Lately I’ve been keeping a low profile, online and in real life. On 1 January this year I officially became a full-time writer — if only for six months — thanks to a CreativeNZ grant. In November last year, when I was looking ahead, imagining this time, I wrote about being hunched at my writing … Read more…
About Tracy Farr
Dream a little dream of me (or, 2014)
2014 was a year that saw quite a few long-held dreams come true, for me, so I hope I can be forgiven a trumpetblowing review of the year’s highlights. I give you: some dreams and their fulfilment (plus some other writing highlights). Being invited to a writers festival I’ve sat in the dark in the audience for so many years, … Read more…
Greenwich, meantime
I started off on the path, but the cold soon got to me, and when I hit an open patch and felt the sun pull on my arms like some strange gravity I veered off to the left and onto the grass. There were Canadian boys with a hackysack – there are always Canadian boys … Read more…
Viva baby, viva!
They’d started drinking at noon. It’s one o’clock the next morning when Liz finally curls up on the beanbag in the lounge-room. The still dark heat, or some drunk obsession, keeps Jan from falling into bed, makes her start to clean up – wipe the salt shaker’s bottom of its crust of salt and lime … Read more…
Purple suit, junkie lover
Her plan took her back to his shop one afternoon – for the bookstore, she knew, was a time-honoured place for the acting out of romantic fancies – at a time when she knew he was most likely to be in attendance himself, reading at the counter, or perhaps arranging and rearranging the Bukowskis in … Read more…
Portrait as a Tehuana, 1989
She rummages in a plastic shopping bag under the table, and pulls out something stiff and white. Lacy, like old-fashioned underwear. ‘It’s nearly finished,’ she says, holding it wide near her face, making a shape I can’t distinguish. ‘What is it Lou?’ Liz asks. ‘Frida’s undies?’ ‘One of her costumes, cara.’ Lou’s fake Mexican accent … Read more…
The Blind Astronomer
It was Aunt who taught me not just to look, but to really see. She taught me to look with an artist’s eye, and that’s what I’ve done in my work. I’ve seen the planets with an artist’s eye, charted their courses with a sense of the beauty their paths carve through space. Connecting memory, … Read more…
Surface Tension
The roads have changed, the houses of Helen’s childhood gone, and she is always shocked when she visits to come this way, to see the great walls of roadway where the little dark houses used to be. She turns the car into North Street, pointing straight at the sea. In ‘Surface Tension’, two long-ago lovers … Read more…
Trick the Light
At the western end of the bay, where the beach curved around, long shadows from Norfolk pines fell on the beach, formed strips of shade on the white sand. We fell in and out of darkness as we walked. ‘Trick the Light’, a chapter extracted from The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, appears … Read more…
Short story: Once Had Me
The car winds between steep fields that sweep down, green, to meet the road. The high sides of hills make corners you can’t see around. The sun’s out, but everything’s still soaking, the road steaming. Lucy presses the button and the window glass moves down, widens the gap, lets in damp fresh air. ‘Go right, … Read more…