BA 1961, Dip Ed 1963
Award-winning author and alumna Carmel Bird will be honoured with a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) at the University’s mid-year graduations in Hobart later this month in recognition of her significant literary career.
Carmel is prolific, with close to 40 fiction and non-fiction publications to her name. Her first collection of short stories was published in 1976, followed by novels, short story collections, anthologies, essays and children's books.
She won the Patrick White Award in 2016. The award recognises an outstanding Australian writer with a substantial body of work. Three previous works were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award: The Bluebird Café in 1991, The White Garden in 1996 and Red Shoes in 1998.
Carmel has taught fiction at university level and published three writing manuals: Dear Writer (1988), Not now Jack, I’m writing a novel (1994) and Writing the Story of Your Life (2007).
She will receive her DLitt at the College of Arts, Law and Education (CALE) ceremony held on 23 August in Hobart.
Here, Carmel answers some questions for our alumni readers.
Your writing output has been incredible, with close to forty works published, from novels to short story collections, instructional writing books, and books for children. What drives you in your writing? What do you love about it?
I think that any art form is probably a way for the artist to make meaning out of the mysterious thing that is life on earth. Each book of mine, whether it is a novel or a book about writing or even a book for small children, is part of my own response to the experience of being alive, and part of my quest for meaning. This can sound rather grand, but it is quite simple, really. It is a matter of taking the beautiful medium of words to construct a narrative that will unravel some of the mystery while entertaining, to some degree, a reader. Writing is my favourite activity, and I write just about every day. I do love words, and I love constructing sentences and building narrative.
You published a new book in July – Telltale: Reading, Writing, Remembering – where you reflect on books that have influenced you from your home library. What have been some of the most influential of these books and why?
Something I discovered, when I began considering the books that surround me at home, was the fact that from a very early age I have been impressed by the physical nature, the design of books. Old encyclopaedias for instance. And details about publishing, authors’ names, the quality of the paper. I was particularly influenced by Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens, and this was because I went to elocution classes where these texts were studied. As a child I used to take such writers as my model for the little plays and monologues I wrote for performance.
Do you find yourself being inspired by particular themes for your writing? Is Tasmania a strong influence?
When I was a child living in Tasmania, I was fascinated by the idea of Tasmania. I felt it was mythic, even – and this sounds crazy – that it was non-existent, that I was living in a place that was not real. It was regularly left off the map of Australia, and people made lots of jokes about it. When anyone went to Melbourne they spoke of going ‘over the other side’, as if to travel out of the island was to be translated into another realm.
As a child I had a kind of forensic attitude to Tasmanian history and geology. The popular belief was that the First Peoples of Tasmania had died out. However, for various reasons, I had a sense that they were still a living presence. And I was fascinated by the terrible stories of colonisation, stories of crime and courage. At high school my class was invited to write essays about Tasmania to exchange with students in America. I wrote about convicts and First Peoples. The teacher explained that my essay was unfit to send to America because the subject matter was unsuitable. This act of censorship only spurred me on to write more on that subject matter. Tasmania has been a powerful theme in my work. Two novels, The Bluebird Café and Cape Grimm are set in Tasmania.
I am also very interested in extinction of species, and I am writing a series of short stories on this theme.
Can you tell us about your writing process – do you map out your books and characters at the start, or is it a process of discovery? Perhaps you would like to focus on how you approached your last novel? What kicked off the idea and how did it develop?
My most recent novel is Field Of Poppies. It is set in 2018 and is about a wealthy couple who leave Melbourne to retire to a country town in the goldfields of Victoria. (In 2007 I moved from Melbourne to Castlemaine, so there is a certain inspiration from life.) Their lives are very comfortable and kind of unreal. They are soon confronted by the mysterious disappearance of a neighbour, and then they learn that their lovely old house is near a new goldmine that is about to be developed. The town will completely change. They are so disillusioned that they return to Melbourne. Still restless, they decide to travel to Europe, where they hope to find ‘reality’.
Before writing, I usually have a few ideas, but I don’t map out characters and events in a very methodical way. The whole thing develops as I write.
You have also had a long career teaching creative writing. Do you have advice for emerging writers?
I believe that to be a writer you need to be nourished by reading. I suggest to my students that they commit themselves to a serious program of reading from past and current writers. The other important thing to do is to write something every day. Every day.
Image credit: Grant Kennedy