Speaker 1: This episode includes a discussion of Indigenous people who are
Speaker 1: now deceased. Please take care while listening. Hey there, it's
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones. All week, we're sharing our favorite episodes from
Speaker 1: our sister podcast, Read This. It's the show where every episode,
Speaker 1: the editor of the Monthly and book fiend, Michael Williams
Speaker 1: talks to another incredible writer. Today we're hearing from you
Speaker 1: all away, musician and writer Narti Simpson. Michael Williams joins me. Now, Hi, Michael,
Speaker 1: Hi Ruby. So Michael, from what I heard Nati Simpson's
Speaker 1: debut novel, it made quite a big impression.
Speaker 2: On you, It really did. Ruby. It came out back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty and I read it, I think during
Speaker 2: COVID Lockdown, and it was just one of those ones
Speaker 2: when a debut comes along and you think this is
Speaker 2: a writer who I will follow through their career now,
Speaker 2: you know, like I just trust them completely, and this
Speaker 2: was one. It's doubly exciting when it's an Australian voice,
Speaker 2: and Nadi Simpson is fantastic. People might know she's part
Speaker 2: of an acoustic duo called the Stiff Jins, and I'd
Speaker 2: listened to their music for years, but as talented as
Speaker 2: she is as a musician, she is doubly trebly so
Speaker 2: when it comes to her writing. It's a book about
Speaker 2: intergenerational injustice. There's a lot of grief and sorrow in there,
Speaker 2: but actually overwhelmingly it's this big, loving story. It's incredibly
Speaker 2: beautiful and her origins as a musician are clear in
Speaker 2: the way she writes is kind of beautiful, writing like.
Speaker 1: Poetic And before this conversation, before this book, you actually
Speaker 1: booked Nadi for the City Writers Festival, didn't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I before I was at the monthly. I was
Speaker 2: artistic director of Sydney Writers Festival for a couple of
Speaker 2: years and so one of the things I was able
Speaker 2: to do back in twenty twenty one was asked Nati
Speaker 2: Simpson to be part of our opening night lineup and
Speaker 2: she spoke incredibly. Everything that made me already a fan
Speaker 2: of her work was there. But part of what she
Speaker 2: talked about was in the past being invited to Sydney Writers'
Speaker 2: festivals to play music or to give an acknowledgment of country,
Speaker 2: but not as a writer in her own right. She
Speaker 2: talked about standing in the wings watching these big international
Speaker 2: writers go out and talk about their work, and she thought,
Speaker 2: you know what, I am going to go out there
Speaker 2: one day and I'm going to do that myself. And
Speaker 2: she did, and as a writer, she really earned her
Speaker 2: place on that stage and continues to her new books
Speaker 2: called The Bell Bird and as a follow up to
Speaker 2: a debut that I loved so much. It's every bit
Speaker 2: is exciting and shows that she's the writer to watch.
Speaker 3: And when you.
Speaker 1: First met her, I believe you met her husband as well,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to ask you about what he said
Speaker 1: to you. Who he said that you reminded him of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no good, thanks true. I really appreciate that. On
Speaker 2: an excellent thing to bring up. Her husband's name is George.
Speaker 2: George is a lovely man, but he's also an idiot.
Speaker 2: He followed me around the party at the festival incessantly
Speaker 2: calling me Jack Black and shouting Jack Black across the
Speaker 2: drinks function. So that was fun. Big hello to George.
Speaker 1: What a superstar of all the celebrities to be compared to,
Speaker 1: I'm just relieved I never heard of Zach glaphanarkus, I've got.
Speaker 2: Away with it.
Speaker 1: Michael Williams. Michael Williams, the one and Only Michael Williams,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment. Nardi Simpson is breaking
Speaker 1: her own rules.
Speaker 2: I think maybe I would like to start with the
Speaker 2: things you learned from some of the Crocodile that from
Speaker 2: the start with the Bell Bird you knew that you
Speaker 2: wanted to do differently or you wanted to build.
Speaker 3: A I wrote a list of things I was not
Speaker 3: going to do for this book, and so then did
Speaker 3: not write a thing for a year because I you know,
Speaker 3: it was all up in my head. I was talking
Speaker 3: with somebody about this a matter of minutes ago. The
Speaker 3: more you think about it, the more you constrict yourself
Speaker 3: and the feeling. It's about feeling, writing feeling. So I did.
