Settling into a five-hour seat
To watch the flat rust land go by.
The sun is set as I walk up Deakin
Frozen tips and toes and nose
To burst in, gasping, at the front desk
Handed a key and a carton of milk.
Men and women take turns on a platform
Mics and high chairs
Crossed legs and notes
In an old art gallery, inadequately heated.
My hands are cold
But my imagination runs hot
Fueled by speech.
A trek to a campus clear across town.
Slipping in late, pink-nosed,
My hands are cold
As the poets and novelists read
Excerpts of things told or untold.
I slip into a trance
To Tracy Farr's voice,
Her story of a woman inventor and a swan.
Her face disappears behind starbursts of light
And the images she creates before us all
In words.
Words becoming worlds.
Tuesday 4 August 2015
Saturday 1 August 2015
Diary Entry from the Last Day
Sun July 19
The main concern for the day was this awards ceremony we had to hold at the finale lunch, with awards of our own invention. Every group did something funny and cute with their award, except for us - I think we were the most nervous. I certainly was, having been determined for the duration of the festival not to meet any famous writers, in fear of making a fool of myself. I will go well out of my way to avoid awkwardness.
Our award was the Optometrist Award for greatest insight. I read out the winning quote, from Alexis Wright:
'You've got to take control of your future... you can't have someone shove your future on you and say "this is how it's got to be"...'
Alexis Wright was in the front row; when we filed off the stage she held my hand and said 'thank you', and, of course, I did make a fool of myself. I was all flustered and nervous and squeezed her hand too tightly and said 'thanks!' before rushing off.
After the awards we had nothing much to do, so a group of us drove out in two cars to the sand dunes, picking up beer and cider on the way. The dunes were beautiful, almost bright orange against the hard blue of the sky, but also a little creepy because of the possibility of lizards and snakes. But we made jokes and drank and played with our shadows until the sun went down and it got too cold.
Then we spent the rest of the evening at a pub until it closed at the unlikely hour of nine thirty.
The main concern for the day was this awards ceremony we had to hold at the finale lunch, with awards of our own invention. Every group did something funny and cute with their award, except for us - I think we were the most nervous. I certainly was, having been determined for the duration of the festival not to meet any famous writers, in fear of making a fool of myself. I will go well out of my way to avoid awkwardness.
Our award was the Optometrist Award for greatest insight. I read out the winning quote, from Alexis Wright:
'You've got to take control of your future... you can't have someone shove your future on you and say "this is how it's got to be"...'
Alexis Wright was in the front row; when we filed off the stage she held my hand and said 'thank you', and, of course, I did make a fool of myself. I was all flustered and nervous and squeezed her hand too tightly and said 'thanks!' before rushing off.
After the awards we had nothing much to do, so a group of us drove out in two cars to the sand dunes, picking up beer and cider on the way. The dunes were beautiful, almost bright orange against the hard blue of the sky, but also a little creepy because of the possibility of lizards and snakes. But we made jokes and drank and played with our shadows until the sun went down and it got too cold.
Then we spent the rest of the evening at a pub until it closed at the unlikely hour of nine thirty.
Tuesday 28 July 2015
First Poem
My first attempt at poetry was scribbled down in the back of Brian Grogan Lecture Theatre on the Saturday morning of the festival. Not that I was bored, or not listening, but I was inspired and curious to try. I don't know any rules and I put the line breaks where I felt like it, so it's probably better off in the Bad Poetry Resort. But I'm going to once again use the excuse that it was my first ever poem.
Between two and three years
And still whenever you open your door
Twice or thrice a week
And stand there in a t-shirt, hair sticking up
Some weekend morning
Or still in your suit and coat some cold night, to let me inside
You look, for a second, like a stranger
Not what I expected.
Then I have to remember that we own each other
And know each other more than anyone else knows us
Or at least
Are supposed to.
After a handful of minutes I recognise you again
Place you in your allocated space in my life
Sweep off the dust that collects there
And put you back up in your spot
And think nothing more of it.
