First Chapters Q&A with Lisa Gorton

Lisa Gorton has a PhD on the poety of John Donne from the University of Oxford.  She is a poet and novelist, essayist and reviewer.  Her first poetry collection, Press Release, won the Victoria Premier's Award for Poetry; he second, Hotel Hyperion, was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.  Lisa's novel, The Life of Houses, was the co-winner of the 2016 Prime Minister's Award for Fiction.


Lisa will be reading from her recent collection of poetry, Empirical, for us at First Chapters on Friday 6 March.


1. Brunswick Bound has asked you to read a piece from your published work.  Tell us what we can expect from the piece you have chosen?

I'll read something from my most recent poetry collection Empirical.  It's a book about place, memory and empire and its first sequence is set in Royal Park.

2. How would you describe your writing?

As a reader's writing.

3. What was the first book that you read (or had read to you) that left an impression on you?

I liked how Max's room opened into another world in Where the Wild Things Are.

4. Do you believe that books should answer life’s big questions?

Maybe that's death's job.  I do feel that books should reveal, one way or another, their author's vision of the world.

5. Do you have any writing quirks?


Is it a quirk to depend on Spirax notebooks and Univall 0.2 point black markers?

6.  What is your favourite word or phrase?

"Unless experience be a jewel that I have purchased at an infinite rate".

7. What have you found most surprising or interesting about publishing a book?

How quickly, after it's published, it starts to feel as though someone else wrote it.

8. What is the question that you hope never to be asked in an author Q&A?

Any question that assumes that the work is autobiography in fancy dress.

9. What question do you hope you will be asked and why?

I liked to be asked about a favourite writer because it seems right to acknowledge a debt, event if you can't repay it.


10. Which author or book do you think should be better known or more widely read?

Penelope Fitzgerald, among others.

Find out more about the First Chapters event series on the Brunswick Bound website.


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