Interview with Eileen Chong

Eileen Chong is a familiar name for many English teachers since a suite of poetry from her collection Burning Rice was included in the NSW Year 12 Prescribed Texts list. One of these poems is also featured in the syllabus as part of a study on Contemporary Asian-Australian Poets, however, Chong is so much more than this. With her poetry spanning the remote corners of the human condition - from highly personal journeys into the inner psyche to sharply-observed forays into broader discourse - it's always fascinating to get an insight into her processes and methods. Beyond Burning Rice, Chong's poetry collections also include Peony, Painting Red Orchids, Rainforest, Dark Matter, A Thousand Crimson Blooms, and her upcoming 2025 release We Speak of Flowers.

I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to ask Eileen Chong some questions about her work and she was very generous with her time and answers!

What first led you to poetry?

I've always enjoyed reading poetry, even from before I realised what poetry was. My first poetry, I suppose, was from the Bible. I attended Methodist and Anglican schools as a child in Singapore, and had always been drawn to Psalms and Proverbs as well as the Song of Songs. I remember asking a teacher why parts of the Bible were written in sentences and others in 'parts'--even at a very young age part of me discerned the difference in language between prose and poetry.

I studied Literatures in English and Linguistics as an undergraduate at university, and was a high school teacher for a number of years. I'd always loved reading and teaching poetry, but my tastes were quite conservative and tied to the canon. It wasn't until I started a Master of Letters at Sydney University and studied the craft of poetry under the tutelage of Judith Beveridge that I started to read more contemporary poetry across different cultures and also in translation. I started writing poetry around 2010, and had my first book of poems published in 2012 with Australian Poetry. 2025 will see my sixth collection of poems (and my tenth book in total), We Speak of Flowers, to be published with UQP.

 

Do you feel like your poetry has changed over those 6 collections?

Absolutely—my poems have changed across the 6 collections because I have changed as a person over the past 14 years. Of course my work must have retained some defining aspects of a poetic voice, but my concerns, interests and obsessions have evolved, doubled back, overlapped, expanded and/or changed, and the poems reflect that in themes and form. 

For example: my next collection, We Speak of Flowers, is a book-length poem in 101 numbered fragments to be read in any order (including sequentially). The book demanded to be written in this manner—the usual poetry collection of 50 poems or so was not the right container for this work.

I teach the poems from my first collection, Burning Rice, a fair bit in schools, and as the years pass, I gain more and more distance from those poems, to the point where I often wonder: who wrote them? I’m actually consistently surprised by the craft of those poems, by the density of and the compression of language, and feel like I could not write poems like those now, simply because I am not longer the same person and poet as then. 

At the same time, there are words and phrases I used in poems in my previous collections that I would no longer be comfortable using as my sociopolitical consciousness has grown over time and with age. Some of the ideas that gripped me so intensely at different times have also faded out of focus as I have moved on to different stages in life, and others have come to take their place.

I love that my work remains dynamic and in flux even after more than 14 years as a writer.  I would be bored if I were to do the same thing day in, day out, and that applies to my poetry as well. 

You mentioned Burning Rice as an ongoing bridge into schools; how does it feel having your poetry listed as one of the options for NSW students to study? Does it change your relationship with the text?

I don't write for any specific audience, but I am beyond thrilled that students are studying the poems in Burning Rice. I think it's a wonderful recognition to have my poems studied in schools. I was previously a high school teacher of English in Singapore, and know first hand how transformative literary texts in schools can be for students and what a great impact it can have on young minds, sometimes long after their schooling years.

To the best of my knowledge, Burning Rice is also the first single-author collection of poetry by an Asian Australian to be on the HSC syllabus. That is a great honour, and I certainly hope I won't be the last. Having my book on the syllabus has also helped me greatly in a financial sense as I am able to go to schools to speak on my work, which has provided an alternate source of income as I continue to try to make a living through my writing.

I think it is also important for students to be able to read contemporary poetry and to encounter the poet in the flesh, and to understand that creativity is a process that is constantly in-flux. I have absolutely loved being able to be back in classroom to speak on the craft of poetry and to teach my poems to students. I hope that the poems form an entryway into students thinking about migration, identity, multiculturalism, liminality and ultimately leads them to reading more contemporary poetry.

I like what you say about creativity being constantly in-flux. Do you find that the ongoing interaction between students and your poetry challenges the idea of the author being in control of the text?

Absolutely. I’ve often spoken about the creative process and how sometimes even the poet isn’t fully aware of what might be in the poem. I’ve always thought that the final stage in a poem’s creation takes place in the mind of a reader. It’s also refreshing to be in the classroom and have students respond to a work in ways that surprise me, but which are completely valid.

