Monday musings

Monday musings on Australian literature: A little Longreach interlude

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I am still tripping through Queensland, and had planned a more in-depth post for today – in fact, I’d started working on it before I left Canberra on 31 August – but my energy levels have been sapped by having had COVID for the last week, not to mention by our busy touring schedule. Rather than publish that post half-baked, I am saving it. Maybe next week!

Instead, I’m sharing a little sign on a library board at the Longreach School of Distance Education. This school was formerly called School of the Air, of which there were several around Australia (five in Queensland). These schools, which started operating in 1951, originally delivered education to children on remote properties via radio. Over the years, the delivery technologies changed, but it has only been since 2016 that the school turned to presenting online classes. A big change from their more paper-with-teacher-support based programs. I’m not sure when the name changed, but in Longreach, and presumably elsewhere, it is now called a School of Distance Education.

We did a little tour of the School, and in the library we came across a decorated quote on the library wall. It’s about reading, so this is my little post for today.

This quote is not Australian, and has been around for a century, so it is probably known to many of you. However, if you don’t know its origins, this is apparently it (from Quote Investigator, a site I hadn’t come across before):

“The earliest evidence appeared in 1926 in an intriguing report published in a journal called “The Library” from the Newark Public Library in New Jersey. The head of the library had received a collection of 43 slogans constructed by students, and that set included the statement under investigation. The creator of the slogan was a student named W. Fusselman.”

It’s worth reading the full Quote Investigator article, because it provides verification for its information, and a few other quotes. It also discusses an incorrect attribution to someone called Margaret Fuller. (Of course the School had done the job for me. They have credited Fusselman as the author.)

I do like that this quote came from a student.

Anyhow, this is your lot for this week’s Monday Musings. I hope to resume more usual posts next week.

Monday musings on Australian literature: A little note on the Kalkadoon (or Kalkatungu)

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Tonight I am in Kalkadoon (Kalkatunga) country. The Kalkadoons were the first Indigenous Australian people I became aware of as a young pre-pubescent girl living in Mount Isa in the 1960s. What I remember being told is that they were “fierce warriors”, but nothing much else, because we didn’t learn this history of Australia back then did we? This description, however, never sat easily with me. What did it mean?

During my current tour through outback Queensland, we’ve heard a little more, mainly about how many Kalkadoons were killed at Battle Hill (or Battle Mountain), in retribution for some action of theirs. The word massacre has not been used in the stories we’ve heard, though there has been recognition that spears had little chance against guns.

Of course, the truth is far more complicated, and was part of a long ongoing conflict between the Kalkadoons and settlers. The Kalkadoons certainly see it as a “massacre”. And they have a good website. I am too tired to write a full post tonight, but I wanted to share this site as an example of sites created by First Nations people, in which they tell their story their way, in which they communicate their stories to a wider world while also providing community for their people.

The Kalkadoon site also proudly shares that

On 12th December 2011, Honourable Justice John Alfred Dowsett of the Federal Court said the price the Kalkadoon People had paid for the prosperity of the region would not be forgotten. Native Title was granted to the Kalkadoon People.

We were told about this Native Title on our drive into Mount Isa, but just think about the meaning behind those words, “the price the Kalkadoon People had paid for the prosperity of the region would not be forgotten”. What a significant acknowledgement!

I am leaving it here, because if I write more, it would need to be a lot more, so I’ve decided to go for succinctness.

If you are Australian, do your local First Nation people have a website?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Nettie Palmer on Australian novels

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Nettie Palmer has appeared a few times before on this blog, and is likely to appear again, because she was such an active member of Australia’s early to mid-twentieth century literary community, and she was a keen supporter and promoter of Australian writing and writers. Three years ago, I wrote about an article she’d written in 1930 in which she discussed pleasing “advances” in the Australian novel. This post draws on an article she wrote for the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail, a couple of years earlier, on 15 August 1928.

The article seems to have been inspired by the novel competition the Bulletin ran that year. There were, according to Palmer, some 536 entries, which she suggests is “a matter for national astonishment”, given the effort it takes to write a novel.

While only few can win, she says, “the lift in the status of the Australian novel will be considerable”. She goes on to talk about the challenge the judges face, and suggests that, with all that reading to do, their minds are likely to be ‘attracted by what was “striking” rather than what was merely solid’. She says that Australia’s chief literary prize-winner to date had been “that rather esoteric writer, Katharine Susannah Prichard”, and identifies some of the prizes she had won – for The pioneers (1915, my review), a short story, and a play. Will she win again, Palmer wonders. She wouldn’t be surprised if she did, Palmer continues, because Prichard “has always added something fresh and original to our literary store”. As it turns out, Prichard did win this prize, for Coonardoo, but jointly with The house is built by the collaborative novelists known as M. Barnard Eldershaw.