But after we say goodbye, for another night or two,
The dust of memory and imagination
Grows over your vacant place again
Even though you are less than an hour away.
Probably the you in my phone is too far separated from
And not as warm as
The you in your doorway, in the flesh.
Probably it is because you are never here
In my box room at the top of a spiral
That barely fits my belongings and I
And surely couldn't hold your presence too
Expansive and relaxed as it is
In contrast with my cramped, meek one.
Between two and three years
And still whenever you open your door
Twice or thrice a week
And stand there in a t-shirt, hair sticking up
Some weekend morning
Or still in your suit and coat some cold night, to let me inside
You look, for a second, like a stranger
Not what I expected.
Then I have to remember that we own each other
And know each other more than anyone else knows us
Or at least
Are supposed to.
After a handful of minutes I recognise you again
Place you in your allocated space in my life
Sweep off the dust that collects there
And put you back up in your spot
And think nothing more of it.
But after we say goodbye, for another night or two,
The dust of memory and imagination
Grows over your vacant place again
Even though you are less than an hour away.
Probably the you in my phone is too far separated from
And not as warm as
The you in your doorway, in the flesh.
Probably it is because you are never here
In my box room at the top of a spiral
That barely fits my belongings and I
And surely couldn't hold your presence too
Expansive and relaxed as it is
In contrast with my cramped, meek one.
Thursday 23 July 2015
Reflections on The Swan Book
Alexis Wright's The Swan Book is not an easy read. It wouldn't suit the content if it were.
The novel takes place in a future Australia, suffering the effects of a global dystopia ravaged by climate change and land-war. This future Australia has backslid from any hope of progress - Aboriginal people from all over the country are taken to live in an army-patrolled camp, homeless crowd the flooded streets of cities, and wildlife are in a forced migration to escape dusty drought or freezing climates. Everyone but a privileged few are starving and displaced.
This dystopia is shown to us through the perspective of Oblivia, a girl who has been unable to speak since she was gang-raped as a child and later found comatose in a hollow tree. Her muteness is born of trauma, but partly a conscious choice: 'She would rather be silent since the last word she had spoken when scared out of her wits, the day when her tongue had screeched to a halt with dust flying everywhere, and was left screaming Ahhhhh! throughout the bushland, when she fell down the hollow of the tree.' (The Swan Book, p.19)
Something I thought fascinating was Alexis Wright's insight at MWF on Oblivia's muteness: 'The story of Oblivia is not just one character... it is Aboriginal people generally. People are closing off.'
Oblivia's story, anger-inspiring as it is, is an incredibly fitting analogy for the issue of ancestral land ownership. Where one story is the invasion of the body, the other is the invasion of land; of home.
The Swan Book is also filled with touches of the surreal: genie bodyguards, talking monkeys, ghosts, and personifications of drought. It is never made clear whether the more fantastical elements are real in this dark future world, or products of Oblivia's mind, resulting from the 'cut-snake virus' in her brain. But hers is an apt lens to examine this future Australia through. Her confusing, fractured and chaotic narrative perspective mirrors a world that has become the same.
'Gang-raped. The girl hardly knew what these two words meant as she thought about herself in the sameness of passing time while sitting on the floor of the hull, pulling her head apart trying to remember what had happened to her, or perhaps whatever it was, it just happened to some other little girl that everyone was talking about and maybe it was not her either, or herself neither, but all girls.' (p.82)
The novel takes place in a future Australia, suffering the effects of a global dystopia ravaged by climate change and land-war. This future Australia has backslid from any hope of progress - Aboriginal people from all over the country are taken to live in an army-patrolled camp, homeless crowd the flooded streets of cities, and wildlife are in a forced migration to escape dusty drought or freezing climates. Everyone but a privileged few are starving and displaced.