Most of all, I really love watching the expressions and responses to my poems when I read them aloud in classrooms, before I explain any of the literary devices used, or even speak about possible interpretations. To witness a poem’s emotional effect on students is a true gift. To paraphrase Eliot, poetry can communicate meaning even before or beyond conscious understanding.

I have also written poems in response to being in the classroom—a kind of metatext about the creative process to try and articulate this interesting circularity. One such poem, ‘Making Sense’, from my last collection A Thousand Crimson Blooms, begins this way:

I tell my students:

poetry is a way to make sense

of what you fear.

And it ends with:

A girl at her desk begins a poem:

I dreamed everyone, even my own

mother, had forgotten my name—

Which comes first, the poet, the poem, or the reader? Perhaps they are all one and the same. 

I love that. I think we get too rigid sometimes about separating the author from the text and their audience. Why do you think poetry became your primary medium for expression?

As far back as I can recall, I have loved language—the science of it, the sounds of it, the craft of it. I majored in both Linguistics and Literatures in English as an undergraduate, but I had to choose one of the two for my Honours year. I very nearly chose Linguistics over Literature—I was particularly interested in neurolinguistics, pragmatics, and lexicography. But Literature won out and, though unknown to me at the time, it set me on a path that would eventually lead me to poetry as a profession.

Simply put, to me, poetry is the highest form of linguistic expression possible. It is the most varied, the most compressed, and the most encompassing of forms. What I love most of all about poetry is its capacity to move the spirit, its neverending mystery, and how a poem can renew and reinvent language in the smallest space imaginable. (Dove: ‘Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.’) 

I also love how poetry is a broad church, and how it aligns itself with every human experience and emotion in ways that other art forms might not be able to. As I grow older, not much surprises me, but poetry retains the power to astonish and revise my experience and existence. (Dickinson: ‘If I feel physically like the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.’)

I often joke about how if I had a choice I would never have chosen to be a poet. It is likely one of the hardest careers to make a living from, because our capitalist society values it so little. (Wordsworth: ‘Poetry has never brought me enough money to buy shoestrings.’) Yet I feel like poetry has been a blessing to me and a calling I could not refuse. Many of my friends from childhood are at the stage of life where they are preoccupied with their careers and life paths, but very few can say that they have spent most of their time pursuing their passion. (Graves: ‘There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.’) I can, hand on heart, say that I have, and I’m grateful for that, at the very least. 

It might seem that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ (Auden), but I believe that ‘a good poem helps to change the shape of the universe’ (Thomas). Above all, it reminds us of what it means to be human, and that there is power in it, that ‘poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth’ (Jordan), even if you ‘tell it slant’ (Dickinson again). Joy Harjo tells us that when you begin to listen to poetry, ‘you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else.’ What other vocation allows you this? Only poetry does. 

You mention some great classic poets from years gone by. If you had to choose 3 great poets from the 19th, 20^th and 21^st centuries, who would you pick?

An impossible task, I’m going to cheat and pick two each. John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Li-Young Lee, Joy Harjo. I’m sure I’ll regret these choices in one way or another. There are so many poets worthy of reading, and not enough time in the world to do so. 

Thanks Eileen. Final question - what advice would you give to anyone wanting to write poetry?

Read poetry. Read non-fiction. Read fiction. Read widely and without prejudice. Read poetry aloud. Listen to its sounds, rhythms, cadences. Study the history of poetry, of forms, across cultures. Read poetry in translation. Read ancient poetry. Read contemporary poetry. Read craft books written by poets. Read interviews with poets. Keep reading, listening, feeling, thinking. See art. Watch plays and performances, attend music events. Walk, swim, sleep in nature. Travel, in person or on the page. Fall in and out of love. Connect with community. Live your life to its fullest. Fill your well, nourish your imagination, and feed your soul. That which spills over? That which cannot be contained? That is the beginning of your own poetry.

 

Visit Eileen Chong's website here.

Creating Worlds - Setting in Imaginative Writing

Imagined and literary worlds are always, in some way, a reflection of the world around us. The bedrock of worldbuilding is a keen awareness of setting - and students need to understand that setting has a precise function if they are to use this element well. When I read a great book or short story, I will find myself transported to that setting and sometimes it will be the one thing that stays with me longest after  I finish reading.

