K Patrick is a poet and author of poetry collection Three Births and the novel Mrs S, a work they like to refer to as the “horny lesbian novel.” They were shortlisted for both the White Review Poets Prize and White Reviews Short Story Prize in 2021. They write work that primarily looks at and examines life in a queer body and the intricacies of queer desire and longing.
Before their panel at the Sydney Writers Festival on Queer Love and Longing, I got the chance to talk with them about their writing process, their characters, and their unique writing style.
Date: May 23rd 2024, Thursday
You write about queer longing in a way that is very based in the physical experience. You never shy away from writing about the body and sex, which is rare to see in queer media where longing is often this metaphysical abstract thing that is only ever hinted at. What was it like for you to write in this very direct and open way about queer longing, which historically isn’t very common in queer texts?
I think maybe it can be quite common in queer text, I felt like I was part of a legacy of writers that have done that especially in recent contemporary fiction in the last 20-50 years. Honestly it felt like the only way to do it because I wanted a text that felt honest and because my first instinct towards the book was that I wanted to write a ‘horny lesbian novel’ it had to then be horny and to be very true to the body and I guess that the bodily experience is essential to the narrator’s way of being in the world. They’re way of being in the world is very much body first. So, I had to have it as part of the novel then as sex being very present, being upfront, and being essential. Having desire is an essential way of making self and making personage.
You do get that sense in the text of the narrator being very centred in their body and how they like go through the world because of their body. Continuing from that, how did you balance the sensuality and physicality of the relationship between the two protagonists of Mrs S? Or keep the feeling of desire and longing alive even as the characters’ relationship advanced?
A: My god, it was really hard. That was probably the most tiring part of the job was doing that. I think that when I first sent it to my editor, I probably let it drag on a bit too long before getting to the combination of the affair, the actual sex part. It was hard. I think I’m still learning how to make that kind of balance work in things I’ve written since as well because it can be tempting not to break pace so you can find yourself with one note and then learning how to add the other notes or to become brave enough with the other notes, that takes a bit of time.
Mrs S is set in a girls-only boarding school, so you have this kind of ever-present chorus of The Girls and The Dead Author as an omnipresent figurehead. What made you want to write a story in this kind of environment, that is isolated from society but where one also always feels watched?
That’s exactly it. I think I needed a setting that could contain the affair in a way that allowed it to remain tense and sexual and allow this kind of unravelling of two bodies or a singular body. I needed something that didn't have many interruptions so I didn’t want a lot of interruption in the text and in order to have that you have to have an architecture that is very specific and very unchangeable so that it’s the characters that become the main focus. The setting is essential in the way that it is this perfect backdrop. The architecture is important too because, I had this idea for a sex scene in a church, so I was like what sort of institutions would have a church inbuilt. And from there to a small self-contained kind of town with a boarding school is perfect for this text as well. And I think allowing for a setting that is historic also in turn create a watchfulness, so it had to be a very watched, a watchful and watching space too. Somewhere where there are eyes everywhere.
You’ve talked about how you enjoy writing about the queer rural as a lonely place but with a lot of potential for self-articulation. In Mrs S you also get this feeling of a boarding school being an isolated place from society, but the protagonist still being wary of the way the few people there view her in a butch body. Would you say that the idea of gaze and perception by others while in a queer body is something that comes up often in your work or your life?
Yes.
Very straightforward.
Yeah, I mean you said everything smart in the question. I write through my own body. I feel a lot of my writing starts in the physical. There’s a natural tendency – of course if you’re writing through the body you’re writing for the gaze and you're also aware of being perceived as a body which I suppose is where that tension you were talking about comes from. In terms of being Butch there is a certain kind of watching that happens both within the identity and puts a pressure on it and I’m interested in that tension too. What is produced as a result of that tension, between the self and place. You use that quote – did I say that about the queer rural, is that something I said?
Yeah, in a different interview.
Sounds smart. I think that stays true, and it’s definitely true for my upcoming work I think the potential to be an unwatched queer body in a landscape like that does invoke a sense of belonging, more than the modern city sometimes. But it’s a lonelier type of belonging .
Returning again, to the idea of nameless characters and the way you write of the body, the way a lot of the characters are identified throughout the book is through title or small physical details, the way the sit or stand or conduct themselves or dress. I remember the scene with the Housemistress in the bar especially as one where the reader is made achingly aware of the physicality of her character. What is it that made you want to write of your characters in this way, as a collection of physical traits rather than named and how did you go about doing it?
It was important to me that the protagonist was nameless so I kind of started from there because I wanted there to be a sense of futurity in that character so it’s really important that they might at one point, or at the end of the text, choose a name for themselves. I also wanted to honour that space they’re in where they’re in the midst of articulating their identity and how for them it would be a really complicated thing and if I brought that into the text then I would have to bring in that complication. I wasn't sure how to do that without dragging down the physicality of the text. It seemed better to represent them as this physical entity rather than tethering them to a specific name Then it kind of became fun for me. The role of detail in the book is what you’re noticing, where there is no padding, not a lot of detail, there is no era or markers of time and same with the names. I felt like those aspects pulled the text down, I needed it to keep at a certain pace for it to work.
