Mine #author Adam Ouston

While searching for inspiration for what will be his final work, an unnamed poet and defender of Tasmania's wild places finds himself trapped down an abandoned mine in the island's mountain rainforests. In the darkness he is visited by memories and voices both from his own past as well as the tortured history of the pillaged landscape to which he has devoted his life and work. 

Lost in a fever dream, in a single sentence that carries the reader effortlessly along, the poet journeys through a kaleidoscope of Tasmanian history, mining lore, hauntology, poetry, rain and rainbow trout, drilling deep into the contemporaneous horrors of the North Mount Lyell disaster and Mawson's expedition becoming trapped in Antarctic pack ice.

An unparalleled reading experience, Mine is at once wondrous, terrifying and haunting; a story of environmental vandalism and exploitation as well as a luminous paean to the beauty which persists in a world spinning out of control.

Author Adam Ouston’s debut novel Waypoints was listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, and the Tasmanian Literary Prize for Fiction. This is his second novel, and plans to deliver many more.

To connect with Adam ....
https://www.instagram.com/adam.ouston/
https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/mine 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good afternoon, Adam Ouston. Welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello, thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Yay, Adam. I've got your book. It's called Mine, your latest book. Congratulations. I want you to tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Right. Well, um, it's essentially it's a uh it's a novel about a uh a poet who's uh an environmental activist and he's stuck down the bottom of a mine. He's he's been researching what he's referring to as a hauntology of uh of the Tasmanian West Coast. And um he's been traveling around to ghost towns, um, usually mining towns that have been abandoned, and uh he's trying to kind of reconcile himself to this kind of he's haunted by uh Tasmania's past. Uh and in doing this, in conducting his research, he finds himself uh down the bottom of this abandoned mine. He doesn't know how he's got there, he's uh he's perhaps donked his head on the way down, um, and he starts thinking about the history of uh or the European history of Tasmania, particularly the the uh the history of the exploitation of the landscape. So uh in a stream of consciousness, it it goes back and forth between the here and now, way back to the 19th century, when the track cutters first started exploring the region, um, or or started literally hacking through the wilderness, some of the most impenetrable country that had been encountered anywhere on the planet. So much so that it took them 65 years to map just that area, just the west coast, because it was impossible to get through. Um, so it's basically the history of the trauma of colonization and commercial exploitation of the land comes to him while he's down in this mine, and it's uh it's as if the landscape is talking to him, and he's talking back and reflecting on his own um artistic uh or poetic attempts at um uh at capturing something of the landscape. So that in a sense is the novel. It's uh it's an attempt to capture uh the uh this this history or this uh the the this haunting, I suppose, why this oh it is is haunted by the landscape.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah. And Adam, you know, your book when I was reading it, you know, I was reading it before I slept one night, and then the next day I started to think about what what my experiences would be if I was alone in a mine and I was like captured. So it's very clever.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, I think, and that's part of part of it is uh it's intended to be a reading experience. It's it's obviously a different sort of novel. Uh it it it asks a different approach from the reader. Um, you know, being a stream of consciousness novel. Um it's I the the only thing I can liken it to is the singular single gesture of a painter like Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, where it's just yeah, it's there's almost oh how do I it's it it it's almost outside of time. Yeah, it's this one gesture. Um and in writing the book, I wanted to make the point that the track cutters of the 1860s going through the forest, to the early uh mining efforts towards the end of the 19th century, to the um North Mount Lyle mine collapse in 1912, um the the simultaneous exploration of Antarctica and the links that Australia and and Tasmania had to that, um, to more contemporary issues around um uh heavy industry today. Uh, in using the stream of consciousness form, I wanted to make the point that all of that is you can't separate all of that, all of that is still happening. And I felt that the only way to really make that point, other than to just say it, was to invite the reader to try and take it all in at once, if you like.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, yeah. And Adam, do you want to share a little bit about you as an author and anything we we need to know about you? I'm curious about your writing journey. You know, do you um do you go to writers' retreats? Do you just lock down and type away? Like what's you what tell us about you and then tell us about your writing journey.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Yeah, um, well, oh gee. Uh yeah, well, I tend not to to do things like writers' retreats and this sort of thing. I've I've got my own space at home and I I just I think I need to be completely immersed, as you might tell from the form of this book and and and my earlier book, Waypoints, is is is different, but it's similar in form. Um I need complete immersion, and I find that to go away to write somewhere uproots me from you know my my usual space, and then you've got to go away, and then you've got to get comfortable and then immerse yourself, and then for you know, a week, two weeks, or a month or whatever, and then uproot yourself again and then come back and and redo it all again. I just think it's much easier to just stay at home and do what I I I need to do. Yeah, um so I've I've been been writing for a long, long time. Um starting off with uh as as writers do, shorter, shorter things. Um I've been writing novels quite a for quite a long time, and um, you know, manuscript after manuscript and attempt after attempt after attempt, failing and failing and failing better each time, I think, as they say. Um and yeah, I just I suppose I've got myself to a place now where I can write every day, and I do write every day, and I've almost finished my next book. Um and I I guess there's a there's a level of uh intensity and commitment to that that comes through in the actual work um that you know that kind of gives itself to these forms that I'm working in and um you know talking about immersion in the landscape is you know, in a similar way, I am immersed in the writing of being immersed in the landscape, you know, it all kind of feeds into one another.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah. Well, Adam, it sounds like you know, you persist away at this craft, you know, you continue, you keep going, and and that's incredible. You know, I wish you a lot of success with mine. I hope people take um take a curious leap into the book. Adam, if if anyone's watching anywhere in the world and is curious about you and is curious about the book, do you have socials? Do you have a website? Where are we gonna go to to find out more?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Uh yeah, I'm on Instagram. Um that's about it though. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

I um, you know, it's it's there's so many authors on Instagram, so that's the internal easy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

You know, but uh yeah, no, it's yeah, that's that's it. I don't have a website or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Well, I'm gonna put in a link to your Instagram. People can check it out. I'll put some links in the publish room where they can get the book. Um yeah, I heard you say there's another book coming. So uh Adam, I'd love you to come back when your your next book is ready.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah, thanks. Yep, we'll do who who knows when that will be. But uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Whenever we'll I'll be here ready to take your interview. Adam, thanks so much for joining us. All the best.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Thank you. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Cheers.