An effective setting will do some or all of the following:

• Remain constant in the reader's impression of the story, even when it isn't being explicitly mentioned. This can be achieved through the consistent use of detail and ensuring that nothing occurs in the narrative to contradict the setting.
• Make use of a set of rules - is everything we read a logical extension of the setting? If the setting is an unusual one, then this needs to interact with the characters and narrative in a way befitting this. 
• Be aware of time and place. A setting should have a particular geography but there also needs to be an awareness of the time of day and year, which may shift according to the progression of the narrative. If it is the height of an Australian summer, for example, then the characters need to act in a way that reflects the constant and often oppressive heat that comes with this.
• Reflect theme or a key idea. The most effective setting will often interact with characters in a way that reveals a concept or message that the writer seeks to explore. 

When we teach setting within a schooling context we need to also think about the syllabus. By all means, students should be encouraged to write for pleasure and to explore their imagination without limit, and time can be spent on this in the junior grades or (if your school has them) English creative writing electives. But if we're looking at the pointy end of the curriculum (in my case, NSW), we do need to teach students how to write within the scope of the Craft of Writing module for the HSC, or for  English Extension 1. This means having the ability to write a short piece within 25-50 minutes (depending on the HSC question and course).

So with this in mind, I would ask students to also think of setting in the following way:

• The previously mentioned dot points still largely apply.
• Come to a decision about whether character or setting will take precedence. Both should reflect the idea the student wants to explore, but if the amount of examination time is particularly short (for example, a double-barrelled Craft of Writing question that requires a reflection as well as a piece of original writing) then I think a student will struggle to give ample space to both characterisation and setting. 
• If focusing on setting, consider how it relates to the idea we want to explore. How does the setting reflect genre? Why is the writer writing about this setting? What is the purpose? How can we ensure that the detail included is consistently relevant to the idea or theme? 
• Don't fall into the trap of fantasy worldbuilding - there is limited space in an HSC examination and we need to consider the stimulus and the parameters of the question. It's great to write an evocative setting but this isn't the place to delve into said setting's extensive history and geography.  

What follows is an activity that uses real world locations to provide inspiration. In NSW it could be used for Years 7-10 English, Year 11 Reading to Write, Year 12 Craft of Writing, or Extension English Literary Worlds. 

Students are taken on a tour of 20 slides - 2 for each setting - and asked to respond to them in a way that will get them started on the above journey. The questions below aren't fixed, they're just a way to get students thinking descriptively and, more importantly, conceptually. 

1. Describe what you see in as much detail as possible.
2. Boil it down to just one key idea that could be used in a piece of writing.
3. What sort of short story could you tell in relation to this setting?
4. What would this short story be about in a single word? (EG. Desperation? Survival? Hope? Secrecy?, etc.)

The slides can be found here - Creating Worlds.

Happy writing!

Disclaimer: The above activity was compiled specifically for this blog. 

Everything Old is New Again

An image from The Bad Sleep Well

Are remakes a new phenomenon? The short answer is 'no'. There is a fallacy in pop culture that cinema is becoming increasingly unoriginal - that we are awash in an endless sea of remakes, reimaginings, sequels, prequels, adaptations, and franchises. Perhaps top of this list is the idea that superhero films are ruining cinema. 

I'm not here to venture an opinion on the quality of said superhero films, I tend to believe that their quality varies depending on a range of factors, however, I would argue that any perceived lack of variety could find its parallels in other eras of fiction.

• Martial Arts films of the '70s and '80s.
• Spy novels of the '60s.
• Action films of the '80s and '90s.
• Western films of the '30s, '40s, and '50s.
• Penny Dreadfuls of the 19th century.
• Spaghetti Westerns of the '60s.
• Teen comedy films of the '00s.
• Vampire/Supernatural novels of the late '00s. 

And so on.

A generic formula responds to the desires of the market as much now as in previous eras, and the quality in such genres was as variable then as it is now. 

Something that I find quite fascinating about cinema in particular is the way in which even the most celebrated 'original' films are the culmination of a long echo chamber of ideas that are borrowed and refracted over time. Here is one example:

1. Revenge of the Sith (2005) includes a scene in which Palpatine formally establishes the beginning of the Empire. During this scene, the speech he makes is intercut with shots of Anakin murdering Palpatine's enemies. This pays direct homage to the baptism scene in The Godfather, in which Micheal Corleone consolidates his place at the head of the family while his underlings orchestrate the murder of rival mob bosses. Both films deal with the rise and establishment of a corrupt power.
   
2. The Godfather (1972) begins with a big wedding reception where a mafia don's daughter has just gotten married to a young man who has worked his way into this shady family. Journalists are parked just outside the main action, photographing the various high profile figures in attendance. This scene deliberately replicates a similar scene at the beginning of Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, in which a company kingpin's daughter has just gotten married and journalists watch from outside while discussing the various high profile figures in attendance. Both films deal with a Machiavellian patriarch whose legacy is steeped in violence and crime.
   
