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Why do you write?
It is the one ambition I’ve ever had. Some bleak days I think that my desire to write is no more than an unshakeable habit. On other days I think that writing allows me to have and make other worlds. All the difficulty of writing is in service to this freedom. Also, the habit of writing renews experience: it makes me notice things with a new distance and curiosity, and wonder how they might work in writing; it means that I always have something to think about on the train.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes, but my most vivid dreams are nightmares. They make me glad to wake. I miss the dreams of flying that I had when I was growing up.
Where are you happiest?
In the small space between finishing a poem and seeing its faults, and in the garden with my children on a bright autumn day.
What is your favourite word?
Unless.
Which human quality do you most admire?
I most admire kindness, but I most enjoy the company of people who can’t help but tell the truth, especially if they think that the truth is not straightforward.
Where would you like to have been born?
In the future.
What is your favourite book?
It varies. This year, for literary criticism, I like Barbara Everett’s Young Hamlet; for dreaming, I like Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space; for poetry, I like Marianne Moore’s Collected Poems; and for fiction, I like Elizabeth Bowen’s The House in Paris.
And your favourite literary hero and heroine?
I like Diana in Martin Boyd’s Outbreak of Love and Stringham in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time; but, beyond liking, I feel a queasy fascination for Laura in Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom. I also like the fast-talking, bitter and ludicrous persona in John Forbes’s poems – the one who walks on his hands along a bar counter, balancing a drink on his shoes.
What, if anything, impedes your writing?
Daily crises of self-doubt.
How old were you when your first book appeared?
Thirty-five.
Of which of your books are you fondest?
The next one.
In a phrase, how would you characterise your work?
Time-consuming.
Who is your favourite author?
Probably Elizabeth Bishop.
How do you regard publishers?
With a sort of half-guilty gratitude.
What do you think of the state of criticism?
It needs more citizens.
If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer?
Yes, but one of genius. Failing that, I’d like to create gardens.
What do you think of writers’ festivals?
I always like hearing how authors speak and what they say about their work, but I think most writers’ festivals need a little more festival and a little less conference.
Do you feel artists are valued in our society?
No, but that doesn’t bother me as much as it should.
What are you working on now?
A sequence of poems set in the future, called ‘Hotel Hyperion’, and a novel that is advancing so slowly it might even be going backwards.
Lisa Gorton’s first poetry collection, Press Release, won the 2008 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry. She has also received the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. Lisa is the author of a children’s novel, Cloudland (2008). Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared in anthologies, newspapers and journals. She lives in Melbourne.
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