Chatting with Edward Hodge

Edward Hodge (he/him) is a poet and fiction writer based in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). He is part of Meridian Australis, an Australian organization dedicated to championing emerging speculative short story writers.

Edward is the author of “When the sun passed through me” from Radon Issue 9.

Q: Where did the initial inspiration for “When the sun passed through me” come from?

An object of inspiration is usually not evocative for anyone else, but I had this idea for a novel about a ghost moving through the desert, drifting inside creatures and plants, inhabiting their consciousnesses for a time, and then moving on. I wanted to explore what happened to the human condition if you stripped a person away from their relationships, from their culture, from their body. I wanted to figure out what was left. How introspective could I get?

I quickly realised that the idea could at mostsupport a short story. And a short story, at that. I ended up exploring themes that I didn’t set out to, including the technology that gave rise to the ghost, transhumanism, the desire for immortality, disconnection from other people, and the world. While the story still ended up being very existential, funnily enough it wasn’t as existential as I’d thought it would be!

Q: The story’s ending suggests a cyclical nature to existence. Do you personally find comfort in the idea of an eternal return, or does it lean more toward horror for you?

I don’t believe in eternal return, that we are locked into an endlessly repeating universe that expands and retracts over and over.

At uni, we learned about how the universe is expanding due to dark energy (energy that we don’t really understand, hence ‘dark’). Dark energy pulls massive objects away from each other, like galaxies. It doesn’t work on smaller stuff like planets or people.

To quickly explain why an eternal return isn’t probable—the force of gravity would need to be stronger than the force of the expanding universe. Because that would pull matter together into one big clump, which is part of the eternal return’s ‘retracting’ phase. But in our universe, gravity is weaker than the force of the expanding universe. So our universe is actually expanding faster and faster, and doesn’t look like it will ever retract. The end of our universe would happen when it runs out of energy. That’s the Heat Death. The death of heat. No more energy, no more movement. Stillness. Cold. That’s what I was trying to describe at the end of the story.

I take things a step further, in the final line where I say that the universe then moves on in some other way, which I believe would probably happen. Though it can’t be proven physically. But we also can’t prove physically what came before the Big Bang, because the forces that physicists measure didn’t even exist in the very early universe.

Can you tell I was a philosophy student? Jesus Christ. Getting off my soapbox now.

Q: What’s a piece of writing advice you’ve heard that you completely ignore?

Write every day. Well, it’s not quite true that I completely ignore this advice. I write every weekday. My advice is for each writer to find a pace that they can sustain over many months, which will ensure their writing is high quality. If that’s writing every day, fantastic. If that’s writing every second day, fantastic. Maybe you’re a morning person, like me. Or maybe you prefer working in the afternoons. You definitely need a pace, and it’s better that it’s habitual and regular.

There were a few months during my early twenties when I wrote 1,000 words a day. And the novel I was working on was pure drivel, because I was more concerned about hitting my daily goal rather than being focused and sustainable. It’s important to find a pace that works for your health, your schedule and your long-term goals.

Q: Can you tell us about Meridian Australis?

I’m part of a writing organization called Meridian Australis, where we champion emerging Melbourne writers of speculative short fiction. We’re all based in and around Melbourne, Australia. In addition to publishing AUSTRAL, our annual anthology, we also run five critique groups within the organization.

To me, the critique groups and the community we have built is what makes Meridian Australis really special. Being part of a critique group is insanely helpful. Think of it like a mechanic who is working on an engine; it helps to have other mechanics around when you’re trying to build something for a consumer. I’ve found that writers tend (tend!) to be shy by nature, and hate sharing their work until it’s perfect. But we ought to get over this. Writers are great people, and having a network will really improve your craft, and you’ll get a new group of friends out of it.

Q: Has working full-time as an editor altered your relationship to writing at all?

For me, they are completely different. When I write as part of my job, I feel like a house painter. I need to stay within the lines. Use the colors we agreed on. Be professional. But when it’s my own work, it’s like I can roll around in the paint. Chuck whole cans at the wall. Paint the carpet. I also feel that a professional setting helps me to be more creative outside of work. It’s like a left-brain right-brain sort of thing. If I exercise one side a lot, then the other side needs to compensate.

Q: How do you balance poetry and fiction writing? Is there a way you know if an idea is going to turn into a poem versus a story?

All the writers that I love most have beautiful prose. For me, a beautiful, meaningful line of description can say as much about life, the universe, and everything as a character’s journey. I like it when the art is occurring at micro and macro scales. Like a cathedral, where each tiny part of the structure is beautiful on its own, working in harmony with the whole. I also love commercial fiction, where there is less emphasis on the prose. But writers like Hermann Hesse, Cormac McCarthy, and Clarice Lispector have my heart, and keep me in love with writing.

When I write a story, I’ll begin with a character. Their situation will pull me into the narrative, and I’ll go from there. When I write a poem, I’ll begin with a line. Just the beauty and meaning of that sentence will be enough to get me going. I have never started a poem and ended up writing a story, or vice versa.

Q: What’s next for you? Any upcoming projects, dreams you’re chasing, or creative experiments you’re excited to dive into?

I’ve got a novel that I’m trying to get published at the moment. It’s a literary-crime piece set in my hometown of Geelong, Australia. It’s about a young man who’s trying to find his ex-girlfriend. He has a gun. He's not a nice guy. He's broken, desirous and on a bender. It's a big dive into the mind of a lost man with nothing to lose. You can read it in a day.

I’m also working on a sci-fi novel that’s coming along really well. The main character is a female android Aussie rules football player. There’re spies, aliens, astronauts, demons, time travel, polycules, the mythic swords of Charlemagne. It’s a lot of fun. I’ve also got a few short stories in the quiver that I’m sending out, and some on the workbench.