Speaker 3: I had a page of things I didn't want to do,
Speaker 3: which were, you know, things like I didn't want long
Speaker 3: flowing sentences, and I didn't want creator beings and all
Speaker 3: the things that I'm probably good at, you know, trying
Speaker 3: to think my way through what I wanted to be
Speaker 3: rather than being who I am. And once I broke
Speaker 3: every one of those rules, once it became you know,
Speaker 3: I got to write something here that's gold. I've gone
Speaker 3: long enough not writing I need to start, and I
Speaker 3: started breaking my rules and that was the beginning point
Speaker 3: for an evolving story that was a negotiation between who
Speaker 3: I wanted to be and what I actually was. And
Speaker 3: you know, the Bell Bird was a kind of a
Speaker 3: spilling out of who I wanted to be and what
Speaker 3: I didn't want to do and where I actually was.
Speaker 3: That's the best way for me to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Did you have a similar list before Song under Crocodile
Speaker 2: or for that? It was much more organic.
Speaker 3: It was organic. What I was trying to prove to
Speaker 3: myself there was that I could do more than just music.
Speaker 3: I was trying to prove to myself I was more
Speaker 3: than a musician. And of course I got to a
Speaker 3: stage in Song of the Crocodile where I was stuck
Speaker 3: and beautiful Grace Lucas Pennington, who was helping me through
Speaker 3: the black and white experience, asked me to bring forward
Speaker 3: my musicality because I was stuck on something and I said,
Speaker 3: it's not working. You know, I'm getting so frustrated. She said, Naughtie,
Speaker 3: what if I was to say to you as the
Speaker 3: music in this stanza, so that's not a restriction anymore.
Speaker 3: I can actually she's asking me to bring forward who
Speaker 3: I am. So you know, it's sort of like history repeating.
Speaker 3: I made the hurdle at the beginning of the second
Speaker 3: book and jumped over it myself and worked out that,
Speaker 3: you know, just don't restrict yourself because of a creative
Speaker 3: idea needs to flow. Yeah, and the point for thinking
Speaker 3: and constructing things will come later, usually with an editor,
Speaker 3: and they will help you get over yourself.
Speaker 2: Get over yourself, but also like trust yourself as well,
Speaker 2: like not just get over yourself, but give over to
Speaker 2: your own instincts, give over to your own individual qualities
Speaker 2: that you bring to the story, to the writing, because
Speaker 2: it sounds like you in different ways. Both times were
Speaker 2: caught up in an idea of what you should be
Speaker 2: doing or what it should look like to be a writer,
Speaker 2: rather than what it felt natural to you.
Speaker 3: Yes, and also this kind of idea of what is
Speaker 3: valuable to bring forward to somebody. I'm still trying to
Speaker 3: work out what it is I can give in a
Speaker 3: written form, because for me music, you know, I know
Speaker 3: that I want to share a feeling, and then I
Speaker 3: think when I pick up a pen on sharing a thought,
Speaker 3: and I struggle with, well, what's the tangible walk away
Speaker 3: my hands, moving, feeling, grabbing thing that I can give
Speaker 3: to somebody. And I still haven't worked out the language
Speaker 3: of the exchange in a book because it's so insular
Speaker 3: and so singular. Even though I do it to make
Speaker 3: somebody feel, I still haven't quite figured out how to
Speaker 3: channel creative thought through my body into another body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in terms of different expressions of creativity, how much
Speaker 2: this is someone who's clearly not a musician asking this question.
Speaker 2: So I may be revealing deep reserves of ignorance. I'm
Speaker 2: sure I am. But it feels to me like there's
Speaker 2: something weirdly more of a tangible object in words on
Speaker 2: a page than there is in a piece of music.
Speaker 2: There's something about something printed on paper that feels like
Speaker 2: it belongs to a different tradition where you're held to
Speaker 2: account on it for much longer.
Speaker 3: It's there, solid, and it doesn't disappear, it doesn't kind
Speaker 3: of go into the ether that it doesn't exist as
Speaker 3: a memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a great piece of music, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I was in the room and saw that performed, and
Speaker 2: it was the most beautiful thing and I can't quite
Speaker 2: capture in words, But I have a muscle memory of
Speaker 2: what was to be. There a good book that connects
Speaker 2: with you. You can go back and pick it up,
Speaker 2: open the page. Yes, you change, you approach it differently,
Speaker 2: but it's still the proof of it is there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I heard somebody talk about the performative artifact, and
Speaker 3: that has a really loaded implications for me, being part
Speaker 3: of a community that has suffered at the hands of
Speaker 3: an archive, and also this idea of a performance versus
Speaker 3: practice and all these things. So all this stuff is
Speaker 3: swirling around me, and I'm trying to find a way
Speaker 3: for I would initially say the river of but you know,
Speaker 3: Bellbert is really the wave of the wave of the
Speaker 3: tangible and how that anchors you and holds you in
Speaker 3: a place where maybe you want to keep flowing out
Speaker 3: and in with greater things. You know. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: sort of work out how to talk about how can
Speaker 3: you be that little bit of sand that moves with
Speaker 3: the tide or the rip, knowing that you know, you've
Speaker 3: got this big book here that is asking you to
Speaker 3: also be that gathered moment. So when I got my
Speaker 3: twelve copies of Bell Bird and I thought my dad
Speaker 3: was one of eleven, I thought, oh, I could give.
