handiwork by Sara Baume
“And it seemed to me, then, both obvious and strangely surprising - how my world appears to order itself around these poetic coincidences, whether I search for them or not; how a planet so overstuffed and complicated can so keenly configure itself in response to my flights of thought, my flock of connections.”
handiwork (2021) is a short, contemplative work of narrative non-fiction by Irish writer and visual artist Sara Baume. Baume’s debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, narrated by a lonely 57-year-old man to his misfit of a dog, won the annual Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 2015 for fiction. handiwork is her debut work of non-fiction.
Through vignette prose and pondering, Baume talks us through her own history of art, writing and creativity, building on the memories of her father and grandfather - both men who worked with their hands, crafting in different ways - and how this has influenced her own pull towards craftwork and handiwork.
Baume draws contrasts between the act of creativity, of returning to being creative, and various birds’ migration habits. On reflecting on the process of making, she writes about the concept of flow:
“Flow is a forgetting - to press the slim button on the side of my phone which illuminates the screen; a forgetting to plan what I’m preparing for lunch; a forgetting to check and see what the dog is barking at; a forgetting to piss even though my bladder is uncomfortably full.”
And makes the comparison with the ease of large birds flying:
“Flow is a tailwind. And the bird with the most expansive wingspan - the wandering albatross - is able, in favourable conditions, to soar for vast distances expending the bare minimum of energy.”
Birds feature prominently throughout, as Baume includes photography of one of her own latest projects; small hand-carved, hand-painted species of birds. In doing so, she introduces a new theme, one of grief and loss, as she works backwards and forwards through her memory, reliving fragments of her father, who we learn has passed. She slowly unravels the story of his presence in her life and his death, and there is a joy to be found in the connection between daughter and father through craft and the ways it manifests:
“I have my dad’s hands - the length of his fingers, the width of his knuckle-bones - and as I age, I watch them grow to resemble his in condition as well - rough-skinned and muscular, calloused and stained.”
The hand-carved birds were a project that spanned two years, aiding her through her grief.
She considers what it means to be drawn back into parts of the world, our daily lives, and what we do when we land there. She eloquently describes her own creative process as being one of language:
“I have always felt caught between two languages, though I can only speak one.
The one I can speak goes down on paper and into my laptop, in the hours before noon. The one I cannot speak goes down in small painted objects, in the hours after.
The more I need to explain, the longer the documents become, the larger the assemblages.”
The book itself is set out in small sections. The chapters are light, flitting between ideas, some pages containing only a sentence or two. Baume moves around her subject matter in tight circles, touching on one thing before moving to another, gradually moving back again.
In doing so, Baume keeps us folded with her thought processes, the idea that a life of art and creativity is never linear but fuelled by abandoned projects, ideas, distractions, preoccupations and movement. Structure exists where we make it, but this can change shape on any given day.
handiwork was written pre-COVID-19, with Baume completing the manuscript in early 2019. It’s surprising to learn this, as the book itself feels deeply intertwined with how many of us have been living in these recent two years, and there is a strong sense of connection and familiarity to be found in the way Baume details her self-contained, solitary life.
I’m uncertain how handiwork landed on my radar, but I’m delightfully pleased it did. The slow, looping contemplation of this book feels just right for a world going through its own forms of repetitive standstill. In posing some of the most urgent questions around art, life and creativity, Baume reminds us that sometimes it is the sitting and reflecting that is far more important than any answers we may draw.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in nipaluna (Hobart), Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under www.wordswithelaine.com.
