Changing man

For Jaya Savige [2008] the last 11 years since leaving Cambridge have been characterised by profound change on both the personal and professional front.

He has captured all of that in his writing while experimenting with poetic innovation and change, with his most recent book of poems, Change Machine, being named one of the ‘Best Australian Books of the 21st Century’ by experts in The Conversation this August.?

The book was published in 2020 with the poems being written over a period of time, mainly since 2014, and brought together in one volume. Jaya’s previous book of poetry, Surface to Air, was published nine years earlier, mid-PhD. His pamphlet of 2014, Maze Bright, was in part inspired by conversations with scientist-friends he met via Gates Cambridge. “Those conversations affected my art and my sense of what is possible in poetry,” he says.

Before he submitted his PhD thesis on risk in the works of James Joyce, Jaya was offered a lecturing job in the English faculty at the New College of the Humanities, the private institution set up by philosopher AC Grayling, and moved from one of the UK’s oldest institutions to its newest in 2013. There was huge opportunity there.

Jaya was at the centre of shaping the curriculum and meeting the regulatory requirements of a new type of creative writing degree, one which was popular as a minor with students doing a whole range of other degrees, from politics to economics. He refers to that period as one of ‘permanent revolution’ as the college evolved, innovated, changed its degree structures with new partnerships and pivoted online during Covid.

At the same time Jaya was grappling with personal challenges as he and his partner tried to start a family.?

In 2021, after the publication of Change Machine, which has received a number of prestigious award citations and plaudits, he decided to move back to full-time writing and editing.? He says he loved teaching and shaping the writers of tomorrow and working with the finest literary academic minds. He looks back fondly on that phase of his career, but he had the writing itch and he needed to scratch it. Jaya now has a top literary agent, Peter Straus, and is working on an ambitious project on the history of poetry across all cultures and eras.?

Amid all the turbulence of the last decade, however, there have been some constants. One mainstay of Jaya’s time at Cambridge and beyond has been his long-time position as poetry editor of The Australian. He has been a judge on some of the most prestigious literary prizes and has become a regular writer for publications such as the Times Literary Supplement. He has also contributed the final two chapters to the forthcoming Cambridge History of Australian Poetry.?

For Jaya, Cambridge was an important time of change for him intellectually, with the Gates Cambridge community playing a? vital role. He looks back on that time with a lot of affection.? “That international and interdisciplinary experience was so important,” he says. “The opportunity to interact with brilliant minds and to hear and absorb the fire burning inside them was life-changing.”

Read the full profile here.