A diptych of art and empathy — In conversation with Erin Shiel
Words by Ariana Haghighi She recounts a frequent episode in her girlhood with a grin. When the house clamoured with demands and stressors and responsibilities, she would slink outside into crisp air. Hoisting herself up onto the top of her house, she’d soar from whatever was down below, and glide into the words of a book, any book. From there, she says, she had a whole view of the world in its clarifying glory. But as she gazed ahead, the corrugated iron roof dug into her hips.
book tracks her coming-of-age, as the spirit acquaints herself with the audience. “She has always been in my life”, Shiel shares. She’s unsure whether the spirit is a manifestation of herself, or an imaginary companion, or a symbol of girlhood. Regardless, the spirit provides Shiel with the supernatural compulsion to write.
pace of paddling. Shiel has an ardent love for art, but acknowledges its manifold inaccessibility to many people. Particularly, she describes how JDOOHULHG DUW VXσHUV IURP DQ inaccessibility of meaning. Plaques aren’t enough, she argues. “Poetry provides an entrance”. Shiel cites poetry’s ambiguity as its best asset and the reason why it triumphs SURVH LQ RσHULQJ DQ HQWUDQFH WR DUW Its vagueness grants the reader subjectivity, allowing them to forge a personal connection with the art: she remains true to this philosophy in her ekphrastic poems. In her works alluding to art, such as “In Patricia Piccinini’s workshop” , Shiel’s empathetic qualities shine prominently. A trained counsellor, Shiel has a keen eye for observing emotion. She writes of the sculpted mother: “She is the comforter and there are no limits to her love/She is glued to a glowing infant”, an intimate exploration of emotion, a pattern of human nurturing imposed on art.
œ, UHDOLVHG WKDW LQ RUGHU WR ƂQG time to think and a view of what felt like the whole world, I had to be uncomfortable.”
Much like during her own life, Shiel chases the apparition through the pages of her book. Her mystery becomes Shiel’s frame of reference. She is the foundation for each of the book’s sections, which cleverly delineate an arc of maturation.
Sydney-based poet Erin Shiel’s debut collection, “Girl on a Corrugated Roof”, is forthcoming in June this year with publisher Recent Work Press. The book has been decades in the making. It is a tender assortment of vignettes on girlhood, identity, and the neglected beauty RI HYHU\GD\ OLIH 7KHUH LV ðFWLRQDO fabric woven on an autobiographical loom. The thread that ties the works together is a phantom presence: a spirit of a girl, who Shiel frames as more inviting than eerie. $σHFWLRQDWHO\ QDPHG ìJKRVW JLUOú WKH
Shiel’s poetic domain is wideranging. She masterfully controls territories of girlhood, motherhood and grief, whilst infusing her poems with artistic and emotive commentary. When I ask about her attraction to ekphrastic poetry — poems which detail an artistic ZRUN ċ VKH ODXJKV DQG RσHUV XS ì, think I am a frustrated visual artist”. I chuckle along, but her poetry is stunningly visual, derived from an Shiel’s claim that poetry may artist’s eye. Her work “Ringtail” provide an entrance to art due to its embodies a moving, lithe possum tail; ambiguity initially confronts me. It “Swimmer” visually oscillates like the is poetry’s ambiguous construction
26
LITERATURE