This dystopia is shown to us through the perspective of Oblivia, a girl who has been unable to speak since she was gang-raped as a child and later found comatose in a hollow tree. Her muteness is born of trauma, but partly a conscious choice: 'She would rather be silent since the last word she had spoken when scared out of her wits, the day when her tongue had screeched to a halt with dust flying everywhere, and was left screaming Ahhhhh! throughout the bushland, when she fell down the hollow of the tree.' (The Swan Book, p.19)
Something I thought fascinating was Alexis Wright's insight at MWF on Oblivia's muteness: 'The story of Oblivia is not just one character... it is Aboriginal people generally. People are closing off.'
Oblivia's story, anger-inspiring as it is, is an incredibly fitting analogy for the issue of ancestral land ownership. Where one story is the invasion of the body, the other is the invasion of land; of home.
The Swan Book is also filled with touches of the surreal: genie bodyguards, talking monkeys, ghosts, and personifications of drought. It is never made clear whether the more fantastical elements are real in this dark future world, or products of Oblivia's mind, resulting from the 'cut-snake virus' in her brain. But hers is an apt lens to examine this future Australia through. Her confusing, fractured and chaotic narrative perspective mirrors a world that has become the same.
'Gang-raped. The girl hardly knew what these two words meant as she thought about herself in the sameness of passing time while sitting on the floor of the hull, pulling her head apart trying to remember what had happened to her, or perhaps whatever it was, it just happened to some other little girl that everyone was talking about and maybe it was not her either, or herself neither, but all girls.' (p.82)
Favourite Festival Quotes
'We want this great surf of poetry to rise above us and smash us into the beach. And I don't know why that's so.' - Tom Keneally
'I thought: I'll give up everything I've learned to write my own poems. ... I wanted to have my own voice.' - Sharon Olds
'If you know where you're going before you even begin, there's almost no point in writing it.' - Judith Beveridge
Let subject matter be at the mercy of your language, not the other way around. If you know what you're going to write about then you don't open yourself up to association.' - Anthony Lawrence
"I don't generally make anything up in my poems... I never used to say that because I didn't want to get sued or killed.' - Sharon Olds
'I thought: I'll give up everything I've learned to write my own poems. ... I wanted to have my own voice.' - Sharon Olds
'If you know where you're going before you even begin, there's almost no point in writing it.' - Judith Beveridge
Let subject matter be at the mercy of your language, not the other way around. If you know what you're going to write about then you don't open yourself up to association.' - Anthony Lawrence
"I don't generally make anything up in my poems... I never used to say that because I didn't want to get sued or killed.' - Sharon Olds
Saturday 18 July 2015
Poetry
Unpopular opinion time (at least in this environment): I've never really been one for poetry.
I do, on occasion, come across a poem that grabs me and holds my attention, but a lot of poetry I've been exposed to has seemed to me intentionally or unnecessarily cryptic. Almost as if the author is showing off, in a way. But since being exposed to Sharon Olds, I think I might now be a convert.
The first poem of Sharon's I heard, the one she wrote on the plane trip here and read out at The Mildura Club on Thursday night, actually gave me goosebumps, and I resolved to seek out more of her work. The next day Peter Goldsworthy quoted from somewhere that goosebumps are the true test of the effectiveness of poetry, which i took as a confirmation.
Though not a 'poetry person', I am a person who can be awed by song lyrics. I was not surprised when Leonard Cohen was referenced all of three times by poets that day, as he is a singer-songwriter I also love, above all for his words. I almost rolled my eyes when he was mentioned, and thought: of course these poets love Leonard Cohen! I haven't read his books, but his songs are poetry. He is a poet. Then: wait, so I do like poetry?
What appeals to me almost exclusively about Cohen are his lyrics. Not to devalue his work, but most of his early folk songs sound very same-y to my ear, musically. Perhaps I do like poetry, but just a certain kind of poetry, one that Cohen and Olds both fit the criteria for. Surely their styles are somewhat similar - relatively simplistic but powerful imagery, eliciting a devastating physical response at times. With a lot of poems, I have to read each line over twice or thrice as I go in order to fully understand what the poet is trying to say, but with Olds and Cohen both, I understand immediately - not just what is at the core of the poem, but what that core feels like.
