1. What is your current state of mind?
I am in a process of transformation, creatively content, holding the collective global grief.
2. How do you switch off?
Sitting beside a body of water - my greatest parenting ally is a river or the ocean - a long bath, a book in bed.
3. What is the trait you most admire in others?
Honesty and integrity, which I feel are ingrained in one another.
4. Which living person do you most admire?
Other than the obvious – my son, my husband, my family, my friends – there isn’t any one person who I necessarily admire more than others, but I am hugely inspired by a very eclectic range of people.
5. What is your greatest extravagance?
Probably chocolate. I eat a Loco Love almost every day, which is an expensive but thoroughly enjoyed habit.
6. What is the first thing that you do when you wake in the morning?
After talking about our dreams and slowly stretching awake, we usually head to our tearoom where we begin each day. My son usually eats an array of snacks and plays while my husband and I drink tea in as much silence as we can get away with. Some mornings get to unfold in a slower more peaceful start, other days we are up before the sun and straight into the often loud and beautifully wild reality of life with a three year old.
7. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
I am not sure that I would reduce any one virtue to being any more or less overrated than others. I think different balances work so beautifully in all of us in our full expression of individuality.
8. Do you have any daily rituals?
My days are filled with ritual but I am not a rhythmic being. Every day looks so entirely different and we are very flexible with our time, but I do try and spend time with my feet bare and on the earth multiple times. Our days are also punctuated by other rituals, both individually and as a family.
9. What do you most like about your appearance?
Probably my hands. They remind me of my mother’s. They hold so much, as a mother’s hands do, and I am grateful for the tactile way they weave words and artworks, for the way they tend to the garden, hold my son, and create intricately.
10. What does wellbeing mean to you?
Wellbeing to me is a feeling of spiritual, mental, environmental and physical harmony. I think that there are countless factors that contribute to this and those are different for each person. I feel best when I have had time to myself and am well rested and eating well. When my family is feeling well, I am too.
11. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Sensitivity, sincere listening skills, kindness... I think regardless of gender-identity I am drawn to the same characteristics in all people, as in, those qualities that I am drawn to in men cross over to what I appreciate in women and vice vera, but I do feel more comfortable around men who are excellent listeners (my experience has been that this comes more naturally to women and is rarer in men) than those who are not.
12. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Warmth, depth, authenticity.
13. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
I talk about riverbeds, spirals, bracken fern, rock pools, pearls, birth, weaving, oysters, motherhood and ancestry again and again in my poetry. Now that I am in the writing process of my second poetry collection, I am trying to explore new ecosystems and motifs, but I return endlessly to these images of my first book because they encapsulate so much of the spirit that is behind why I write and the people I come from.
14. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Heath, my husband. He is a painter and the most loving partner and father to our son that I ever could have dreamt of. I feel very lucky to feel so supported and understood by him and we are both very involved in the conceptual parts of each other’s art making practices and discuss our philosophies and concepts extensively, which feels so supportive. He cooks every meal we eat and tends to our family and home and the land with so much intention and love.
15. When and where are you happiest?
Lately, by the saltwater river, sometimes by myself, often with a friend, but most of the time with my husband and son. We spend a lot of time there together.
16. Which talent would you most like to have?
I would love to be more musically inclined - to play the piano.
17. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
To feel more comfortable with performance and public sharing, but then again, I have also made peace with this not being my medium. In many ways, it is why I write. But I also wouldn’t mind having more confidence in public speaking, to stop turning down writer’s festivals and other speaking opportunities.
18. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Motherhood. It knocks the wind out of me most days but also fills my heart with a very unique kind of love and inspiration. I always knew that I would be a mother, my entire astrology chart points to it too. I would also say, writing a book and winning a major literary prize for it. I am the first person in my very large family to have gone to university, so to complete a poetry collection felt like a very isolating and abstract concept within the realm of what my childhood-self felt was possible.
19. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
Probably a kookaburra. I would love to fly.
20. Where would you most like to live?
I am very content to live with my family on Bunjalung Country, in the Northern Rivers of NSW, but we do enjoy and seek out travel and I do envision living overseas part-time in the near future.
