Salt River Road, by WA award winning author Molly Schmidt, is definitely a book with a difference.  Written with a mixture of prose and poetry, it tells the story of the rurally-based Tetley family in the aftermath of the loss of their mother. While the story is fiction, Molly has drawn on her own personal experience of losing her father when she was 10 years old and her familiarity with grief and loss is deeply felt in this book.

Read Serena Kirby’s review of Salt River Road

Australian Regional and Rural News interviewer, Serena Kirby, chatted with Molly to find out more about the unique and beautiful techniques she used in the book and the personal experiences that shaped her writing. 

ARR.News: I feel like there are two parts to this book; one of grief, pain, and coming-of-age and the other about community, reconciliation and healing. Was this intended or did it just evolve that way?

Molly Schmidt:  It wasn’t the intention initially but I guess, as it evolved, it became the intention. So yes, there are two very distinct parts of the process and the book for sure.

ARR.News: Throughout the book you refer to siblings Rose and Frank Tetley’s mother (Elena) as “you”. This really personalises the narrative and draws the reader in as if you are part of a private and intimate conversation.  It’s such a powerful technique so how did this come about and why choose ’you’ rather than refer to her as Mum or Elena?

Molly Schmidt: I think it was quite natural because, drawing from my personal connections of losing my dad, I used to write reflectively to him quite a lot as I was processing my own feelings. So by putting myself in the kid’s shoes when they were thinking about their Mum, they were talking and thinking directly to her.

I think some people have liked those parts of the book and some have found them more tricky, which I guess is always the gamble when doing something a little bit more experimental. But it was authentic for me, so I had to lean into it.

ARR.News: And the inclusion of poetry? It really surprised me at first but I soon began to look for it and almost read it separately from the story as it could almost stand alone. Was this written alongside the prose as you went along or at some other stage? 

And secondly – why did you choose to interleave the poems into the story?

Molly Schmidt: So that was really interesting. I guess for context – the book had been developing for ten years and with me just sort of returning to it while growing up I suppose. And so it had lots of different forms and I was naturally writing poetry.

I never imagined I’d write a book, but I read a lot of poetry. And then when I started trying to bring this story about Rose and Frank together and imagining that maybe it would be a book, there were some scenes that I couldn’t write as prose. I guess it wasn’t quite as natural for me.

And so I was initially writing the more emotional scenes in poetry. Sort of more free form thinking. I wasn’t sure what would happen with them and at times I tried to translate them from poetry into prose. But there came a point when I just transferred them into the book just as they were.

I think when you’re writing about emotion (and with some of the scenes that are quite sharp)  I felt like the poetry gave me a way to express the rawness but also in a slightly lighter way than if you had to read pages and pages of that emotion.

ARR.News: Are there parts of Rose that are you? 

Molly Schmidt: Yes definitely. She’s still very much her own character though and it’s not me, but I guess Rose is the character that’s the most informed by me. I guess I responded more similarly to how Rose did to losing my Dad than the way her brother Frank did, so he was the character where I was exploring all of what I didn’t do and what grief might look like for him.

Rose, on the other hand, was much more familiar to me and the way that she’s trying to carry on and hold everyone else up and being slightly more sensitive and stressed about it all was familiar to me, that’s for sure.

ARR.News: I love how you established the era of the story through references to popular songs of the 1970s and I note you’ve collated all the songs into a playlist at the end of the book. Who’s clever idea was that?

Molly Schmidt: Well the song choice was influenced by my Dad’s record collection which was a really nice ode to him, I suppose. Then, during the final edits, Mum and I were going over everything with a fine tooth comb  and she suddenly started asking me in lots of detail about which song was mentioned next in the book. At the time I thought it was really not necessary, and got a bit frustrated at her, but unbeknownst to me she was starting to write the playlist which ended up going in the book.

ARR.News: So the book won the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award. How did you find out you had won?

Molly Schmidt: I found out on the awards night, on stage. There were four of us shortlisted and we were all sitting on stage that night not knowing what the outcome would be. So I had absolutely no idea. I was already over the moon just to be on the shortlist and had told friends and family that to me, that was the prize.

I certainly didn’t expect me to win and it was very, very,  surreal when they announced my name and that really fast tracked everything. I don’t think I’d be here talking to you without that having happened.

This interview is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Related story: Review – Salt River Road