Writers on Writing is our regular conversation with a writer or industry professional about the writing craft, industry insights, and their own practice. This week, we spoke to poet and writer Sara Saleh about finding inspiration in the everyday.
Your workshop will explore poetry ‘born out of the act of noticing, and being open to our exteriors and interiors.’ How might emerging poets go about this?
I read this quote by Charles Simic that sums it up: ‘Sometimes, the hardest thing for poets is to free themselves from their own habitual ways of seeing the world.’ This workshop is about giving yourself permission to slow down, think about what is going on somatically and how you interact with the world, and find ways to surprise yourself – to play, to rest, to think, to seek pleasure…that’s all part of poetry.
How do everyday surroundings and senses inspire your own work?
Like a lot of people, I think the L-word (lockdown) really scattered me. Even though we were confined to a single place, I actually felt all over the place. I was trying to reconcile all the pressures of productivity in an environment of languishment. It did teach me to be conscious of my body and connection with mind, I re-learned how to rest and reset, and I am (continually) practicing acceptance and grace especially in the face of rupture.
Your debut novel will be published this year (congrats!) – how has this writing process differed from your poetry?
In some ways, poetry and short stories I’ve written have served as a gateway to this larger piece of writing – but it was definitely challenging. Oscillating between self-doubt and delusion in a way I hadn’t before – but also, discipline. You just have to keep going no matter the tides.
The traditional poetry world is often accused of elitism. Could this ‘art of paying attention’ method be a more accessible approach?
I love this perception. I do think accessibility is critical to any artistic practice and to the arts. The ‘content’ is just as important as fostering a healthy shared space where we can be vulnerable, intimate, trusting with others, so we are able to bring our whole selves to our poetry. This empowerment and connection is how we grow and dismantle barriers together.
Hear Sara share her work in this Sydney Writers Festival conversation, ‘Unacknowledged Legislators.’
Sara M Saleh is a human rights lawyer, community organiser, writer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon, living on Gadigal land. Her poems and short stories have been published in English and Arabic in various national and international outlets and anthologies including Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin, Overland Journal, and Rabbit Poetry. She is co-editor of the groundbreaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. Sara is the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review’s 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. She is currently developing her debut novel, Songs for the Dead and the Living (forthcoming with Affirm Press) and a full-length poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls (UQP 2023).
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