Australian literature

Monday musings on Australian literature: Writers Victoria

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When I wrote my last post in this Monday Musings series on Australia’s writers centres, author Angela Savage, who is also the current Director of Writers Victoria, commented that the centre was celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. She was hinting, in the nicest way of course, that I should “do” Writers Victoria this year – so, here I am.

Like Writing NSW and Writers SA, Writers Victoria changed its name (in 2011) from its original name, the Victorian Writers’ Centre. A not-for-profit membership organisation, it was created in 1989 by a group of writers who believed Victoria’s writing community needed a professional organisation. I love the clarity and comprehensiveness of their overall goal:

Writers Victoria supports and connects all types of writers at all stages of their writing careers.

This is supported by more specific purposes as listed on their About Us page. It’s not surprising that what they do is similar to other centres, but, like the others, they have their own flavour. They also operate within a very specific environment, given Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City of Literature and the presence of The Wheeler Centre (for Books, Writing, Ideas). The then Victorian Writers Centre played an instrumental role in achieving both of these. Writers Victoria is, apparently, “the largest writers’ organisation in the country” and “the country’s leading employer of writers” through their programs.

You will have read enough of these writers centre posts now to know what they offer – courses and workshops, mentorships, manuscript assessments, fellowships, writing spaces or studios, to name the main activities. Writers Victoria also specifically supports regional writers, young writers, diverse writers, and writers with a disability. They also advocate for writers and the literary culture.

Book coverTheir diverse writers program, for example, supports “writers who face barriers in the development of their writing careers”. The programs are, well, diverse, catering for women of colour, Asian Australian writers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, refugee writers, and so on. The program recognises that money can be an issue for these writers, so among the support it offers are bursaries, and paid commissions. The indigenous writing program has used writers you’ve met here – Tony Birch, Anita Heiss and Bruce Pascoe.

For writers with a disability they have a program called Write-ability. Its aim is “to remove some of the barriers that have traditionally prevented people with disability from connecting with writing and publishing”. This support includes regional and online programs, and fellowships.

30 Years

However, because this year is their 30th anniversary, I thought I’d focus mainly on how they are celebrating this milestone – particularly since October was their establishment month.

Here are some of the ways they are celebrating their anniversary:

Flash fiction challenge

In April – the first month of the year with 30 days – they held a Flash Fiction Challenge, which they promoted as “30 days. 30 prompts. 30 Words.” For each day they offered a word prompt, and writers had to submit their 30-word works of flash fiction inspired by that word by midnight of that day. The 30 winners are shared at the link I’ve given, with the first winner, for the word Grit, being blogger Tony Messenger. As a wordlover, I enjoyed the variety of the prompt words, which included Baroque, Gloss, Remember, Nacreous, and Perfectionism.

For a clever, pointed piece, check out Sumitra Shankar’s Beginning, on April 21. It’s a perfect example of the power of flash fiction.

Writers on Writers Vic

Book cover for Toni Jordan's AdditionFor each month – they are up to September – a Victorian writer comments on what Writers Victoria means to them. The writers to date are:

  • Lee Kofman (who co-edited Rebellious daughters which I’ve reviewed)
  • Mark Brandi
  • Toni Jordan (whose Addition, Fall girl and Nine days, I’ve reviewed)
  • Melanie Cheng (whose Australia Day I really must read)
  • Shivaun Plozza
  • Fiona Wood
  • Andy Griffiths (with whom I’m sure to soon have a close acquaintance through my grandson!)
  • Anna Spargo-Ryan (whose The paper house I’ve reviewed)
  • Else Fitzgerald

You can check them all out by going to the site’s page, but to whet your appetite, here are some of the things they say:

… the main antidote to that famous writer’s malady – loneliness, isolation – is in hanging around with peers. Today writers’ centres seem to serve a similar function to that of literary salons from the previous centuries. (Lee Kofman)

I always tell aspiring and emerging writers about Writers Victoria. Many, like me, are just bumbling along, feeling lost and isolated. Writers’ centres like Writers Victoria are invaluable in making writers feel less alone. (Melanie Cheng)

First, I would wholeheartedly recommend it [joining Writrs Victoria]. But second, know what you want to get out of it. A centre like Writers Victoria has something to offer writers at all stages. (Anna Spargo-Ryan)

And so, a very big Happy Birthday to another active writers centre. Australians should be proud of the energy and commitment centres like this one are putting into both supporting all writers and keeping our literary culture alive. Oh, and thanks to Angela Savage for the birthday heads up!

