Meet the School of Communication and Creative Arts

Today we speak with Antonia Pont: Antonia is a poet, writes nonfiction essays, and teaches creative writing to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as working with research students. She generously shares about her own creative practice, some tips for other creatives, and the teaching and learning environment at Deakin.

What do you teach at Deakin?

Antonia: I teach at the first year level, into the foundations unit for the Bachelor of Creative Writing, which is called “Writer’s Toolkit: Craft & Creativity”. It’s a really thorough and, I hope, really fun unit, where we try to bring all the new undergrads up to speed with the basics of their future vocation. The assignments try to emphasise process and technique rather than sheer inspiration, which is fun when it arrives, but not always reliable for writing as a profession. The team of tutors is amazing, with strong writers who are kind and encouraging teachers. We want students after this unit to feel more confident that they could submit to a journal, magazine or publisher and have all the basics in place. The rest is luck, timing and often years of work ahead. Students often start getting published in our Deakin publications: Verandah and Wordly. I love teaching this unit, especially since three years go past quickly and then it’s amazing to see students graduating — confident and connected to their fields and peers. I also teach into Honours, the Masters program, and supervise many PhD students across writing, literature, philosophy and the creative arts.

How would you describe your creative practice?

Cover of poetry book, Rabbit Poets Series, image by Andrea Eckersley

Antonia: My creative practice has spanned a number of genres over the decades, including fiction, performance writing and even making visual word-artefacts for art exhibitions. In recent times, I’ve been very focused on poetry (my first love) and also writing nonfiction essays. My poetry can range from quite playful and a little cheeky, to the very philosophical, asking the big questions about life, change, time, silence and loss. Sometimes I just write poems about desire and love and heartbreak, too. I actually worship a really good pop or music lyric. They are so hard to write, and can be the soundtrack to the most intense and memorable moments of life. My essays tend to merge philosophical musings and references with really contemporary themes and issues. I’ve written about envy, and how that feels and what to do with it, about internet intimacy and how we navigate love and the digital, then (around the time of the fires) about leadership and where it goes right or wrong, as well as nerdy themes like adverbs!! (they are super interesting). Creative practice in words also merges for me with creativity in the body. I’ve been a dancer and gymnast and, these days, I run a small yoga school (outside of work hours!), where I look into the intelligence that the body knows. That’s also a kind of poetry when it comes together. Another way to say it is that there is a grammar to the body and to movement. A story or poem that moves fluidly is not unlike a body that has practised being itself fully and moving from its own uniqueness. I think people say that my poetry has this intense embodied feeling in it. I’m happy for it to be described like that.

Who has been your biggest influence on your career to date?

Antonia: There are often a lot of quieter people over the course of a career, who support in subtle and ongoing ways. My PhD supervisors were good to me and saw what I was trying to do: Professor Jack Reynolds and Ass. Professor Marion May Campbell. A close friend and mentor, Professor Tim McNamara, who is not in my field, but with whom I read philosophy for many years in a little reading group, has been there in pointy moments. My yoga teacher, Orit Sen-Gupta, has also always offered incredibly sane advice when I wasn’t quite on a clear track. There are many fellow writers in my life, and female role models, such as Professor Jen Webb, who have lived a dignified version of being a professional woman and make me want to do the same. This is always inspiring. I try to do this for my students too. Sometimes an email comes through, from a past student, saying that years later a small bit of advice suddenly made perfect sense — like a lightbulb! These moments make my job wonderful.

What do you consider your greatest achievement in life?

Antonia: Learning to wait before I react. I know it sounds boring, but it can avert so much suffering (for me and others). It is an ongoing learning, and it is never wrong. We are volatile creatures; we are tender and reactive. From this place, it is harder for us to be kind, to give others the benefit of the doubt, and to think outside of our own narrow viewpoint. Working in a university, which has its own moments of strain and reactivity, is an incredible training ground for this. This also relates to leadership, in which I have a strong interest. When leaders are steady and wise, we can all move forward, do and create more. When I lead well, and my job offers chances for this, I feel very proud. On a more tangible note, I consider a big achievement a series of essays I wrote in my role as a columnist for The Lifted Brow publication. I worked with two incredible editors (who worked voluntarily!!) and they made space for me to write in a very genuine and sometimes provocative voice. This is a great gift, and it’s what a good editor does. In our degree, we hope to train our students to be like this for writers. Editor/Author, when it works, is a golden and miraculous encounter of minds and energy.

What has been your favourite Deakin experience?

