TONTS. - Toxic Masculinity with Tim Loveday

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Tim Loveday is a poet, a writer and editor. He writes primarily on masculinity, intergenerational violence and rural communities reckoning with climate collapse. Look out for his forthcoming book titled Your Father Was A Bastard. Tim is the recipient of a 2021 Next Chapter Wheeler Centre Fellowship, a 2021 Varuna Residential Fellowship, a 2022 Bundanon Residential Fellowship, 2022 Melbourne City Arts Grant, and a 2022 Writing Space Fellowship. His poetry/prose has appeared in Meanjin, Victorian Writers, The Griffith Review, Cordite, Mascara, The Big Issue, Meniscus, TEXT, Foam:e, and The Big Smoke; and is forthcoming in the Overland and The Suburban Review, among others. His spoken word has been featured on 3RRR and FBI Radio, and he has been a feature performer at Melbourne Spoken Word and at events throughout Victoria. His work has been shortlisted for numerous awards, and was highly commended in the Southern Cross Short Story Prize. A Neurodivergent dog parent, he the editor for The Creative Hub of Extinction Rebellion and IPEd’s former Student Adviser (Victoria Branch).Originally from rural NSW, Tim currently resides in North Melbourne, the traditional land of the Wurundjeri people, where he recently completed his studies in Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT. As an avid fan of the full stop, he’s afraid of sentences longer than 6 words; this bio is trying.For more from Tim head to:Instagram: @t.j.lovedayTwitter: @TimLovedaypoetWebsite: https://www.timloveday.com/You can find more from Claire Tonti at www.clairetonti.com or on instagram @clairetontiShow credits:Editing - RAW CollingsMusic - Avocado Junkie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak and write today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. Just before we get started, a trigger warning. In this episode, we talk about toxic masculinity and themes of domestic violence. If this brings anything up for you at all, please contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or speak to someone you trust. Hello, this is Tons, a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they

shape our lives. I'm your host, Claire Tonti, and I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I speak to writers, activists, experts, thinkers, and deeply feeling humans about their stories. And who's more deeply feeling than a poet? I don't think anyone. I really don't, actually. My guest this week is a really cool bloke called Tim Loveday.

Now, I met him at Dr. Neela's book launch again, just like where I met Astrid and he was actually one of her students. And I was immediately struck by his humor and his warmth and his really funny, interesting perspective on the world. When I got to know him more though, we snuck off later to have a wine and I realised that he writes on some really moving and complex themes, toxic masculinity, domestic violence, and living in rural communities where they're grappling with climate change. From Tim's work, I think it's really clear when you go to his site and read some of his poetry that he's lived through domestic violence himself and that his father plays a huge role in the work that he creates. I wanted you to listen to this poem

that he wrote that I found incredibly moving. So here's Tim's poetry. I'm going to read this one because we talk about it in the episode and I might butcher it, just saying right now, but it's only short. So I think it gives a really clear, empathetic perspective on what it must be like to be a kid living in a house where things are not always okay. The House My Father Said, written by Tim Loveday. In the days when my body was not big enough to penetrate the doors, I believed in love. Believed sleep was a still place in a darkness of limits. That love was a song we were learning to sing. That songs were hymns and silence was closing. That when the door shut, my father would not set my mother's skin on fire. That behind those doors love lived with the kindness of dreams.

But as those days strip like the velocity of broken wings, doors thin, skin pressed to the splinter and love, the stillness of drowning, tightens into a fist on the brass handle swing, I could be nothing then. But listen, meanness was unknowable. My oracle, a bay of milk pressed against a door on fire. Okay, so that gives you an idea of Tim's work and the beauty that is within his words. I wanted to tell you a little bit more about him before we get started. So he's a poet, but he's also a writer and editor and a self-professed clown lark who is a neurodivergent dog parent. Growing up in rural New South Wales, Tim currently resides in North Melbourne, where he recently completed his studies in professional writing and editing at RMIT. the recipient of a 2021 Next Chapter Wheeler Centre Fellowship, a 2021 Verona Residential Fellowship and a 2022 Melbourne City Arts Grant, among many other things. His work focuses primarily

on masculinity, intergenerational violence and rural communities reckoning with climate collapse. His poetry and prose has appeared in publications like Mean Gin, Victorian Writers, The Griffith Review and The Big Issue. And his spoken word has been featured on Triple R and FBI Radio. And he's been a feature performer at Melbourne Spoken Word and at events throughout Victoria. He was highly commended in the Southern Cross Short Story Prize. And you can find more of his work online. But let's get started. Let's get straight into it. Here is the wonderful Tim Loveday.

When you say the word patriarchy, right, like as a bloke, have you always grown up with an idea of men being superior? No, definitely not. I don't think I was, I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't aware of this sort of sociocultural structure that afforded me a thousand different privileges that women I wish I was that aware. My success would have skyrocketed by this point. No, I wasn't aware of this sort of stuff. I don't even think until my late teens I became particularly aware of these forces. And I think there's sort of, I guess, a balancing act in those things.

Like you are sort of aware of the privileges you have in particular situations, but you take them in your sort of youthful selfishness and don't question them and don't set out to undermine them. I think I became particularly sort of interested, I guess, and critical of this sort of stuff when I started to be, and honestly, selfishly, and I think this is a conversation that I had with other men who write in this space, is like, there should be more of a push towards recognising how these things deeply affect men, because selfishness

in sort of social discourse, for lack of a better sort of phrasing, is actually quite a powerful motivator. If you start to point out to men how these things like painfully affect them, they'll be more interested in engaging in them. Wow. What do you mean by painfully affecting them? I mean, you know, like I said, it's the first time I got my nails done. Yeah, Tim was telling me this great story yesterday.

You went into a nail salon. Yeah. What was that like that? It was just really, I don't know. It was just, it was really amazing actually. I think my friend has been doing my nails for probably the last few months and that's, you know, sort of me having this phoenix moment, I guess, in my life. And she does a really amazing job but she always goes and

gets her nails done professionally and I just started thinking about like well why haven't I ever done that why is this like a thing that's like something that's never occurred to me or been a problem in my life or something I just wouldn't do so I went with her for like the first time yesterday and we sat down with this booze and like you know I'm just amazed at the sort of machinery that's involved. You know, there's UV ray lighting systems. There's, you know, these amazing scalpels and these little chisels and all these things going on that I just don't understand so far beyond my brain matter. So I'm just astounded that all this technology exists

that I had no awareness of. Oh, mate, it's only the beginning. It's only the beginning. It's only the beginning. It's the whole world. I know. It's 100%. I hope so. I'm excited.

And, yeah, there's like a couple of other men came in with their partners while I'm getting this done and sort of being mesmerized by someone, you know, hacking away at my nails and repainting them. And just multiple, like, you know, women were, like, nudging their partners being like, hey, hey, you should go get your nails done. What are you doing? Why are you here with me?

And all these men were like, oh, no, no, no. And they're very jovial. They're like, oh, no, no, no, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. And I just thought it was sort of this, you know, this trigger point for these men or these women to have these conversations with their partners, I guess. It was sort of fascinating to me. But I was also sort of saying too that I gained some real insight into the sort of culture of women sort of without the male gaze existing because these places are acutely safe. You know, they're spaces in which women have historically occupied and continue to occupy. And the only times, like I said, the only times I sort of have ever been privy to women talking

in very intimate terms about their partners is when female friends have come to me, talked to me about stuff or, you know, in passing at a pub and suddenly I sort of, and you never get like a full conversation and suddenly I'm sitting next to multiple women hearing them talk like very intimately about their boyfriends and what big dickheads they are. It's really fascinating to me, I guess. It's a whole new world.

