Dear Readers,
Since last I wrote much has happened which has taken me away from writing here, whilst I started-up a new literary arts publishing house, which has been officially registered with the name: Postmistress Press. FuguEditions, which I have already written on, is now an imprint of the press, which is based in the nineteenth century cottage where I live, which happens to have been the first Post
Office in the inner city suburb of Adamstown, in the regional city of Newcastle, New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia.
When first I saw the house years ago, in 1995, I
was drawn to it, even though it looked dilapidated. There were no
trees in its overgrown garden, and the house needed repairs. The real
estate agents tried to dissuade me, with 'worst house in the best street'
comments. But I was drawn to the tumbledown cottage. I had no idea then of its
past, its history as the post and telegraphy office, in the historic regional area
in which I live. I was to find out, over the coming years, when I
was living in the small cottage with my family. My now ex-husband found the
stories in the local heritage column in the Newcastle Herald, and we recognized
photographs of our house- in the black and white images of the postmistress and family lined up on the veranda, on the street front.
Now years later, I have started up a
publishing house, in a house that was
for many decades the local hub of post communications, of postal mail, prefiguring online posting, and telegraphy, which is the predecessor to tweeting.
It seems to be serendipitous, that I should start to design courses and lecture in Arts Media, and Communications, when living in the cottage years ago. I began teaching and designing my
own communications arts writing courses as Adult Education community classes at the Workers Educational
Alliance (WEA). I wrote and ran adult education community courses in Freelance
Journalism (which was my profession in Dublin, Ireland, and in London) and I wrote and named and for two years taught my original course: Find Your Voice-
Creative Writing Workshop (which was my passion: creative writing). From this basis, I was invited to lecture on Business Communications courses at the
WEA, and from that experience it was not long before I got a casual lecturing
position, lecturing in Business Communications and Fine Arts in
several Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges in the Newcastle region. I
moved from The Old Post Office, when I went to Sydney (my young children came with me) to pursue my career as an Art writer and at the same
time, I took my MA and PhD in creative writing, at the University of Technology
Sydney (UTS). My first Australian Fugue novel The Antipode Room began its life (in a much earlier form) as my MA thesis, a novel and exegesis in fugue modality in literary narratives.
I founded and ran Arts Features
International, an art writing business, which I started up in 2003, from
my home. After I had published many essays
and long features on prominent Australian and international contemporary artists, it was circumstance (not choice, as such) that was to bring me back to Adamstown's Old Post Office, almost four years ago. I told parts of the
story of why these things occurred and some of what happened when I came back, on this
blog, which I started up, when I found myself alone here, with no company other than
the small black kitten I found almost starved to death, dehydrated, in
the overgrown garden when I returned. Unexpectedly and due to not being able to get enough work in Sydney after my children started university. I was compelled to move back to the cottage. Shadow
is, as I write, asleep, on my laptop case, he is a companionable, well
cared for adult cat, four years old.
And I have just started up Postmistress Press, the
first author-publishing house in Australia that will publish e-Books and
print books, of literary writings, PhDs and MA theses, and arts writings. I shall be posting regular articles on The Daily Fugue, with information on publication of my books, as well as articles on new online and print publishing, for author-publishers. These will be posted at least once a week, so you can now expect to read more publishing news from Postmistress Press, and how to find my first Australian Fugue novel publication, here.
All the best and happy reading,
Ruth Skilbeck
The Antipode Room by Ruth Skilbeck
E-Book and print book, for publication in December 2013
Cover design: Maxim Skilbeck-Porter Cover image: Blue Fugue, Ruth Skilbeck, 2013.
The photographic artwork on the cover, was first published in the Daily Fugue, earlier this year.
The montage is made from three photographs I took of the trees in the garden, at the old post office, at dusk.
The photographic artwork on the cover, was first published in the Daily Fugue, earlier this year.
The montage is made from three photographs I took of the trees in the garden, at the old post office, at dusk.
Postmistress Press:
Postmistress Press is the first publishing house in Australia to publish eBook and printed books, of literary fiction, MA and PhD theses, and art writing books.
It is an author-publisher house and will start-up by publishing books by Ruth: the Australian Fugue novel series, her PhD, The Writer’s Fugue: Musicalization, Trauma and Subjectivity in the Literature of Modernity, and a second literary theory book developing her PhD research in fugue in literary form.
After she has published her own books, Ruth plans to publish new literary fiction, PhDs and MA theses, and arts writing, by Australian and international authors. All moneys raised through book sales will go towards this new enterprise supporting new literary arts writing and publishing that will also bring Australia into alignment with the new realm of e-Book and physical book publishing that has already taken off in the US and UK.
The Antipode Room excerpt:
"Nobody
knows about the shadow-lands, the phantoms that play inside my head. Last night
I lay beside Hugo, in the luxury-hush of our draped and carpeted bedroom, in my
mind’s eye, I saw the shadow of a tidal wave, bigger than a mountain on the
horizon, bigger than a dinosaur, closer than a comet just before it smashes
into planet Earth. A tidal wave arising from the darkness with all the power of
everything I have forgotten. Lost. The self buried years ago. The strange
absence, inside me, that keeps this whole thing spinning.
“Antipodes is Greek for “having the feet
opposite”. I’ll put up a plaque outside the Antipode Room with that
information, a dictionary definition,” I said to Sir Hugo as I drove him to
work this morning.
