Q&A with Kate Humphreys

Kate Humphreys is an Irish–Australian writer from unceded Darumbal land, Central Queensland. She is currently based in Sydney.

Hi Kate—firstly, thank you for sharing your work with TSR. It’s so rich with both direct reference and more sideways acknowledgements of the writers who’ve shaped your practice. What’s reading like for you? 

Hi Erin—thank you, it’s a pleasure to have this piece published in MEETCUTE. 

I’m glad that you have asked about reading in response to the texts cited in ‘Salt on the Tip of the Tongue’. I’d say my affiliation with writing began after reading Bluets by Maggie Nelson—certainly my fascination with the lyric essay and its ability to carry fragments of thought and emotion. Some would say this style of writing is evasive. Maybe it is. But it allows a writer to develop a rapport with their reader, one that is built on tenderness and trust. Bluets has a way of scattering information to create a pattern, or rhythm. This requires subtlety and finesse. When we really read something, or really understand the way a text has been conveyed, we embody the form and allow it to shape our writing voice. A wonderful way of acknowledging intertextuality is to cite the work of others. Every piece that I have read and loved (Oceans by Sarah Manguso; ‘Alive in Ant and Bee’ by Gillian Mears; A Body of Water by Beverley Farmer; Josephine Rowe on Beverley Farmer; Claire-Louise Bennett; Lydia Davis), I have managed to slip into an essay somehow.

One of my favourite parts of your essay is the way you write about Fatima Measham’s ‘The Nature of Language’. You write that ‘for Measham, it is intimacy that makes what surrounds us legible’. What do intimacy and legibility (apart, or together) mean to you in your essay, and more broadly?

To be able to write, you must be receptive. You need to be able to witness what is happening around you and respond. When I began writing ‘Salt on the Tip of the Tongue’, I felt detached from my immediate surrounds. I guess I was using poetic expression to remind myself of a time I felt truly alive. I think intimacy can be a synonym for presence. I’d say my desire to re-establish presence comes through in the first half of the essay. As the piece slowly evolved, I began to lose faith in writing. I was afraid that I was spending too much time turning inward as opposed to fostering meaningful connections: platonic, romantic, familial. And then I began to question my own receptiveness: What authority do I have in witnessing and responding? The task of the non-fiction writer is to understand that their connection to their immediate surrounds is temporal. They need to show great care when they seek to describe what they see and how they feel. I think impermanence and fallibility are sentiments that are latent within ‘Salt on the Tip of the Tongue’. A situation occurs; we move alongside it temporarily; we seek to make sense of it. Maybe we can’t, and that’s OK—we try our best and move on.

‘Salt on the Tip of the Tongue’ includes stories about various interactions with animals—and it also uses animals (I’m thinking about whales, especially) as metaphorical devices, or as figures through which you can write about your own life. What do animals and writing have to do with each other?

I definitely have a soft spot for centring animals figuratively within a text. I try to do this lovingly. There is a wonderful essay by Ashleigh Synnott where she likens writing to ‘the bird you hold in your hand’. I believe she is referencing Toni Morrison, but the point she makes is that because writers have an incredible power to construct experience, they must approach their material with care. The bird is the story; but if we don’t treat it with respect, it may as well fly away. As mentioned, Fatima Measham has a beautiful way of depicting the relationship between humans and non-humans. In her essay ‘What We Mean When We Say We Love Animals’she questions our affiliation with wildlife, reminding us that forced intimacy is a one-sided exchange. That’s not to say that it is selfish to desire connection—intimacy is a basic human need. But relationships are complex; they come with their own imbalances in power. This is the case with writing. Good writing tries to recognise this give and take. Sometimes, language has a mind of its own. No matter how much we try to tame it, it has a habit of becoming something other than what we expect. 

Erin McFadyen

Erin is a writer and editor from Awabakal and Worimi land in Newcastle. Her writing can be found in Foam Magazine, Overland, Art & Australia, The Mascara Review, Review 31, and Artist Profile, where she was Deputy Editor from 2020 to 2023. She also writes catalogue essays and copy for arts organisations including Blacktown Arts Centre, and works occasionally as a freelance copyeditor, mainly on books about art.