Who is Verity Laughton?
I’m a South Australian playwright and have been for a long time now, though I did spend some years in Sydney from 2000 – 2012, which I loved. But the skies and landscapes and people I love here in SA called me back and I’m living happily on the shared farm – a hobby farm, really – that we established in those dizzy days of the early 1980s when we all thought we might re-establish a version of Eden in our own backyards. We’re still the same group of people after all these years so I guess there’s an achievement in that.
What would you do differently from what you do now?
What would I do differently in getting to this point? Professionally I might hope to get started a few years before I did. My first play went on as I haunted the hospital in which my third baby lay between life and death. (He’s fine now, thank you).
If I’d started my career in my 20s, I might have had those years when you are the next interesting thing and people get behind the idea of you because they want to share in the fun of a terrific youthful trajectory. So not getting started despite being quite so driven… Probably a mistake.
But then again, I also think that our choices are what make us and perhaps surviving the tough things and the stupid things and the bad choices might grow us the resilience to go deeper and harder and make better art. And in the end, it really, truly is about the art. The person is kind of a by-product to that.
On the other hand, if you mean what would I do if I wasn’t a writer? Not possible. I wouldn’t be me.
Who inspires you and why?
That’s an unexpectedly huge question. It’s a bit corny but my husband, Rob Brookman. He’s a man of great sweetness and capacity and a phenomenally hard worker. My three sons, ditto. A range of very dear friends and family who I won’t name because it’s bad enough mentioning your family; my hardcore writing heroes – W.B Yeats, Hilary Mantel, Joseph Campbell, and (cliche alert here!) Shakespeare; Alexei Navalny – sheer courage, and I hope his story outlives that of the malign wart, Putin; Ross Garnaut – may Australians please listen to him; whoever made La Dame à la Licorne tapestries that hang in the Musée de Cluny in Paris, whoever built the Ring of Brodgar in the Orkneys, Emily Kame Kngwarreye. I could go on and on. Even though we are undoubtedly living in very tough times, there’s a backlog of fantastic people out there doing the hard yards or the astonishing-skills-yards who have made the way brighter for all of us.
What would you do to make a difference in the world?
If I was God? Make sure a bolt of lightning demolished anyone telling a political lie. If I was me? Try harder I guess, in everything. In The Dictionary of Lost Words, Esme’s yardstick is if people are kind or not. So, to be kinder, when I can. That’s not a bad aim.
Favourite holiday destination and why?
Can I have a favourite when I’ve only been there once? I discovered that all my father’s family for generations as far back as there are records and hence, given it is an isolated place, probably as far back as can be imagined – came from the Orkney Islands. So we went there last year. Perhaps I was fooling myself, but I don’t think so – I’ve never felt such a peaceful sense of ‘being home’ in my life.
I think that in colonialism there might be two sorts of dispossession. The colonists dispossess the indigenous people – and we are slowly learning the suppressed details of that in Australia – but the colonists are also dispossessed of their own ancient lands. So there’s this odd yearning for ‘somewhere’ where your DNA feels it belongs. I think I’ve found that place for me.
When friends come to town, what attraction would you take them to, and why?
I would take them to the Museum of Economic Botany in Adelaide’s Botanic Gardens because it is both a jewel and a curiosity, and I would take them to the Ukaria Concert Hall in Mount Barker, which is a classical music venue of great beauty, effectiveness and evolving world fame founded by someone whom I do find inspiring, the herbalist and philanthropist Ulrike Klein. Google all three. You will be rewarded!
What are you currently reading?
I’m reading Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, David Malouf’s Being There (3) and Christine Evans’s Nadia. I like to have a few things on the go at once.
What are you currently listening to?
I am a bit of a tragic for Henry Purcell so anything would do. But the one on rotation right now is Andreas Scholl’s CD O Solitude, which has a range of Purcell’s pieces. It’s ravishing. But I might take this opportunity to give a shout-out to a niche CD that I use some mornings when I need to feel grounded. It’s called Octaves from the Sun by Chris Shakallis, a Sydney-based musician that I think I heard of through WOMAD, which uses sounds from singing bowls. I love it. And – because my days as a card-carrying hippie are absolutely done, but the music isn’t – Van Morrison with The Chieftains singing Carrickfergus.
Happiness is?
I don’t think I can risk corniness again so you can imagine that bit of the answer. Beauty, particularly of landscapes. And being in flow, those times when the magic visits you.
What does the future hold for you?
I don’t know. Life can turn on a sixpence at any moment, can’t it? I’m in the time of my life when the horizon should be lowering. But it doesn’t feel like that. More and more writing? That’d be great.
Verity is the playwright of The Dictionary of Lost Words (based on Pip Williams’ award-winning novel of the same-name) – which will play the Playhouse – Queensland Performing Arts Centre (26 April – 10 May), before playing the Playhouse – Canberra Theatre Centre (15 – 24 May) and Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong (29 May – 7 June).
Image: Verity Laughton – photo by Sam Oster