“But if “antipode” designates a relational
point, not place of origin, shouldn’t that mean, in Australia, Europe is the
antipodes?”
He threw back his head and roared with
laughter, as if I had just made a hilarious riposte. I smiled queasily and
accelerated through an amber light. "
(The Antipode Room by Ruth Skilbeck).
Writing style:
The literary art and
fugal modality of the Antipode room, spoken and ‘sung’ in multiple voices, puts
into practice fugal dissociation in poetic form. This dissociation is evident
in the split between the controlled formalism of musicalization contrasted with
dark unconscious shadows of trauma. This creates a wrenching affect and effect
in psycho-linguistic structure, a compression of emotion that at times may be
too painful or difficult to read empathetically. The narrative in parts aims to
almost voice the unspeakable, in a fugal musicalized ellipsis, a pattern of
gaps and omission, a haunting elegiac grace- played by the young woman
violinist obsessed with finding an ending to Bach’s last unfinished fugue.
Young
woman alone
Playing
violin
Falling
Dusk a-
Darkening
Room
She half sits up and leans over me. The top of her Japanese robe falls
open. Her breasts are pale lilies floating on a dark pond.
She leans down and kisses my
mouth. “I’ve got Bach’s Art of Fugue,”
she says. “I can put that on. I often listen to it as I’m going to sleep...
It’s my bedtime music.” She leans and touches the player beside the bed.
The
first slow haunting bars of the fugue, the searing profound beauty of a solo
violin shatters the still warm air…
(from The Antipode Room)
The
narrative is a poetic-literary example of what Ruth has termed ‘fugal modality’
a mode of art that she later theorized in her PhD on The Writer’s Fugue: Musicalization, Trauma and Subjectivity in the
Literature of Modernity (coming soon in eBook and printed book).
As
Ruth is an arts writer, and the main story begins in the Antipode Room, a
gallery space, she refers to several contemporary artists in reality that she
knows, as well as to fictional artists, in a roman-a-clef style. Included in the narrative as well as writings
in different styles, are photographic images Ruth has taken of actual art works
by artists and referenced by name or by their own nom de plume. The cover image
is a new photographic work by Ruth, Blue
Fugue (2013).
Background context:
As
founding director of Arts Features, a small arts business based in Sydney, Ruth
interviewed and wrote for leading periodicals on some of the world’s most
prominent international contemporary artists who were at times reviewed as
“controversial”: Tracey Emin (UK), Tracey Moffat (Australia), Antony Gormley
(UK), Charlie Co (Phillipines), Mary Kelly and Kelly Barrie (US), David Adjaye
(UK) and the poet, Christopher Barnett (Aust/France). At the same time as
running her arts business, Ruth was taking an MA and PhD in creative writing and
writing novels set in the art world, on artists and what drives them. In her
first novel The Antipode Room, the
first book in her series Australian Fugue,
she presents a very different perspective on contemporary Australian artists to
the view more usually portrayed in international curated exhibitions of
Australian art (such as the current “Australia” exhibition, in London). She
writes from the perspective of “Ruby Love” a young gallery director in London,
who has left Australia in a state of fugue. Ruby marries Hugo, a masochist,
member of the British aristocracy, conservative philosopher, with a taste for
the bizarre. The novel traces their doomed one-way trip to Australia from their
home and gallery in inner London to collect Australian artists. In Sydney Ruby
encounters by chance the reason why she left Australia, Ray Furness, from the
days of the Adelaide neo-Dada group Art Criminals. Yet
Ruby remains haunted by the image of the beautiful young Margarita, playing
Bach’s unfinished fugue- a music she is unable to forget. This is a novel that
can be read in many ways. It contains scenes some may find shocking, so please
don’t read or purchase this book if you may be offended. Yet none of these
scenes are gratuitous, and are only in the book as they offer an authentic
truth to the narrative, which is wholly fictional, but has the truth of art- a
truth of the inner world, and morality tales, such as the Canterbury Tales, James Joyce’s Ulysses,
some contemporary literary writings by women, poetry by holocaust poet Paul
Celan, and Sylvia Plath, and fugal authors.
About the Author:
Ruth has worked as an academic, arts writer and broadcaster, and run an arts writing business Arts Features International that she founded in Sydney. London-born, she has lived and worked in Dublin, London, and Sydney. She has recently started up an author-publisher press, at The Old Post Office, a 19th century cottage in Newcastle, NSW. Ruth has published extensively as an arts writer, and her research writing also appears in leading scholarly journals and books, including Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, International Journals of the Arts, and collections by Routledge and Taylor and Francis, and Demeter Press. Her research is in the field of Arts journalism reflective practice, art writing in global contexts of social, economic and technological change, mother art movements (MAM), and cultural history. She writes and publishes fiction, poetry, photography and essays. The Antipode Room is her first novel, and the first in her Australian Fugue series with a second novel that will be published soon by Postmistress Press. Ruth has a BA honours from Bikbeck, London, and a PhD, as well as professional qualifications in university teaching; and small business. She has two young adult children and lives in Newcastle, Australia.
Now Available:
Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room a novel by Ruth Skilbeck is on sale from PostMistress Press and on Amazon.
The link to the print book and kindle ebook on amazon where you can buy the books:
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