Writers Centres covered to date: the ACT, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Growing up [name the aspect] in Australia

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With my Japanese trip almost over, I’m posting just a quick – but nonetheless interesting, I hope – Monday Musings this week.

Anita Heiss, Growing up Aboriginal in Australia

Some of you will have guessed what this title refers to; it’s to the little recent flurry of anthologies being published in Australia in which contributors write about growing up Asian, or Aboriginal, or name-a-specific-situation in, yes, Australia. I have read one of them, myself, Anita Heiss’s Growing up Aboriginal in Australia.

Here is a list of the books (as I’ve found), in publication date order:

Book Cover

It doesn’t take a genius to see that publisher Black Inc has got a stranglehold on the theme. You could be forgiven for being a bit cynical about bandwagons and such, except that Black Inc is a thoughtful, quality publisher, and the editors of these books are established people in their fields who have walked the talk. They have significant reputations which establish their credentials and which, I presume, they’d want to maintain. (I don’t think I’m being naive here.)

Also, in one case at least, the Disabled one, it was the editor who approached the publisher to do the book (presumably, of course, on the back of the series to date). Black Inc’s publisher Kirstie Innes-Will was apparently delighted that Findlay approached them. Innes-Will says:

Part of the strength of the Growing Up series is the way it has evolved organically, championed by editors from different communities. The way these books have been embraced by readers shows how much representation matters. Growing Up Disabled will be an invaluable contribution to that tradition.

Book cover

If you believe, as I do, that reading can open your mind to the lives and experiences of others and therefore help you understand people better, then these books (if as good as the one I have read) are worth publishing. And, if you believe, as I do, that reading about your own experience can help you understand your own life, can help you manage your own life, can perhaps even help you survive your own life, then these books (with the same proviso) are worth publishing.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian novels in Japan

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Here is my second Monday Musings inspired by my current Japanese travels. It is, loosely, a companion piece to one I wrote three years ago on Australian literature in China. That was inspired by an article I found in Trove. This one, however, was been inspired by a program I discovered via Google, called The Masterpieces of Australian Contemporary Literature.

The website describes the series as follows:

The Masterpieces of Australian Contemporary Literature Series was established by Gendai Kikakushitsu Publishing in 2012. With the support of the Australia-Japan Foundation, the program aims to increase the recognition of contemporary Australian literature by translating and publishing Australian novels in Japan. Not only showcasing the excellence of Australian literature, the series looks to reveal ‘Contemporary Australia’ and share with the Japanese audience the diversity of its culture and society.

ABC RN Books and Arts Daily discussed the project after the launch of the first book. The Australian ambassador to Japan at the time, Bruce Miller, comments that Japanese interest in Australian Aboriginal culture comes from their interest in ancient cultures, and because it’s unique. He also talks about the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which is supporting the project, being comfortable with sharing the positive and negative aspects of our culture. Professor Kate Darian-Smith from the University of Melbourne says that part of the project is to support and foster the teaching and discussion of Australian literature in universities and by the public.

So far, apparently, six books have been so translated and published – and here they are in the order they were done (with the date they were launched, and links to my post on that book, if any!)