3. The Bad Sleep Well (1960) is a modern Japanese adaptation of Hamlet. Instead of a medieval Danish court of intrigue and murder, the action is set in the corporate boardrooms of corrupt Japanese businessmen. Like Hamlet with his wavering quest for revenge, Nishi is a young company man who hides his identity while working to expose the men who killed his father. 
4. Hamlet (1599) is one of the most well-known stories of all time and perhaps Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. It is not, however, a story entirely of Shakespeare's creation. Shakespeare is thought to have directly remade a now-lost play that also featured a Danish prince named Hamlet who is urged by a ghost to pursue revenge.
   
5. Hamlet (c. 1580s) is the suspected name of a play by Thomas Kyd, a highly influential figure in Elizabethan theatre. Referred to as Ur-Hamlet by scholars, this play likely leaned on the 'hero-as-fool' trope, which flows back into the untraceable realms of ancient storytelling. It is also thought to be a loose retelling of a Scandinavian folk tale about a prince named Amleth. 
6. Amleth (c. 1100s) is a folk tale in which a prince dresses himself in rags and pretends to be insane as a means to disguise his quest for revenge against his uncle. This uncle, Fengo, murdered Amleth's father so he could marry his mother Gerutha. Fengo eventually sends Amleth to England with two escorts carrying a letter instructing the English king to kill the prince. Amleth, however, switches this letter so that the escorts get killed instead, and he returns to Denmark to watch his own funeral and then finally take revenge on is uncle. Like Hamlet, The Bad Sleep Well, The Godfather, and Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith, this story deals with the theme of corruption and the extreme behaviours that surround it. 

So, as we can see, even Shakespeare isn't immune from this 'unoriginality' problem. Here are some other examples of great films that can be traced to earlier texts that explore the same themes.

• A Fistful of Dollars (1964) - a spaghetti western remake of the 1961 samurai film Yojimbo, which was an adaptation of the hardboiled detective novel Red Harvest (1929). Thematic core: an outsider takes on a lawless community.
• A Bug's Life (1998), an animated film about a misfit putting together a group of warriors to save an ant colony from an evil grasshopper, which sounds a lot like the Western classic The Magnificent Seven (1960), which is a direct remake of Seven Samurai (1954). Thematic core: the value of community and team-work.
• The Searchers (1956) is a famous Western based on a 1954 novel of the same name. 1970s films as varied as the seedy crime dramas Taxi Driver (1976) and Hardcore (1979), and the sci-fi epic Star Wars (1977), and the more recent television series Breaking Bad (2000s) and the film Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) all draw upon plot elements or iconic shots from The Searchers. Thematic core: the anti-hero's journey. 

And here are some films that challenge the notion that 'original' stories in cinema have ever been common.

• Gladiator (2001) is recognisable to most as a throwback to the sword-and-sandals epics of the 1950s and 1960s. Dig a little deeper and you'll find The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), which tells the same story. 
• The most famous cinematic versions of Ben-Hur (1959), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and The Ten Commandments (1956) are not the first film versions of these stories. All were made as silent films in the mid-1920s first. 
• Star Wars (1977) used the 1958 samurai epic The Hidden Fortress as both a narrative and stylistic influence. George Lucas replicated the idea of a kidnapped princess and a grizzled samurai, as well as the narrative choice of telling his story from the point of view of two comical and lowly characters. He also 'borrowed' Akira Kurosawa's way of using vertical wipes to transition from one scene to another. The Japanese director's influence is so keenly felt in the Star Wars trilogy that Rian Johnson would borrow stylistically from Kurosawa's 1980s samurai epics Ran and Kagemusha much later in The Last Jedi (2017).
  

Some of the above are more obvious than others but what's interesting is that none of the famed directors responsible for the above classic films would even try to hide their influences if asked. There's a tendency in pop criticism to reject texts that aren't original or to bemoan the replication of ideas. But, like the great painters who obsessively toiled on a singular topic or style, or playfully subverted each other's works to add new meaning to common themes, should storytellers not also be lauded for mining common material in new ways? These directors and writers are combining old ideas with new genres, or diving deeper into a particular story to explore a new context.

There are, after all, only 3, 6, 7, or 36 types of stories (depending on which writer you trust).

A Path of Light and Joy

Even back in the mid-90s, when I was a bristling tadpole in a high school pond, I remember a class discussion that started quiet and then rose to a challenging crescendo. We were reading Came Back to Show You I Could Fly by Robin Klein, a YA novel about an unlikely friendship between an 11 year-old boy and a young drug-addicted pregnant woman. A girl in class took umbrage with the depressing nature of the story and asked the teacher, "Why do we have to do all these books about sad and depressing things?"