However, I have digressed a little, as my point here is to share Palmer’s thoughts on the Australian novel. Her life’s work seems to have been, at least partly, to define the Australian novel. Anyhow, she comments that she had been “examining a great many Australian stories in magazines, journals, books and manuscripts” and one of the things that has struck her was “the immense variety of geographical angles from which Australia can be regarded”. She takes, as an example, the idea of “the north-west”. For a Victorian, this means “the Mallee country, with its acres cleared for wheat, running up to the irrigated country with Mildura and its fruits and close settlement of semi-urban, rather ‘American’ homes”, while in South Australia it means “the interior, near the transcontinental line, given up to sheep”. In Western Australia, on the other hand, it’s “the country used by H. E. Riemann in his book of short stories, Nor’-West o’ West, set in Broome and its hinterland”. And so on … This, she says, “is just to name one half-point of the compass”. She discusses this a little more, but then says the thing that I really wanted to share:

The point is … that the life and problems of various parts of Australia show immense contrasts, from pearling at Broome to legislating at Canberra. Our writers have the task of gradually revealing it all to us.

This is it, it seems to me, in a nutshell. At some fundamental level, an Australian novel – or any nationality’s novel for that matter – is one which reveals who we are, in all our richness and diversity. It is what, I think, Miles Franklin intended by endowing an award for a novel that conveys “Australian life in any of its phases”. For Palmer, and I suspect Franklin, there was an awareness of the role the arts can play in nation-building, which is understandable given their times. The thing is, we are still nation-building – maybe always will be – and so today, we have First Nations writers and migrant-background writers trying hard to reveal to us their view of Australia. For as long as society keeps changing, there is a role for writers to “reveal it all to us” – even while they also explore the universal – don’t you think?

PS: On Wednesday, Mr Gums and I start a 14-day outback Queensland tour. I may not manage to write Monday Musings on the next two Mondays, but we’ll see. Apologies in advance for this potential hiatus! Monday Musings will not be lost forever.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Best Australian books, 21st century (to date)

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I do think it’s jumping the gun, rather, to be listing best books of a century when that century is barely a quarter through! However, it seems that critics and reviewers around the world are giving it a go, including the esteemed New York Times, so who am I to quibble? Certainly Readings Bookshop and The Conversation, motivated by the non-inclusion of even one Australian book in NYT’s list, decided they wouldn’t. And, after all, what reader doesn’t love a list?

That said, listmakers rarely agree with each other, neither in their actual lists, nor in their approach to making their list. Some take it deadly seriously, and do their best to produce something authoritative (however you define that) whilst others see, perhaps, that authoritative lists in artistic/creative endeavours are not possible so take a looser approach. So it seems to be here. Readings, for example, asked members of the Australian literary community to nominate their best Australian books of the 21st century, and created a ranked top 30. The Conversation, on the other hand, asked 50 Australian literary experts for their top pick, and they listed all 50, starting with the books that had the most “top pick” nominations. Their experts were allowed to identify two honourable mentions. These “mentions” are not included in the list, but they are in the pickers’ comments. (Check out the lists, including NYT’s, at the end of the post.)

In The Conversation’s list, five of the 50 books were nominated by more than one expert, and they are listed first, but this is not a ranking they say – and perhaps that’s a fair point given their survey was very small. So, their list is indicative rather than thorough in any way, but indicative is still interesting:

  • Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy (3, Bill’s second post)
  • Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (3, my review)
  • Helen Garner’s How to end a story (2) (on my TBR)
  • Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of travel (2, my review)
  • Kim Scott’s That deadman dance (2, my review)

Three books by First Nations authors, and four by women writers. Interesting. Some authors appear more than once in the list, including, obviously Alexis Wright, whose The swan book is also in the list, but also Kim Scott and Fiona McFarlane. Theirs is a diverse list reflecting the diverse experts, and that makes it a “good” list to me, because it will speak to different readers.

For me, the most significant book published anywhere this century is Carpentaria (2006). Wright’s larger-than-life, all-too-human characters enact their dreams across a vast tract of earth, water, sky and the “alltimes”. The writing crackles. In this story of Country, ancestral voices offer wisdom and hope. (Nicholas Jose)

Readings’ list on the other hand was drawn from 600 “votes” from members of the Australian literary community – writers, publishers, and Readings’ own booksellers. They were asked “to nominate their favourite Australian books, published since 2000”. I don’t know whether 600 people nominated one book each or whether some nominated one and others more. Whatever method Readings used, they came up with a ranking, presumably based on the number of times each book was nominated. Their top 5 is:

Christos Tsiolkas, The slap

A more popular list, dare I say, than The Conversations’, which is not surprising given its genesis in a bookseller. I have read all of these. Indeed, it’s not until no. 15 on their list – the Garner that also appears in The Conversation’s list – that I hit a book I’ve not read.

Conclusion

Jason Steger wrote about these three lists in his most recent weekly email. He explained that NYT’s aim was to “take a first swing at determining the most important, influential books of the era”. Which of those will still be there in 75 years time? Care to take a guess? You may as well go out on a limb as I’m assuming most people reading this post will not be here on 1 January 2100 to say “I told you so”, or not, as the case may be!

