Hear some more about Only the Empty Sky in this interview of author Russell Kelly by 936 ABC Hobart host Ryk Goddard.
4 Sep 2015
Hear the interview below.
Transcript:
File Name: 150904rk_interview
Duration: 00:08:36
Ryk: You know I don’t know if you remember Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish. But it was about really an artist, animals, and creatures, and it unlocked a whole world. Well, I guess you’d will have to say that this book’s in a similar vein it’s going to annoy Russell Kelly forever people making those comparisons. But it’s a new Tasmanian novel about a bird artist but this artist is fictional. Good day, Russell.
Russell: Good morning Ryk.
Ryk: The book is called, Only the Empty Sky and has a beautiful illustration of a bird mid-flight. But your bird artist is a fictional character. How did you come to create him?
Russell: Well, it is very Tasmanian book Ryk set on Lord Howe Island and it’s inspired really from many sources, but one of them was Dr. Norm Sanders who arrived in Tasmania in the late 1970s and was elected to parliament as a democrat, an Australian Democrat. And he really caused, set off a chain of events which we all know in Tasmania very well now that’s discussion about the environment. So I always was interested in how an outsider could arrive in a community and set off a chain of events and that’s what’s behind Only the Empty Sky.
Ryk: And it all about islandness and islandinity. Your descriptions of how he paints the birds it’s so vivid. What research did you do to describe that so well? Because are you a twitcher?
Russell: Well I am not a twitcher but there are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of bird watchers and twitchers across the globe and it does fascinate people and when you look at why birds – are such a metaphor for many aspects of our lives. People love birds and there’s something about birds that people identify with and it…
Ryk: It’s so much life in such a small packet, birds.
Russell: That’s right and so when I researched that and looked into that, of course one of the giants of bird illustration is Audubon, the American. He painted all the birds of America. But died in poverty and his wife sold all those prints for a dollar each. So a life-times work sold for a dollar each. And also the early bird illustrators would shoot birds indiscriminately hundreds of them. In order to get them and paint them, and so there was an irony that as a writer I found fascinating. And so I threw that into the pot as well.
Ryk: Along with the active inadvertent extinction are they true those stories that are in the book?
Russell: Yes the stories of extinction – of bird extinctions that are in the book are true and
Ryk: These bird collectors unknowingly sort of knocking off the last couple of birds and then…
Russell: Absolutely.
Ryk: What years later people going, “all right that was the last one…”
Russell: Absolutely. That’s right. The Steven Island Wren, for example, in New Zealand was eaten to extinction by the lighthouse keeper’s cat before it could be studied and one of the fascinating things about bird extinction is that birds could be numerous, pests even, and then they dwindle and then strange things happen; a community or individual starts to identify with them and something about that bird becomes important to them and then it becomes scarce and then folklore, and then people miss what’s no longer there. And that’s a very common and human way of seeing the environment and I think it’s part of us here in Tasmania we see it all the time.
Ryk: It’s Threatened Species Day on 7th of September and that remembers the day that Benjamin, the last Tasmanian Tiger, died and I made little yesterday’s news today thing about that yesterday looking at all the newspaper reports about it.
Russell: Yeah.
Ryk: Exactly how that story changes overtime if it’s a…
Russell: That’s right.
Ryk: …pest that must be exterminated and, you know, it has to be killed, it’s inevitable, its demise, and then suddenly this attempts to save it.
Russell: That’s right.
Ryk: The people not knowing it’s gone.
Russell: That’s right. Just 300 meters up the road from this studio in fact, the last one in captivity died and I often think that that site actually could be an international focus for understanding the commonality between us and our fellow creatures. And how we express ourselves and our love for each other and for our community through our relationship with animals as well.
Ryk: How does that work in your mind, Russell?
Russell: Well, I think that we relate to the environment, all of us, at a very deep level of affection. And even though we often in Tasmania know very well that we argue for decades over how to use the environment. We actually all love the environment we just express it differently. So I think that we have been on a journey for 30– 40 years now, on understanding how we relate to the environment and I’m hopeful that in the next decade or so, we’ll actually crack it in Tasmania and have a common understanding of the environment here and how it affects us.
Ryk: Look a man can dream….Russell Kelly is author of Only the Empty Sky. It’s his first novel and it’s about naturalist Paul De Martinet, who is a fictional character, a bird artist who is trying to paint all the extinct birds of the world? It took a while to get my head around about what task actually meant. It’s futile – it’s impossible.
Russell: It is a futile task and that’s one of the things about it; how do you paint an extinct bird? Well, you paint a bird that’s almost extinct or you paint a bird that’s similar to the one that’s extinct or you paint the landscape where it no longer exists and try and imagine what it was like. But of course it’s a futile task and that’s one of the themes of the book that we carry with us futile tasks our whole life.
Ryk: Is that from your experience of working in the corporate sector? Working in politics – as a communicator?
Russell: Well, we do carry campaigns and crusades with us that actually might end up going nowhere. We have to understand in our own lives when we’ve taken something too far or too long. You have to move on. You have to find a new peace with the people you’re in discussion with and so that’s a part of the theme of this book to – letting go, learning when to move on.
Ryk: It’s very dense in its language, very poetic and beautiful but you’re not a poet are you? You’ve written short stories before.
Russell: That is right. And this is my first novel and this has been written at the speed of pencil on paper and numerous cafes on three continents over more than a decade. I write with my journal that I take with me everywhere I go. Which I am pulling out of my pocket now and I will write pen on paper and that leads to more poetic style. Because even though I can type very fast as you have to in the modern world, this is actually written at a slower pace. A more contemplative pace and I think that brings out a certain musicality in the language which I hope people will like.
Ryk: If you work all day with computers operating at email pace, for those of us who do our own emails ourselves. Then do you think you need to write creatively to operate outside of that same medium?
Russell: I don’t think so. I think that you just have to find a creative process that works for you. I’ve had to have a double life of maintaining a day job and working creatively otherwise and for me writing every day is important.
Ryk: Did you plan the whole story out in your head and then you write a bit every day or are you finding it as you go?
Russell: Well this one was created more as vignettes, little snippets of observation over many years and then tied together. But my next one will be written differently but still pencil and paper, I believe.
Ryk: Well it holds together very well. And when did you launch it?
Russell: It’s launching at Fullers on Thursday the 24th if you’re in Hobart please come along I would love to see you there.
Ryk: And how did your cover art?
Russell: I have to thank local…
Ryk: It’s just beautiful.
Russell: …artist Tim Squires he’s terrific and he is very gifted local designer and artist and author and illustrator in his own right.
Ryk: because there’s a lot of pressure when it is a book about a bird artist if you’re putting a picture of a bird on it?
Russell: Yeah, he has done a great job there.
Ryk: My hands could be shaking if I try to draw that.
Russell: That’s right.
Ryk: He has done a great job. Only The Empty Sky, it’s by Russell Kelly and comes out…
Russell: In three weeks
Ryk: In three weeks?
Russell: Yes, it comes out in three weeks look for it in bookstores and it’s available online as well.
Ryk: Great to speak with you
Russell: Okay, thanks Ryk.
Leave a Reply