Apart from that, I can't say what else it is about these two poets that puts them parallel in my mind. Having never studied poetry, I can't tell of any similarities or divergences in these styles on a formalistic level. But I think now that I should start to educate myself.
I've also started experimenting with writing my own poetry, as of this morning, on a whim, in the back of the lecture theatre.
That's right. One more bad amateur poet in the world.
I do, on occasion, come across a poem that grabs me and holds my attention, but a lot of poetry I've been exposed to has seemed to me intentionally or unnecessarily cryptic. Almost as if the author is showing off, in a way. But since being exposed to Sharon Olds, I think I might now be a convert.
The first poem of Sharon's I heard, the one she wrote on the plane trip here and read out at The Mildura Club on Thursday night, actually gave me goosebumps, and I resolved to seek out more of her work. The next day Peter Goldsworthy quoted from somewhere that goosebumps are the true test of the effectiveness of poetry, which i took as a confirmation.
Though not a 'poetry person', I am a person who can be awed by song lyrics. I was not surprised when Leonard Cohen was referenced all of three times by poets that day, as he is a singer-songwriter I also love, above all for his words. I almost rolled my eyes when he was mentioned, and thought: of course these poets love Leonard Cohen! I haven't read his books, but his songs are poetry. He is a poet. Then: wait, so I do like poetry?
What appeals to me almost exclusively about Cohen are his lyrics. Not to devalue his work, but most of his early folk songs sound very same-y to my ear, musically. Perhaps I do like poetry, but just a certain kind of poetry, one that Cohen and Olds both fit the criteria for. Surely their styles are somewhat similar - relatively simplistic but powerful imagery, eliciting a devastating physical response at times. With a lot of poems, I have to read each line over twice or thrice as I go in order to fully understand what the poet is trying to say, but with Olds and Cohen both, I understand immediately - not just what is at the core of the poem, but what that core feels like.
Apart from that, I can't say what else it is about these two poets that puts them parallel in my mind. Having never studied poetry, I can't tell of any similarities or divergences in these styles on a formalistic level. But I think now that I should start to educate myself.
I've also started experimenting with writing my own poetry, as of this morning, on a whim, in the back of the lecture theatre.
That's right. One more bad amateur poet in the world.
Sunday 12 July 2015
MWF Anticipation
I've never been to a writers festival before in my life, so I'm rather unsure what to expect. What surprises me is the implied intimacy, the exclusive smallness of the event. A handful of writers giving intimate lectures in something of a 'retreat', far from the city? Sounds cosier than what I would have expected. I can't picture it without picturing everyone cradling a glass of mulled wine.
My preparation for this upcoming week has consisted mainly of reading through novel after novel, more often than not while sitting in bed. Which is my favourite kind of homework. Those that have stuck most stubbornly in my mind are Alexis Wright's The Swan Book, which was vivid and confronting, and Peter Goldsworthy's Wish, which was beautiful in an extremely confusing way that made me uncomfortable by design. I am still finishing Tracy Farr's The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, but it also has invaded my daily thoughts and has somewhat of a floating, bobbing quality to the writing which deeply relaxes me.
For the past few days I've been obsessing over the eight hour journey from Melbourne to Mildura, and the prospect of leaving familiar friends behind for an empty hotel room. But I can think of something that will make both problems disappear - more books.
My preparation for this upcoming week has consisted mainly of reading through novel after novel, more often than not while sitting in bed. Which is my favourite kind of homework. Those that have stuck most stubbornly in my mind are Alexis Wright's The Swan Book, which was vivid and confronting, and Peter Goldsworthy's Wish, which was beautiful in an extremely confusing way that made me uncomfortable by design. I am still finishing Tracy Farr's The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, but it also has invaded my daily thoughts and has somewhat of a floating, bobbing quality to the writing which deeply relaxes me.
For the past few days I've been obsessing over the eight hour journey from Melbourne to Mildura, and the prospect of leaving familiar friends behind for an empty hotel room. But I can think of something that will make both problems disappear - more books.
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