Rachel Hennessy's Blog

The lecturer (1)

He sticks his head into the hall and asks ‘Is this Biology 101?’ before ambling into the lecturing space. The students (off screen) titter. Who is this crazy guy, they think? The man casually places his folder file on the desk, then launches into a story about a ‘male, 45, married, career as a criminal lawyer’ whose behaviour was bizarrely effected by a brain tumour.

After the anecdote, the Professor throws a series of questions to the audience: ‘Who believes in nurture?’, ‘Who believes in nature?’, ‘Who believes in God?’ The questions are flung, fast and furious, and we do not get to see who is raising their hands. We hear laughter again. This man is crazy, yes, but he is also good fun.

‘They’ are showing us this YouTube clip as an example of a certain lectureship style. ‘We’ are staff at a university, jumping through the hoops to gain a teaching certificate.

We debate the man’s style. Does he talk too fast? Is he too challenging? Does it look like the beginning of a Hollywood movie; Robin Williams at the front of the class shouting ‘Carpe diem’? What will the students learn from this encounter? Will they remember anything he said or just the fact he is slightly off-beat, not the usual sedentary lecturer? Will the man become the lesson?

I consider the possibility of walking into a tutorial and acting this way. The image does not come. I am not an older man, I do not have the … what is the word …? Well, if I cannot even find the word, how can I stand with such authority, with such knowing, and entertain the masses; a lecture hall full of undergraduates who can sniff out the slightest whiff of fakery.

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When teaching creative writing, I invariably ask my students why it is they want to write. The answers range from the predictable – ‘to straighten out my thoughts’, ‘to create my own world and escape reality’, ‘to remember and capture memories’ – to the faintly quirky – ‘to reproduce the contours of my mind’, ‘to take ideas out and decide if they are a diamond or a piece of glass’. While these reasons are perfectly valid, I am yet to encounter a student who gives the answer I did when I first began my writing journey: ‘to change the world.’ Read more.

We need to understand the privilege we have in being free to spend time with our children in genuine, spontaneous ways and to cherish the fact that, regardless of whether they ‘tick off’ the manufactured sand bucket list, their childhoods are, more than likely, not going to be marked by starvation, war or displacement.  Read more.

I was twenty when I first read Helen Garner’s The First Stone, published twenty years ago, in 1995. I had fallen in love with Garner as a teenager via her novels Monkey Grip and The Children’s Bach, thrilled by her depictions of ‘ordinary’ Australian women living in urban and suburban areas, thrilled that women/girls like me might be worthy of literature.

So I remember approaching The First Stone with trepidation, knowing of its subject matter but, hoping, Garner’s skills would provide an interesting insight into the case the book was investigating: two girls who were taking a master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne to court for sexual harassment.

Reading The First Stone was like being betrayed by a good friend.

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If He Woke Up by Kalia Forde

‘The Sleep Walkers are coming,’ he whispered once in the dark, ‘and we have to be prepared.’ This has gone on for months now, him talking in his sleep, usually babbling incomprehensibly. It’s only on occasion, like that night, where he will say complete sentences. Sentences containing words I didn’t even realise he knew.

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Australian Crawl by Shannon Burns

‘Even the rain is drowning,’ he mutters. If Thomas could only recover, or genuinely imagine, what it was to be. Instead his feet move damply and his mind glitches. Over and over, the same thoughts, the same corrections, the same aimless abstractions.

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‘If we are only left with this individualistic view – with this constant cry of “it isn’t that way for me!” – how do writers say anything of worth without fear of being hassled?’

My piece on outrage and offence.

https://overland.org.au/2015/06/white-rage/

Overland��is seeking fiction from new and emerging writers for a special online edition to be��curated by Rachel Hennessy. For this special edition, ���new and emerging��� describes a writer who has not yet published a book of stories or novel with commercial distribution. Online contributors for this edition will be paid $120 per story.

https://overland.org.au/2015/04/we-want-your-fiction/

An article I wrote for Daily Life entitled “The Day My Daughter Said She Didn’t Like Brown Skin“, about dealing with the recognition of difference by young children.

Another article I wrote in Overland Literary Journal entitled ‘The Valley of Frozen Eggs‘ about egg freezing and the workplace.

Wrote an article about the campaign to raise awareness of gender stereotyping in toys. Published in Overland:

https://overland.org.au/2014/12/the-no-gender-december-agenda/