  • David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon, trans. by Rumi Musha (2012)
  • Tim Winton’s Breath, trans. by Keiji Sawada (2013, my review): the launch included a discussion between Japanese writer Natsuki Ikezawa and Kate Darian-Smith.
  • Christos Tsiolkas’ The slap, trans. by Keiji Minato (2014, my review): Tsiolkas attended the launch and took part in a symposium.
  • Kate Grenville’s The secret river, trans. by Tomoko Ichitani (2015): Grenville attended the launch, along with “Ms Yukiko Konosu, a well-known translator of foreign literature”.
  • Kim Scott’s That deadman dance, trans. by Masaya Shimokusu (2017, my review): Scott attended the launch, along with two prominent Japanese writers, Ms Akiko Shimoju and Mr Masaaki Nishiki, to talk about “Australian culture and literature, and the role literature plays in multicultural societies”.
  • Helen Garner’s This house of grief: The story of a murder trial, trans. by Megumi Kato (2018, my review): Garner attended the launch, and took part in a panel discussion with Japanese author Kyoko Nakajima discussion Australian and Japanese perspectives on “the non-fiction novel”. You can read a report of the launch event here.

I’m thrilled that I have read, and liked (in different ways and for different reasons) every one of these six books, some, of course, before blogging. I wonder what the next book will be?

Kim Scott That Deadman DanceAll these books have won major awards and/or been bestsellers (by Australian terms, anyhow). None are simple or easy books, and none present Australia at its best. In this sense they represent “true” literature that grapples with real issues, and clearly meet the goal of revealing ‘Contemporary Australia’ (in all its messiness.) Clearly, they appreciate that historical novels also say something about “contemporary” Australia. It’s encouraging that the program is still going, and is supported, it seems, by quality launch events. So many visionary programs like this seem to flounder.

Oh, and by-the-by, I discovered that in July this year, Monash University held a Translation in transition: Australian literature in Japan. It was to focus in particular on this Masterpieces program, which they describe as a 10-year project. The seminar was being given by Tomoko Ichitani who translated Grenville’s book for the project. She is apparently working on a “collaborative translation of Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria“. I wonder if that’s for this program?

Anyhow, what book would you choose next? (I have a few ideas.) And do you have any comments on those chosen to date?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian writers in Japan

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Given I’m currently travelling in Japan, I thought I’d write a couple of Japanese-oriented posts. My first one – introductory, rather than in-depth – is about Australian writers who live or have lived (loosely defined) in Japan.

An early Australian writer who went to Japan was Rosa Praed who visited Japan around 1894–95 on her return to Australia from England. Resulting from this visit was her novel Madame Izàn: A tourist story (1899) in which, writes Clarke (see below), she “raised the then daring subject of an interracial marriage between a Japanese man and an Irish woman”. This novel is available online, but I’ll just share this little description of the characters’ arrival in Japan:

And now they were in the harbour, where among the native craft and merchantmen were French and English and American men-of-war and a fierce Russian battleship, which looked as though it could, with its big guns, gobble up, as easily at the wolf gobbled up Red Riding Hood, pretty, harmless Nagasaki, lying so peacefully at the foot of her green hills.

Praed visited at an interesting time!

Ogai Mori, The Wild GooseA different sort of Australian writer who lived in Japan, in Kyoto, for twenty years, is Meredith McKinney (who also happens to be poet Judith Wright’s daughter). She is best known as a translator of Japanese literature. Back in Australia, since 1988, and living near Canberra, she’s an associate professor at the Australian National University’s Japan Centre, and writes on Japanese related topics. An example is her analysis in Griffith Review of atomic power and Japan after the Fukushima meltdown, “Continuing fallout”. She continues to translate, her books including Penguin Classics editions of Sei Shonagon’s The pillow book and Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro, and Finlay Lloyd’s edition of Ogai Mori’s The wild goose (on my TBR).

American-born Australian writer Roger Pulvers has also lived in Japan, mainly Kyoto and Tokyo, for many years. (He is also now based in Canberra I believe.) He’s a playwright, novelist, scriptwriter and, like McKinney, a translator and a writer on Japanese topics. This year he was awarded the Order of Australia for his service to Japanese literature and culture. There’s an extensive article on him in Wikipedia. Broinowski says of his writing:

Always evenhandedly satirical of Australians and Japanese, Roger Pulvers has returned repeatedly in his fiction, drama, and filmscripts to the Pacific war, its consequences, and the moral dilemmas it raised.