I do agree with like you get the feeling that because you don't know the obvious named markers you get very quickly let into the private and personal lives of the characters. Looking again at the Housemistress, you get this real sense of solidarity and friendship between her and the protagonist, and even romantic and sexual tension despite them saying they are uninterested in each other. I wanted to get an idea of what inspired the Housemistress character, and what her role was within the story?
I think I needed that balance. When I look back at the text the Housemistress evolved quite naturally. I realised that I needed those solidarities, I needed a sounding board, someone who’d survived. Someone who was able to offer a possible way of being in the world to the protagonist. Also, just some light and relief. I wanted to have this balance of platonic intimacy too, I didn’t want just romantic intimacy, I wanted the intimacy between friends too. I thought it was really important to the text. If you’re talking about desire, it exists in so many different forms that I didn’t want to have only this sexual desire. I wanted to also have that very queer desire of that strange unofficial kind of mentor/mentee relationship, where you have that queer instinct of someone you recognise something of yourself in, and then maybe that thing in yourself is able to be articulated, and you are drawn together because of that. And that can be a friendship. Sometimes the most beautiful articulation is as a friendship. I think that’s why I was so keen on it and writing that character.
You’ve mentioned before about writing and not feeling the need to explain queer subtext or translate yourself for a wider audience, rather being able to write authentically about queerness and the social language of it. What was it like to be able to write so authentically of yourself? Do you find the page freeing in comparison to how you have to exist and move through the world?
That’s an interesting question. Do I find the page more freeing then how I move through world? Yes and no. In some ways yes of course, because if you're writing fiction in theory there's a limitlessness to it that would indicate a kind of freedom, but I’m not sure that that ends up being true because of course within a text you’re creating boundaries and difficulties for yourself. You also have to live inside, and we can’t help ourselves, it’s a really human thing to do. A for moving through the world I know? I think I don't really think about the way that I am in the world, I don't really think about the relationship between the way I am in the world and the way that I write. Which is really weird, maybe I should think about that, because there is one. The things that went into Mrs S of course were inlfuenced by my experience, but it’s funny because you separate yourself as an author from the text at a certain point but maybe that's kind of a disingenuous thing to do because what went into the book is my own knowledge of being in that space of the world and as the narrator, knowing how that felt. And knowing what that moment before you jump or before you make these huge decisions about yourself is like. I’ll have to think about that acutally, it’s a complicated question. Have you asked anyone else that before?
No.
It's kind of a complicated question, I hope that was a helpful answer.
Yes, definitely. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about, because you transform the way the world sees you within and through fiction, I think that’s something you get a lot with queer and POC authors. So that relationship was something I was interested in.
Yeah, I see what you mean. In that way there’s quite a lot of responsibility in it as well. Maybe that’s what I shy away from. That idea that I’m answerable to the text, sometimes there is that queer resistance that to produce and then be accountable for the text, you just want to produce and then remain unseen. I think sometimes to become a figure alongside the text is really complicated. Especially when you’re writing from a marginalised perspective.
You use language in a really unique way, the way you write prose in these short, mysterious sentences with stark imagery is rare in literary fiction. Would you say this is a consequence of being a poet, or just a feature of how you write?
I think it's definitely a consequence of being a poet, in that you think rhythmically. It sounds really pretentious, but I did think in beats. Because it's so bodily it has to be attuned to the body. Again, that’s why there is no detail and that’s why there’s no names, no dates, no local place names either, because it would all just drag this text down. So, the way I wrote in that staccato style allowed me to make it feel more like manoeuvring the body. Even physically but also internally. I wanted it to be based on organs, heartbeat, blood pumping, all of that seemed really important. And it is important when you're in a state of a particular kind tension where you're very aware of what it's like to be in your body and I really wanted to put that in there. Put that on the page somehow. I think from writing poetry you give yourself a certain permission to be stranger on the line and maybe that's what I did with this, and I didn’t realise it was weird until after the fact, that’s just how it ended up being written. It wasn’t until people talked to me about the book that it was quite a strange way of putting sentences together and I was like “Oh, I suppose it is.” Very nightmarish, it’s sometimes very hard to follow the action but I wanted that kind of intensity of the world when you’re in that state. In a really busy melting place and everything falls or collapses into one another. That seemed really important to the book.
That’s everything, thank you so much. I really look forward to seeing your panel after this.
I hope I don’t repeat myself too much in the panel tonight but, thank you.
The one thing that is clear after a conversation with K Patrick is just how cool and composed, they are. Someone with a real passion for their work who holds no fear in putting themselves and their own experiences and desires on the page. Mrs S is a culmination of both their poetic expertise and their personal experience, creating a work that is unmatched in its ability to insightfully examine the queer experience.
