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.
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/gemmawhitepoetry?ref=l2-about-shopname
https://gemmawhite.com.au/
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