Sophia Brous and Andrea Goldsmith are talking about muses. “Oh my God,” says Goldsmith. “It’s a shocking term. But did I inspire her best work? Of course!” She laughs.
Goldsmith’s partner was Dorothy Porter, the revered Australian poet who passed away in 2008. Porter’s final published work, The Bee Hut (2009), is the basis for Life Lines, a new song cycle by Brous, performed with Paul Grabowsky, to premiere at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Nearly two decades after her death, Porter is very much the centre of the conversation. As she writes in “Egypt”, the opening poem of The Bee Hut, “The most powerful presence is absence.”
Life Lines is part of Brous’ Set Pieces series of song cycles inspired by poets. The libretto is written in advance from existing works, but the music emerges through improvisation.
Past performances have been built from the words of Argentinian Russian-Jewish poet Alejandra Pizarnik and Polish poet Debora Vogel. It was Veronica Sullivan, director of the Melbourne Writers Festival, who suggested she turn her eye to Dorothy Porter.
“She’s such a revered figure in the psyche of the country, and in my own psyche,” says Brous. “I said, ‘Sure, but … am I allowed? Is that OK?’”
It was. She met with Goldsmith, guardian of Porter’s work, who gave her approval to the piece, and lent the title, Life Lines.
After Brous and Goldsmith met and settled on the poems that would form the piece, Brous recalls getting an email from Goldsmith. “It said, ‘You should, you do with this work what you wish,’” which is incredible,” says Brous.
“Which Dot would have said too,” says Goldsmith. “She was always a very generous collaborator. She loved what another artist could bring to her words.”
One of Australia’s most influential poets, Porter is best known for her 1994 verse novel, The Monkey’s Mask, which has been adapted for stage, radio and film. Music was always an influence on her work, and vice versa. This latest project, Goldsmith says, is exactly the sort of thing Porter would have loved.
“From the very beginning, composers have recognised how musical Dot’s poetry is,” says Goldsmith. “There’s something about her words, and as you read them you can actually feel the musicality.”
Porter collaborated with Grabowsky for the 2005 album Before Time Could Change Us, with vocals by Katie Noonan. Since Porter’s death, Goldsmith has overseen several musical collaborations based on the poet’s work. A collaboration with Tim Finn which Porter began in the 1990s finally premiered in 2016 as The Fiery Maze. Further musical adaptations of her work have been performed by Jonathan Mills and Brett Dean.
Brous has known Grabowsky for years, and sought him out to collaborate on this project even before she had settled on Porter as the piece’s inspiration. That he’d worked with Porter came as a surprise.
“I believe in creative, in the serendipity of things,” says Brous.
Porter often wrote to music, too. Goldsmith shows us a playlist that Porter made for her of the songs she had in mind while writing The Bee Hut. It’s the first time Brous has seen it. It’s an eclectic list, full of big feelings, from AC/DC to Antony and the Johnsons.
“I would ask Dot about the music that she used, because I could so rarely see a connection with the writing,” says Goldsmith. “It operated at a very visceral level for her. It took her out of herself.”
Brous is a musician who lives between Melbourne and New York, where she is part of the improvisational band Exo-Tech, formed with Kiwi musician Kimbra.
“This project, for me, is a way of playfully subverting audience’s expectations,” says Brous. “I’d be very happy if no one in the audience knows that the piece is being created in the moment. It doesn’t matter.”
The collection that Brous was most drawn to, The Bee Hut, is an intimate book which grapples with mortality and loss. “But it has a certain giddy romance throughout as well,” says Brous.
No two performances of Life Lines will be alike, but Brous is uneasy about the word “improv”, which carries jazz connotations, or “jam”, which sounds too loose. “We’re letting the words be the scenery, the environments around the text,” says Brous. The term “emergent composition” sits well, as does Brous’ comparison to American artist Alexander Calder’s hanging mobiles. It implies balance, movement.
“It’s a dance,” says Brous. “We’re in a dialogue that is emergent, and that takes a great deal of trust and relinquishing of control as well.”
Goldsmith is excited about the possibilities. “What is actually going to happen on the night is going to be a real surprise to me,” she says. “I mean, of course I know Paul’s music, and now I know Sophia’s, but it’s emerging in the moment. It’s quite extraordinary.” She once saw Grabowsky perform an improvisation based on the Goldberg Variations. “He started in a known place, and he ended in a known place, and he took on a journey that Bach would have been proud of,” she says. “It was unbelievable.”
Goldsmith believes in seeing Porter’s work take on new forms. She once wrote that Porter wanted to see poetry “displayed in neon”.
“She was a typical poet, in that she saw poetry as the pinnacle of writing,” says Goldsmith. “Her aim was to bring poetry from the back of the shop, where it was mouldering with the craft books, up to the window.”
“In this series so far, I’ve worked with writing that I had no personal connection to, but this has been a much more personal process,” Brous says. “And to have Dot’s partner – in life and in creativity – able to talk me through every single poem … I’ve never experienced this kind of intimacy as a background.”
Life Lines is at the State Library of Victoria on Friday, as part of Melbourne Writers Festival.
Will Cox writes fiction and arts criticism. He’s based in Merri-bek.
