The Monthly interviews Australian poet, Dimitra Harvey – Part 2 – Following the passion for writing

When you start writing seriously, what ideas or themes do you write about?

At first, I started off wanting to write a verse novel on the question of colonialism. I just couldn’t get that to work. But a lot of the poems I was writing for that work had to do with human relationships to the natural world and the way colonialism alters and disrupts those relationships.

A lot of my early poems, and a lot of the poems I’m writing now, are trying to figure out what the right questions are to ask around those issues, around the violence of colonialism.

See Dimitra Harvey read at 45 min

You were well received when you started to present your work publicly. Does winning awards make a difference to your career?

Yes. You often can’t gauge if your poetry is working, whether it’s effective. I can’t judge my work objectively. Often something I think isn’t working gets shortlisted or wins a prize. I’ve given up on trying to judge whether my work is any good. Prizes and awards have built up my confidence and my willingness to submit poems, even ones that I think are bad, to other prizes. Prizes have helped me to trust my writing process.

In 2012, I applied for an Australian Society of Authors Young Writer’s Residency and that was my first award. It gave me a week’s stay at a writer’s residence. I was remunerated for my writing. Prizes give you meaningful and substantial resources to keep writing.

In Australia, winning poetry awards is really the only way to make money from your poetry (other than through grants). It also gets you noticed. People see that you’ve won an award and they’ll check out your work. It gives you some purchase in the literary landscape.

You have come a long way from your early years. Where to now?

I am trying to polish my full-length collection. I have published a chapbook so I want to produce a full collection. A lot of my poems are coalescing around specific themes and I’m searching for the time to pull that full collection together. That is my priority at the moment.