Yeah. What's fascinating about it? I guess it was sort of a feeling of privilege in itself, you know, feeling like you're in this space and you're so harmless that you just sort of disappear. And that's, you know, maybe that's the conditions of having sort of a hyper vulnerability in this space. You know, this is not a space men go into. Men don't go into salons. They don't have their nails done. I'm suddenly a man in

this space having mine done. And I can say that in saying, like, I left my arm. I got some, like, fake tattoos at a store down the stairs in this shopping complex and I left them there. I was like, oh, I can't leave my fake tattoos. I've got to get my nice dragon put on my arm. So I went back to get them. And this younger woman, she's probably about 18, she just, she sort of looked at me as I came in and she wasn't there when I was originally in the salon. And she sort of looked at me and she had this like take back moment, like, oh, well. And then she looked down and saw my nails and, you know, my nails at the moment, it's are matte black and I've got a signature nail, one of them's gold.

I've been calling them my grills and my hands. They look and they're very shiny. Yeah, they're incredibly shiny. They're really great. And she sort of looked at my nails and she went from sort of like taken aback to looking at my nails to suddenly be like, oh, yeah, that makes sense to me and sort of smiling to myself with a sort of delight.

And I think, you know, there is a sort of, I guess for lack of a better expression, and this is not a self-pumped, you know, but this hyper-vulnerability when men engage in classically sort of feminine activities. And when we do, I guess we're perceived to put down our guard and so we just sort of blend into the background. We become a non-threat. Yeah.

And I find that sort of, you know, verbalising it now as sort of a realisation for me, I suppose. It's a realisation for me too, actually. I'd never thought about that before. Yeah. But that's so true. Something as simple as someone with their nails painted, it kind of

symbolizes something about them that them i guess and this might not be true but more open more feminine in some ways safer maybe creative as a bloke with their nails painted so yeah i would i would say i would put my guard down more then. You sort of think, oh, there's someone to talk to you and that's fine and cool and interesting. And also interesting because it's self-expression, right? And I sometimes feel sad for men because I feel like there's all these avenues for self-expression that are so socially acceptable for women to do, clothes-wise, beauty-wise, like getting your nails done.

I mean, guys walk around with the most disgusting nails. Like really, come on, grow. And how nice is it to sit and have them be cared for and to care for yourself in that way? Yeah, 100%. I think so much self-care practice for obvious reasons on a sort of capitalist level and patriarchy level is guys towards women and they're the you know traditionally owned spaces by women um well actually i think realistically

on a capital level they're owned by men and they're pushed on to women correct yeah break their self-esteem down so they need it yeah yeah but yeah like self-care practice uh is is is so feminine in so many ways and that sort of relationship to creativity, there isn't a whole lot of space in which men are actively sort of encouraged into those conversations or into those spaces or they want. I remember years ago, I might be pronouncing a name wrong and I apologise, Naruki Gori, the Indigenous activist, writer, et cetera, amazing human being.

They were on Q&A on ABC and they started talking about how their brother had just bought a scented candle and it was just this revelation for them, just a revelation that you could own a scented candle and it might make your space smell nice, which is just so terrifying. It must be so terrifying for a man. It doesn't smell like shit in here. Where the fuck am I?

This isn't my house. You know, I just find that really funny and actually very true because I've been with men who are sort of trying to come into their own in terms of breaking down gender barriers. And one of their first steps is go out and buy a scented candle, which is a slight of so-and-so, and go and buy the shittest, cheapest scented candle that came out. God, I hate those two.

Like apple cinnamon. Yeah. It's like the scented candle equivalent of like Link's chocolate. Yes. It so is. That's so true. I know. It's a whole world, the scented candle aromas. I'm very much an essential oils kind of person. Don't like any of the synthetic fragrances.

Anyway, yeah, you really deep dive into it and you got to get it right. Yeah, you do have to get it right. It's very important. And that is actually something really interesting, like scent and smell and all that stuff can really change the way we feel about ourselves. Yeah. And the way we, you know, perceive the world in some ways too, it can change our mood. Yeah, it's just so sad that we've got this culture that men feel like all of that stuff doesn't belong to them. Yeah. I wanted to ask you now, just going back to your story, where did the writing come from?

Like, why do you write? It's interesting. I've been thinking about this so much lately and I think I've been thinking about it for a long time, you know. It's the nature of the work is you spend so much time justifying its existence and justifying its history, I suppose. And I think I've always sort of written from my earliest memories. You know, my mum has these boxes and boxes full of old books

and stories I've written, you know, like 120-page that I hand wrote myself, you know, sitting on the steps in the, you know, the library when I was in primary school and these picture books I drew when I was like four years old. And so I've always, always sort of written and always, always engaged in that space. But I'm curious more largely as to why I was doing that in the first place. And I think in one way, you know, storytelling was a sort of way of escape. It was a way of sort of constructing another reality. And it was a way of sort of, yeah, building another world in which I could jump into. And I've written a lot in my book about this sort of history of my family and the history

of a bunch of different things in that space. And not to really specifically go into that, but I think I wanted sort of, I guess, a bit of an escape from what was going on in my immediate world and how I felt about my body and my family and my town and everything under the sun. So I just sort of wrote and wrote and wrote. And then when I was sort of a teenager, I stopped writing and I'm not really sure why. Maybe that was a bit of socialisation. You get a bit older and, you know, you grow up in a country town, you're a boy, you're expected to go and play footy, although I was real shit at that.

I got that sense. Horribly shit. Yeah. Imagine if I was good, I would have lived a different life. I wouldn't have written the article about footy being really jittery if you'd been really good at it. Actually, there's a really great lighted flea bag that I'm thinking well, if you'd write to that, I wouldn't be so feminist

if I had bigger boobs. And I often resonate with that. I think, yeah, that might have made sense. Yeah. So because you grew up right in rural New South Wales. Yeah. Can you paint us a picture of your hometown? What was that like back then?

I mean, in framing it today, what I would describe my hometown as like the sort of coffee central of the universe. You know, there's too many cafes in every single corner. I think it's sort of going through its Paris phase. That's not what I expected you to say. So we're back in the 80s, 80s and 90s? No, I was born in 91, so I grew up mostly in the sort of 90s, early 2000s. But back in the day, and it still has these existing problems,

is, you know, my hometown, it was based on sort of the founding elements, the founding structures are a military base and then an Indigenous mission. And, you know, obviously those two things on a cultural level are really going to clash. And also it's, you know, at that period, one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country had one of the highest rates of street violence. It had a huge rate in terms of teens' pregnancy, et cetera, et cetera. And I guess my perception of it was always, it rough as guts it was sort of it was terrifying you've sort of had this expectation when you used to go to parties and I'm not saying

this is specific to sort of country towns or regional towns even but you had this expectation when you'll go to parties that you know some someone was going to get bashed that you might be the one getting bashed that that was just sort of normalized and almost to the point where you like you drink yourself silly just so if you get hit it doesn't hurt as much. And I remember sort of thinking that. I remember, like, you know, when I was about 16 getting absolute crap kicked out of me by a bunch of kids and, like, having, you know,

very conscious thought for days after, like, oh, I'm happy I was so pissed because otherwise that would have really hurt. Really good. But there was a real, and, you know, I'm hesitant to say this because I'm evidently a white guy, but there was a real race division, I think, where I grew up. And that was, you know, it was built on the background of really ugly race relations in the town and the sort of history

of the political and social persecution of Indigenous populations or First Nations populations in the area is really, really abhorrent. So there was sort of tension between the black and the white kids in town. And I remember sort of writing about that years ago, thinking about that years ago, and talking to one of my friends, Steph, who's First Nations, her saying, when we grew up, you knew you were

