I hope this is the right manner by which to reply to the list. A neophyte, you see, to all this.

Alison, I understand wholeheartedly. My partner is a printmaker, and I have to work as a journalist to keep all of our world in a piece. Which means writing at three or four in the morning, and writing in the mind on the 70km trip to work, and on the way home, and in the paddock while cutting feed. (We are on a small property).

But we write. Sometimes the conflict of work, of working, provides the spur for me. Or is providing the spur. There is a sadness and an anger, and thus an energy, that I draw from having to work, that can be (sometimes) channelled usefully. And, sometimes, consumes me in useless ways. But we are the creatures that we are. So that means if, at the time I come to writing, it is one or two or three lines (as it often is), there is nothing I can do for it but wait for the next chance. I have been poor, awfully poor, once. I don't fancy going back there. It informs my life to this day. And like yourself, because I chose to marry an artist, I suppose I have to be prepared to do what I do to keep us working as artists.

It doesn't make it any easier, of course. But sometimes it doesn't make it harder.


Caleb Cluff

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Alison Croggon
Sent: Tuesday, 10 January 2006 9:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Money and poetry


Hi George

On 10/1/06 3:43 AM, "George Hunka" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 
> I wouldn't mind writing a screenplay or two every few years to keep the
> rent paid. But I would do it in the full knowledge that I'm doing it to
> keep the rent paid; writing itself isn't necessarily something that can
> be compromised. I would never write a play that way, because the
> theatrical experience is so central to my heart's desires; the movies
> aren't. And I love movies, too, and even TV, and I'd gladly write for
> them. But I'd never bring that attitude to my work for the theater.

It's not money that's the issue, per se, but desire. It can be more soul
destroying to use your talent and skills in demeaning ways (I am not
suggesting btw that films or tv are necessarily that, although there's no
doubt they _can_ be) than simply to sell your labour for different kinds of
work. Even when I'm writing potboilers, I am writing what I want to write,
and I take that work as seriously as anything else I do. I worked out a
while back that writing wise I am actually incapable of doing anything I
don't want to do, that doesn't, for me, serve some inner desire.  So the
question becomes simply the practical one of how to make that possible,
which sometimes I do well and sometimes I don't.

I live in a capitalist economy that values art as a commodity in all sorts
of eccentric ways that don't accord with how I value it, and I want to be an
artist, which for me means full-time work, and those are the facts that
result. Everyone who makes that choice knows it, and it wasn't as if someone
tricked me. I have never regretted it. I wear those facts with as good grace
as I can and hope one day that the potboilers might make me rich and I never
need think about money again. But if I wanted seriously to make money, I
suppose I could start a new career in marketing.

All best

A




Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com