Links to the Lists

Monday musings on Australian literature: Short stories, revisited

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I love short stories but, as Jason Steger, Literary Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, wrote in one of his recent weekly emails, not everyone does. Indeed, he writes:

I know quite a lot of people – people I would consider good readers of fiction – who find them unsatisfactory. Not enough meat to them. Not as satisfying as a novel. Always leaving you wanting more.

And he admits to shifting between the like-don’t like positions himself, before going to say that, “more often than not [with good short stories] you come away knowing precisely enough; you don’t need any more after the author has ended the story with perhaps a surprise, perhaps a neat tying together, or perhaps with ambiguity”. He offers other writers’ thoughts, including English novelist Elizabeth Bowen who wrote in her introduction to The Faber book of modern stories (1937) that “Poetic tautness and clarity are so essential to it [the short story] that it may be said to stand on the edge of prose.”

Bowen, he said, is particularly relevant to what he wanted to share, which was that Tasmanian poet and novelist Kathryn Lomer had won this year’s Furphy Literary Award. Worth $15,000 to the winner, the prize is named after Joseph Furphy, the author (using the pseudonym, Tom Collins), of the Australian classic, Such is life. Lomer’s winning story, “Nothing about kissing” (read it here), is set in Hobart’s MONA, and opens with the protagonist starting her cleaning shift. Steger quotes one of the judges, Stephanie Holt, who said the winning story “unfolds as layers of assured, erudite but often plainspoken reflection. Into these, the writer drops several crucial moments with such startling aplomb you want to stand and applaud.”

Selected recent short story collections

After this introduction, Steger notes that “despite publishers frequently saying that stories are tricky to sell, they still appear”, and then he lists some, noting that collections are more often published by smaller publishers, like Spineless Wonders and Puncher and Wattman. There are others of course, including the somewhat larger, but still independent publisher, UQP.

He gives a few recent examples, which I am including here, in alphabetical order, along with a few of my own. I have limited the list to those published since 2022 to convey a sense of current activity.

  • Tony Birch, Dark as last night (UQP)
  • Carmel Bird, Love letter to Lola (Spineless Wonders, my review)
  • Georgia Blain, We all lived in Bondi then (Scribe, Brona’s review): posthumous publication of new stories written during 2012-2015
  • Larry Buttrose, Everyone on Mars (Puncher and Wattman)
  • Ceridwen Dovey, Only the astronauts (Penguin Books Australia, Brona’s review)
  • Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13 (Brona’s review): “a suite of interlinked stories, received a rave review in this masthead” (Steger)
  • Laura Jean McKay, Gunflower (Scribe)
  • Catherine McNamara, The carnal fugues (Puncher and Wattman, on my TBR): recently shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards
  • John Morrissey, Firelight stories (Text Publishing): First Nations speculative fiction
  • John Richards, The Gorgon flower (UQP): Gothic-infused short stories
  • Mykaela Saunders, Always will be (UQP): First Nations speculative fiction
  • Su-May Tan, Lake Malibu (Spineless Wonders)

Anthologies are a specific type of collection, of course, in that they contain writings by different authors, but are worth including here too:

  • Suzy Garcia (ed.), New Australian fiction 2023 (Kill Your Darlings)
  • Lynette Washington (ed), Futures: Stories of futures near and far: includes a story from Carmel Bird’s Love letter to Lola (Glimmer Press)

There are two broad types of anthologies, those selected from previously published stories, and those that result from a call for submissions and contain all new stories. The two above belong to the latter.

Not always, but often, short story collections and anthologies are themed or genre-linked. So, for example, Saunders’ collection comprises First Nations speculative fiction. Speculative fiction, in fact, seems to be a popular genre for short story writers, and currently they are grappling with some of the big issues like climate change and, for First Nations writers in particular, the experience of colonialism.

Ten years ago, ABR (the Australian Book Review) asked ten Australian short story writers to name some favourite short story collections and short stories. One of the ten was Carmel Bird. She introduced her selection with the comment that “I delight in the fact that the ‘short story’ is forever elastic”. She should know, as her own stories epitomise this elasticity, but she’s right because she’s not the only one. Recent stories that I’ve read have been exciting in the degree to which they push and stretch the form, from experiments with micro fiction to trying out different voices, including inanimate. If there’s one way to keep something interesting, it’s to mix it up a bit, and our short story writers are doing that. It’s exciting and encouraging.

Do you read short story collections or anthologies? If so we’d love to hear your favourites.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 7, Grace Ethel Martyr

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The forgotten writers I have been writing about vary greatly, and most will stay forgotten because, to be honest, their time has past and not all writing remains relevant. This is not to say, however, that they are not worth revisiting. They are, after all, part of our literary culture, and they paved ways, whether we are aware of it or not. Grace Ethel Martyr is an example. She is notable enough to have entries in AustLit and Wikipedia, and was interesting enough in her time to catch the attention of Zora Cross (who wrote about her for a series she did for The Australian Women’s Mirror.)