black, like you just knew. And, and I, and, you know, I think it took me until I left that town to become sort of acutely aware of that, that sort of tension existed as a sort of frustration in me that now I would probably recognize as a form of racism. I, it wasn't, it was sort of habituated that it was us against them. I was sort of, yeah. And I think about, and, you know, and there was a lot of, there was a lot of other stuff going on there. I think teen violence and teen sort of gangs were very normal. And at one point that area was known as sort of the pill press capital of the East Coast of Australia. So it was manufacturing a lot of methamphetamines to be moved

up and down the coast. And, you know, I had friends growing up who ended up doing, you know, long prison stints. Fortunately, sort of my close group of friends were relatively clever and nerdy kids. So we sort of dipped our toes in but never got too involved. But, yeah, it was strange now because I think I wouldn't be okay engaging in the sort of this constant prevalence or constant fear of violence that was very normalized for me

growing up there, you know, going out. And those things sadly also sort of existed in my home. So I think I'm curious at the idea that everything's, that I feel very safe now. Yeah. You're curious about it. I'm curious. Yeah. I'm curious, yeah, I'm curious at the, that's probably a 10-hour conversation with my psychologist, but, you know, and I'm sure we've covered it before, but I guess I'm curious, or sometimes maybe curious is the right word, sometimes I feel, I guess, slightly unsettled by the level of sort of social comfort I have now, and there's a lot of sort of security I have now.

Sometimes I think everything is just going to sort of crash and burn around me. Yeah, because you grew up in a place that wasn't like that and you kind of didn't even know at that time how unsafe. Yeah, I just think I thought it was normal. And you sort of carry those things with you throughout your life and you don't ever quite throw off the shadow of all of them, I guess. Yeah, when we're kids we just grow up in the world we're in, right?

We don't see anything different so we don't think there's any different way of being. Yeah. I think I was sort of aware that other people lived in different circumstances and that I had a very idealistic impression of sort of city life, I suppose. Like Jerry Seinfeld walking around sitting in timers. Yeah, pretty much. I remember being so enthralled by like a mall. It's one of our greatest places in the world.

Now I had to go to one yesterday to do my nails and I went and got my second ear pierced. It was sort of a day of self-care I guess and just I was like I don't want to be here this place sucks and then I had this flashback to when I was like 10 years old and my grandma would take me to Warringah Mall and every time I say Warringah Mall my grandma says Warringah Mall so like I have to literally force my tongue into the right shape to stop it from going, Moringa, meow. Moringa Mall.

You know, we'd go to Moringa Mall and I'd just be so enthralled. I'd catch the elevator up and down and I'd wander through the aisles and I'd look at everything under the sun and, you know, I remember spending like half a day deciding whether I should buy suspenders. I was a 10-year-old boy. I don't know what I needed, suspenders. I love that little team. Oh, my God, what a cute team. Yeah. They know what I needed, suspenders. I love that little team. Oh, my God. What a cute team. Yeah.

They're like the high fashion suspenders. Oh, I know. Oh, still are. Exactly. Good to bring them back. That's my next step. Yes, exactly. I love it.

It's toxic masculinity and suspenders. That's it. That's it. Absolutely. So you said you touched on home, and I know you've written a lot about domestic violence and being a child of domestic violence. Yeah. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that story? I know that's a big thing to ask on a Monday morning.

You're all good. I've got a coffee in front of me so I'm feeling okay about it. Yeah, I think, you know, domestic violence and domestic abuse, like anyone who write in the space, takes on a thousand different forms and like you said before, when things are sort of normal to you growing up, you don't question them and you don't sort of challenge them mentally. It sort of is what it is. But yeah, to be absolutely frank with you, my father's violence growing up, like most domestic violence perpetrators, was inconsistent and sort of all over the place. But we existed in a sort of a world

in which we walked on eggshells all the time and we had to shape our behavior around his mood. And when he wasn't happy, that was very damn obvious. When he was angry, that occupied a whole house. I was always, I guess, fortunately very close to my mum and she took the brunt of that anger and that frustration and I think when I think about a lot of this stuff and I think about my dad specifically, I think here was a man and here is a man who's deeply insecure and feels deeply, for lack of a better word, unsafe in his own masculinity or his own sense of self or his own sense of self-worth.

And he sort of took that out on the family. He projected that. So when money was tight, it was our fault. When, you know, he felt like he was denied power in his interpersonal relationships or his relationships with us or his job or the world. He took that out on us. And, you know, he's of a very particular generation, one that is still sort of bleeding into the present obviously,

but you sort of always kept those things shrouded and they were always sort of a huge source of shame. We weren't supposed to talk about these things, you know. You don't talk about these things publicly and they continue to exist in that sort of language. So I guess for me writing about it and thinking about it a lot and talking about it publicly whilst in some ways being a new frontier is also something I've consistently done.

And it's sort of my fuck you to this sort of culture of shame, I guess. Yeah. And in a way that I could talk all day about the uncomfortableness of being in those spaces too and talking about these things publicly. Yeah. Sorry. No, thank you. Thank you for sharing.

No, no, no. Yeah, I think what you said about shame and talking about it, it's exactly what it needs to breathe and for us to change things, right? It's the only way is to really shine a light in those places that no one wants to look in. Yeah. Because in a way that's a way of healing, right, for yourself as well. What's your mum like?

Because you're really close with her. Yeah, my mum's a bloody delight. She's funny and quirky and awkward and sort of off-key. She still feels like someone's sort of trying to find their feet in the world. But she's a really good human being. And she's been incredibly supportive of me and kind to me and gone out of her way to be a good mum. I don't think, unfortunately, that has been sort of systemically appreciated.

And I've certainly been a shitty son multiple times in my life and been unappreciated of her level of care. But I also think, and I'm going to preference this in saying that like, you know, in domestic violence discourse and in spaces where we see women as oppressed in any real sense, we also tend to deeply infantilize them. And my mom is by no means a saint, similar to me in ways can be stubborn as hell. Is she where you get your creativity from, like your spark, the writing, the words, or does that come from somewhere else? It's a good question.

I don't really know where the writing came from in the family. My older brother who I sort of lived I guess in a lot in the shadow of when I was growing up, he's very intelligent. He's a doctor in psychology and I've sort of always, I guess, in ways wanted to emulate him even when he was doing the dorkiest things in the world, like dressing up like a Matrix character when he was 17. I just like having flashbacks to go on a Lowe's with him to buy like a trench coat. Those long ankle ones.

Yeah. Yeah, that was a real vibe. Yeah, it was very real. And I just, I wish I could be my age and just sort of transport myself into my childhood body and just be like don't do that Tom this is not going to be good for you back away from the coat yeah you will regret this um but I can't so now I've lived in the shadow of wanting to emulate someone who's dressing up like Neo but he he used to write quite a bit, I guess, growing up, and he mostly wanted to write, you know, from what I can understand, Matthew Reilly style stuff, which is not even remotely in my space. But maybe some of the creativity, I guess, did sort of come from my

mum. I feel like in ways my mum never got to sort of fully embody her creative and intellectual presence. She never got to sort of live the life that I feel like she should have. She's quite a clever person but I think feels insecure about her cleverness and her humour. I think she's really funny, I guess is what I'm saying. I think she's fucking funny and, like, she's not quite as aware of how funny she is. That must be where you get it from then.

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I would hope so. God, I would like that. It must be where you get it from then. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I would hope so. God, I would like that. That would be nice. Yeah. That's probably how genetics works.

That's probably a fair chance that's how it works, Tim. I'm just going to let you know. It doesn't fall off the ground. I thought I just, yeah, I thought I ate some soil one day in the backyard and suddenly I was just a poet mastermind. Correct. Yeah, exactly. All right, so you have so many beautiful poems

and incredibly moving and incredibly raw. Yeah. I love The House My Father Said. Yeah. Where did that come from? When did you write that? I wrote that during lockdown 2.3, let's say. A million, thousands. A billion of them, one of them, somewhere in the midst of 2020, I would say. Yeah, 2020. Where did it come from?

