Well, I wish she never told me this, it has been absolutely no help in my life.

What good is genius? I don’t believe there is any such thing, anyway: genius is an idea men made up. It has nothing to do with women.

Silly old suffragette spinsters at that school, they never taught us how to make peace with our limitations. They didn’t teach compromise cooking cleaning conciliating or caring. They didn’t teach disappointment and they didn’t teach hurt. I have had to learn those things all by myself.

I have been toying with calling my first collection of poetry ‘The Housewife’s Lament’. Only then nobody but housewives will buy it. That is the shame—only housewives listen to housewives and no one cares what housewives think.

(Farmer’s wives, though—that is something completely different.)

Love Veda x

† † †

24 DEC 1966

Dear Tilde,

Well, I know I am not preserving turns, writing before I’ve had an answer from you, but as nobody is home here, and as I’ve just (finally!) got something positive in the mail from a publisher, I’m writing anyway. Bear with me. If you ever have a similar need to write out of turn, be sure and do so.

So: a publishing house, name of ‘Vellum Press’, is ‘interested in the poems I have sent and would like to read the rest of the collection’! John Honey (editor-in-chief) was particularly taken by my ‘urbane and dry commentary on the reality of a woman’s life in contemporary Australia’. He wonders why he has never come across my work before in print. Hip, hip, hooray! All is well in this little writing room! Children might blot my copy, spill drink on my desk, crunch biscuit crumbs in the margins of my notebooks—but all is well! Husbands might go on frying and scoring and peeling and pureeing, I blow them kisses, for all is well! Mothers might shake heads and think the worst, but daughters have proved they are not fools after all!

Yes. I know. I am getting ahead of myself, but I don’t care. I want to enjoy this feeling while I can. I’m going to spend the whole afternoon writing because this letter assures me that I am not stupid for doing so. It’s very hard, you see, to keep on writing without positive criticism. Poetry-writing is a ‘dubious activity’, especially for a woman. (I put quotes around this because I made it up, and it has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?) Poetry is a ‘dubious activity’ because: a) it does not make money for anyone—or very rarely (unless you are Mr P), b) it has no use, in a practical sense, in the world, and c) it takes up time a woman could be using to scrub out the bathtub or do an extra load of whites. Furthermore, to really clinch the matter, your average Australian would always choose a rural gazette over a book of poems.