The South Coast Writers Festival on 18-20 August will feature a wide array of genres, from romance to science fiction, young adult fiction to poetry. Ahead of the festival, you can get acquainted with one of the talented local authors, David Stavanger.
David is poet, performer, cultural producer, editor and lapsed psychologist living on Dharawal land. His first full-length poetry collection, The Special (UQP, 2014), was awarded several prizes and his most recent, Case Notes (UWAP, 2020), won the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry.
David is the co-editor of Solid Air: Collected Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, 2019) and Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health (Upswell, 2022).
He produces MAD Poetry (writers with lived mental health experience) and Poetry Month for Red Room Poetry
What is your latest project?
I have two writing projects loosely on the go – the first is a unwieldy thing titled Author Unknown, which is a collaborative co-writing project whereby myself and co-editor and long-term collaborator Pascalle Burton have invited 50 practising artists across diverse mediums (poets/authors/musicians) to co-write a poem/short form work with us using a menu of constraints we devised during lockdowns.
The second is the manuscript for my next collection titled The Drop Off, exploring the liminal space of co-custody, the parts of being a parent where you can't quite feel the sand beneath your feet.
And the last nine months have been all about Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health and getting it out into the world.
Why these works?
Author Unknown due the increased sense of isolation that formed during Covid and lockdowns, the desire to write/create with others.
The Drop Off as I've increasingly wanted to explore the surreal nature of shared parenting and related/adjacent experiences (plus I need to write something new and extend out my use of forms.)
Admissions because it was time, there were so many great lived experience voices around me who deserved a collective home in print.
What do you love about your work?
I love collaborating because it frightens me as a writer and pushes me into the deeper water where stranger things happen and reminds me I am of a community of peers, friends and people I strongly admire as artists. Writing my new collection affirms I still have something to say and my own way of saying it. And working creatively in the mental health lived experience space allows me to meaningfully draw on my own story (and affirms that art can transcend the limitations of cultural credibility and personal reward.)
What challenges have you run into?
Many. Obtaining funding to write/curate/edit (though there have been some real wins here too), being too enthusiastic, lack of motivation, fear of having bitten off to much and not being able to deliver, not being able to carve out time to create/write whilst also being a full-time arts producer at Red Room Poetry and a parent and person trying to be in a world increasingly defined by capitalism and pragmatic needs like paying rent, trying not to write what I've already written, pushing up against the idea of the poet/author as a brand or of a moment, making time for sand to fall through my hands.
What are you most excited about for your event at the South Coast Writers Festival?
I have two great events – very excited for the Admissions panel with contributors Helena Fox, Sara Saleh and Sam Twyford-Moore and one of my brilliant co-editors Radhiah Chowdhury, that's such a great line-up and if it's anything like the last panel I chaired at Sydney Writers Festival it will transcend and bend the intersection of mental health and who gets to shape the public narrative.
And I've curated with Red Room Poetry this year's Wollongong Poetry Month Showcase as part of Poetry Month 2023 – it's a killer line-up that showcases everything poetry can be when set free from the limits of form. Can't wait for both!
You can see David on 19 August at 12.30pm for Admissions and at the Wollongong Poetry Month Showcase at 6pm. Tickets available here.