That's a good question. I think I said recently in another interview that like my approach to writing poems is Billy Collins is an American poet. And I'm not the biggest fan of his work, but I like some of the quotes he has sort of about poetry. He's a very famous American poet. And I'm not the biggest fan of his work, but I like some of the quotes he has sort of about poetry. He's a very famous American poet and he says, you know, I just try and write one line and then I try and write another good line after the first good line. And I have to try and approach poetry like that, which is a really, when it comes to craft and having to get things out

and meeting deadlines, not the best way to write because people are like, hey, man, you've only written two good lines here and you're still stuck on those. So I guess that poem came from me thinking, I guess, more broadly about fear and my relationship with intimacy and relationships and thinking how I'd sort of formed self in relationship to my intimacy and my intimacy with other people. And yeah, I think I just sort of sat there and it came out. I'm like very hesitant also to use the framing of sort of romantic, well, some idea of lightning strikes, I guess, because I think it's a very European sensibility and I'm much more of a sort of Australian when it comes to my writing practices.

You're like, you sit down and you just write and you write and you write and you write until you write something good and usually it's not good and then you have to rewrite it and you do it that 10,000 times until it's good. And I also don't really sort of believe in lightning very rarely strikes. I think almost all of the best work I've ever written is the product of sitting there for eight hours straight.

You have to treat it like work because at some point or another, especially when you go beyond it just being art or craft and it goes into transitions into income and, you know, yeah. So it needs to be technical and you're basing it around what you've studied as well because you studied writing, right? Yeah, yeah, you study in a sort of conceptual way. I mean you sort of apply the conceptual ideas but I also think you have to have a sort of worker mindset about it.

It's not just sort of waking up and being like, oh, if I throw the blue paint on the canvas it'll look beautiful. You know, I didn't wake up from dreams at 4am and be like, oh, I've got a whole poem formed in my head. Yeah. You know. But do you think it does, like for this poem in particular, it's quite short, it's so powerful.

Yeah. The way you talk about the door even and how it sort of almost becomes thinner, do you feel like that kind of came out though in more fully formed or did you labor over every word and you know oh i definitely labored over every word i think ease in writing is the product of struggle which is like and you you know like you know when something is easy to read or it sounds lyrical, it flows in a very particular way, I think quite often that's the product of a writer sitting there

and being like, you know, almost constipated with like, oh, I've got to get this out and just doing it over and over and over again because the easiest things to read are the hardest things to write, I guess. That's like the duck on the water. So the duck's sailing along and underneath there's a rider just paddling madly but everyone's just seeing the swan or whatever on the top.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that kind of artistry. Yeah, it's a good metaphor too because I often feel like I'm drowning and someone should hand me a straw so I can get some oxygen. I'm glad I'm not the only one. That's how I live my whole life. Yeah. Just constantly like struggling along and then being like,

hi, everyone, I'm here. It's fine. It's fine. I'm not completely internally dying. I'm great. I'm great. It's really fine. You're doing fantastic.

I'm impressed. It looks all right. All I see is the duck. Yeah, excellent. The same to you. That's great. You ride at the end of the rail. So that's so atmospheric in so many ways.

What is that poem to you in your life? Where did that – is that because you grew up right next to the railways? Did your dad work in the railways? Is that – Yes, yeah. So growing up, my dad was a shunter on the railways, and I used to go with him quite early in the mornings to shunt, for lack of a better word.

What is that? What is shunting? Shunting, I think. It sounds really inappropriate. It's perhaps a profession that has happily died. It is essentially connecting the different caverns of the trains together and then directing them into the different bays in train stations. Or I don't even have the word for it, the place where they home the trains. I think Thomas the Tank Engine late at night them having their chats.

Yeah, I used to go with him quite early in the morning, 4 or 5am for ethanol deposits that were coming in because the town I live in, there's a huge ethanol processing plant, and he would direct the trains in. I'd go and sit in the cabins with the old blokes who, you know, literally crossed the country in these trains, did 24-hour shifts plus. And I think those are like very pertinent memories of my childhood to me. They're some of the earliest memories I have and ones that are now I have a really strange relationship with, I think. And that's what I've tried to capture very specifically in that poem because I think

when I think about my relationship with those memories, obviously they're deep and nostalgic, but they're also sort of this corrosive nostalgia, I guess, because in reality it was mineral processing, which has a really dark history in terms of, you know, what's happening. In the world. In the world. Just like the impending apocalypse. Exactly. It was the impending apocalypse.

So my nostalgia is framed by, you know, the precursors to the apocalypse, which is interesting in itself. Totally. And so I sort of tried to capture that. But then also it was this intense bonding experience with my dad and this bonding experience with men and my first sort of habituations of sort of masculine culture and my first kind of insights into that sort of hyper-masculine men. And also it's not just the sort of pending apocalypse. Mineral processing in Australia is a particularly dark history because it's also relational

to, you know, the active oppression and persecution of First Nations peoples and, you know, stealing their land and stealing their resources. And so I guess that's sort of what the poem is trying to grasp at and deal with and process. And that poem itself at the end of the rail is the opening to my book, Your Father Was a Bastard. And it in itself is sort of thematically trying to grasp at multiple different threads that sort of carry out through the book and look at, I guess, look at how we've invisibilised history. You know, the closing line is we've learnt distance in this

country, we've learnt to never look back. And I think that's how I sort of think about rail systems and I think about the history of Australia. We're so obsessed with this sort of forward movement that we've become, we've invisibilised this really ugly past. And I think there's so much of that language and so much of that that carries through, you know, violent occupation in its myriad of forms in Australia. And so do you see a connection between that violence

on a national level and a violence in your home? Yeah, 100%. And that's like we were talking about before I was in a child. You mean like, oh, I see the connections. I see the connections. You know, I think the connections are sometimes very clear, sometimes they're very loose. I think that poem in itself is sort of a reckoning

or a coming towards, it's a movement towards some larger idea. But yes, I certainly see these relationships. And another poem of mine, which is called Mowing, I talk about the idea of sort of farming practice and my father's relationship with his land and this idea of sort of fortune, destiny and occupying land and controlling land and t idea of sort of fortune, destiny and occupying land and controlling land and

taming it. And the sort of relationship of that sort of land violence and then domestic violence. And I think those things exist on a national scale. We have a, I think our political discourses and how we engage with land on a national level is in a very white frame, is very hyper-masculine and hyper-violent. I think the mythology behind it, this legendary status about the sort of idea of man conquering land, and I think that's sort of bled through our whole social discourse.

It's ownership and control as well, isn't it? Yeah. It's this idea that as well, isn't it? Yeah. It's this idea that you can own this land that actually is your mother, is actually you're so reliant on, but you can also own it and control it and nature can't be controlled. Yeah. As we're seeing on so many different levels. And that undermines then so much of, I think, particularly male identity.

And I wonder whether some of that violence comes from that too, that grappling almost unconsciously with this idea or the story they've been told that they're the top of the chain and actually we're all part of all of it. And how do you cope with that as a human? You act out, become violent? I don't know. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

I mean, very sadly what you often see in domestic violence situations is that when women set out, you know, typically women, when women set out to reclaim power, you'll see sort of violent reactionism. And you see that, sadly, on like an individual level, but on a larger social level in the fact that, you know, since the advent of Me Too, you've seen a mass rise in incel culture. This is the response to sort of people reclaiming power and, you know, and connecting those two threads when the land sort of enacts or empowers

itself. When the land fights back after, you know, being hurt for a long time, the conversations around that and the media around that tends to be very centred on this hyper-masculine narrative of stoicism and bravery and resilience and et cetera, et cetera. And I've started writing quite a lot about that and thinking a lot about that because this idea is so ridiculous. I think on a language level, there is no difference in my mind between the idea of stoicism and resilience. And yet we somehow have sort of transitioned,

particularly in fire discourse, in the relationship between fire discourse and men in rural towns sort of surviving fires, because obviously that was a hugely sort of pertinent thing in 2019, 2020, and obviously times before. But the whole conversation about this idea of, it's no longer sort of stoicism, it's now suddenly resilience.