Several other students in the class, especially those who typically avoided reading at every opportunity, also piped up at this point, "Yeah, all these books have people die in them!"

As a class, we began to list each of the books we had read (this was the '90s, when English classes read anywhere between 4 to 8 books a year, rather than the more customary 1 that classes now cover just once each year). It transpired that, yes, every single book we had read involved a character dying or something else similarly tragic happening, like child abuse (So Much to Tell You, Goodnight Mr. Tom) or drug addiction (the aforementioned Came Back to Show You I Could Fly). 

A recent online discussion led by the always-insightful Clairie Ormiston on the NSW English Teachers Resourcing Sharing Facebook group posed a question that opened up a similar discussion - why are so many of the Prescribed Texts for Year 12 English in NSW focused on issues that could be quite triggering for people? Another valued colleague, Paula Madigan, asked what would work as more uplifting or joyous options for HSC study.

There are obviously lots of great unexplored options out there that would fit this brief, however, the process that leads to selection of Prescribed HSC texts for future syllabuses is well beyond this discussion. 

Instead, I've looked closely at the current NSW Prescriptions to ascertain the options that would work best for students and teachers seeking to avoid dark or emotionally distressing subject matter. Whatever one's opinion might be on resilience, development, or the challenges of literary study, it must be acknowledged that there are often specific teaching contexts that preclude the teaching of certain subjects or titles for a whole range of reasons that don't need going into. 

So here are the options available if one wants to find a pattern of study for Year 12 that focuses on texts that are more uplifting, joyful, or fun. Before I list them I would like to add one disclaimer - it is admittedly quite slim pickings as a great deal of texts at this level do indeed deal with subject matter that could be seen by some as distressing. The list below is one interpretation that seeks to find a path around this but I am sure there will be contrary opinions of which texts best fit this brief and I am always happy to hear these.

Common Module - Texts and Human Experiences

• Collected Poems by Rosemary Dobson - observational poetry that focuses more on the artistic and aesthetic. 
• Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry - the class-based themes are a little depressing but the message of this film (and its ending) make it ultimately quite uplifting. 

Standard Module A - Language, Identity and Culture

• Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey, and Michelle Chahill - some of the poetry touches on the impact of past trauma and present prejudices but, overall, these poems aren't excessively negative or emotionally challenging. 
• Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw - there are a few comic elements in this famous play but be warned about some of the now-outdated language that may prompt awkward conversations (such as its use of the word 'slut'). 
• The Castle, directed by Rob Sitch - easily the most pleasant text within this module. Funny and with a feel-good ending that resonates with a lot of Australians. 

Standard Module B - Close Study of a Text

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - some aspects of this novel, such as the strained familial relationships and the fate of the dog in the title, might be challenging for some students. That said, this is a fun text in the way that it plays with language, structure, etc., and this may be enough to keep things light if you approach it in a structuralist fashion.
• Coast Road by Robert Gray - focuses on landscape related to coastal Australia.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare - I left The Merchant of Venice out of the Common Module above due to its themes of racism and retribution. I do think that Midsummer definitely fits the bill for 'joyous' though in its exploration of love, the fairy realm, and the presence of the ass-like tradesman Bottom. 
• The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir - fun and quirky and ultimately uplifting in the way its protagonist triumphs over his environment.

Standard Module C - The Craft of Writing

• 'Popcorn' by Carol Chan - a fun piece of poetry that doesn't ask anything too emotionally-demanding of the reader.
• 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost - the poet's exploration of nature is fairly uncontroversial and shows a certain admiration that's hard to fault.
• 'May Your Pen Grace the Page' by Luka Lesson - a beautiful and engaging piece that explores a writer's love of writing. 

Advanced Module A - Textual Conversations

All of the options in this module have some varying degrees of darkness in them. If I was pressed to pick the least distressing pairing of texts, I would have to go with either: 

• Richard III / Looking for Richard - which admittedly features its fair share of murder but, hopefully, the passage of time dims the negative impact of this. 
• The Tempest / Hag-Seed - which features more comedy than any of the other options. 

Advanced Module B - Critical Study of Literature

• Emma by Jane Austen - romance and Georgian comedy.
• Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas - a quirky and left-field text that, if the teacher is brave in exploring its many eccentricities, can be quite rewarding for students in a range of ways not dependent on emotional challenges.
• Earth Hour by David Malouf - poetry focused on the aesthetics of life. Not particularly controversial.
• Henry IV Part 1 by William Shakespeare - there is the battle near the end that leaves some of the characters dead or sentenced to death but, other than this, Henry IV provides lots of opportunity for laughter with Falstaff. There's also a lot of room for the sort of intellectual discussion that doesn't necessarily plumb the darker corners of Shakespeare's tragedies.

