AustLit
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In the first of the series of interviews, Anita speaks to Samuel Wagan Watson.
Samuel Wagan Watson is a Brisbane-based freelance writer, an award-winning poet, and a professional narrator and storyteller who has performed his work internationally.
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Who’s your mob? Where did you grow up?
Of, Muse, Meandering and Midnight by Sam Wagan WatsonI grew up on a schoolyard where your culture was rarely promoted unless you were the kid of a ‘Greek’ doctor, or the child of a wealthy ‘Chinese’ businessperson. Unfortunately back then an economic viability was the ‘needed’ stamp of acceptance in your background. In my neighbourhood, Mediterranean and Asian families owned the best real estate and drove Volvos, so they were considered very cool in the schoolyard hierarchy. That was primary school on Brisbane’s southside in Mt Gravatt. It never bothered me none. The fortunate kids always made the soccer team and were given preferential treatment. I thought that was good because it got the teachers off my back! I was always in a group of boys who were considered underachievers. Dad worked hard and Mum was in teachers' college. So I didn’t complain, and had nothing to complain about. I was safe at home and loved.
I only became interesting when ‘Aborigines’ were under the spotlight in social studies … Did I hunt kangaroo? Have I been initiated? And yeah; I spun the worst fantasies in the world!!! But I was also fortunate that we lived in a grass-root home and had extended family in Ipswich and Cherbourg. We even had a visiting Uncle from Arnhem Land who worked for National Parks … we’d actually have a campfire in the backyard and he’d show us how to make spears! The ghost stories were incredible, but they never frightened me like ‘vampire’ or ‘zombie’ films … These stories were about country, and you saw a ghost because you had committed a crime on the land or were being warned because your safety was in imminent peril. It wasn’t about being scared … it was about being respectful of what you have!
Being a Murri boy who was German/Irish was not exactly of interest to anyone. It wasn’t until my late teens that music from U2 emerged and Midnight Oil … suddenly it was cool to be black or part of another minority …You didn’t hear any more jokes about ‘Dumb Irishmen’ or ‘Boongs’ or ‘Nazis’. When Uncle Tiga Bayles and Uncle Michael appeared in the film clip for Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds are Burning’, I enjoyed a very minor celebrity at school because some kids in the neighbourhood saw these Uncles at family bbqs … But really, it was a short-lived acceptance.
When I had my career while other kids were trying to survive with limited credentials and dyslexia, the racism soon came out. I sat the public service exam before the end of high school and had a permanent job, while most of my mates were getting knocked back from universities or struggled as pizza delivery boys. My sister was already accepted into a leading university to study law … she achieved the highest score of any Indigenous student in the area and probably ever since … Jealousy is the pestilence that allows a sudden pandemic of hate. I grew up north of Brisbane on the southern fringe of the Sunshine Coast. Pauline Hanson did well there. But so did we!
The only mate I am in touch with from school now manages one of the best music stores in Brisbane and my 17-year-old goes in there and calls him ‘Uncle’ and they jam on guitars and Samuel now has his own job and is studying contemporary music. He buys his axes and pedals down there … He figures that Mum and Dad have to buy the amps and ‘pay’ for them in noise pollution. Lucky my girl Helen (my partner) is a drummer and she belts it out in the studio under the house while Black Sabbath junior is amping his metal-zone pedals!
My mate and I laugh about the homophobic teachers that used to hassle us and warn us that the ‘arts’ world is full of ‘poofs’ - what a despicable thing to tell a 16-year-old! Some of my closest associates are homosexual (and so what?!) and I am sincerely worried sometimes that the racism and phobia that I experienced as a child remains … (and well, it does!) But the ‘haters’ are more dangerous than the ‘hated’! My sons have Aunties and Uncles who love them dearly and they will be denied the opportunity under draconian government legislation that stops them from giving a neglected child a loving home! … It’s a basic human rights violation! We haven’t come very far in this country as far as the evolution of humanity.
Where you come from, shapes your path. I was with guys in school who were so repressed by our community that they were very violent people before we hit our teens! And that’s why I state in my current bio, 'I survived my teenage years on the fringe of the Sunshine Coast'.