It's, you know, these communities have to be resilient and they have to hold themselves together and they need to, you know, band together and stick together and be strong, you know. There's absolutely no difference in my mind between that and sort of, it's just sort of a... Like the stiff upper lip thing? Yeah. It's the same thing?

It's just, yeah, it's just sort of a, it's sort of just a, like a stoicism 2.0, I guess. Yeah. This reframing of it to make it seem politically more progressive. And I say this and obviously this is a big sort of jump from what we're talking about, but in 2020, Shane Fitzsimmons, who's the former RFS chief fire commissioner, did a welcome for Australia Day. And he started talking about this idea of resilience.

And they'd started this task group called Resilience, which was kind of a community response to rebuilding communities that have been drastically sort of devastated by fires. And he, in this speech, had talked about men communicating to each other in the shadow of climate disaster and in the shadow of fires and how men need to speak to each other and how they're falling apart. But what really frustrated me at the time was everyone was patting him on the back. Everyone in mainstream media really wanted to, you know, oh, my God, it's a man talking about men needing to talk. Wow. It's revolutionary though, Tim. It's so revolutionary. It's, like I said, it's a whole new world.

Exactly. Candles talking. God, nails. What's next? The crumbling of society. Yeah, 100%. Could I just, like, frame all this all this by saying like I'm a small piece in the puzzle.

Like, you know, my perspective is incredibly limited. I'm not the be all and end all source of information on this, on masculinity or the conversations around masculinity. I just feel like I'm some of a bit player and I have my perspectives and my thoughts on things. But I do find it really frustrating to me in men talking about toxic masculinity or talking about the cultured nature of masculinity, sort of presenting themselves as the absolute authority on these issues. And I'm very distant. I want to distance myself from that. I'm not the absolute authority. I offer one perspective and I think we need thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of men to stand

up and start to have these conversations. And sorry, in the shame fit Simmons, he basically said, and he got a pat on the back and everyone was sort of saying, you know, you're, you're, you're an absolute authority on men. Now that you've told other men, they should talk to each other. You know, he, he, he basically said that men should talk to each other. But in doing so, he was talking about communities and their response to fires. And he started using all these cowboy trips, you know, fall off a horse, you get on another one, like he might as well have referred to a 10 gallon hat or whatever they are. And I just thought it was, I thought there's a huge disconnect in terms of the

the language he was using and the ideas he was presenting and he was he was trying to reframe the idea of resilience he basically said at the heart of communities there's resilience and i've seen it time and time again which is all well and good but sometimes i think we need this and i've written a little bits and pieces about this sometimes i think in in in this is we need this, and I've written a little bits and pieces about this, sometimes I think in this is we need to accept the idea that men are incredibly fallible and they can fall apart. And we should stop promoting this discourse where men have to hold it together. And you can't just suddenly say, well, like on one hand, men should talk and they should be able to talk about their weakness and how they're feeling like they're falling apart. And then on the other hand say, well, you know,

at the heart of community men are being really resilient because those things are, they're butting heads. And it's not, in my mind, it's not a fully formed worldview or a fully formed view of what men could be or how you can actually help them. I think you have to accept the idea that, like, in horribly devastating circumstances, like, people and men in particular in this case shouldn't just be sort of accepted to pull themselves together,

pull themselves up by the bootstraps, that they should be given space to fall apart because their lives are falling apart. Completely, Tim. Completely. Because actually sitting in pain is the only way through pain. Yeah. Like really sitting in it, right? And I think that's a truth that this resilience narrative,

and I hadn't thought about that before, is not giving us. Because, yeah, you can't heal until you've fully felt it all. If you repress it, which is I guess what you're talking about, right, resilience, jumping back on the horse, it's repressing it all and then that pain has to turn into something, right, and go somewhere if you haven't kind of acknowledged it. It's like that analogy is so obvious and I'm telling this to a poet. I'm so aware of my words at the moment. Anyway, I'll just keep barreling through. But, you know, like a seed, it falls apart, right?

Before the tree kind of grows and it becomes this really incredibly strong, amazing thing. But we have to let it fall apart completely. And when, if you just saw the seed falling apart, you think, well, that's really fucked. It's done fucked it's done it's done for you know because it looks broken and I feel women often and this is a big generalization and I'm talking about women in terms of and people with you know wombs as well who give birth women have all that pain built in we like fall apart essentially Our entire bodies often our very being falls apart to give birth. But then over time, motherhood can be incredibly challenging and shit, but you grow through it. When we allow women to grow through that pain and let that pain teach them, they become so much stronger and wiser and have so much depth from that. And I think, I hope that kind of what I'm saying kind of resonates with what you're saying. Because I do feel that it's

really dangerous to think like in two weeks, right, your home's burnt down, but in two weeks, we'll rebuild it or in a year, we'll rebuild it. And then that's fine now you're fine you know we need to allow men that space and time to heal and i think women have overall are when we're used to having to talk through pain constantly because our lives are often very hard so we've got these social networks you know of discussion and talk over thousands of years of what we need to do to work through all those emotions and i'm hoping there's a new way of being that we can show men in those situations. Yeah.

I don't know. It's interesting you're sort of talking about women having the space to talk about pain or being cultured and talk about pain a lot as a consequence of their experiences. And I'm having a flashback to, I drove through a place called Narragah, which is rural New South Wales, sort of East Coast, massive valley got absolutely destroyed by fires and then floods. And I was driving backwards and forwards. It was just before I moved to Melbourne and I was driving backwards and forwards,

shipping things from New South Wales to here. And I stopped in at the pub one day and we're just sort of sitting there having a beer and making notes in my book and thinking about things. And I overheard these conversations and it was, you know, it's about a month after the fires had come through. And then two weeks after fires had come through, massive floods had come through the region, absolutely devastated the entire community. And, you know, very few things other than the main street had survived. And I just remember seeing, you know, these men, they're probably 50s to 70s, talking about a fundraiser for the local community and talking about this fire trail that they

were going to ride down and do this whole community endeavor thing. And thinking to myself, like, these men sound like they're learning to communicate to each other again. Like, it's, you know, there's this huge distance or this huge gulf that has existed in sort of fire discourse and like their experiences of the fire intimately and now they're having to learn how to talk to each other again. And all of their conversation now, you know, I was in the pub for about

an hour and a half listening to a lot of this and I was thinking all of this conversation is centred on like rebuilding, getting on with the job, like moving forward, fundraising so it can fix things, and none of it was about how badly these circumstances had affected their lives. Despite sensing it in the way they talked and in their ways of kind of engaging with one another, because like I said, it was like there was a distance between them

because of these horrendous experiences. It was like there was this whole, it was like the elephant in the room, this space that existed between them that none of them could name. And I find that really sort of curious. Curious, once again, not the right word. Yeah, but interesting and kind of devastating in some ways. Yeah. It's about having the lexicon, right, like the language to talk about emotion and pain and what you've been through.