Book coverAn Australian writer who seems to have disappeared from view is Andrew O’Connor, who lived in Tokyo and Nagano for a few years in the early 2000s. His novel Tuvalu won the The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for unpublished manuscript in 2005. I read it back then, before blogging. You might think from the title that the novel is about Tuvalu, but you’d be wrong. It is set primarily in Tokyo, with Tuvalu representing an escape-fantasy. (Hmm, not now!) O’Connor captured well the life of young expats in Japan, and that strange, black, other-worldly tone you find in some modern Japanese literature.

Around the same time, some may remember, Peter Carey published a travel book, Wrong about Japan, which chronicled a trip he made to Japan with his son. It was pretty controversial at the time, because of the approach Carey took. However, Wikipedia quotes Stephen Mansfield of The Japan Times who wrote in 2018 that Wrong About Japan was “not universally appreciated when it was first published in 2005, but time has proven it to be a small, highly original contribution to books on this country.”

It seems that in this book Carey begins by appearing to be a naive tourist in Japan, but Broinkowski writes that:

Gradually however, he allows it to emerge that he has been in Japan more than once before, has done considerable research, and has excellent contacts. When in Japan, Carey doesn’t do as the Japanese do, but he respects the ascendancy of Japanese civilization, and unusually among male writers, doesn’t make a contest out of it.

Book coverAll these writers I knew about when I conceived this post, but one I didn’t know who had spent significant time in Japan is novelist and short story writer, Paddy O’Reilly. According to her website, not only has she been an Asialink writer-in-residence in Japan, but she spent “several years working as a copywriter and translator” there. The knowledge she gleaned as a result has informed several of her stories (including two in The end of the world, 2007) and a novel, The factory (2005).

And then there’s Tara June Winch who popped up serendipitously in this month’s Qantas magazine with an article titled “The journey” in the QSpirit section. She talks about having an idea for a novel set in Japan, inspired by the Japanese word hakanai, which she understands to mean “something that is beautiful or precious” because it doesn’t last long. She envisaged her character approaching Mt Fuji, but then became stuck. She writes:

I was adamant that if I could only walk up the side of the mountain myself, the story would be waiting for me in the still quiet, in the pine forests.

So what do you do? You find an artist residency, that’s what! She went to Japan with her daughter. They slept on futons on tatami mats, gradually made friends, and joined in the culture. She never did write the novel, but, she says, hakanai was “the essence of the the entire trip. Hakanai was my daughter’s childhood – beautiful and precious, just because”. We know what she means.

There’s actually quite a lot of academic writing out there on the topic, analysing interpretations, but I hope this has provided a little intro to some Aussie literary connections with Japan. I’d love to hear what you know or have read.

Sources:

Alison E. Broinowski (2101). The honbako is bare: what’s become of Japan/ Australia fiction? (University of Wollongong Research Online)

Clarke, Patricia (2003). “Two colonials in London’s Bohemia” in National Library of Australia News, XIII(12): 14–17, September 2003 (A source I used to add information about Praed to Wikipedia, a decade ago!)

 

Dominic Smith, The electric hotel (#BookReview)

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Book coverI admit to a brief feeling of déjà vu when I started Dominic Smith’s latest novel, The electric hotel, because it starts by telling us that its protagonist 85-year-old Claude Ballard has been living in the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles for over thirty years. Not another man living in a hotel like our gentleman in Moscow? Very quickly, though, I realised that this was a very different book. Towles was inspired by the idea of people living in hotels, while Smith was inspired by something completely different, the idea of lost films. The Library of Congress, he says, believes that over 75% of silent films have been lost forever. A figure familiar to retired film archivist me.

