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“Everywhere I look it just feels so creative.” ~ Novelist Pip Adam on Residencies, Writing and Ōtautahi

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Pip Adam is a Pākehā, Tauiwi fiction writer. Pip was born in Ōtautahi and lived here for the first three years of her life and for a seven-year period in her late twenties. Since 2001 Pip has lived in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. 

Pip is the author of Audition (2023), which was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction; Nothing to See (2020), also shortlisted for the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction; The New Animals (2017), which won the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction; I’m Working on a Building (2013); and the short story collection Everything We Hoped For (2010), which won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction in 2011. 

She is currently the Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at Canterbury University. We spoke to her about being back in Ōtautahi…

How cool to have you in the city! Tell us what you’re doing here?

I am so incredibly lucky because I’m one of the recipients of the Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury. Nic Low was here for the first half and I’m here until January, so I feel very grateful for this opportunity and in a nutshell, that’s why I’ve moved down.

So it’s a bit of a temporary move…

Yeah, I’ll be here for six months, but I have to say I’m really loving the city, it’s such a magnificent city.

You were actually born in Christchurch, weren’t you?

I was born at a hospital that I don’t think even exists anymore – that’s how old I am! I was born here and then we moved when I was about three years old and then I moved back here in my twenties and lived for about eight or nine years in Christchurch – I’ve had two stints of living here.

I understand you were a graduate of the New Zealand Film and Television School which was based here for many years.

Yes. I was there in 1994. It’s funny wandering around the city now, because every now and then I’ll walk past somewhere we shot some late-night, experimental film and it brings back memories of that time, which is really nice.

Tell us what you have to do in the Ursula Bethell residency…

This is the absolute generosity of the residency – short of having an office hour and being involved in the university communities, I’m simply here to work on the novel I’m writing. Right now, I’m just looking out at this wonderful view that I’ve got from my office, and I have access to the library which is massive and I also have some really amazing colleagues – I just bumped into Paul Millar who was off to teach Brideshead Revisited, and I’m sitting in on Erin Harrington’s screening and tutorial for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes later this afternoon so it’s wonderful to be here.

Quite a stimulating environment. Being able to access a residency like this must be a real gift for a writer to have space, because one the hardest things about writing is actually finding the time to write!

I think that’s so true. These residencies are so important and it’s so great that Creative NZ and other organisations fund them because we really need to be careful that we’re not creating an environment where only the very wealthy can write. I always think about the time when I was hairdressing, and I was working 40 or 50 hours a week and I was exhausted and so my writing output was very small whereas to be able to offer someone a residency – and the Ursula Bethell Residency is great being six months long – although not doable for everyone, shorter residencies are often more feasible for writers I think.

And that space to write  – or not write – is important. I think a lot of people assume that if you have a day off you can just sit down and the words will just flow..

Sometimes there is some discipline in it, for sure.  I’ve only been here three weeks, but what I’ve already noticed is that the time to mull is hugely important. The room to think and the room to read is massive for me. That’s why having access to the library is so important. There’s a thesis I’ve been wanting to read for years, about Janet Frame and yesterday I was able to access it through the library and I was like ‘Oh my god, this is amazing!’

I’ve heard it said that a writer is someone who can really observe the world, and what’s going on in it, and that observation means you have to have time to process it.

I think that’s true. I’ve been thinking a lot about paid work, and unpaid labour as well, and I think this is why I’m grateful that I’ve never been so well off that I’ve not had to work another job. I love that idea of observation, because your life experience dictates what you observe and therefore what you write about, so I think being in the world as much as possible is really important for my writing. This is something I’ve noticed since being here, just being around students, being on the buses, wandering around lost, you really see the life of the city.

You’re never really sure what you might see that might spark an idea.

This idea of being around people and being in different communities – so much of it is serendipity. I might be mulling something over, some political or economic idea, and that will change what I notice as well. You can’t manufacture that. I think sitting still, by yourself, you can’t really manufacture those human interactions. I’m not a documentary writer, but being involved in the world allows my imagination to leap out from real life interactions.

You’re an incredibly imaginative writer! What’s it like living in your mind?

It’s that funny thing where I don’t know any other mind! Often, it’s not an easy place to live, but I feel incredibly grateful that I’ve found an outlet for it that is productive.