A lot of the people I knew and loved, simply didn’t survive! I went to three funerals in my senior year.
We now live in the same neighbourhood where Mum and Dad grew up. The Page family (of Bangarra Dance Theatre fame) grew up around the corner. Melissa Lucashenko started ‘wordsmithing’ down the highway from me. Uncle Richard Bell spent weekends crabbing with my family. Some really innovative First Nations artists came up in this neck of the woods. Wesley Enoch grew up about 20 kliks away … he now runs Queensland Theatre Company. Not a bad neighbourhood for a bunch of kids who probably weren’t considered shining lights by some of their peers and teachers back in the day …
I’m a Munanjali/Birri Gubba man with two blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys. One day, my youngest has the choice to go back to Finland and do national service. No matter what they do, I’ll adore them for it!
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This year I have completed assignments as a journalist, scriptwriter, songwriter, poet, and fiction writer. Each genre can and does have a different dynamic in the way a story is told. As a writer you have to have a clear idea of what your client or editor [wants], or what you need to accomplish, and you should try to stay as close to the brief of that assignment as possible.
Poetry is not prose, yet poetry can complement prose within a piece of corporate writing. Journalism is relatively the ‘facts’ and nothing more, but speculative writing does deserve a place in writing feature articles to complement facts. Prose hasn’t a place in songwriting unless it is utilised by a voice suited to telling a strong narrative and that it works within the textual landscape that has been created.
This is all academic and I’m not an academic, but I’m a full-time writer and I understand that if a client asks for a ‘song’ then you give them one. A ‘jingle’ for a 2-minute radio script is not a song and it’s not exactly a poem, but the jingle needs to complement the narrative inside the storyline of that radio script.
Once again, it’s all about sticking to your assignment, pleasing the client and giving your audience an insightful glimpse of your ability to tell a story. So no, I don’t have difficulty moving between genres. But if I do utilise another style of writing within a job, I always run a ‘sample’ by my client or editor for their feedback first. There is nothing worse than 'going sideways' on a job and losing perspective from what you had set out to accomplish and what you had promised to deliver.
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Who do you write for?
Smoke Encrypted Whispers by Sam Wagan WatsonEach genre I write for has a specific audience. Some audiences are very wide and some can be quite narrow. I remember once developing a radio-play for 98.9FM (Brisbane Indigenous Media Agency) that was specifically created for an audience from within First Nations Australia. After it went to air I received a call from a ‘logistics company’ who liked the concept and wanted to know how to give more of the same advice to their workers.
Basically, the original message was that if ‘you’re going travelling, program a next of kin number on your mobile, so that if you do have an accident, paramedics know who to contact.’ This company evidently had no blackfullas working for them but the drivers enjoyed country music. So when the message came on air, it was heard by one of the managers that thought it was a wonderfully simple idea for their drivers.
You never can tell who is listening and who is not? My message was conceived because quite often family members would contact the station looking for people - asking if the broadcasters could make a quick community announcement - place a message on the ‘murri-grapevine’. I never expected my message to reach out like that on this occasion. It just goes to show that you can never place a perception of who your audience is.
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What do you think makes a ‘good writer’ and who are some of your favourite authors?
Samuel Wagan Watson (Image credited to Helen Kassila)A writer doesn’t announce to the world one day that they want to be a writer. Writers just naturally know their life’s journey and what it is that needs to be completed. And they do it. And they succeed.
As far as what makes a ‘good writer’ … I don’t know? I’m an ‘established writer’ yet I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘good’ writer. Should we define a ‘good writer’ as someone who publishes a novel every year or an artist who simply falls in love with language and is a skilled technician who writes a sentence now and then that simply smokes with pearly-wings of an epiphany in the midst of your mind’s eye?
I believe Oscar Wilde was a ‘good’ writer because he seemed to fall in love with every sentence that he composed and each of his words has an ownership of its place … I could compare an Oscar Wilde quote to a Western Desert painting … each word, each dot, each piece of punctuation seems to naturally deliver you to the beat of a song-line.