Speaker 3: I could have one at home and then give one
Speaker 3: to all his siblings. But then, actually that is not
Speaker 3: the right gift. Even though it's everything that I it's
Speaker 3: all the ways I have grown thanks to them, the
Speaker 3: bestowing of a book is actually a kind of not
Speaker 3: the right way to show how they've affected me. And
Speaker 3: you know, I think Michael about I didn't want to say, oh,
Speaker 3: here's this book because I didn't want to. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to give my aunties and uncles in Waga a
Speaker 3: book because I didn't want it to be confronting for them.
Speaker 3: But then you know, my cousin, said her Nan, whose
Speaker 3: dad's sister, the eldest of the eleven, bought the audio book.
Speaker 3: She's gone too now. They would lay on her bed
Speaker 3: and listen to me and my words because I read
Speaker 3: the audio book, and you know, Auntie, Georgina and Nikola
Speaker 3: would sit on the bed and they'd listened to a
Speaker 3: little bit, and then they'd go and do something else.
Speaker 3: And I think actually that my words were part of
Speaker 3: their relationship. That's the beauty for me. And you know,
Speaker 3: as people disappear and dissolve and move into other realities
Speaker 3: or whatever, the book is not the thing. The words
Speaker 3: around who we are is a beautiful offering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Whereas with Song of the Crocodile, you know, it's
Speaker 2: very much around your family's country. The bill Bird is
Speaker 2: set in and deeply concerned with the country you were
Speaker 2: born in and have lived most of your life in,
Speaker 2: but not your ancestral country.
Speaker 3: It's the salt the salt water shadow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's clearly a place and country that's shaped You
Speaker 2: explain to me the difference between that and ancestral country
Speaker 2: in terms of what you own, because there are like
Speaker 2: for lots of people, they're going to be like, well,
Speaker 2: you were born me, you've lived your life there, why
Speaker 2: can't you tell the story of that place in the
Speaker 2: same way.
Speaker 3: For me, it was very I was, oh, part of
Speaker 3: the list of things I didn't want to do that
Speaker 3: I actually kept was I wanted to use a story
Speaker 3: as a way to uphold somebody else's sovereignty. As you know,
Speaker 3: I'm fresh water woman, and I'm informed and colored by that,
Speaker 3: and I know the value that that has in my life.
Speaker 3: That's not the only way the world works. I get
Speaker 3: a lot of cultural spiritual zessed from my mob, as
Speaker 3: other people get from theirs. And I live on somebody
Speaker 3: else's sacredness, so how can I use language to uphold
Speaker 3: their sacredness? And that's what really the Bell Bird was
Speaker 3: for me, an exercise, I don't mean to trivialize it,
Speaker 3: but a practice in living inside somebody else's sacredness and
Speaker 3: making something that honors me but references them. So the
Speaker 3: bell Bird references a little baby, a real baby that
Speaker 3: lived for a matter of months in Sydney at the
Speaker 3: time of colonization. I am not culturally connected to that
Speaker 3: baby or her parents, yet the story of her life
Speaker 3: is foundational for me, a foundational teaching and how to
Speaker 3: be somewhere that belongs to someone else.
Speaker 2: It's a particularly acute example, and I think you handle
Speaker 2: it really sensitively and really beautifully in the book. It's
Speaker 2: the great power of the book is how important that baby,
Speaker 2: that little girl is, But how much space you give her,
Speaker 2: how much you kind of walk around her rather than
Speaker 2: directly to her. Because what strikes me is, as you say,
Speaker 2: she's a real historical figure. She had this brief life.
Speaker 2: Her parentage was significant in terms of the time and
Speaker 2: the place and the figures. But it would be very
Speaker 2: easy to instrumentalize her as a kind of symbol of
Speaker 2: something rather than as a living, breathing human being. How
Speaker 2: did you get to the human part of her?
Speaker 3: I think her breath was sacred, and a sacredness that
Speaker 3: is not open to me. But I love to weave
Speaker 3: words and feelings, and I think it is an act
Speaker 3: of respect to play with everything that was around those
Speaker 3: in and outs.
