EC: Yeah, that’s very interesting.

TJ: The reclaiming, in the book, and in the story, I guess. The self-discovery thing, I found… and that’s how I used the time frames, I always… probably coming from being a journal writer all those years. I wanted to be reflective but not overly sugary.

EC: I didn’t mean self-discovery of you as a writer but of the char—

TJ: Of the character, yeah.

EC: And I think that’s actually what you can feel in the narration, that Tarena is not expecting, she’s waiting, to know if she’s going to have more information. This is not an expectation. Like a respect for what maybe will never be.

TJ: And you won’t push that because that’s a boundary that you respect.

EC: That’s interesting, that respect of personal emotion and feeling, because as you said, for some people, history, and stories should be told, but there are also personal relationships…

TJ: Yeah, also like, do you really need to know the details of it? Whereas for some reasons it might be not told to you.

This interview was conducted on 01/12/2005 in Sydney.