News
16-12-2023
Interviews with the artists 2023 #24 Jack Kirne
Urban Schemes versus Rural Escapes
Jack Kirne is a writer and unionist based in Melbourne, Australia. His work has appeared in various publications including Necessary Fiction, the Meanjin blog, Subbed In and the anthologies Growing up Queer in Australia and New Australian Fiction (KYD).
You are a writer and you also work as a unionist. How does your political activism inform and influence your art practice, if it does?
That's a broad question. I think often: doing union work, you meet so many people. So you're always being exposed to sort of different characters and different ways of seeing a problem, which is really productive, I guess, when you're writing, because you've got this bank that 's always being refilled. I think I also get to see people, I guess, at their worst a lot of the time. When they call the union, it's not because they're in a good place. Often they're really having a hard time. So I think I find a lot of very intimate stories with people that, again, provide this kind of material of the world in a way that's very different to my regular life, where I think people are usually trying to be quite optimistic and have fun. I think also those different kind of political perspectives that come with people talking about politics has forced me to kind of nuance my view of the world. And invariably, not consciously, but invariably that ends up influencing how you write and what you think.
What do you think are the most challenging aspects to be a writer nowadays?
I think perhaps the most challenging thing is, in Australia, and I'm sure abroad, the sort of death of small presses. I think there are less and less places for people to get published. What does get published is increasingly conservative or playing to a particular market. And so I think the project of writing, for me anyway, is about trying to sort of think about your community of people who are making art around you. So it's those writers that you like and working with them and sharing work with them. And that is being a different way of kind of making writing that isn't about the book or, you know, finding a wide readership. It's about finding people who care about this craft that you're doing. Remember reading an interview a few years ago that was talking about the novel as going the way of the easel painting. And I think there's some truth to that . But when your art form becomes obscure, well, then it goes from being this thing that is kind of lauded and celebrated and becomes something that's quite intimate. So that's a challenge, but it's also something I find humbling and moving about that.
Even if Sardinia is not the location of the novel you wrote during your stay, what elements of the island do you think had an impact on this novel?
Oh, well, actually, the final sequence of the book will take place in Sardinia, which was not something I sort of expected. So the escape into goat life will take place in Sardinia. It sort of in a funny way that only became clear once I was here.
Part of the reason why I wanted to do this residency was because I'd sort of joked about this goat life thing for years and being somewhere remote and doing that was one of the things I found really appealing. And once I got here, I mean, I knew that that fantasy was silly. But being here has been on one hand totally magical and very inspiring to see how community works. But also, then you speak to people and they'll say the same things about wanting to escape to the big city, you know, and how, you know, they can 't find a job or they feel like they're at a lost end. And they have this dream of escape into the city.
So for me, that sort of produced like what I can imagine is kind of the full circle of the novel, this dream to escape into the countryside and then realising that the escape in the countryside is just to find another place where people want to escape to the city.
Is the rest of the novel set in Australia?
Yes. In a big city. So I mean, the middle of the book is just the characters pulling off a bunch of like schemes to steal a bunch of money to then elope into this house in Sardinia.
Okay. Okay. Okay. We are curious. Very, very curious .
Yeah. I mean, here has been so inspiring. Like, there's just so much. I mean, I think also because the community has been so welcoming. But you just walk into places and people tell you all kinds of really odd stories about this place. And so when you start to put them together, what you build, I mean, it's not Millis. It's sort of like a mythologised Millis that sort of collapses the wider populace into this like imagined island. But it's all there and it's just so exciting. So I actually felt it was that night of the choir performance and we ended up with a big community dinner. I felt that like that was the sort of end of the novel in the sense that this is the most, it represents the dream of kind of this community and everyone coming together. And yet there are all these kind of sinister elements kind of working in the background.
Did it also shape like the way the characters move or interact or behave? Like seeing all this?
Not really. I think, as I said, I had a very clear idea of sort of what they wanted. I think it just sort of clarified what I was trying to do, which was good. Yes, cool.
More info about Jack on his website.
You are a writer and you also work as a unionist. How does your political activism inform and influence your art practice, if it does?
That's a broad question. I think often: doing union work, you meet so many people. So you're always being exposed to sort of different characters and different ways of seeing a problem, which is really productive, I guess, when you're writing, because you've got this bank that 's always being refilled. I think I also get to see people, I guess, at their worst a lot of the time. When they call the union, it's not because they're in a good place. Often they're really having a hard time. So I think I find a lot of very intimate stories with people that, again, provide this kind of material of the world in a way that's very different to my regular life, where I think people are usually trying to be quite optimistic and have fun. I think also those different kind of political perspectives that come with people talking about politics has forced me to kind of nuance my view of the world. And invariably, not consciously, but invariably that ends up influencing how you write and what you think.
What do you think are the most challenging aspects to be a writer nowadays?
I think perhaps the most challenging thing is, in Australia, and I'm sure abroad, the sort of death of small presses. I think there are less and less places for people to get published. What does get published is increasingly conservative or playing to a particular market. And so I think the project of writing, for me anyway, is about trying to sort of think about your community of people who are making art around you. So it's those writers that you like and working with them and sharing work with them. And that is being a different way of kind of making writing that isn't about the book or, you know, finding a wide readership. It's about finding people who care about this craft that you're doing. Remember reading an interview a few years ago that was talking about the novel as going the way of the easel painting. And I think there's some truth to that . But when your art form becomes obscure, well, then it goes from being this thing that is kind of lauded and celebrated and becomes something that's quite intimate. So that's a challenge, but it's also something I find humbling and moving about that.
Even if Sardinia is not the location of the novel you wrote during your stay, what elements of the island do you think had an impact on this novel?
Oh, well, actually, the final sequence of the book will take place in Sardinia, which was not something I sort of expected. So the escape into goat life will take place in Sardinia. It sort of in a funny way that only became clear once I was here.
Part of the reason why I wanted to do this residency was because I'd sort of joked about this goat life thing for years and being somewhere remote and doing that was one of the things I found really appealing. And once I got here, I mean, I knew that that fantasy was silly. But being here has been on one hand totally magical and very inspiring to see how community works. But also, then you speak to people and they'll say the same things about wanting to escape to the big city, you know, and how, you know, they can 't find a job or they feel like they're at a lost end. And they have this dream of escape into the city.
So for me, that sort of produced like what I can imagine is kind of the full circle of the novel, this dream to escape into the countryside and then realising that the escape in the countryside is just to find another place where people want to escape to the city.
Is the rest of the novel set in Australia?
Yes. In a big city. So I mean, the middle of the book is just the characters pulling off a bunch of like schemes to steal a bunch of money to then elope into this house in Sardinia.
Okay. Okay. Okay. We are curious. Very, very curious .
Yeah. I mean, here has been so inspiring. Like, there's just so much. I mean, I think also because the community has been so welcoming. But you just walk into places and people tell you all kinds of really odd stories about this place. And so when you start to put them together, what you build, I mean, it's not Millis. It's sort of like a mythologised Millis that sort of collapses the wider populace into this like imagined island. But it's all there and it's just so exciting. So I actually felt it was that night of the choir performance and we ended up with a big community dinner. I felt that like that was the sort of end of the novel in the sense that this is the most, it represents the dream of kind of this community and everyone coming together. And yet there are all these kind of sinister elements kind of working in the background.
Did it also shape like the way the characters move or interact or behave? Like seeing all this?
Not really. I think, as I said, I had a very clear idea of sort of what they wanted. I think it just sort of clarified what I was trying to do, which was good. Yes, cool.
More info about Jack on his website.