There are simply pieces of literature that will sing and seduce you. The late Lester Bangs, the immortal rock-journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, could take an observation like, 'The Colour of Jazz,' and easily compose a 5,000 word essay in one sitting! His skill with language and ‘sensory’ writing could deliver any reader into a spectrum of mind-enhancing thought.
A ‘good’ writer should maybe make you feel a fatigue like jet-lag when you depart their work, like you’ve been somewhere foreign. I received a copy of Aunty Alexis Wright's The Swan Book a little while ago and I’d have to say that Aunty Alexis is a ‘good’ writer because her pages infiltrated me. I read the novel in 24 hours and saw many things in shades of ‘rust’ for the next few days. I more or less swam and flew with her words through the swamp that provided both a palette to base her protagonist ... The fact that this gem of a book is fiction and the flow of consciousness in the text is so fluid. I believe some readers will look for ‘the swamp’ in her book on Google … the rusting hulks of battleships … I mean, it does exist out there in the politics of Australia. Aunty Alexis Wright’s textual landscapes, to me, exist between the sordid lines of every newspaper headline that degrades our peoples, every piece of paper involving every dirty land deal and every transcript from a cop who pleads innocence who is involved in a death in custody.
See how I carry myself away with a topic! I am not a ‘good’ writer yet, and may never be? I am simply never satisfied with my use of language! I’m the punter who can develop a concept that is worth a million bucks … and then I’ll blow all the value of the concept in a poem or paragraph that is rushed by too much angst … I have a wealth of ideas but I believe I spend my words too quickly … which I believe does not make a good writer.
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Once by German filmmaker Wim Wenders. ‘Uncle’ Wim is an incredibly talented weaver of stories and it will be my dying wish to work with him in the future. His book has a little over 100 photos from ‘stills’ and ‘polaroids’ that were taken on his journeys around the world. The images are narrated by short prose- poems explaining why he captured each image. It is an absolute gem of a book!
I also read Aunty Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book in one sitting - it wasn’t just a book, it was an odyssey and it really illustrated to me how her writing has evolved. Instantly I picked up Swann’s Way by Proust and it had nothing to with birds on water …but it introduced me to another writer whom I will forever admire.
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Yes, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. After page 10 I remember thinking, ‘Once I put this down, I’ll never pick it up again!' And I didn’t! And I don’t regret it … It was written at a time when colleges in the States were still not encouraging black students to join or simply stopped them from entering their halls. It’s a book about self-indulgence … Salinger’s character should have just said to himself, 'I’m lucky to be considered a human being … and I am protected by the bill of rights … ' THE END.
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The Tawny, Scrawny Lion, (A Little Golden Book) and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I have read a chapter almost every day or before bedtime for the last 6 months from On the Road.
I was once stuck in a transit lounge in Papua New Guinea for almost 10 hours waiting for a plane to Sydney … On the Road kept me sane. My partner can’t understand why I read this book so much? And I can’t understand why a beautiful mind like hers would want to watch reality TV on a nightly basis … Each to their own I guess?
When you do find a book that really ‘tickles’ your senses, you need to hold that book for an eternity. I am also a terrible romantic and The Tawny, Scrawny Lion was brought home by my Dad and placed in my hands when I was four. I’ve placed the same book in the hands of my 17-year-old and his little brother who is three. There is something quite magical in that book?
My big boy is now in music college and his band just won a local talent quest. We both share the same love for films, animations, music, literature and comics … It’s actually quite nice when he borrows my novels without asking. Samuel took a Hunter S. Thompson book of mine and read it in one sitting but found it quite absurd. I like his honesty and his perception of literature for a 17-year-old. The little fella loves books and animations and we talk much ‘silly’ talk around the house that really doesn’t make any sense but only to us. He had an appointment at the hospital today and we both wrestled in the waiting room to the displeasure of some of the other parents.
When you can actually create an adventure out of nothing you’re a storyteller and ultimately a writer. I feel sorry for people who are embarrassed to show creativity in their everyday lives.
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‘Every Australian?’ Hmmm … It’s hard to say, and I know mature Australians who have admitted to having never finished reading a book because literature bores them. I can’t answer that question? I’ve never watched a cricket match in my 41 years either … So I must seem weird to people who don’t pick up a book. If I was on a ‘soapbox’, I’d say any writing by Uncle Henry Reynolds or Uncle Jeff McMullen.
