Parley with Barry Dickins

'Unparalleled Sorrow' by Barry Dickins

Barry Dickins is an award-winning Australian author, playwright and artist. He was such a passionate contributor to last Friday’s Writing the City session that I knew I wanted to talk to him about his new book. Our schedules were a bit tight, however, and we engaged in a little bit of old-fashioned, hand-written correspondence instead.

Barry, your description of the first onset of the clinical depression and anxiety that affected you is such a sad one. As a performer, writer and social being, ‘not being able to speak’ must have been an extreme experience. Could you write during this time?
The fact is ‘no’: for nearly all of 2008 I assumed I was deceased and as a consequence of no longer being alive I was voiceless and opinionless. I tried to write several thoughts at the psychiatric clinic but my hands shook so much I was unable to grip a pen to employ a physical diary. My whole life seemed meaningless and idiotic as it were a film not worth reviewing – I was nothing and offered nothing. However, upon my recovery at the start of October ’08 I used to write 4000 words a day – minimum output – I was determined to describe my downfall in English. But the depression I felt all of last year conquered me utterly and completely.

Most people would be shocked to discover that electroconvulsive therapy is still recommended as a treatment. But it was recommended to you.
My former wife says it was a miraculous recovery but I can really only remember one treatment which was the first – I was given nine doses of it and was amazed that it was that much: I hated the feeling of ECT due to the public service mentality of the psychiatrists I met. There was no post-mortem – no discussion – it was cavalier and horrifying but maybe it helped me – I’m in no condition to remember it. The anxiety and clinical depression left me after my father got me out of there in late September.

Can you describe what helped you repair and recuperate?
The decision to compose a truthful memoir and work as a writer once again was actually my medication. It was a spiritual decision of mine to capture my misery in written English and present myself as an essay.
Also my pig-headedness to be an artist again instead of a file in a mental clinic I didn’t respect. I needed to capture in prose my Hell. Now the book is popular I feel vindicated. But my love of my son was the strongest medicine – as well as that, I’ve always worshipped writing.

What did you hope to learn by putting your story into words?
That human peace of mind was still an option – that God who is words wanted me back at the desk – it was that I had discipline again after so many months of stuffing around and being hopeless as a father and a man. When Sandy Grant told me at lunch that he wanted to publish my memoir, it was just more good medicine, not drugs that I was scared of. Also I wanted to write something helpful for Australia’s army of depressed souls. I needed to be brave and truthful. All good poets are truthful.

Are you working on anything at the moment?
I’m completing a fairy story novel based upon the sorts of pixies my grandmother introduced to me nearly sixty years ago in West Preston – it’s for the adult reader however – thoughtful and highly poetic to enhance the truth of fantasy. I write 4000 fairy words per day. It is both escapist and real such as the unravelling-imagination is. It is full of foibles and love.

Estelle Tang, 3000 BOOKS
Festival Blogger