And for whatever reason, women, not all women, but we're often very good at that because that's how you get through it by going here is all my stuff. Can you look at it and tell me if it's normal or are you feeling it too? And then when you both bring your stuff and have a look at it, you realize you're not alone in feeling the way you are and that can bring you forward. And often women have done so much in their friendships

before something terrible happens. Like, for instance, a friend of mine recently had a mastectomy and it was such a shock. She's really healthy, had no idea that she would even, she'd had breast cancer at all. And we're really lucky it was picked a shock. She's really healthy, had no idea that she would even, she'd had breast cancer at all. And we're really lucky it was picked up really early, but she had to make that decision. But watching the community of women, all the WhatsApp groups we've got, all the like different ways that women showed up for her, you know, bringing the food, someone else was driving

her around, like driving Miss Daisy, cause she couldn't leave the house otherwise but she wanted to see some hills you know just like and then they had someone else had like a food roster going and then their kids and her husband you know women are talking about how what he might need and or maybe i'll connect him with one of my husband's friends or who's been through something similar and they should go and have a chat and have a beer because you know they need to talk about it and i don't think they even know they need to. You know, all of this infrastructure that exists and how beautiful, you know, and there is no reason why men can't also have that, I don't think.

Yeah, 100% agree with you. And I think obviously as we were talking about before me going to the salon yesterday and even the way I say salon I love it I went to the salon I think I'm just self-aggrandizing yeah I think men men do have a obviously do have a sort of separate infrastructure in terms of how they engage socially and culturally, but one of those things is that so much of that is centred on physicality or work, et cetera, and those things deteriorate as you get older because your bodies change

and your priorities change and you realistically, I think everyone in a lot of ways, becomes more domestic, you know. You go out less. You are less interested in socialising with your work friends. You're less interested in you have kids. The whole dynamics of things shift. And women, my perception is at least that women are much more adaptable at creating the infrastructure as time goes on,

whereas men are very set in their ways about what constitutes appropriate kind of social engagement, collective social engagement for men. You know, it's footy-centred or it's, you know, it's at the pub. We sit down, we have a ski together, you know. It's, you know, after work drinks. It's not brunch or a walk. It's not brunch. It's not a walk.

Yoga? Yeah, how often do you see two men walking in the park together? It's a rarity, which is just odd. And I think I'm as susceptible as anyone else. The first thing that if a mate of mine asked me if I want to do something, the first thing I suggest is let's go get a beer together because it's just so cultured. But those things

shift as you get older and you can't do them as much. And women have much better skills or are taught better skills in terms of working around. And men, as we know, sort of progressively lose their social circles as they get older. I think, I'm not going to quote any specific stats, but I think my understanding is that women's actual social circles tend to increase as they get older. I think, you know, I'm not going to quote any specific stats, but I think my understanding is that women's actual social circles tend to increase as they get older, and it's particularly after they have kids, whereas men's tend to diminish. And I think about my own dad in that sense. You know, he always had one, maybe two friends,

a very sort of socially isolated person. And I don't think, I think friends offer so much, like, you know, good social circles offer you so much. But one of the big things they offer you is, and this is, there have to be positive social circles, which is difficult for men to manifest, unfortunately. But, you know, positive social circles question your individual behavior and they challenge you to be a better person and they challenge you to grow. And, yeah, I wonder if men had better social circles as they got older and they had critical social circles, you know. They were safe places in which men were willing

to question their behaviour of one another, whether that would have a real serious impact on men's behaviour or problems, for lack of a better phrase. Because men, you know, as they get older, they become progressively more isolated and sort of feeds into the narrative. And I often jokingly say, like, oh, I'm a lone Cadillac sailing into the sunset because I just think men have such a glorified sense

of this sort of individuality in their... They don't need anyone else. The independence, you know, yeah, I'm going to go build a fort in the woods and fish for trout. Oh, God, that seems exhausting. It sounds so tiring. I know, exactly. I'd much rather go join a book club.

Oh, 100%. I've started ocean swimming with my friends and I can tell it's just, it's going to be a thing I'm going to do into my 80s. I'm loving it. Interestingly enough, one of my best friends in the world is my old English teacher. I think she's 69. I'm sorry, Judy, if I get this wrong.

Awkward. Judy ocean swims, you know, two to three to four times a week. She loves it. I think she'll do it for the rest of her life. Yeah, I'm too scared of sharks to ocean sleep. I get a pang every time I put my toe in. I used to have nightmares all the time of a shark coming after me. I don't know what that's about.

I could guess something about safety. Didn't we talk about that? Yeah. You know, you're in a very safe urban environment. Yes, there's no sharks around. Yeah, no sharks, no crocodiles, all the things. I love Judy already. I can tell she's my kind of person.

I just like want to be, sometimes I just want to be 70 already with like a whole lot of other women just like sitting around a fire, jumping in an ocean and then like drinking hot chocolate and not having to care for anyone. Yes, 100%. Each other wearing ridiculous hats. I just love seeing women as they get older wearing like really bright jewellery and like awesome outfits because they give no fucks anymore

about it. And that's the hope for me as I get older and my friends, I think. I think that's such a fantastic hope. But I think Judy is a good model for that. She's like, you know, she's building this amazing furniture. Sent me some photos yesterday of this stool she'd handcrafted. She's like, I'm going to take woodwork. And now she's become obsessed.

She builds this woodwork. She's an amazing visual artist. She was a teacher for a good 30, 40 years and, you know, always, you know, given herself space to do her own thing. But she's had kids and she's had a family, so that's occupied a lot of it. She's been a full-time teacher and is, you know, in the last decade particularly has just sort of, you know, these are the things I want to do

and I'm going to do them and stuff a lot of you. I love it. I love it so much. Oh, my gosh, I love it too. Yeah, it's about reclaiming your space, I think, particularly if you're a creative person. But also women get a shot of testosterone as they get older in their 60s and 70s after menopause.

So that's why they just give less about everything and you see them complaining in cafes and like, no, I want it hotter because they have that kind of, you know, boost. I'm loving it. So great. Now I asked you to bring in a poem. Yes, you did. Yeah. Do you have one you'd like to share? You can really share anything. So great. Now, I asked you to bring in a poem. Yes, you did. Yeah.

Do you have one you'd like to share? You can really share anything. I do. I'm going to try and do it off the top of my head. I've been trying to memorise them lately, so let's see if I can. I referenced it before. It's a poem called Mowing. I don't think you would have found it online probably.

No, I didn't, no. It's been in my computer for about a year. It's one of my favourite poems that's sort of floated around. No journal's interested in it yet, but if you're listening. Well, perfect space. Tons is very interested in it, definitely. Hopefully I don't totally stuff this up. Let's see how I go.

Maybe I'll get a copy up on my phone just in case. It's called Mowing. My father had a big old bastard of a tractor. Its hulking clutter of wire and gears beneath a red breastplate, its rusted grills spoke smoke, it threw a cape of chewed grass, its tomb of wheels was white magic that robbed colour from its path. When he wasn't a bastard, Dad was an ice cream. He had a bad habit of mowing when the sun had reached its meanest, when the whole sky was afire, the blow

fires, a megaphone, a concert in awe of a cow patty, the fire grass so yellow that I had a theory. God had a severe case of gallstones. Most days, Dad would come slopping out in his oil-splattered tracky-dacks and his navy blue shirt missing several buttons. The gates screamed, the grass crunched, the sun never set on his shoulders. In his breast pocket, emblemised by a yellow tick underline Dad kept a hanky, grass-hardened by boogers Climbing up the worn tracks, he'd mount the tractor like his woman His slap hat casting bruises, he'd jam the tractor into gear His steel-capped boots slamming clutch He'd stick the bent key in the bent ignition, start turning

A puff, a cough, a choke, a splutter. Each time that tractor threatened to become a part of the scenery. A landlocked tall ship as opposed to a meeting place. Each time that tractor could sit dormant for months, eventually consumed by the green crown of his enemy. Not a mourning, not a conquering, but a statement of fact. What he called his enemy was a language he'd never learnt to accept. For him, the good days would take a fence line down the paddock, the same line he took with my mum if she ever talked back, raised questions that raised more questions than they answered.

