Gemma White

 

Melbourne based poet Gemma White late last year dropped her second book, Oh My Rapture. The initial theme of the book is poems that where responses to Nick Caves Red Hand Files, but the core of the topics are the mundane little things that make life fascinating. Oh My Rapture comes off the back of Gemma’s first book, Furniture is Disappearing, another set of autobiographical poems that shows everyday story’s that we can all relate to, that are more fascinating that anything you see on telly these days. Short story’s with minimum word use that grab the reader that will make you laugh, cry, or draw any kind of emotion. That’s the showing of a true wordsmith, that can get a response from there reader under a 100 words.

Munster: what was it about poetry that appealed to you?

Gemma:  why poetry? It’s kind of the laziest form of writing I can do. If I was to write a novel, I’m like oh my god how I would even do that. With poetry its little fragments of life, little fragments of time, and when I write it’s very quick. So I’m basically a lazy writer (Laughs). I like to do things quickly, have it done and have a result straightaway. So poetry is a good medium for that. There are people that write long pomes but that’s not me.

Munster: did you have any major influences?

Gemma: Bukowski was a big influence, I remember sitting in my bedroom flat many years ago, 10-15 years ago, I was just getting into writing poetry, and I found all these books from the St Kilda library. I was just devouring them, I was reading poem after poem, and I loved how he wrote about his everyday life. I thought to write poetry you had to have something profound to say, something really important to say about a topical issue, but it doesn’t have to be that. It can be but doesn’t have to be that. It can be personal or part of everyday life and that’s how I draw influence.

Munster: do you think you will write a novel one day?

Gemma: I haven’t given it serious thought. One of my friends wants me to write a novel, she’s like it’s the only way to get known as people don’t read poetry. There’s this perception that people don’t read poetry which I don’t agree with. She’s like people read novels you’ll get your name out there and you’ll make some money. I’m not sure I’m passionate about a long form project. It would take years to write a novel. I assume it would. Never say never but probably not.

Munster: In Melbourne, I only discovered in the past few years all these poetry readings and events that go on, and like with music how fellow musicians make up a large part of the crowd, when a reading happens most of the mass is fellow poets.

Gemma: there is a poetry scene and there are a few regulars who go to events around Melbourne so you tend to see similar people at different events which is cool, get to know people. Poetry’s pretty diverse in Melbourne, Everyone has their own thing which is cool and there’s always plenty of poetry to see, different people featuring at different places. I feel lucky that poetry is big in Melbourne where I live, you can go out many nights of the week and see something of high quality.

Munster: you mentioned before how you write very quickly, and I’ve seen you in person just pumping out a poem in a matter of minutes, it’s pretty impressive.

Gemma: over the years I’ve created a style I like to write in, it’s noticing the everyday things around me and trying to detail a moment in time. When I first started writing it was because I had my heart broken. And I was trying to distil these moments with this person, and I didn’t want to forget them and it felt very precious to me. Some writers I know are like that, they are driven by loss and driven to write about this topic. That’s my story anyway.

Munster: when and where did you first get published?

Gemma:  I was published in a whole lot of small journals and a list of places, and it gave me confidence, like Australian Journals. And I was published in the Age when they had a poetry feature, and that gave me a bit of confidence, and that poem in the Age got published in Best Australian Poems, which is a well know anthology most poets would like to get published in. So after all that I thought I should create a manuscript of poems and get a whole book together. so I entered a competition run by Interactive Press. They accepted my work, I didn’t win but they accepted it, and that book became Furniture is Disappearing, which came out in 2014.

Munster: Your second and most recent book, Oh my Rapture, which is poetry inspired by Nick Caves Red Hand Files, how did that come about?

Gemma: I was reading the Red Hand Files, which is his blog where he answers questions from fans, and I thought his answers where so poetic, he can say things in such a poetic way, and I thought this needs to be highlighted somehow. This is really inspiring and I wanted to do something in response to this so I began writing individual poems to individual Red Hand Files. Sometimes I wrote more than one and I choose one to be in the resulting book. I responded to the first 50 Red Right Hand Files, I thought the work was strong and the Nick Cave theme really ties all the ones together. And some of the poems I incorporated some of his responses in my poetry, so some of his answers where in the poem. I had this rigmarole of trying to get his words in my poems, and asking his management for permission, and they said were not cool with that. So I had to rethink the whole manuscript and make it all my words. But I think it’s stronger for that, and the pomes stand up on their own, and I think the books stronger for going through that process. I was hurt at the time and upset but I got over it and kept going and rewrote the pomes that needed rewriting after taking out his words, I think it’s a better book for that.

Munster: that’s a great attitude to have, when his management declined your offer, you pushed on and did your own thing as opposed to scrapping the whole thing.

Gemma: there was no option B, I wanted the book to come out I wasn’t allowed to use his words, so I had to work with what I had, and it didn’t take long to reword the pomes and it turned out pretty good, it was an easy process after all the mashing of teeth.

Munster: there’s 50 poems in the book but how many did you initially have?

Gemma: not sure, some I only wrote one poem in response, some maybe three. I might have written 60-70 and narrowed it down to 50. Something like that.

Munster: there’s a whole bunch of indie/small publishing house here in Melbourne, and some have published your work as you mentioned. On your website your friend and fellow poet Koraly Dimitriadis wrote an article on the steps she took to make her book Love and Fuck Poems a best seller. Like music when you’re at an indie level with very little promotional budget, is it hard to stand out in terms of getting the word out? (read Koraly's blog article at https://gemmawhite.com.au/blog/koraly/)

Gemma: it can be really hard to know how to promote poetry. It’s not a gene most poets get when they become poets, I think a lot of people are scared of it, scared of promoting themselves and it feels uncomfortable. And I went through that with my first book, Furniture is Disappearing. I knew on one level the poetry was good, but I was also incredibly ashamed of my work. And I’m not sure what that is, some kind of artist shame, not comfortable promoting my own work. You don’t have to be sleazy or salesy, even the thought of telling someone about my project was like out of the question, I felt so ashamed to exist as an artist. I had to move through those feelings. And it was too late for that book, it came out and I was green as an author.  I wasn’t proactive and didn’t know how to promote it. with this new book I’m being a lot more active, in the promotion, and I think because I went through those previous feelings about self-promotion and all that thing, I feel more comfortable talking about my work in a, “this is me this is what I do, if you don’t want to listen all good If you do great.” It’s taken me a while to get top that stage.

Munster: have you been happy with response the book has received so far?

Gemma: yes. The book launch was fun, there was heaps of people there. I’ve had a trickle of sales ever since though my Etsy store. You can buy it at gemmawhitepoetry.esty.com. Yeah it’s been a good reaction, when I told my publisher how many books I sold at the launch he was pleased. And I want to give back to them as well as they gave me a chance to be published, so it’s good to be able to do that.

Munster: What’s next?

Gemma: I’m working on another manuscript of poetry, which in part deals with mental illness. It’s a manuscript I wrote before Oh my Rapture, so it’s an older manuscript. It deals with a lot of relationship and love stuff, mental illness and art. So there’s a recurring theme to my work, things that pop up now an again. So I’m hoping to get that published soon, just working on the edits and improvements at the moment and getting friends to look at the manuscript taking on board their opinion so I can improve it.

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https://gemmawhite.com.au/