Magdalena Ball—who grew up in New York, studied at Oxford, and now lives with her family in Australia—is the author of two novels, five books of poetry, and one nonfiction, all of which have garnered much critical acclaim. But as if that’s not enough, she also spends a good deal of her creative time lifting up other writers, through her amazing and well-known book review site, CompulsiveReader.com, and her radio show, Compulsive Reader Talks. We are so excited to have this opportunity to talk with her.
Please tell us why you started Compulsive Reader, now in its 22nd year, and how it grew to be one of the best known serious literature review sites worldwide.
I always have been a reader first. Writing is something I enjoy and feel compelled to do and certainly part of who I am, but I continue to think of myself first as a reader. We live in such a fast-paced world and our culture encourages superficiality. We are all so busy, and everything is scanned and digested in seconds. We make snap decisions based on headlines and shortcuts, using our judgment to categorize and group for efficiency. With Compulsive Reader, I’m effectively giving myself a very deliberate mandate to slow down and read carefully, thoughtfully, and with attention, to counter the trend for speed and allow for complexity, depth and a really deep engagement with what I’m reading. I think that’s the real value of a book review, to allow for that second reading, the attentive mindful connection which is so critical to our lives. That has always been my purpose with the site, but since I started so many years ago, I’ve had many submissions and a bunch of regular reviewers who write for me. I try to maintain a similar standard of in-depth, pithy and detailed reviews—neither PR nor easy rejection. I also try, especially these days, to keep the reviews relatively kind. A review is always subjective, and always an engagement with the text. If you can’t engage, you probably aren’t the right person to do a review. I have rejected a few hatchet jobs, especially when they are unsubstantiated. But I am very lucky to have a few very dedicated and capable reviewers who have been writing for me for many years. We try to do about ten new reviews a month (sometimes a few more), and I usually only write two to three of those, so I rely on my fabulous reviewers!
Unmaking Atoms, Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup are some of the titles of your poetry books. Please tell Occhi readers about your relationship with the physical universe and how it serves you (and how you serve it) in your writing.
Though I have been on a few science panels, I am not a scientist. But I remain fascinated by physics, at least in a lay sense. Poets often explore the nature of reality, memory, time, space. There are so many possibilities to link what we understand about how time works, or the connection between time and space, with the way memory works, or the machinations of the human mind with all of its frailties. The more we learn about astrophysics, quantum physics, neurolinguistics or psychology, the stranger reality seems to be. I’ve been reading Carlo Rovelli’s Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, a beautifully written book that is not too difficult for a layperson like me. Rovelli says, “Science is a continual exploration of ways of thinking. Its strength is its visionary capacity to demolish preconceived ideas, to reveal new regions of reality, and to construct novel and more effective images of the world.” This is what poetry seeks to do; it’s a natural connection.
Your most recent book of poetry is titled Unreliable Narratives. Why that title and what does it say about the poems within?
Of course, the book is poetry, so ‘narratives’ is a little joke. It’s not narrative at all, therefore doubly unreliable. Most of the poems in the book began as a series of memoir vignettes, and I was not satisfied with them. I felt something was wrong. The linear approach did not convey the reality I experienced; it felt false to me. So I decided to pull them apart and remake them as poems. Most of the poems have the contour of memoir, but also explore how unreliable memory is, and the whole nature of recollection—which is always a reconstruction, a renegotiation, and a reimagining.
The powerlessness and vulnerability so many of us feel about living through these thorny times seems to exist in some form on every page in your book High Wire Step, sometimes apparent and sometimes between the lines, while narrators are busy serving drinks or making observations about the neighborhood. What would you like readers to take away from these poems?
The underlying theme of High Wire Step is the impact of unchecked greed, self-interest, and bullying, as typified by your—excuse me for pointing it out—president (ours is no better, so I’m not being smug here). The anchor poem is Art of the Deal which provides a New Yorker’s view on the rise of DT. I’m well aware that my work is probably mostly read by people who are in the same bubble as I am, so it’s not directive as such. If it is moving or impactful, then I’ve done what I set out to do. But I do focus a fair bit in this book—more so than I’ve ever done—on economic inequality, our increasingly urgent climate emergency (made very visceral during the Australian summer bushfires), resource depletion, the loss of species and ecological collapse. It’s not a pretty picture, but I feel like poetry makes for a palatable apocalyptic vision that hopefully reaches into places that other types of prose can’t. Somehow I feel that the solution must begin with compassion, connection, and empathy. Hopefully, this is part of what comes out of the work.
Your two novels are Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening. Please tell us a bit about each of them.
Sleep Before Evening was my first novel and is a coming-of-age story about a young piano prodigy, Marianne Cotton, who develops a terrible addiction after her influential grandfather dies while playing chess with her. Black Cow is about a high-flying executive couple, who decide to give up their well-paid jobs and fancy Sydney home to become Wagyu farmers in Tasmania, mostly living off-grid.
Which of these novels would make the best film and why?
My mother had this weird fantasy that Black Cow would make a perfect film, and she even went so far as to send a copy of the book to Heather Schreiber, the mother of Liev Schreiber, whom she knew—they both frequented the same ashram—to suggest that it would make a perfect film. In her mind, she already cast Naomi (Watts) and Liev as the protagonists, Freya and James Archer. So I’ll go with that one because her enthusiasm sort of infected me (though of course she never heard back), and I do love the idea of Naomi and Liev as Freya and James, though I understand they are no longer married. I still think they would bring the right tension to the role. Also, I think the book is very visual, and probably, with a few tweaks, it would make an easy transition to cinema. So if Naomi happens to be reading this, the book is still available!
According to your website, in addition to everything else you do, you are a Research Support Lead for a multinational company. Can you say a bit what that means and how (or if) it fits into your literary life?
I probably don’t need to say it but making a living from writing is not easy. Having a solid day job (which I’ve been at for some 30 years!) has freed me to write whatever I want, as a hobby, and not stress over financials. This is critical for poetry. My day job also involves working with scientists—nearly all of my work is semantics—around reporting, our library, writing up grant applications, etc., which means I have plenty of material for my writing.
What is your next project?
I’m currently finalizing another poetry book; it’s nearly ready for submission. I also have a long-running and very difficult novel in the works, which I’m struggling with but which I continue to work on. The story is still too diffuse to discuss but it is something of a science fiction and involves time travel, World War II, cryptanalysis, and music.
Where can readers learn more about you?
The easiest, all-in-one place to find out more about me is http://www.magdalenaball.com. I have links to everything there, but I’m also on all the socials and try to use each of them a little differently: https://www.facebook.com/magdalena.ball, https://www.instagram.com/maggieball1/, https://twitter.com/magdalenaball.
Readers can learn more Compulsive Reader at http://www.compulsivereader.com.
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