Martyr is another writer I have posted about on the Australian Women Writers (AWW) blog, but again, I am not including here the piece written by her that I published there. Titled “The blue jar”, its subject is domestic violence, though that term would not have been used then. It’s not typical of her best-known work. However, in the light of our own times, it is worth reading. It is told from the 1920s perspective that women just need to put up with brutal husbands and manage as best they can. They didn’t have much choice. But, in this story, a bit of luck comes the wife’s way … check it out at AWW.

Grace Ethel Martyr

Grace Ethel Martyr (1888-1934) was a Victorian-born poet, short story writer and journalist. She wrote under various permutations of her name – G. E. Martyr; E. Martyr; Ethel Martyr; Grace E. Martyr; and G. Ethel Martyr.

Born in Ballarat, she was the only daughter of James Kent and Grace Flora Martyr. She grew up in Maldon in central Victoria, but spent much of her working life in Bendigo. She apparently passed the University of Melbourne matriculation examination in 1906, but I haven’t found evidence that she went on to university. AustLit and Wikipedia both say she was employed by the Bank of New South Wales, for whom her father had worked, for four and a half years, but left due to ill-health. While working at the bank, she published a collection of patriotic war poems, Afterwards and other verses (1918), but she didn’t begin to write seriously until she had left the bank. Zora Cross (writing as Bernice May in The Australian Women’s Mirror) tells how this book was given to her to by Martyr’s cousin who wanted her assessment of it, and says it was she, Cross, who encouraged Martyr to leave the bank (though the ill-health part is also true, I believe).

The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 1918, commented on Afterwards and other verses, describing it as “unequal” (meaning “uneven”?) but also as

characterised by sincerity, depth of feeling, and a burning patriotism which redeems many shortcomings. Her technique, though not faultless, is usually correct, and at her best Miss Martyr can reach a high level of dignified expression.

Perth’s Western Mail, 31 May 1918, offers similarly qualified praise:

War has given inspiration to Miss Martyr’s muse, and if her verse does not reach the loftiest peaks, the level of its quality is rather beyond that common to such collections.

Writing about Martyr ten years later, Cross says that

So far, Miss Martyr’s best work has been done in verse. But her true vein is the child story and child-verse. I know of no Australian writer who has so beautifully caught the spirit of the child in verse as she has. And she is that rare writer, the one who never forgets that child-verse should also be poetry.

Martyr, then, wrote children’s poetry and fiction, including several stories serialised in The Australasian, but AusLit says that her principal literary output is the poetry she published in The Bulletin and The Australian Woman’s Mirror. In addition to this writing, Martyr also worked for The Bendigo Advertiser, where she edited the women’s columns and the children’s page, and she was Bendigo’s social correspondent for several Melbourne publications.

Cross praises much about her work, saying

She shows inner melody in her verse which is often of a very high standard. Her love of music and nature comes out in her poetry. Like all Australian writers her best work has appeared in the Bulletin.

Martyr won prizes at Ballarat’s South Street Literary Awards – in 1918 for best patriotic poem and in 1919 for best original poem. In 1920 she came second to David McKee Wright, from a field of 125 entries, in the Rupert Brooke Award, which was established by the Old Collegians’ Association of Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College.

Martyr was also a pianist, and worked with musicians Margaret Sutherland and William James on various projects. In particular, she wrote stories and verses for the 3LO children’s hour, with James setting her verse to music. (William James is best known, to me anyhow, for the 15 Australian Christmas Carols he composed with lyricist John Wheeler. I wrote about them early in my blog.)

Martyr seems to be another example of a woman who managed to make a career for herself as a writer, by turning her hand to a wide variety of forms and audiences, but she also died relatively young. She was not completely forgotten, however, because five of her poems were included in Michael Sharkey’s 2018 anthology, Many such as she: Victorian women poets of World War One. An exhibition was held at Bendigo’s Soldiers Memorial Institute Military Museum in association with this book. Curator Kirsten McCay specifically mentioned Martyr, saying “Poet Grace Martyr lived locally and was a journalist for the Bendigo Advertiser. She also gave illustrated talks on famous composers at St Paul’s Cathedral, where a cross commemorates her life.”

Cross concluded her 1927 article with:

Grace Ethel Martyr’s work is always getting better, which is surely the best sign in any writer. Time, I think, will prove her to be one of the most sincere writers among us.

Six years later, at the age of 46, Martyr was dead. The report of her death, which was repeated in several Victorian newspapers, is brief but says that:

Miss Martyr’s literary gifts were apparent at an early age, and during the years that followed she established something of value to Australian literature.

I rest my case!

Sources

Monday musings on Australian literature: Poetry Month 2024

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National Poetry Month – in Australia – is now four years old, and once again it is spearheaded by Red Room Poetry, which is described by ArtsHub as “Australia’s leading organisation that commissions poets and produces live poetry events nationally”. ArtsHub adds that this Month is “a festival that celebrates emerging and established writers, as well as public figures with an unexpected passion for poetry”. I don’t know how successful it is at reaching its goal of increasing “access, awareness and visibility of poetry in all its forms and for all audiences” but something must be working. I was thrilled to not only hear the month mentioned on our national ABC radio station but to hear that the ABC would be featuring poems during the month.