Advanced Module C - Craft of Writing

• 'How to Marry Your Daughters' by Helen Garner - a sassy review / discursive piece that would go well alongside a study of Emma.
• 'Eight Days in a Corset' by Siri Hustvedt - an interesting and playful essay that focuses on fashion and gender.

Extension Elective 1 - Literary Homelands

• Burning Rice by Eileen Chong - there's enough within this suite of poetry to allow for some brighter discussion of culture and identity.

Extension Elective 2 - Worlds of Upheaval

• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - this famously absurdist piece of drama is as close to 'fun' as this elective option gets.

Extension Elective 3 - Reimagined Worlds

• If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino - a playful, irreverent, complicated and challenging text that manages to spellbind and engage without delving too much into distressing subject matter.
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin - this feminist sci-fi novel is the quintessential example of creating an engaging drama that isn't reliant on traditional modes of conflict or brutality. Le Guin's text operates on several layers.
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - satirical without being particularly savage. The passage of time has perhaps dimmed any controversy that once surrounded this novel. 
• Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith - award-winning sci-fi poetry. 

Extension Elective 4 - Literary Mindscapes

I'm struggling to find any texts within this option that fit our bill of 'light and joy'. The closest is probably the film Lost in Translation but even that is quite downbeat and in a minor key, plus it raises awkward questions related to the age and power gap within its 'romance' plot. 

Extension Elective 5 - Intersecting Worlds

• Clay by Melissa Harrison - a gently descriptive novel that contrasts the wonders of nature with a very British cityscape.
• The Major Works by William Wordsworth - romantic poetry focused on the beauty and wonders of God's earth.
• Island Home by Tim Winton - focused on environmental issues rather than individualistic human ones. 

The Literary Canon: What's In It?

If you're feeling brave, feel free to look up any Twitter debate on 'The Canon'. It's an increasingly partisan debate and... yeah, that's all I'll say about that. I don't really feel up to arguing in favour of either side, whether we should be focusing our teaching on the classics of the canon or whether we should be attempting to destablise the canon by looking at texts written by marginalised voices - it's just too big a question for me to pour any energy into right now. 

I do confess, however, to having more than a passing interest in the canon. 

My introduction to the concept of a 'canon' was through my childhood love of Doctor Who, wherein fans would refer to anything that formed part of the 'official' narrative as 'The Canon'. Even now in Doctor Who fandom there are endless debates about whether something counts as canon or not. Many of these fans aren't even aware that the term has a far more academic meaning. 

Next, as a teenager, I realised that the term's etymology was partially linked to theology. Thinking about it in this way - that the Canon refers to the texts officially accepted by the Church (and this extends to canonized saints) - it helped me to make sense of why the term has come to be used in various other ways.

Then I learned about the Literary Canon, and the Western Canon; maddeningly elastic concepts that can seem as solid as marble or as slippery as an avalanche. And the canons go on... there's a canon for comics, a canon for film, a canon of short stories, one for poetry, one for music, and ones for art, philosophy, architecture, and on and on and on. If enough people think it's important then there might be a canon for it.

And let me be unequivocal here: there is no exact Western or Literary Canon. 

Isn't it fun? Exclusive? Exhausting?

I enjoy making lists. So I made a list to represent the Literary Canon (and one for comics, one for science fiction, one for film, etc.). As I've said above, there's no one, single, definitive Literary Canon (despite what anyone tells you), so this is a living meta-list, one that I continue to add to, and it so far represents information pulled from the following places:

• 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - a decent attempt at a collaborative canon that utilises contributions from approximately 100 academics and eminent literary critics. 
• The Bokklubben World Library - a master list of the '100 best books' compiled by the Norwegian Book Club in 2002. Created via proposals from 100 writers from 54 separate countries.
• Classic Chinese Novels - this refers to the 10 key novels within China's own literary canon.
• Guardian Top 100 - I included this because I like the literature stuff the Guardian puts out, and I wanted something a bit more popular included.
  
• Times Top 100 - for an American perspective. 
• Pulitzer - America's most prestigious literary prize.
• Miles Franklin - Australia's oldest and perhaps most academically-respected prize. Included here because I'm Australian.
  
• Booker Prize - one of the most well-known international prizes in English language literature. I've also included the shortlisted novels alongside the winners.
• Costa and Commonwealth - I've included these two major literary prizes just to try and broaden the list out a little with more recent titles.
• Asian Classics - a collation of a few titles considered to be part of the canon across the continent of Asia.
  
