Glen Hunting: A particular joy and privilege

Use the time available to you as your playground and your canvas.

I had to trawl through my sketchy records to work out that my previous stay at the Katharine Susannah Prichard (KSP) Writers’ Centre, on the outskirts of the city I was born and grew up in, was in 2011. I was predominantly a prose writer in those days, although I had recently branched out into drama. I later rediscovered the thrill of writing poems, and my early offerings didn’t dissuade me as they had when I was a teenager. Later still, I relocated from Whadjuk Noongar boodja—the place I still have the impertinence to call “home”—to Central Australia, where I have lived and written for the last seven years.

All of which made it a particular joy and privilege to be selected for a KSP Fellowship to work on poetry, nearly fourteen years after my first self-funded residency there. I had forgotten how marvellous it is to wake up, walk two steps from the bed to the desk, open the window blind onto the prospect of Katharine’s sloping bush block, and sit down to write. As my pen skated the paper or my fingertips trod the keyboard, I was often regaled with magpie song from the garden, in chorus with the black cockatoos as they swooped through the eucalypts heaving in the morning easterly. Then there were the other currents beyond my cabin—the whoosh of the airliners climbing and descending over the ranges, and the Doppler-drone of the semis on the highway as they started or ended their treks across the continent. In case you’re wondering, no; I didn’t mind this sonic smorgasbord in the least.

I had an approximate plan going in, but I gave myself permission to adjust it as I went along. I typed up a few pre-existing poems from before I arrived and then reworked them on my laptop. At the same time, I was able to fill many blank pages with handwritten, first-draft verse. Some of the words I set down weren’t poetry at all. But everything I managed to write during my residency contributed to the anthology I am assembling, whether as a fully formed poem, a clarified thought, an alternate voice, or an incipient truth or puzzlement that demanded some form of expression. At least a few of my less-easily categorised scribblings seem to point the way to future projects. But for the moment, I feel as though I’m several steps closer to having a first collection of poems that maybe, just maybe, will interest a publisher enough to take a chance on it.

Having now completed my Fellowship, I should emphasise that my personal “top ten residency tips” (required by KSP tradition) are not confined to residencies. I hope and believe that they apply to most writers, and most writing, most of the time. I apologise to all the authors and poets whose ideas on these matters I have adapted or pilfered, but whom I don’t remember well enough to credit by name. I also apologise to those readers who have encountered most, if not all, of my second-hand suggestions already.

1) Have at least have one goal in mind, if not more, before you begin an extended period of work over several days.

2) Be prepared to be flexible with your schedule and your expectations, particularly if something unavoidable disturbs you or you’re just plain stuck.

3) Try not to be distracted by the solitude. Use music, podcasts, or the silent conversation of books if you need to.

4) Try not to introduce unhelpful distractions.

5) Maintain your self-discipline without putting too much pressure on yourself. Use the time available to you as your playground and your canvas.

6) Remember that making mistakes is a valuable learning resource.

7) “Off” days aren’t necessarily a waste. Often, you will simply need to return to the well (reading, thinking, experiencing, or just allowing your unconscious mind to process).

8) Be honest with yourself if you’re wilfully procrastinating. If it’s because you’re scared, what you’re avoiding is probably very important for you to write. If it’s because you’re bored, perhaps you should reconfigure the work or write something else entirely.

9) Don’t be too much of a hermit. Respect your own boundaries and have others respect them, too. But check in with your fellow beings from time to time. No writer lives on words alone.

10) At least once, and preferably more than once, you should get up early and write immediately, before you have time to think and spoil things.

I can only thank the staff and committee of the KSP Writers Centre for the opportunity to reconnect with such an inspiring and historic setting, and for giving me the time and space to make real inroads into my emerging manuscript. I managed to get through the fortnight without either losing my keys or locking myself out, which (for me) is a significant achievement in itself. I greatly appreciated the hospitality and bonhomie of the writing groups that I visited at the Centre, and being able to count both old and new friends among their numbers. I even got to spend some quality time with a quenda. I very much hope I can repeat the whole experience before another fourteen years slip by!

Glen Hunting writes about estrangement and (be)longing, cultural value and culpability, and the difficulty of recognising truth in the age of mass misinformation. He won (jointly) the 2024 Liquid Amber Emerging Poet Prize and received a 2024 Varuna/Arts NT residential fellowship. His poems have been published in Plumwood Mountain Journal, Rochford Street Review, Oystercatcher One, Meniscus, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Mparntwe, Arrernte country (Alice Springs, NT).