But some people can be turned off literature - altogether - by books that are too confronting. And that’s the delicate balance that needs to be dealt by a writer when you’re thinking about audiences. I do believe some writers have no idea that they are either not engaging with an audience or they don’t care? As a writer, on the journey of composing your work or novel or music, you need to consider your audience at every turning point. If you don’t think about the needs of your reader, you are simply writing in a very tight vacuum.
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Of all art forms, why literature?
Image credited to Helen KassilaIt was too late in life that I wanted to learn music. Mum and Dad couldn’t afford it and it was a very high maintenance art form. Literature was accessible. I watched Dad write his first novel. It just seemed like a natural thing to do to start writing my daydreams.
I can work in between art forms and I have done well in the public art sector - I have poetry featured at the Boondall Wetlands, the river terrace windows in the State Library of Queensland (kuril dhagun) and the Eleanor Schonell Bridge (also known as the Green Bridge) - and I’m always amazed when a visual artist tells me that I’ve written something ‘wonderful’ that complements their art … I’m just really stunned that they didn’t think of writing it themselves and saved a few bucks by hiring me?
Writing to me just seems so simple … I wonder why some people are so challenged by writing? Of course literacy challenges some of the population and of course illiteracy is quite disabling. I ran into a bloke (an old acquaintance) not long ago on the bus and I really didn’t want to talk to him. He started on about how he was hurting his partner because she wouldn’t read his mail to him because he couldn’t read. Outright, he shouldn’t abuse her! He was so crippled though to not be able to read his own mail? Domestic violence is not acceptable anytime, anywhere … And I also wonder how scared he must feel, day in, day out, by not being able to read a street sign, newspaper and his mail?
To me writing seems so accessible because I acknowledge that my talent has some limits. But when you meet someone who says they want to be a writer and how do they start … well, I try to be encouraging, but you’re more or less born into the game. I come from a household of award-winning authors. The ego-meter at the dinner table at Christmas sometimes hits boiling point. Out of all of us, my sister Nicole is probably the most dedicated craftsperson in the family. Nik definitely thinks hard before she puts a sentence down. It’s like, ‘looking before you cross the road’, her sentences are quite beautiful. I can try to NOT be a writer, and I have tried, but then I receive an email and a job offer and I jump on the concept and I’m writing …
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I like Google and I like to scribble in my journals every day. I wake up and make Harry’s lunch and help Helen as much as I can. Email is the writer’s best friend. I have to check that every morning and maybe 5 times a day to see if a job comes in. I missed a job six months ago by not checking my email and it chips my spine every day, because the writer who got the job wasn’t really suited for it and didn’t really need the work … anyway, burnt my bridges there! I sit down with a client and work over the variables of the concept. Or if I see an interesting submission opportunity, I usually just hit my ‘concepts’ journal and look at old writing that I’ve done.
A poem can take years to write. Submissions and commissions have set deadlines. Your journal is your best friend, because concepts that emerge which you can’t use right away can stew in your journal. My daily process is to write the best I can and not wander.
I can basically publish a lot of work at the moment, but your mortality is always in question when you’re a freelance writer … And then plenty of people like your writing but won’t exactly pay the market price for your efforts. If I average $100 a day, I’m happy, but it’s still not healthy. Seventeen G’s [$17,000] is the best I’ve done in one hit, and I was really dead broke and working two jobs in the 24 hours leading up to that as a writer with no money coming in directly.
My partner was at a party recently and met an old crony of mine who is a film producer … This producer apparently went on and on about how much she loved me and begged me to stay with her company … Gammon, gammon, gammon! I’ve got a family … what psycho would leave a paying job like that? I begged to stay! Writers need to be wary of the wolves in the industry and being aware of these hazards is simply part of your job.
A writer will find their nice little process. And then hopefully that evolves. The process shouldn’t be too complicated though and you need to be conscious of it every day. WARNING: People will see you as neurotic! Some people think writers just sit at a computer all day without generating income, but I remember showing my lady 5 G’s that was deposited in my bank account for some writing I did … 'So who is mad and never goes out and sits on the computer all day? Who?' I joked with her. Sadly, appreciation is a tough mistress.