What would you know, Jane? You're a woman. talked back, raised questions that raised more questions than they answered. What would you know, Jane? You're a woman. Out there under the banner of his echo chamber earmuffs soldered to his head like big plastic burger buns or a south-pointing bicorn, Dad must have thought of himself as a conqueror of worlds, a handsome white king. Out there, him, his head, his land, that ruthless cage stretch of wilderness,

it was silence, or shut up, it's silence. Even Mum, who occasionally went out and planted herself in front of its path, could only alter his course if she anchored stop with its lunch, Dad recognising the shape her mouth formed when she spoke about food or sex. Sometimes in the long hot nights I took those earmuffs to my sleep, mummifying my dreams, taming my sheets, creating white-knotted ghosts with my fists, a submission, the silence, the will to survive that I learnt when my parents' door closed. On the days when dad's PJs were narcotics, his grey stubbles, small blades, the midday movie, just a little bit shit, the news reporters,

what a bunch of fuckwits, whatever mum made a plate full of slop and there was a bill reading, turn all the bloody lights off. I would measure myself by the height of the grass. I would construct an army of pleated green wings. I would deafen myself in the swing of their million long stalks. There, talk was whistles, not thumps. There, a woman's skin was not land a man mowed. Thanks. Well, a woman's skin was not land a man mowed. Thanks.

Well, that was really great. I don't really have anything else to say now. That was so great, which is such a small word to say. I'm struck by the vulnerability and the truth in your work that hits so deeply and I just wanted to say thank you for it. You're going to make me cry. No. No, thank you.

That's very kind. But I can't imagine what it takes to do that, to kind of go internally into yourself in that way, to share. I, yeah, I think to be honest with you, it's an incredibly sort of selfish process for me. I just, I don't, a lot of people say this, but I think you, when you make work and it's vulnerable, you don't necessarily set out to, to make stuff that's vulnerable. You just, you write what you know and you write what you, and it just inevitably comes out like that. And I think I've gotten to a creative position and a personal position

where I'm not willing to shy away from it anymore. But I also just, I'm not certain I could have written about anything else. You know, I've gone on to other projects since that sort of work, but I'm not sure I could do the projects I'm doing now if I hadn't done the foundational work on myself and thinking about this stuff complexly. So I think it was incredibly selfish on a professional and personal level to write about what I'm writing about and explore what I'm exploring.

Selfish, but then that's the best. I'm not convinced selfish is a bad word. No. At all. I don't think so either. No, because that time and the gift of time to really explore the things you've been through and then create art and share it with people, the only reason it has so much resonance is because you can spend

that amount of time with yourself. Yeah. Because then people see themselves and their experience in what you do. Yeah. Which is incredibly powerful. Here's a question I was thinking about as you were reading. Why did your dad have the view of women that he had? Because it strikes me that he had such a derogatory view of them

as a species, not just of your mother but of, you know, women in general. I think his take is that the world 50 to 70 years ago was a better place, and that women's rights have undermined men's rights, which is very incel-y when I use those words out loud, which is, you know, the sort of advent of feminists, they're ruining the world, corrupting everything, destroying everything, you know. Like even not that long ago, it must have been last year, 2021, when the women's marches were going on. I just sort of happened to go home and the TV was on and the news was on and my dad, he said, I feel sorry for your generation, Tim.

And I said, why? And he said, because women won't be happy until you don't exist. And in one of my finer poetic moments I think I replied, well, maybe we should stop raping and murdering them and then they might feel a bit better about the world. We walked out. Micro. Yeah, I think it's only the product of my work doing, you know,

writing about what I've written about for so long that I could become certain and eloquent in the moments when I need it. But I think his perception and his perception has always sort of been is that women hold men back and that they are superior. I'm not, I think, and I think that's the product of patriarchy, it's the product of his sort of socialisation. He had a dad who was in the military in the Navy who was away at sea for six months of the year and, you know,

when he was back, he was the head of the table and he ruled with an iron fist and sort of was what it was. And his mum going through different roles at working in Woolworths, et cetera, also was sort of the caregiver and the mum at home and she was always in a sort of servile role. And he never actively questioned those roles, I don't think. And the more that women did for him and the more that they looked after him, you know, including my mum, and took care of him. Like I actually think my dad in a lot of ways has no real capacity to care for himself.

The guy could barely use microwave. It's just wild. And so, you know, that's the impression he's got of these people. And the impression is that, you know, women are there to serve and men are there to improve life circumstances, I guess. Make the money or make the money to pay the bills. Yeah, and it's a very archaic framing for the world, it's for sure. One that's always sort of, not always, but particularly as you get older, been incredibly confronting.

So it's quite interesting to me that you asked, you know, why does he have that? And I think, well, my response to you is maybe he's a bit more vocal than the average man. But even in his sort of vocalness about it, it's quite often just jovial, you know. He used to like joke about mum's role being in the kitchen, but under all those jokes is a real nugget of truth. So he actually saw the world.

Yeah. Are they still together? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. How do you reconcile that? Like how do you feel about? Uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. I think my perception is, and it's really complicated on a family and political level, is that he's potentially softened as he's gotten older. But a lot of the book I wrote and a lot of the sort of parts of that are to do with a very particular time in our lives and it wasn't distant past. It was quite recent, you know, the last couple of years. So, yeah, I feel really uncomfortable about that, I guess.

And I also, I don't, and this is something I write about in the book too, sometimes I'm very concerned that me so actively writing about this and actively thinking about it and writing with such sort of vehemence, I guess, about these particular issues is just sort of a replication of the sort of violence that he inflicted on us. And that, like I don't want to, I don't have any maliciousness towards him as a person. I think he has become a conduit for me to talk about bigger things.

But, you know, it's the old saying, if you write what you know. And I wrote what I knew. But once again, I really, I am very conscious and I think a lot about whether the way in which I speak about these things and the certainty and the sort of, yeah, the vehemence or anger and sadness I speak about them, whether that is just a mirror image of his violence or it's like a reimagining of his violence, I guess. No. No.

Nah. Oh, Claire, thank you. Sound like my psychologist. No way, mate. No. God, no. No, because what you're doing is changing the narrative and undoing something that may have been perpetuating

through generations of, I don't know if it's your family specifically, but culturally you're the generation that's changing things for, you know, your family. And I think that that does need you to stand up and unfortunately be the one telling the truth and shining a light on things that people don't want to talk about and it's really uncomfortable and difficult but necessary and also really hard that you've been given this, you know, as someone who's a writer and a creative, being given all this trauma

in one way, great because you can write what you know, but that's also a big burden too and the way that you're coping with it and doing it and sharing it and allowing other people to see those experiences I think is, yeah, really keep going, you know. Keep going. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. It's the only way to get through it I think and I'm hopeful to change things.