Red Room is running similar events and activities to those they’ve run before – their 30in30 daily writing competition with prompts from Red Room commissioned poets, poetry ambassadors, online workshops, showcases, a community calendar, and more. And this year, “more” includes something new which is that they are closing out the month with “the UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival, Contains Strong Language” in Sydney from August 28-31. 

Poetry is beyond time. It’s a way of bringing together the countless generations of humanity. It’s a means of connecting past and present. It’s a way of imagining the future. ~ L-Fresh the Lion (via Red Room Poetry).

National Poetry Gala … and more

This year their National Poetry Month Gala, if I read the website correctly, will happen in Sydney on 29 August at the State Library of New South Wales. It will be hosted by Chika Ikogwe (an award-winning Nigerian born actor and writer) and will feature Julia Baird, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Lorna Munro, Felicity Plunkett, Hasib Hourani, Rob Waters, Dan Hogan and Pascalle Burton, plus guests from the UK, Simon Armitage (their current Poet Laureate) and Princess Arinola Adegbite, and live music from Paul Kelly.

Contains Strong Language is a four-day festival in which local poets and spoken word artists will appear on stage alongside visiting UK poets including Simon Armitage. It’s the first time this annual broadcast festival, founded by the BBC in 2017, has left Britain. Events will be held across Gadigal and Dharug land in Greater Sydney (including one in the Blue Mountains) and will also be broadcast to Australia and around the world, through the BBC and ABC. The events include “performances, masterclasses, panels, galas, slams, live and online workshops, and international writing collaborations featuring 70+ artists”. Sounds like a real coup. The program, which includes free and paid events, can be found here.

Line Break is a new podcast from Red Room Poetry, and is presented in partnership with the Community Radio Network. It will include, over August, their daily 30in30 poetry commissions and writing prompts, plus various special series hosted by our Red Room producers. Some of Australia’s poetry-loving favourite public figures will apparently also share their ‘gateway’ poems. Who are they, and what will they share?

If you would like to know what is happening through the month – in various locations, including online – this Showcase page is a good place to start (or Red Room’s main site which I’ve linked in the opening paragraph).

And, I’ll just add that this might be a good month to check out – on your preferred music streaming service – the Hell Herons’ debut spoken word (poetry and music) album, The Wreck Event, about which I posted recently.

Musica Viva, the Choir of Kings College Cambridge, and a Poem

On Saturday night, we attended the Canberra Concert of the Kings College Choir of Cambridge’s current Musica Viva Australian tour. As regularly happens when this choir comes to Canberra, Llewellyn Hall was packed. It was a wonderful program which included some different programming decisions, but my focus here is the commissioned piece they performed*.

This piece was a setting to music of a prose-poem by, coincidentally, the Canberra-based poet and visual artist, Judith Nangala Crispin, who traces her ancestry to the Bpangerang people of North-Eastern Victoria and the NSW Riverina, as well as to Ghana, the Ivory Coast, France, Ireland and Scotland. Titled On finding Charlotte in the anthropological record, the poem won the Blake Poetry Prize in 2020 – read it online here – and was set to music by composer Daniel Barbeler. He says, in the program, that the poem captures “the real-life experiences and reflections” which came from Crispin’s “20-year search through paper records and via physical travels” to find information about her Indigenous Australian heritage. She eventually found “a solitary photograph of her great-great-grandmother, Charlotte”.

Among other things, Barbeler says his music captures the Australian landscape, specifically Lake Moodemere (pictured) in Northern Victoria where it’s likely Charlotte was born and died. Barbeler describes this part of the country as “peaceful but haunting” and, having visited this lake a few times (including earlier this year), I concur. The poem is certainly haunting, and one particular line from it – “Charlotte is a map of a Country stained by massacres: Skull Creek, Poison Well, Black Gin’s Leap” – is repeated a few times in the musical version. I wondered what these (some very) young British choristers made of it. (You can listen to the piece via music streaming services, as a single under the Choir of Kings College Cambridge.)

* A special thing about Musica Viva concerts is that they regularly commission new Australian pieces for the visiting international artists to perform in their program.

Image: I assume Red Room Poetry is happy for their Poetry Month banner to be used in articles and posts about the month.

Thinking about the Line Break program, I’d love to know if you have a “gateway” poem, and what it is.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Et toi, France!

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With a certain event happening in Paris, and other parts of France at the moment, I thought it would be fun to briefly explore, some literary connections between Australia and France. I say “some” because there’s no way I could know, let alone list, all the ways in which our countries have connected over the years through literature. My aim, instead, as I often do in Monday Musings, is to introduce the topic with some ideas and let you all do the rest.

