Where are you happiest?

On our bush block at Golden Beach in south-eastern Gippsland, among coastal banksias and manna gums, home to rainbow lorikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos, kookaburras, red wattlebirds, willy wagtails, wombats, echidna and eastern grey kangaroos. At night there is the great galactic dazzle and always, from beyond the dunes, the boom and crack of the Southern Ocean.

What is your favourite music?

Perhaps Callas singing ‘Je veux vivre dans ce rêve’ (‘I want to live in this dream’) from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. She is like a sleepwalker on the edge of the precipice, her voice lurching with the bliss and ache of amorous anticipation.

Which human quality do you most admire?

Kindness, by far.

What is your favourite book?

Perhaps Atemwende / Breathturn by the Moravian-born poet Paul Celan.

Who is your favourite author?

The Austrian poet and novelist and one-time lover of Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann.

And your favourite literary hero and heroine?

I was deeply moved by Augustin Meaulnes, the achingly passionate and mysterious adolescent boy of Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes. Heroine: Molly Bloom of Joyce’s Ulysses for her glorious yes to life.

How old were you when your first book appeared?

Thirty-six.

What, if anything, impedes your writing?

Putting off writing constructive critical reports on students’ work, which have to come before my own writing, I tend to find urgent alternatives like ironing socks or playing Spider Solitaire.

How do you regard publishers?

With extreme gratitude. Despite what appears to be the general trend, my novella konkretion received extraordinary editorial care from UWA Publishing.

What do you think of the state of criticism?

Newspaper reviewing in Australia is often shallow and careless, but ABR and the new Sydney Review nurture intelligent criticism, which actually considers how the writing works.

If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer?

I would like to spend my next life as a painter.

What do you think of writers’ festivals?

I think they are for readers. Too often writers appear to have scribbled their panel papers on the aeroplane. However, I love it when writers turn out to be wonderful performers of their own work, like the peerless Jeanette Winterson.

Do you feel artists are valued in our society?

Not particularly, but maybe that is a good thing. They are just cultural workers doing something they love, after all.

What are you working on now?

Avoiding correcting my critical study Poetic Revolutionaries to appear with Rodopi, Amsterdam.