Rūbarū*: Digital Series
* A Persian-origin word, now in Urdu and occasionally Hindi usage, Rūbarū means coming face-to-face, to meet, to be present and to present. In this series Aotearoa and international authors explore artistic resonances, writerly preoccupations, thematic obsessions and share the pleasures and struggles of the craft.
Series is now online until 24 December. Featured authors are: Ling Ma with Rosabel Tan; Sara Baume with Catherine Chidgey; Trent Dalton with Melody Thomas; Paige Clark with Emma Sidnam; and Claudia Durastanti with Michelle Rahurahu. You can purchase one at a time or the whole package of five.
Whether it is the unnamed narrator of Spill Simmer Falter Wither on a lonely odyssey with his one-eyed dog or the couple in Seven Steeples who have fused into one being and now speak a dialect of their own invention, Sara Baume’s characters stand in a still lake of isolation and loneliness, contemplating their moving reflections. Catherine Chidgey, recipient of most major New Zealand awards, and herself a German translator, knows this isolation as well as grief, longing and the human cost of war. Her latest novel, The Axeman’s Carnival has a magpie for a central character, an unlikely narrator of human violence, domestic cruelty, and the nature of fame.
From Cork, Ireland, Sara Baume joins Catherine Chidgey for a conversation on writing, how they wrestle language on the page, what keeps a book going, and the radical possibility of ‘looking closely at the sublime’.
‘Here is another rule for my project: no pets, only wild things. So it can be about the immense poignancy of how, in the course of ordinary life, we only get to look closely at the sublime once it has dropped to the ditch, once the maggots have already arrived at work.’ (A Line Made By Walking, Sara Baume 2017)