Settler Australia’s connection with France starts right back at the time of the arrival of the British in 1788, when French explorer Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, and his expedition, met Captain Phillip’s First Fleet in Botany Bay in January 1788. After spending a few weeks in the settlement, the French left, and, as Wikipedia reports, “neither he nor any members of his expedition were seen again by Europeans”. In early 1801, another French explorer, Nicholas Baudin, led an expedition to map the coast of New Holland, as Australia was called back then, not leaving until July 1803. During this time they met Matthew Flinders’ expedition which was also charting the coast. Baudin stopped in Mauritius en route home, and died there of tuberculosis.

These were just the start of many links between France and Australia over time. Some have been negative (often military in origin, like nuclear testing and a certain submarine cancellation) and some positive (mostly cultural, like the work of Alliance Française and an interesting organisation called ISFAR, or Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations), but overall there are strong and continuing connections. After all, who can resist some French pastries with their coffee?

Now, though, my main point, literature …

Australian novels set in France

Australians being the travellers they are, it’s not surprising that our novelists sometimes set their stories in places other than Australia, like, say, France, albeit their reasons vary as greatly as their novels. War is one reason characters find themselves in France, and work is another, while for others it is travel, or study, or following lovers. Many of the novels I list here are not fully set in France, but all spend some time there – and they are almost all from this century.

  • Diana Blackwood’s Chaconne (2017, my review): starting in Cold War Paris, about a young Australian who goes to Paris for love only to find it’s not what she expected.
  • Michelle de Kretser’s The life to come (2017, my review): a big novel about contemporary social issues including emigration and personal challenges, one of its five parts is set in Paris.
  • Alan Gould’s The lake woman (2009, my review): a “romance” involving an Australian airman who parachutes into a lake in France just before D-Day.
  • Marion Halligan’s The golden dress (1988, read before blogging): multigenerational novel set in Newcastle, Paris and Sydney.
  • Marion Halligan’s Valley of Grace (2009, my review): set wholly in contemporary Paris, and about fertility, babies and children.
  • Anita Heiss’ Paris dreaming (2011, my review): one of Heiss’ “choc lit” books about professional First Nations’ women, this one about a young art curator mounting an Indigenous Australian art exhibition in Paris.
  • Mark Henshaw’s The snow kimono (2014, my review): a mystery set mainly in mid-late 20th century Paris and Japan about two men, their fractured lives, lies and memory.
  • Katherine Johnson’s Paris savages (2019): historical fiction based on the true story of three Badtjala people from Queensland’s Fraser Island, who, in 1882, were taken to European cities, including Paris, as ethnographic curiosities. 
  • Mary Rose MacColl, In falling snow (2013): historical fiction about an elderly woman in 1970s Australia reflecting on her life as a nurse in France during WW1.
  • David Malouf’s Fly away Peter (1982, read before blogging): about three very different Australians, and the impact on them of their experience of WW1 in France.
  • Alex Miller’s Lovesong (2009, my review): the love story of Sabiha and John who met in Paris, told to a writer in Melbourne, who ponders the art and responsibilities of storytelling.

There are also Australian short story collections which contain stories, sometimes just one, set in or referencing France, including Emma Ashmere’s Dreams they forgot, Irma Gold’s Two steps forward, Paddy O’Reilly’s Peripheral visions, and Tara June Winch’s After the carnage.

Australian novels written or published in France

Too many Australian novels have been translated into French over the years, so here I’m sharing some different examples of connections that can happen.

John Clanchy, Sisters

Writers’ retreats are loved by many writers for the opportunity they provide for dedicated, uninterrupted writing time, but not many Australian writers get to do so in France. This however is what John Clanchy did in 2008. His novel Sisters (2017, my review) was originally drafted at the La Muse writers retreat in southern France, and was later published by the retreat. The retreat is open to all sorts of creators, besides writers.

When it comes to translation, a highly successful contemporary Australian writer is Karen Viggers (see my posts). She is a bestselling author in France, with her novel The lightkeeper’s wife having also been awarded the Les Petits Mots de Libraires literary prize. Her latest novel (her fifth) is being translated. On why she is so popular in France, she says that they love her “big landscapes”. Most of her novels have strong environmental themes and are set in gorgeous Australian landscapes. (She has a French page on her website.)

Book cover

Then, in a different again example of Australia-France literary connections, there is Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch who moved to a French country town when, as a young woman in her 20s, she found herself caught up in the Andrew Bolt “It’s so hip to be black” discrimination case. She withdrew from the legal action taken by several First Nations Australian identities, and disappeared from view for some years, during which, living on her French farm, she wrote her award-winning novel The yield (2020, my review). As far as I know, she is still based in France.

Different again, but still relevant, is Noumea-born Jean-François Vernay, whose somewhat quirky book about Australian novels, Panorama du roman Australien, was published in France in 2009. (It was later revised and expanded, and published in Australia as A brief take on the Australian novel, on my TBR).

Finally, there is our lovely French blogger, Emma (bookaroundthecorner) who includes Australian books in her reading diet, giving our often strange idioms her very best shot.