Writing needs to be done daily and evenly. You need to go out and have a walk, exercise and talk to another human being also. Your process will hopefully take many forms and be a healthy process.
My close friends and I no longer drink when we write together. It is simply unhealthy. I was never a drug user but some young people have asked me if I’ve done that, if I’ve taken LSD or anything else when writing. I really don’t know who has done that and produced any good work?
Honestly, I’ve pulled myself up and have tried to be a healthier person, but it is very easy to ‘carry on’ in an unhealthy way when you work from home. The best writing comes from healthy writers. Your process doesn’t need any drugs or alcohol or even coffee …
Writing is an organic process and productive writers are very organic people, and their pages are very organic.
PS … Invest in some hard drives and always save your work and if you need a drink, soy Milo ain’t a bad tipple … please!
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There are several books that definitely have been inspiring, but I can’t put my finger on one single book. I joined a writers' centre when I was in my early 20s after having ‘lucked’ a few publications in literary journals. I’d have to say it was one or two teachers in school who set me on the path. But I didn’t decide to be a writer; I just am a writer.
You can join a writers' centre, you can have a complete computer system at home linking you to the world, you can have a university degree in English literature. It still cuts short your ability to write, even with those advantages. Disadvantage isn’t a bad asset sometimes. When I started on my path I had a dictionary and a typewriter … Then the ‘S’ key broke on the typewriter … I still felt more competent then than I do now.
You need to naturally have the talent to write, with or without a book that inspires you, but it’s either an epiphany at school or at home that gives you the indication that this is who you are. Some people who recognise this path go to university, and some write their books or do both.
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My aim as a writer is to simply stay alive. Now I’m taking the romance out of writing! I’m on a road that is very easy to die upon if I drop the wheel. I love writing this piece for the blog … but it really is a working day out of writing, yet I am thinking of this writing as I am doing it as a ‘maintenance’ piece.
As a working writer I have had in this exercise, a couple of hundred, even thousand words to evaluate what I do and how I do it. Like an engine, a writer needs a ‘grease and oil’ job now and then. Some things I am aiming for now and in the midst of what I am doing is trying to be a healthier writer. I sat up with another writer last night and although he is a musician, we have very similar concerns about our health and wellbeing and how it impacts on the dynamics of our writing. Too many of our mates are driving themselves into an early grave by drinking, smoking and just simply leading rock 'n' roll lifestyles.
I’d like to be a healthier artist who can write all day and produce without fatigue, but I have survived two brain bleeds from a childhood health condition and I have residual issues from that. I had to learn to write again with a pencil and speak without a lisp … but in a way it was very interesting having to reboot my system. I had a toothache the other week and it took me out for a couple of days. I was eating raw carrots with my little man in the back yard when I broke an old filling. I couldn’t see my dentist for days. The pain was incredible! If I’d been asked to do a job, either at home or interstate (and I wouldn’t mind the work!) I would have been unable to do anything. I couldn’t even talk and I didn’t even see it coming! You can’t afford any health issues as a writer.
Ethically, I believe every storyteller needs to be true to who they are and acknowledge their limitations. Someone emailed me the other day, 'Watson, how do you get these gigs … Who do you crawl up to?!' Well, I don’t crawl and I don’t believe my agent does either. I’ve just learnt to be versatile and that’s not a bad aim. I could also say that it’s a good aim to say ‘NO’ to some jobs and have a quiet night at home. And if a gig interstate is only paying a little over two hundred dollars and they’re not going to give you cab vouchers, you really have to weigh up the financial costs. Of course, the aim is to please, but why take a dive in the hip pocket for the sake of being featured in a festival or reading?
We’ve just had the ‘Plagiarism War’ waged in Brisbane and it definitely destroyed the columns of a fiefdom or two. If anything, that debacle really showed me how to know when ‘to pull my head in’.
My aim is really to stay alive right now and deliver quality writing and be true to myself, and my audience. Truth to the audience is paramount though.
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