• Modern Library - a 100+ year old publishing initiative where a board of 'prominent thinkers' put together a Top 100 fiction novels.
• The Western Canon - Harold Bloom is probably the chief Canonist of the 20th century. His 'Western Canon' sought to pull together the definitive list of texts that have informed Western thinking. I've only included the novels and full length non-fiction texts from the list - I've opted to consider the poetry and plays as their own separate canons.

Some ground rules I established while sifting through these canons for the curating of this Literary Canon:

1. The focus is on novels and books. These are primarily fictional, though there are some crossover non-fiction novels that seemed to find their way onto some of the above lists, so I've included those too.
2. I've left out plays/drama, poetry, and opera - I feel like these could have their own lists, especially as they appear to be becoming increasingly niche as the decades and centuries go on. The only poetry that is the exception to this rule is when an author creates a long-form poem or narrative poem that exists as a singular book. 
3. There is the odd graphic novel that made its way onto some of the above lists (such as Watchmen) but I've chosen to leave this out as the Comics Canon is quite extensive and deserves to live as its own list. 
4. Some of the above lists include the occasional book series. In these cases I've broken each series up into the individual books.
5. There are not any individual short stories in this Literary Canon but there are some entire short story collections - I've included these to reflect wherever they've been mentioned by the above lists.
   
6. I have not added anything that I personally felt should be in there. That would defeat the purpose of researching the canon.
   

 Anyway... here's the list!

Using Schemas with Related Texts

The drive for senior NSW students to locate and select their own related texts has diminished somewhat since the days of Belonging and Discovery. The 2019 syllabus de-emphasised it across the entire Standard and Advanced curriculum, relegating it as a single Common Module element that doesn't require external assessment (meaning there is no requirement for students to recall their related text in the HSC exam... make of that what you will!) 

All that said, Extension English 1 still requires students to find some related texts for their elective module. In total, the elective module involves the study of three prescribed texts (selected from a pool of six) and two related texts - with students expected to (most likely) draw upon their knowledge of two prescribed and one related text for the HSC question. 

In a 1 hour exam context, it's quite a feat to be able to tie together that many texts and tailor a response to a previously unseen essay question.

I found myself grappling with this challenge when I first picked up an Extension class a few years ago, thinking to myself: 

How does one prepare Year 12 students to be adaptable while managing sophisticated and interlocking knowledge of that many texts?

A schema works. This is a way to guide students in pulling out specific textual examples from their texts. The examples are collected in connection to the module descriptor, which can be a highly effective way to organise thinking if the student is made to do it over and over again with in the following ways:

1. Use the schema with multiple texts at the same time in a single lesson
   
2. Use the schema with the same texts at different times throughout the year
   

My schema was developed for the Literary Homelands elective but versions could be easily made for any of the other electives. I was heavily influenced by Paul Kiem's excellent video on the Question 1 segment of the History Extension exam. I recommend watching it even if you have no connection at all to the teaching of History as it's a really valuable approach to teaching adaptable critical thinking and the synthesis of ideas at a more academic level. 

Download schema here.

Once students have used the schema a bunch of times they can then try out some paragraph or essay responses. I start them out with the instruction to come up with a thesis in response to the question (a whole other exercise) and then to tie this thesis to one of the themes in the schema. The notes the student has made on each of their texts (both prescribed and related) in relation to this specific theme can then be pulled from each schema to construct a single thematically-driven essay paragraph that ties together two, three or even four texts. 

It's not the only way to do things but my students found it helpful so maybe yours will too :)

Random Rules for Writing

NaNoWriMo

Late last year I threw myself into NaNoWriMo. If you're not aware, this stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a fun (fun?) exercise that favours quantity over quality. Madness, really, but for an English teacher it's a worthwhile activity. Have you ever encouraged students to use lightning writing strategies? I see it as being akin to that. 

This was my third attempt at NaNoWriMo. The first time, in about 2009, I barely wrote 2000 words before running out of steam. I spontaneously decided to write an Australian Gold Rush era novel about a bushranger who teams up with a Chinese miner to fight monsters. Then I realised that, without a plot or any substantial time for research, I was just punching words out into the dark, so I gave up. 

The second time was in 2016 and, perhaps learning from my mistakes, I opted to just journal about my memories. I got to about 25 000 words out of the required 50 000 word count. It was easier because I could approach things episodically and in a non-linear fashion. To be honest, I can't remember why I didn't get any further... it's most likely that I probably got too busy with work or just lost interest. 

In 2020 I was prompted by a friend to undertake the challenge again. Well! I managed about 30 000 words this time and then things got too busy again. I became a Head Teacher Teaching & Learning at a new school and filled in as relieving Head Teacher TAS/CAPA for Term 4 and, well, it was a tremendous experience and I had to put aside my NaNoWriMo project. Luckily, with not much doing in the holiday break before we go back, I've managed to get back to the novel and momentum has thankfully continued. 