Now, you know what to do – share your love of bookish France.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 6, Constance Clyde

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“Forgotten” is a subjective thing, as I suggested with my fifth post in this series on Lillian Pyke whose reputation as a children’s writer has survived in niche circles at least. My next subject, Constance Clyde, like Lillian Pyke, has entries in both AustLit and Wikipedia suggesting some notability, but I had not heard of her before.

Like my last three Forgotten Writers, Clyde was the subject of one of my posts on the Australian Women Writers (AWW) blog this year. Once again, I am not including here the piece written by Clyde that I published there, but it’s a little different from the more romantic stories I’ve published. Titled, “The paying back”, it references a failed romance but its subject is the relationship between a mother and her unmarried daughter … check it out at AWW.

Constance Clyde

Constance Clyde (1872-1951), born Constance Jane McAdam, is another writer who wrote under a few names, but Constance Clyde seems to be the name by which she was best known, as well as the name she mostly wrote under. However, for the record, AustLit says that she also wrote under Clyde Wright, Pen, C.C. and C. Clyde. Christopher Dawson, writing in the Inside Boggo Road Gaol blog, describes her as the “author of a novel, contributor to high-class English reviews, sometime social editress of a Christchurch (N.Z.) newspaper, and in 1906 one of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Suffragettes”. He sums her up, in his 2023 article, as “a formidably independent woman”.

Clyde was born, the 11th child in her family, on 25 Jul 1872 in Glasgow, Scotland, and died in Brisbane, Queensland, on 30 Aug 1951. The “Clyde”, both Dawson and I suspect, comes from Glasgow’s Clyde River. She moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, with her family when she was 7, and was schooled there. According to Australian writer and journalist Zora Cross (writing as Bernice May), Constance Clyde’s first poem, called “Blighted Hopes,” was published in the Otago Witness when she was twelve, and she won second prize in a story competition for adults when she was still at school.

She arrived in Sydney in 1898, where she continued her career in literature and journalism, contributing to Australian and English newspapers, including the Sydney Bulletin. Cross says that Clyde was one of the first women to contribute to the Bulletin regularly, and that it was the Bulletin that gave her “the idea that one can and should write from the soul”. She also says that “Possessed of a rippling sense of humor, a pen as strong and vigorous as a man’s at times, it is because she does write with her soul that this writer has so many admirers.” Cross, adds later that Clyde

thoroughly mastered the tense, compressed drama the pink-covered weekly [The Bulletin] favored, and her work earned the admiration of the reader and the envy of the aspiring writer of the day.

Meanwhile, Dawson says New Zealand academic Kirstine Moffatt describes Clyde’s subject matter as encompassing “social, feminist and literary questions”. Wikipedia says that, in an essay entitled “The Literary Woman”, Clyde urged women to continue “to make brilliant discoveries in the realm of the emotions”.

In 1903, Clyde went to London to pursue a literary career, and her only novel, A pagan’s love, was published there in 1905. Anti-Puritan, it apparently explored ideas about women’s dependence, which included the heroine considering an extra-marital relationship with a man. Cross writes that while in London, Clyde met leading writers like HG Wells and Bernard Shaw.

In 1907, she was imprisoned in Holloway Prison as one of the suffragettes who ’caused a disturbance’ in the House of Commons. She wrote about this experience – which I found in Hobart’s The Mercury (June 24 1907) – from how she went about ensuring that she was arrested through to her release after thirteen days incarceration. It’s worth reading, not only for its firsthand experience but for its insight into who she was, but I’ll just share this little reference to Australia and Australian literature. She says one visitor was not allowed to give her a rose, but another was

permitted to leave a book. It is Tom Collins’s “Such is Life,” and she had previously reviewed it as a volume “suitable for reading in a desert, island, or gaol.” I find its acid philosophy, flavoured by eucalyptus, thoroughly refreshing!

Some time later, she returned to New Zealand, and in 1925 co-authored a travel book with journalist Alan Mulgan. In 1928, while living in Auckland, she was described by Sydney’s Smith’s Weekly as “one of the most brilliant and versatile of Australasian women journalists”. The article explains that:

In order to understand officialdom, Miss Clyde in recent years accepted appointments in New Zealand institutions, being on the staff of a backward school, sub-matron of a women’s gaol, and attendant at a mental asylum of 1500 inmates. She is strongly opposed to the new N.Z. Child Welfare Act, which she contends gives the official too much power over family life. Her great desire is to have proper Montessori teachers in New Zealand for such backward children as do come into the hands of the State.

In 1931, she was ejected from the New Zealand Parliament for protesting against the 1925 Child Welfare Act. She was a true activist, in other words.

Sometime after this, in the early 1930s, she returned to Australia, to Brisbane, where she was again imprisoned in 1935, this time for refusing to pay a fine for fortune-telling using tea-leaves. Dawson reports that, when in court for this offence, she said, “I thought that I could do some good in this depression by sympathy, kindness and advice, and especially by telling people that there is nothing wrong with this world except the monetary system.” As Dawson added, “even reading tea leaves could become a political platform” for Constance Clyde. Somehow, in between all this she wrote prolifically, with AustLit listing over 130 works by her, most of them short stories, the latest dated 1938.