Speaker 2: When we return, Natti Shar's why she wants to be
Speaker 2: more like the character she's written in this book and
Speaker 2: reveals why it took decades for the stories from her
Speaker 2: elders to finally make sense to her. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: The engine of this novel is a story in the
Speaker 2: present day, one that follows a young poet and activist
Speaker 2: called Jenny Dilboll. Her name and her power to represent
Speaker 2: the possibility of change echoes the novel's historical tale, even
Speaker 2: as the way she moves through the world is decidedly contemporary.
Speaker 3: Ginny Dilboom is a character in the book that I
Speaker 3: wish I was her. I'm just going to say, I'm
Speaker 3: just going to say it, I really wished I was her.
Speaker 3: And if I had to explain why she's in there,
Speaker 3: she is the promise that that little girl was. You know,
Speaker 3: at the time, that little baby was an inheritor of
Speaker 3: serious cultural business and also the future of what was
Speaker 3: going to happen in this place that we all walk
Speaker 3: around on now. She was going to be the boss
Speaker 3: of what has happened and what will come. And she
Speaker 3: didn't thrive. And so Ginny is my way of bringing
Speaker 3: an idea of a young black girl who has the
Speaker 3: world at her fingertips. That's why she's in the book,
Speaker 3: Genny Dealbong. You know, she's a poet that makes words
Speaker 3: and sticks them in buildings, and that's the way that
Speaker 3: she colonizes the places that she owns.
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised that you wish you were her. I
Speaker 2: think i'd defyre anyone to read it and not wish
Speaker 2: that they were. But you seem pretty Genny to that.
Speaker 2: What are the elements she has that you long for
Speaker 2: in yourself that you don't quiet have.
Speaker 3: Well, she was young and she didn't care about what
Speaker 3: she should do or be, which is where we start today.
Speaker 3: There's no way she'd make a list of things she
Speaker 3: wasn't going to be. And I think her youthful fierceness
Speaker 3: is something I never had.
Speaker 2: She does have the power to be made clearer in
Speaker 2: who she is by dickheads instead of them wearing her down,
Speaker 2: instead of her being broken by them or feeling like
Speaker 2: this isn't a space for me, or I can't write
Speaker 2: my poems, I can't make my art. She instead, in
Speaker 2: the face of dickheads again and again, is just like
Speaker 2: n that resolves me in who I want to be.
Speaker 2: And that seems pretty admirable.
Speaker 3: Yes, and she is alone in doing that. Wow, you
Speaker 3: know I need fifty people around me to make me
Speaker 3: feel brave enough to do the thing that I want.
Speaker 3: She's by herself, she is you know. I want to say,
Speaker 3: a flick or a feather oscillating in the everywhere and
Speaker 3: doing a thing without connection. That's powerful. That's strength to
Speaker 3: be isolated, maybe, and alone and small in the greatness
Speaker 3: and still have the courage to do what you want.
Speaker 2: One of the things I particularly love in this book
Speaker 2: is how you write about and capture time. It moves
Speaker 2: between two timelines, and there's this and that, but actually
Speaker 2: it doesn't. That's not the relationship you have with time
Speaker 2: in this book, And that's not the relationship that the
Speaker 2: story you're telling has with time, it loops back on itself.
Speaker 2: It's not this, then this, then this. Can you talk
Speaker 2: about how you got the idea of time right for
Speaker 2: the purpose of the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be one of those things I reckon, Michael,
Speaker 3: if I thought about it canpletely muck up. And it's
Speaker 3: also helped by having these ageless Eels and grandfather Wales
Speaker 3: who are really just reflections of people. I know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, I know, great whale. I've been taught by
Speaker 3: that man. Another fellow who passed away while I was
Speaker 3: writing Very important you and man South Coast and New
Speaker 3: South Wales, Uncle Max Harrison. He is a great whale.
Speaker 3: He's gone into he's whale dreaming, but while he was
Speaker 3: on land he was sharing all those learnings with me.
Speaker 3: And so those people are timeless. So if you're lucky
Speaker 3: to experience that ageless and it's not mystical and magical,
Speaker 3: but it's ancient and ageless in a really complex, tangible way.
Speaker 2: I think when I interviewed Melissa Lukashenko about Eden Glassie
Speaker 2: is the phrase aboriginal realism, which magic realism. It's not
Speaker 2: describing what's going on here. This is aboriginal realism.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it misses the point when people sort
Speaker 3: of say that those creator beings are a release. Actually
Speaker 3: they're the they're the structure. It's beautiful to be able
Speaker 3: to work within that. And you know, I have the
Speaker 3: same thing about fiction. What people call fiction is our
Speaker 3: reference section.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's the way our stories are, the way we need
Speaker 3: to be. You can't negotiate, so then we get to
Speaker 3: play with those kind of things as well. But I
Speaker 3: don't know if I thought about time, i'd get it wrong.