Writing the Novel

In my life as an aspiring writer I've attempted to seriously write a novel two other times (outside of NaNoWriMo). The first one, which I undertook in my pre-teaching life, took me about ten years. By the time I had finished writing it my life had changed so much that I was no longer interested in it. I looked at it and decided that I appreciated the experience of putting it together but that it just wasn't me anymore. 

The second one was a much more ambitious attempt and remains unfinished - it fell by the wayside after I became a permanent teacher in 2014. I can see myself going back to it at some point but I'll no doubt completely rewrite what I've got. I had already switched from first person to third person while expanding my outline and I'm still unsure where I sit with the kind of narrative voice I want to use on this one. The world has also changed a lot since 2010 (when I started writing it) so there's that to think about too. 

Finding a Different Approach

So, for NaNoWriMo 2020, how was I going to manage writing an entire novel in a short space of time without boring myself? My first step was committing to a fictional novella. I've written a lot of sentences - in blogs, articles, textbooks, short stories, poetry - and I felt like I needed shake things up in my approach. So I came up with some random rules to stop myself from falling back on certain things. These were things that I either felt like I tended to rely on too much, or things that become roadblocks when I try to write. 

This is what I came up with:

• No direct speech. The only way I was to convey dialogue is through reported speech. 
• Each chapter reflects one day only.
• There can be no references made to the past. This includes referring back to anything that happened the day before. Each chapter only focuses on that one day.
• Maintaining a mixture of past/present tense to reflect the short distance of time between events portrayed and the subsequent writing of each journal entry. 
• Minimal reference to how the narrator is feeling about anything.
• Why have a compound sentence when two simple ones will do?
• Keep punctuation simplistic too. This means no hyphens, no ellipses, no brackets, and definitely no semi-colons!
  
• Each entry should make both direct and indirect references to the writing process employed by the narrator (rather than turning into a straightforward fictional narrative). 
• All of these rules are sacrosanct and must be stuck to for the entirety of the novel. They will never be broken. Except for the times when they are. 
  

I found that these rules became much more of a blessing than a restriction. I actually finished my first draft and I don't hate it :)

Writing in Response to the Literary Homelands Prescribed Texts

One of the challenges of the HSC Extension English syllabus is the idea that students need to analyse a broad selection of texts as part of their elective. The mandated amount of texts for study are as follows:

• Three of the Prescribed Texts (two of which must be 'extended print' texts - this means two drawn from the available novel, non-fiction text, drama, and short story suite options).
• Two related texts.
  

This means that, in response to the question given in the HSC Exam for the Elective, students will need to be able to ostensibly call upon detailed knowledge of up to five texts (though in reality, it's most likely to be two prescribed texts and one related). Putting aside any concerns we might have about the level of depth that this allows for in a single one-hour exam, students are required to have a holistic enough understanding of the studied texts to be able to achieve a synthesis of understanding in response to the Elective descriptor. 

So how do we teach this?

There are many roads to Rome, so to speak, but having just finished teaching the new syllabus for the second time I feel more ready now to share a particular approach after fine-tuning the way it works in action. 

This hinges on the use of a schema - download here.

1. Start with your normal way of approaching each text. Students should read, and re-read, and discuss, and analyse, and write about the texts in a variety of ways.
   
2. There then needs to be common identifiable threads that can be applied to all of the texts. This requires legwork from the teacher because students will not have read all of the texts until the end of the course. Part of this legwork has been done already in the Elective descriptor, and this is reflected in the schema. There is room on the schema for additional concepts to be drawn out from all of the combined texts that have been chosen for the students. As far as the Literary Homelands Elective goes, I've indicated a range of common concepts in the schema and left space for the class to come up with further ones throughout the duration of the course.
   
3. After each text has been studied, students look at the schema and connect their analysis to each concept (or half of the concepts - your mileage may vary). 
4. As you move through the course, students come back to this schema over and over again, using the concepts to discuss commonalities and differences, building up their meta-analysis of  Literary Homelands.

Eventually students internalise many of the concepts. They pick out their favourites and they start connecting quotes to a thesis they develop in response to each concept. They write paragraphs exploring their meta-analysis of each concept. 

And then you chuck some HSC-style questions at them and they practise rearranging their meta-analysis accordingly.

This schema approach could be easily adapted to each of the electives. You'll just need to examine the the Elective descriptor for your chosen Elective and use the indicated key concepts to fill in the schema accordingly. Once you've read the Prescribed Texts as the teacher, undertaken some professional learning, or read associated academic texts, you can then populate the schema further to suit the needs of the Elective.