Sadly, as Dawson chronicles, her life ended quietly, petering out “in the mundane concerns of suburbia after such an ambitious foray into the bohemian literary circles of turn-of-the-century Sydney and London”. There was no obituary. Forgotten already it seems!

Sources

  • Bernice May (aka Zora Cross), “Constance Clyde“, “Constance Clyde”, The Australian woman’s mirror, 3 July 1928 (Accessed: 22 July 2024[
  • Christopher Dawson, Constance Clyde of Dutton Park: Author and Suffragette, 16 May 2023 [Accessed 22 June 2024]
  • Christopher Dawson, “A Suffragette Recalls Boggo Road Gaol“, Inside Boggo Road blog, 17 June 2018 [Accessed: 22 June 2024]
  • Constance Clyde, Wikipedia (citing several sources) [Accesed; 21 June 2024]
  • Constance McAdam, AustLit (sourced from A. G. Stephens, ed., Australian Autobiographies, vol.2) [Accessed 21 June 2024]

Image: Constance Clyde in her suffragette days, circa 1914, from Australian Women’s Mirror 1928. Public Domain from Wikipedia.

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian short story collections

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NAIDOC Week 2024 National Logo

NAIDOC Week 2024 finished yesterday, but, as I often do, I am bookending the week with Monday Musings posts. Last week, I posted on First Nations Australian Stella listees. This week I’d like to highlight some recent (meaning 21st century) short story collections. In my admittedly limited experience, First Nations people can be wonderful storytellers. Lest this sound like a stereotype or generalisation, see Tara June Winch’s quote below!

As I shared last week, NAIDOC Week’s theme this year was Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. It encompasses a number of ideas but one, the website says, relates to forging “a future where the stories, traditions, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are cherished and celebrated, enriching the fabric of the nation with the oldest living culture in the world.” Short stories make a perfect contribution to this goal, and contemporary First Nations writing is richly served in this form. My aim here is to share a selection in order to provide a resource for anyone interested in reading more First Nations stories.

“we are a culture that has survived by storytelling” (Tara June Winch)*

The first First Nations stories I read were the “myths and legends” which comprised a significant component of the first works of First Nations literature to find its way into the mainstream. Not all of these, I admit, were written by First Nations people, though some were, such as those published in the 1970s and 80s by Dick Roughsey. Some others claimed (and I hope this was honest) to have shared the stories with the agreement of the relevant owners of those stories. I then jump a few decades to journals like The Griffith Review which has, from its start, included writings – fiction and nonfiction – by First Nations writers. Indeed, they write on their website that

One of the things that makes Australia truly unique is being home to the oldest continuous civilisation. What this really means is undervalued and little understood in this country. It is part of the reason Griffith Review has featured Indigenous writing in every edition.

So, we find articles, poetry and fiction by Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko, Ellen van Neerven, Alexis Wright, and others. One of the first First Nations short stories I reviewed on my blog was one by Melissa Lucashenko from The Griffith Review.

Selected short story collections and anthologies

  • Tony Birch, Common people (UQP, 2017) (Lisa’s review)
  • Tony Birch, Dark as last night (UQP, 2021)
  • Tony Birch, Father’s day (Hunter Publications, 2009)
  • Tony Birch, The promise (UQP, 2014)
  • John Morrissey, Firelight stories (Text Publishing, 2023)
  • Mykaela Saunders (ed), This all come back now: An anthology of First Nations speculative fiction (UQP, 2022)
  • Adam Thompson, Born into this (UQP, 2021) (my review)
  • Ellen van Neerven (ed.), Flock: First Nations stories then and now (UQP, 2021) (on my TBR)
  • Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (UQP, 2014) (my review)
  • Archie Weller, The window seat (UQP, 2009)
  • Tara June Winch, After the carnage (UQP, 2016)

As with the Stella listees, UQP leads the pack here too, with such a strong commitment not only to First Nations writing but to that dreaded form, the short story! And, many of these collections have been listed for (or won) some of Australia’s top literary awards. The stories cover all genres – contemporary fiction, speculative, dystopian, historical fiction, satire, ghost stories, and so on.

I would like to add here a title from Fremantle Press, though its ambit is a little wider. Published in 2022 and edited by Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail, it is Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction, and it comprises “speculative, visionary fiction from 21 emerging and established First Nations writers and Black writers” (Fremantle website). I’ve reviewed a few pieces from it, including Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Fifteen days on Mars (my review).

I didn’t plan for this to be a treatise, but a taster – or, is it, tempter? I will close on another quote that speaks to me …

We are your original storytellers. Our culture has survived through story and we are the civilisation with songlines etched in the land you inhabit. (Tara June Winch)*

* Tara June Winch, “Decolonising the shelf”, Griffith Review 66 (Nov 2019)

Click here for my previous NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

Have you read any First Nations short stories – Australian or otherwise? And if so, care to recommend any?