Yeah, so am I. Yeah. Do you see hopeful things? I know we've talked a lot about some pretty difficult things, but do you see hope? Yeah. I try not to let my scepticism bleed too much. I think I'm a product of my life has led me towards scepticism generally

and I'm sceptical of men because, you know, I know sort of what I'm like. I know what the men around me are like. I know what I've seen. But I do see good initiatives coming forward. There's a lot of amazing initiatives in terms of educational programs and policy, and I think things are shifting. They're not shifting nearly as quickly as I would like. You know, I think men should be forced into re-education programs

if it's up to me, but don't tell anyone that. No one's going to hear it. You know what? You know, it's fine. You just said it publicly on the podcast. I'm sure no one will hear it. No one will hear it. Yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah. I think, yeah, I think things are sort of steadily shifting. I think the status quo is being really undermined and we're starting to look at things more broadly, I think the status quo is being really undermined and we're starting to look at things more broadly, I think. I think specifically what I think about domestic violence services is so much of it is framed around sort of aftermath, I guess. It's how do we protect women in the wake of these things? And I think a big shift we need in that space is like

how do we prevent these things from happening? And where does that exist? You know, how early do we do we prevent these things from happening and where does that exist? You know, how early do we start in preventing these things from happening? But, yeah, and I also, yeah, like there's a bunch of really amazing programs. The one that really springs to mind is there's an organisation called Men's Cave that was started, I think, in Collingwood in Melbourne

and that's doing some pretty amazing work with kids. I think sometimes when I think about these things, they are definitely a little too conservative for my liking. I think I'm a bit of a radical. I think my ideas about how to challenge these things and how they're all related and how they're all connected is, yeah, quite radical. I think also when we talk about the sort of the culturalization of men. We're not just dealing with sort of gender discourse or gender politics or how we gender men. We're also, you know, butting heads with a thousand different other forces, you know.

Like those things exist within other frames of reference, you know. What do you mean by other forces? Like so we're talking about gender but then what other things? Do you mean capitalism? Yeah, capitalism. I mean capitalism is the blaring one. And, you know, imperialism and, you know, colonisation. We're living now, obviously, this being recorded a couple of days

after Queen Elizabeth and now we have a king, which is a whole other conversation. But, you know, the sort of imperative of capitalism dictates that men are breadwinners and that they accumulate wealth and that the most important thing in the world is to be wealthy and to sort of scale the social rungs and, you know, move from the lower class to the middle class to the upper class and become the upper crust.

And those things cannot be unthreaded from the narratives of masculinity. They are almost inseparable in my mind. So until you start to challenge those, you can't actively think you're making change in the space of masculine discourse if you don't couple them together. And also, like, you know, the way I talk about masculinity is in a very white frame. And that's why I say I have a very limited frame of reference and I have a very limited sort of frame of inquiry. I'm interested in sort of very particularly rural reality and its relationship with masculinity, rural reality and its relationship with sort of climate discourse and men in country towns dealing with the sort

of aftermaths of climate collapse. And, yeah, my frame is very particularly white. It just is. That's my experience of the world. That's what I've grown up in. Because we're both white. Because is very particularly white. It just is. That's my experience of the world. That's what I've grown up in. We're both, because we're both white. Because we're both white, exactly. Yes, correct.

I'm about as white as white bread. So I am acutely aware that the things I talk about aren't need to be understood for other people and in other context through conversations about social justice and race relations and in a thousand different ways, I think. Yeah, there's so much to learn from our First Nations people in so many different respects.

And culturally, I totally agree with you. Australia has a huge amount to grapple with. Even in terms of just actually understanding the truth of our own history. I think there are so many people who would be shocked or are shocked when they hear some of the truths about what happened to First Nations people across our country. It's kind of, especially in places where it's not rural and there are, I guess, I worked up in the Kimberleys, for

instance, which is a completely different setting for First Nations people. And you see, like you grew up, you see the differences really starkly and up close. Whereas I think in Melbourne, that's not necessarily the case at all. I think people often don't come up against that kind of history every day and we need to be educating and doing our best in that respect. I agree with you. There's just so much.

We could do a whole other podcast just about that. A hundred percent. And I think, you know, I'm just starting to think, I think quite often when I think about these things, I have very specific sort of stories or points of reference in people's lives or the stories I've accumulated or heard from other people. And, you know, yeah, 100% the sort of stark difference in terms of my white experience and the experience of First Nations people in the community. I grew up in opposite ends of the spectrum, but even more broadly, broadly is not quite the right word, but even in terms of other people's sort of experiences of masculinity

and the kind of intersex with the race. I have a friend who just finished this amazing memoir that I had the sort of privilege of being one of the first readers for and he is, you know, his father was Burmese, he grew up predominantly in know, his father was Burmese. He grew up predominantly in Australia. His mother was English. And he grew up in Perth during the late 80s, early 90s, the Pauline Hanson generation, if I like a better word.

And, you know, his experiences of violence inflicted on Asians in Australia at that time in history and still to this day. But at that particular time in history in Perth is indistinguishable in that memoir from his experiences of the habituation of masculinity and the violence that was inflicted on those communities because, you know, all of it was framed around this sort of hyper-violence, hyper-masculinity. You have to fit into this club. You have to exist in this system if you don't adhere to it.

And it was impossible for him to adhere to it because he didn't look like everyone else. What's his name? Kin Mint. Okay. He's a phenomenal writer. Wow, what's his memoir? Has it got a title?

Its current title is Uncertainty, but it deals with lots of different things under the sun. But it's an amazing book. He should have a bigger voice. Excellent. Well, keep an eye out for his book then. Absolutely. Yeah.

All right. I know I've taken up a lot of your precious time. And I've really valued this conversation so much. So thank you so much for all the storytelling that you were doing. When is your book coming out? Oh, that's a very long-winded conversation. All right, we'll just set the recording on for another hour. I think my response is to you, well, it's currently being shopped around.

I've just signed to Jacinta de Maze's agency within the last couple of weeks. And so we're just sort of getting the package together to ship it off to publishers to convince them that they should want me. And they should. They absolutely should. Definitely. All right. Yeah.

Exciting. It is very exciting. And if people want to see you, are you doing some poetry readings in different places coming up? Where's the best way for them to find more of your work? Oh, that's a good question. A few different things. I am starting a new event called Curate, which is a poetry reading,

but it's, you know, award-winning poets come in and respond to artworks in gallery spaces. So the first one will be on the 14th of October at Red Gallery in Fitzroy North. I will be one of the hosts along with one of my good friends and we'll probably spit a few rhymes there. You can also have a look at my website, timloveday.com, and then I think in the next month or two I'm doing Clementine Ford

has a series called Conversations with Men and I will be on the next one. So the dates for that announcement, I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to be announcing that. That's all right. We can always check it out. You're forced into a corner now. I am. Yeah, exactly.

I'm a sheep. Yeah, yeah. Correct. Cool. All right. Well, I can't wait to hear that. Thank you so much for coming on, Tim. All right.

Thanks. Thank you. Cool. You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonti, and this week with the wonderful Tim Loveday. For more from Tim, you can head to his website, timloveday.com, and you can also look out for his book, Your Father Was a Bastard, that will be coming out very soon.

You can also head over to Instagram at t.j.loveday or on Twitter at timlovedaypoet. Now, for more from me, you can go to my website at, oh no, that's my Instagram, is at claretonte, and my website is claretonte.com. I also have another podcast I do with my husband man, James Clement, and that comes out every Thursday where we recommend you things to watch, read, and listen to, to solve the age old problem of when you sit on the couch and you're about to turn on Netflix

and you think, I don't know what to watch. So that's called Suggestible. And we'd love you to go and check that out as well. This week, we are talking about Dr. Lara Bryden, who's written an incredible book called The Hormone Repair Manual. James also recommends a book that he read on break called something like The Children of Time. book called The Hormone Repair Manual. James also recommends a book that he read on break called

something like The Children of Time. And as always, it tends to be fairly post-apocalyptic. And this one's about spiders, a spider society. Anyway, I promise you it's a rollicking good time. So that's it over there. And as always, thank you to Raw Collings for editing this week's episode. If you'd like to contact the show, you can email me at tauntspot at gmail.com. And if you wouldn't mind leaving us a review and a rating, that would be so wonderful. You can do it straight away in app. And if you felt like this episode resonated with you, or you know someone in your life who it might resonate with, or even they might find it quite challenging, but in a good way, please send it along. That's actually the best way for this podcast to get

discovered and it's my favorite thing to do to share recommendations for podcasts with people. So that would be wonderful. That's it from me. Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you.