James is a poet and short story writer born in South Africa and living in Australia since teen-hood. He calls the Blue Mountains home and takes his inspiration from the surrounding trails, cliffs and canyons, and from the flora and fauna, especially the perky lyre birds of the Federal pass.
He has won various awards for his work including the ASA Poetry Mentorship, 2018. His poetry and fiction have appeared in fifteen journals in Australia and abroad including Meanjin, Cordite and Rattle. James is currently fine-tuning his collection of narrative poetry for publication, tentatively titled, ‘Aaron Heroically Survives His Jewish Self’.
James subscribes to the view that the writing life is an examined life. As such it may be fraught, for in order to capture and transmit story truth, the writer must view the self in an unflinching manner, regardless of whether he likes what he sees. He may try to change but cannot dupe himself or grow too comfy. In the world of literary art, the smug condition foreshadows the end.
A writer selectively gathers his material, drawing on life and imagination. And while he gathers he waits for the inkling of a story to surface. Once on the page he spends copious hours working for an outcome that draws the reader in and takes her on a fictional journey worth remembering. Actual writing is in large part rewriting; oh, those blessed drafts – they are the chance to rework the poems and narratives into desired shapes.
What keeps a writer at his desk when he could be out making friends or money? Nothing entirely rational. James works in solitude such that he might lift his craft into the realm of art. For this is what the literary writer aspires to, the creation of poems, stories and novels worthy of the moniker, art – writing imbued with the flair and the depth to entertain readers and grant them new insights into what it means to be human.
To his readers and to those who feel they may have been maligned on the page, James offers this barbed reassurance: Don’t flatter yourselves – the work is fiction and poetry, unless otherwise indicated, and in fiction and poetry ‘truth’ is markedly different from the truth of daily life.
James has two sons who keep the writing real and honest, poised somewhere between the leaves underfoot on the valley floor and the finger holds on the cliff face.