Stripping back to the essence: Q&A with Lynn Davidson

Lynn Davidson has published four collections of poetry, most recently Common Land in 2012 by VUP. Her novel, Ghost Net, was published by Otago University Press; her short stories have been published widely and adapted for radio. I haven't met Lynn but it was a pleasure to work with such an astute writer, whose choice of language I found more potent with each reading of her short novella, The Desert Road.
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Image: Tamara Friedmann

Would you say a little about writing this short novella? — the time, place, and any anecdotes associated with them/it?

It took me a long time to find the right form for this story. Several years ago I wrote it as a novel but it never quite worked. I changed point of view and tense, I drew certain characters forward, slid others back, yet it never came right. But it never let me go either. Finally I made it work by stripping the story back to its essence. I wanted to write about a family who had grown up during the building of the Tongariro Power Development. I wanted to write about the Central Volcanic Plateau. And that was one thing that stayed in place for me through all of The Desert Road’s incarnations – the land as a central character. I’ve known the Desert Road all of my life and each time I drive over it I am excited by the land’s beauty, rawness and volatility. I was, and am, interested in how it is to live and work in such a dramatic landscape. I wondered how it was for the northern Italians who came out to do the tunnelling for the development; what they made of the place and what they brought to it.

The Central Plateau is spiritually and culturally significant land for Maori, particularly the three sacred peaks Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu. In 1887 Horonuku Te Heuheu, on behalf of his tribe Ngati Tuwharetoa, gave the three sacred mountains to the Crown in the hope that they would work together to protect and preserve the land forever. The gift initiated the creation of our first national park, the Tongariro National Park which is now a World Heritage site for both its cultural and its natural values. The land is powerful. It is among the most active land on earth. When I go there I feel both lost and found. How could I not write about it? 

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Are there writers whose work or way-of-being you draw/have drawn on for encouragement or inspiration?

There are so many novellas that have inspired me: Kirsty Gunn’s Rain and The Boy and the Sea, Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, The Dead by James Joyce, the Ballad of the Sad Café (and anything else) by Carson McCullers … the list goes on. A good novella is a gem; it shines with the compressed immediacy of poetry and a lively sense of passing on the most interesting news.

What are your current writing challenges? What is delighting you? And what's in the pipeline for you in 2014?

I recently spent two months in the UK, one month of that as a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle just outside of Edinburgh. To live in a castle with other writers was thrilling and inspiring. I was writing about islands; about returning to the Isle of Islay in Scotland after 27 years and about Kapiti Island. I wrote poems in the voice of Kapiti Island…that was fun. I’m currently immersed in a PhD in Creative Writing. My goal for 2014 is to complete a collection of poetry for my thesis and to keep remembering to write what most interests me no matter how singular or strange.

 Thanks, Lynn, and for the privilege and fun of publishing The Desert Road.