21. What is your most treasured possession?
Probably my books. I worked in a bookshop for five or six years from the age of fifteen - in fact it’s where I met my husband - and have always collected and loved books as objects. I lost hundreds of books to the enormous floods that devastated this region a couple of years ago, and was particularly devastated to have lost a copy of ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ that I inherited from my brilliant, spirited late grandfather. It was missing the cover and was held together by a hair-tie and the pages were very yellowed. He was the least materialistic person I have ever met, and the book didn’t specifically mean much to him – he always gave things away the moment they came into his possession – which makes it ironic to have mourned it being ruined by a flood.
22. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
I would describe the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian population by the IDF as the highest expression of evil and misery. I think that this is a very pivotal moment for humanity and I am both fierce and fearless in my vocalisation of anti-genocide, anti-settler colonialism action. I am First Nations and have protest in my blood. Our ancestors were massacred, their land colonised, so my stance isn’t an option, it is ingrained in my cells. I think people want a different kind of future, want more justice and equality and peace, but are afraid that there is too much to lose, too much at stake. But when it’s human lives on the line – children, elderly, disabled, homeless and starving – and all international law has become meaningless amidst these crimes against humanity, we have a duty to do everything within our power, from protesting, boycotting, demanding divestment... taking a stand in every and every way we can.
23. What is your favourite occupation?
Anything in the realm of the arts. I also really admire and value teachers. I was studying my masters to become a teacher years ago, whilst simultaneously working at a Steiner school, but realised that it wasn’t for me at this moment in my life. It is a lot of work – arguably of the most important and humbling work there is – and I really respect people who are up for that.
24. What is your most marked characteristic?
I think it’s fair to say that I am flexible, creative and empathetic. I spend a lot of time in dream-like realms and am very sensitive.
25. What do you most value in your friends?
I really value compassionate understanding and healthy boundaries. I am drawn to depth and sensitivity, to deep-thinkers and passionate creators. Many of my favourite people live in other countries but it doesn’t matter once we’re back together because there is this knowing that our friendship will span many decades and that our paths will continuously find their ways back to one another.
26. Who are your favourite writers?
Deborah Levy, Tara June Winch, Bruce Pascoe, Joy Harjo, Samuel Wagan Watson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mary Oliver, Ali Cobby Eckermann... the list can go on and on. I am always reading a lot of poetry but have recently been loving the imaginary worlds offered by a good novel.
27. Who is your hero of fiction?
Alexis Wright. Few people can imagine worlds with as much mastery, depth, spirit and ingenuity as she does.
28. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
I am not sure that there has been one particular person I would say I most identify with.
29. Who are your heroes in real life?
I really admire brave and ground-breaking female thinkers and artists and writers, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Agnes Martin, Audre Lorde, Anni Albers, Hilma af Klint... they all created and paved the way for such important change.
30. What are your favourite names?
I have a list of names for my future children and one-day book characters, so for now I hold that close.
31. What brings pleasure to your day?
Any moment when I feel truly present, which admittedly can be easier said than done.
32. Do you have any products or objects that you can’t live without?
On top of the books I already mentioned and our sprawling collection of ceremonial tea ware, I am very basic when it comes to skincare and rarely wear makeup but I have used and loved Living Libations for many years and I would happily accept using nothing but that on my skin for the rest of my life. I also use Chinese herbs and other medicinal supplements and feel very grateful to incorporate those into my health routine.
33. Where is your favourite place to wake up in the world?
Our home overlooks the mountains and has distant views to the sea and is my favourite place to be.
34. What is your motto?
I’m not sure that I have one, but I think that trust has a really big impact in my life. I implicitly trust that things happen when and how they do in my life for the right reasons, even when those reasons are steeped in grief and pain or feel challenging to alchemise. I dream a lot, as a Pisces, and have always just really leant into that trust of the way that life unfolds around and within me. If something feels forced or isn’t happening naturally, I wait or redirect. I am big on things moving with great ease and spend a lot of time getting clear on my intentions.
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Interview by Anna Harding
Images supplied by Tais