Antonia: One of my favourite Deakin events is the annual HDR Summer School for Masters and Doctoral students. It’s a rare thing in the world of higher degree study, and Deakin offers it in the Arts and Education faculty. Each year, I continue to be astonished at how great it can be. A whole bunch of students, researchers and guests meet over some days in February, and distance-enrolled students fly in from all over the world. We spend some days meeting, thinking, reading, sharing and, of course, eating, drinking and making new friends and connections. It happens in Geelong on the waterfront and I always find it so special that Deakin offers this, time and time again. The keynotes are often incredibly famous or respected scholars or practitioners, and I’ve been stunned at the wonderful talks I’ve heard. The Faculty Research staff who run it are incredible. I love being part of it.

How would you describe the Deakin learning experience for students?

Antonia: It’s hard to say, being on the “inside”, but I hope that what we offer is a human, caring face (and not just a front!), backed with rigour, skill, collegiality and dynamism. Deakin staff are often quietly incredible. I work closely with people who do really amazing things, but we still just chat like normal people about what tea we’re having with our morning cake… secretly I’m admiring them immensely! I think the campuses are beautifully appointed and students feel like they’re beginning their professional lives. Staff are warm, available, kind and encourage the slow-building of excellence in whichever field. With writing, I say to students that if they are still doing it, daily, weekly, monthly, after their first units with us, then they have succeeded. This is because writing, like any life-long skill, is a slow burn, and creeps up on you. The main thing is that you feel welcomed into doing it and being part of that community. I think students also appreciate Deakin’s amazing IT. Our Cloud learning is second-to-none, and we are improving it all the time. Learning platforms are friendly, and students can also make new connections there, to take into their lives.

What is your best advice for someone looking to enter a creative career?

Antonia: Never believe the doubters. Practise every day. Accept difference. Know that your voice/style won’t come overnight. Accept advice, even when it stings your ego a little. Don’t compare yourself EVER with anyone. Our paths have a special rhythm, and you never know what will happen. Be a good citizen of your community, while also knowing that creative fields are thick with ego and ambition and that you may see some unsavoury sides of people… alongside this too, however, you’ll encounter generosity to knock you over. People do stuff to just help others, to promote them, because they love the arts. My only wish is that we could have more faith at a government level in the arts at every level, from the State Ballet and Opera, down to tiny literary mags that brighten the days of younger people and contribute to mental health and togetherness in subtle and crucial ways. The arts need to be funded. They can’t be a business like any other. We need all the arts because they are about being human. What’s the point of all the practical aspects of life, if once we’re settled, safe, healthy and fed, we have nothing to ponder, read, watch or visit? When the arts thrive too, Deakin students can get internships, and get out into the working world, and find their feet and self-confidence. I love seeing this.

What is it like teaching and studying your discipline online?

Antonia: When I teach online, I tend to use all that Deakin’s IT platforms can offer and more. I use Twitter a little bit, to broadcast videoed reading sessions, to hopefully inspire my students with the range of literature we’re looking at, and to keep in touch. I use the Cloud for communications, and also emails to really be there for students. Lectures are often recorded, and that’s really fun. I love giving the lecture live, to a room of people and then being able to provide this to the Cloud.

We also use some fairly simple but clever methods of teaching the most important part of writing study on the Cloud. Workshopping is a traditional aspect of writing apprenticeship and we do it in innovative ways to make the Cloud students’ experience dynamic and engaged.

There are good and more challenging bits about online study. One incredible bit is how it can include people who might have been excluded from face-to-face learning. I love knowing that someone, who would never have been able to do a degree more traditionally, can now study, practise excellence and acquire a degree to open new life doors. Deakin is so good at this, and I’m very proud to be part of it. Online learning is very good for those who have a sense of time-organisation. It is flexible, which is good when one is mature and has a very clear goal. I do think that students who are younger and seeking not just a piece of paper, but a life encounter, to broaden their circles, to hang out, beyond the classroom and so on, should — if they can — try to attend on campus. It’s not for everyone, but it’s still a wonderful experience in a life. It can just be a good moment to grow up, be messy, waste some time, argue a lot, consider ideas, read philosophy, debate politics, make friends and fall in love. A lot of students have to work part time, and we know this and try to meet them in these practical pressures, too.
It might sound old-fashioned, but I think it can be worth spending some time becoming a person and university has been one place for that in history. My dearest friends are often those I met during study. That said, people are different, and the main thing is to understand the pros and challenges of each mode of learning, and then to consider one’s own style and personality, needs and tendencies. The fact that Deakin offers beautiful campus study, and very slick and accessible Cloud study is what I love. I’m happy to chat with any prospective student who wants to work out which mode will support them best.

Dr Antonia Pont teaches in the Bachelor of Creative Writing, the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) program, the Master of Arts (Writing and Literature), and supervises PhD students.