You can put your mind to work.

It goes all the time so it’s really nice to make it productive! I don’t know any other way.

Were you always imaginative, even as a child?

I feel like I didn’t arrive in my own, actual life until I was about fourteen. I was constantly imagining that I was somebody else or doing something else. I had this weird tentative relationship with reality until I went to high school which kind of stamped reality more for me. I remember sharing a concern with my father once and he said, ‘Oh my god, your imagination!’ and I think that being able to put that imagination to work, rather than it just cycling through all the possible terrible scenarios that could happen is a good thing.

Imagination can lead to anxiety… 

That’s what I loved about writing my last book I really tried to concentrate on utopia rather than dystopia. Someone explained it to me once, that our minds are problem solving things and they’re always looking for problems to solve and that’s why we tend to go to the negative more often that the positive. Sometimes I experiment with the idea of ‘What’s the best possible outcome here?”

Do you have other tricks to get back into the writing flow? I remember reading that Truman Capote would leave his sentences halfway through so it was easier to start off again the next day.

I use that a wee bit myself. I find it really useful. A big thing for me is to recognise that everything is writing. I don’t actually have to turn off and turn back on again – understanding that my subconscious is always chewing away at it. Life experience is the work, and so that’s been really helpful to me as a writer because rather than portioning off this time where I’m supposed to be at the keyboard, I feel more that I’ve been doing it all day and this is just the bit where I sit down and type. There can often be anxiety around whether or not I’ve written enough during a day, and so just trying to realise that the flow doesn’t actually stop, it’s just that I may be doing another task at the same time, has been amazingly helpful.

How are you finding Christchurch? Does it feel like a creative city for you?

Oh my god, yes! I’m just astounded. I’m writing a book that’s based around comedy, so the one thing that I’ve been so impressed with is the comedy scene here.  There’re also amazing things happening like the Late Night Poetry that Claudia Jardine organises. Everywhere I look it just feels so creative. I love being on the bus and going past that huge mural of the kitten. It just feels like a city that recognises that art belongs to everybody.  It feels like a democratic city to me, the use of Hagley Park for example, the buses seem really good, the art gallery always seems to have something free going on, it just feels like a place where art is accessible.

Historically there’s a lot of art and creativity that has come out of Christchurch -including our two Booker prize winners who were both raised in Christchurch – so you might be our third Booker prize winner! It does seem like there’s something in the water here.

Definitely. I do wonder if it’s something to do with the outside environment. The cycling, and the walking. There feels like something in the energy of even just walking around the city. Even just the fact that it’s flat – the sky is enormous here. The other day I was looking at it and it felt like someone had taken the roof off and I did think for a moment that I was really going to just fly away!

It’s great having people like you here to add to the momentum of the city. You bring a different eye to it, but also you absorb some of the city and that might impact on your work

I feel like it already is. Even just the light here. I was walking home the other day and just the way the light was falling on Ngā Kohatu Whakarakaraka o Tamatea Pōkai Whenua, and the fact that there are very different trees here. Even that has changed the way that I’m writing. You can’t have that much visual information coming in and keep writing the way you always have, I don’t think. There’s also something about living here, rather than just visiting. Knowing this is going to be my home for the next six months, it really changes the way you look at a place.

Can you give us any hints about the book you’re writing?

I’m looking at the weaponisation of humour. I’m interested in that thing where people say, ‘can’t you take a joke?’ I’m especially interested in how the Right Wing are using humour at the moment. I’m very interested in the idea of jokes that hurt. I’d written 80,000 words but threw them all out, so now I’ve started again but it feels like it’s taking shape.

This is in novel form?

I think it will be. Although my good friend Jo Randerson said to me, “are you sure you’re not writing a play?” and that freaked me out. I’d really love if there was some performance element that went with it, but I’m not sure. I’ve done a little bit of stand-up comedy and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think that’s one of the things about writing – you have to go to it with as little demand or expectation of it as possible.

It’s amazing what resonates and what doesn’t.

There’s no telling and that’s why I’m always grateful for conversations with people because they always help me understand the world a bit better.

You can catch Pip Adam at WORD Christchurch  – for all the details follow this link!

 

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