Reading between the Lines: A Body of Water, presented by Jaimee Edwards

Reading Between the Lines is a series of monthly literary discussions led by special guest presenters from neighbouring universities.

This monthly event is a chance to hear an expert speak about a book they have chosen and offer a greater depth and understanding of the book.

We have copies of the book so you can read ahead of the session but it's not essential. Writers and lovers of literature will especially enjoy the unpacking of this work.

You can take part in the discussion or simply sit back and learn.

This month, the featured book for discussion is A Body of Water by Beverley Farmer.

Borrow A Body of Water and other suggested reading here with an Inner West Library card.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In A Body of Water, Beverley Farmer records a year of her life through the changing seasons, creative influences, daily rituals, poems, short stories and moments of heightened awareness. Part diary and part experiment in attention, the book enacts what British psychoanalyst Marion Milner called “wide attention,” a non-extractive way of noticing. Farmer’s entries present living as emergent—a practice rather than a theory. This talk explores how her form and style create a distinctive mode of insight, and what diary writing can reveal that other literary forms cannot. It considers how A Body of Water demonstrates self-observation as a way of thinking, and a preference for self-discovery that is less about knowing than remaining intrigued by what we do not yet know about ourselves.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Jaimee Edwards is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney. Her research explores the ways planetary crisis is registered at the intimate and domestic scale. She is currently working on a novel set in the Blue Mountains of NSW, in which a lone woman lives through an apocalyptic time in the company of her memories of earlier endings, while a panther of local legend roams the periphery. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Overland, Best Australian Stories and Sydney Review of Books.

ABOUT THE VENUE:

LEICHHARDT LIBRARY is accessible from street level and via lift from the car park.

If you have any access or support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know in the booking order form to ensure that we can arrange any reasonable adjustments. Please note: the venue is accessible for people using wheelchairs and other mobility aids.

We may take photographs of the speakers and the audience at this event. Read here for more details.