Speaker 3: It's just that I know I sit next to ageless
Speaker 3: people and get to have their wisdom soak into me,
Speaker 3: and it's as my and as you can get.
Speaker 2: I think part of what I so love about that
Speaker 2: is you sit next to you, don't you know, you
Speaker 2: don't come after, you don't have a debt to This
Speaker 2: is not something from the part. The whole point of
Speaker 2: the agelessness and the timelessness is you sit alongside and
Speaker 2: next to you. You're sharing those stories, you're telling them,
Speaker 2: you're hearing them.
Speaker 3: We're so lucky, you know. And that old man too,
Speaker 3: He used to tell a story Uncle Max about when
Speaker 3: he was taken by his masters, he calls them, when
Speaker 3: he was a young boy. He's taken on a journey
Speaker 3: with his masters, and he was told to go and
Speaker 3: fill the billy with water and come back and bring
Speaker 3: it back. And he would tell this story a lot,
Speaker 3: and I never actually got it. He said he'd feel
Speaker 3: the billy, take it back to his old pop, who
Speaker 3: would kick it over and say no, go again. And
Speaker 3: he do this, you know, a few times, and he said,
Speaker 3: I couldn't understand why he kept kicking the water out.
Speaker 3: He asked me to go and feel the billy, and
Speaker 3: I did it, and he said so I went down
Speaker 3: to the edge of the water, and I thought, what's
Speaker 3: this old man trying to teach me? And I just
Speaker 3: started playing with the water. And then after a while,
Speaker 3: I thought, I'm just going to try it one more time.
Speaker 3: I filled the billy and I put it next to him.
Speaker 3: He said good. And that's how he told the story.
Speaker 3: And he would tell it the same way every time.
Speaker 3: I thought, what is going I don't get it. I
Speaker 3: don't get it. Maybe he's missing a bit or something.
Speaker 3: And he passed away and I was thinking about it,
Speaker 3: and then I actually understood what he was trying to
Speaker 3: teachers that don't just take you need to go and
Speaker 3: interact and dream and think that was the water that
Speaker 3: the old fellow wanted. But I think back for the
Speaker 3: amount of years that I never understood that story, and
Speaker 3: it was just waiting for me. It was waiting for
Speaker 3: me in the future, my future me to understand what
Speaker 3: the teaching was. And so it took you know, I
Speaker 3: knew him for twenty years. He passed away three years ago.
Speaker 3: I only understood it a year ago what he was
Speaker 3: teaching me. But it was waiting for me in the future.
Speaker 3: It was about, you know, when he was a little
Speaker 3: boy seventy years earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all all on a continuum, but also at
Speaker 2: the same time letting into itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: How has I mean talk about the list of rules
Speaker 2: you had for yourself on the second book and your
Speaker 2: idea about the kind of writer you were, But how
Speaker 2: has having had readers changed the kind of writer you are?
Speaker 2: That sense of people coming back to you with, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, here's what I took from your book,
Speaker 2: or here's what it meant to me, or here's what
Speaker 2: it awoke in me. Has that surprised you and has
Speaker 2: that changed the way you approach story?
Speaker 3: I feel very it's not grateful there's some other level
Speaker 3: of grateful when people come up that they've read the book,
Speaker 3: or they've thought about things, or I get a bit shame.
Speaker 3: You know, I sit in the shame because I'm so grateful,
Speaker 3: and that's how I interact with it. It's just like I
Speaker 3: am very humble about that. But that's where I stay.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you when I think about audiences while I
Speaker 3: make it, because I put all my energy and hope
Speaker 3: of a connection in the making of it. When I
Speaker 3: do it, when I ask them to unwrap the present,
Speaker 3: and then when they got the present, that's up to them.
Speaker 3: By the time the last full stop, my work's done.
Speaker 3: And that's your fellow's business. You can own that, and
Speaker 3: that's yours.
Speaker 2: Nadie Simpson, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Michael.
Speaker 2: The Bell Bird is available at all Good bookstores now
Speaker 2: and if you're googling to find it, it is b
Speaker 2: E L B U R D Bellbird. You can listen
Speaker 2: to the audiobook, which is equally gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: Read This. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode and
Speaker 1: you can hear all of Read This by searching for
Speaker 1: it wherever you listen to podcasts,