{"id":1064028,"date":"2023-05-10T00:46:28","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T00:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.broadagenda.com.au\/?p=12948"},"modified":"2023-05-10T00:46:28","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T00:46:28","slug":"death-and-dying-a-profound-experience-for-prize-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/05\/10\/death-and-dying-a-profound-experience-for-prize-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"Death and dying: A profound experience for prize winner"},"content":{"rendered":"
Congratulations on this extraordinary achievement. As writers, we never know if anyone will read or appreciate our work. How did you feel when you found out you\u2019d won the Stella Prize?\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Really delighted and so surprised. I think I\u2019m still taking it in, to be honest. It\u2019s a huge honour, of course, and it also means that so many people who might not otherwise encounter my writing will have the opportunity to read it, which is an extraordinary gift.<\/p>\n The Stella Prize has done so much to change the reception of women\u2019s writing in this country, and to shift our literary culture in general, so it\u2019s particularly lovely to be recognised by a prize driven by such laudable ideals.<\/p>\n The Jaguar<\/em> is about your relationship with your late father, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Why did you decide to write about this topic?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Often writers don\u2019t get to choose their material; life gives it to us.<\/p>\n Watching my father\u2019s trajectory with Parkinson\u2019s, particularly towards the end of his life, was one of the most profound and moving experiences of my life: challenging and tragic at times, but also poignant and deeply beautiful too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Many of the experiences were so striking and insistent in my imagination that I felt compelled to write about them.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a topic one might traditionally associate with poetry…What inkling inside you made you think it WAS?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Much of the greatest poetry through history has been, in various ways, about reconciling with our mortal nature, and accepting that one day we will die. So I\u2019m not breaking new ground in that sense; my work is part of a long conversation that is as old as poetry itself. But I hadn\u2019t read very much poetry about the frailty of the parent, which I think is a particularly acute and at times challenging thing to witness.<\/p>\n Our parents are the bedrock on which our own adult selves are built, generally speaking; to watch them change and become vulnerable and in need of our own care is intense and profound, but it’s also not a topic we speak much about openly or freely.<\/p>\n There are so many taboos still remaining about ageing, and such stigma about neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson\u2019s and dementia. Poetry seemed to me to be a good form\u2014short, intense, with the capacity to move through space and time and draw together disparate images and ideas\u2014though which to explore this complex terrain, and hopefully open up that conversation.<\/p>\n\n