What’s the hotel got to do with all this? Well, apparently, the 1929-built Knickerbocker was, for much of its life, closely connected with the film industry. As Claude remembers in the novel, costume designer Irene Lentz committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor, and silent film director DW Griffiths collapsed in the lobby. Moreover, at least one person, the character actor William Frawley, did live at the hotel for thirty years. However, Smith’s story, unlike Towles’, spends very little time in the hotel. Instead, it follows the life and career of fictional silent filmmaker Claude Ballard, focusing on his most famous film, The electric hotel, which sent him, and the production team, bankrupt, not because it was a failure but because the film inventor Thomas Edison threatened to sue for illegal use of his patented film stock. While Claude and his film are fictional, Edison was a shrewd businessman who did try to control the film industry. Smith’s research, then, looks good, and while I’m not an expert in the silent era or its technology, I felt pretty comfortable with the history – right down to the concerns about the vinegar smell in Claude’s room, although I don’t think the term “vinegar syndrome” was much used in the early 1960s.

For a (retired) film archivist like me, The electric hotel offers a step down memory lane. Indeed, the framing story is that film historian Martin, who is writing his dissertation on innovation in early American silent film, has become interested in Claude’s career. We are neatly given the shell of Claude’s career in the first chapter via his first meetings with Martin. This segues to Chapter 2 and the largest portion of the novel which takes us from the young Claude’s meeting the pioneering Lumière Brothers in the mid 1890s, through to the heyday of his career when he worked with American producer Hal Bender, French actor Sabine Montrose, and Australian stuntman Chip Spalding, and which peaked with the release of The electric hotel in 1908. They are artists, entrepreneurs, adventurers, and together they make something quite astonishing. Gradually, however, and for various reasons that I won’t spoil now, they go their separate ways. We follow them through to the end of World War 1, with a couple of forays back to the novel’s original time setting, 1962, where we also end up.

It’s an engrossing read. Smith creates vivid characters, and conveys well the excitement and energy of the early film industry pioneers – Claude’s early fin-de-siècle days in Paris, his travelling around the world with the Lumières’ cinématographe, the development of his career in New York with Hal and Chip, and the war years. It’s a complex story, with a fair share of twists and turns, about art and money, success and failure, and, yes, an artist (Claude) and his muse (Sabine).

What, though, is the book really about? Besides being inspired by the idea of lost films, I mean? Smith himself says, as quoted in the press release, that his ongoing interest is “the gaps and silences of history”.  What does he say about these gaps and silences? I’m not sure, really. I think that perhaps he’s not so interested in commenting on the gaps, as dabbling around in them and bringing them to our attention. This is what he does for silent film, anyhow, but in doing so he also explores the increasing realisation of the power of this new movie medium. Early on Claude tells Sabine that “it turns life into moving pictures”, and a little later, Sabine’s coach and devotee of naturalism, Pavel, says that Claude had “managed to trap real life”. It’s in the war, though, that film’s darker potential becomes obvious, as German soldier Bessler forces Claude to produce the perfect propaganda movie, The victor’s crown. Claude, however, manages to subvert it to his own ends, proving to Bessler’s detriment that, indeed, “the camera sees the truth”!

The book is also an ode to the drive, the obsession, to produce art – and to the price paid by those who have this drive. Claude, who never goes anywhere without his camera, keeps his most personal negatives undeveloped because “until that second they hit the chemical bath, every image is perfect in my mind”. I’m sure many creators understand this.

But the book also has a personal dimension. It’s about love and loss, about escaping, hiding, and stalling. Claude’s personal life is peppered with loss, from which he never really recovers. He tells Martin, “I had every intention of starting over. It was like an errand I meant to run for fifty years.” And, late in the novel he says:

… the past never stops banging at the doors of the present. We pack it into watered suitcases, lock it into rusting metal trunks beneath our beds, press it between yellowed pages of newsprint, but it hangs over us at night like a poisonous cloud, seeps into our shirt collars and bedclothes.

It’s good writing – expressive, but controlled, and never overdone.

The smug German Bessler tells Claude that “art is art wherever it blooms”. The electric hotel explores that in all its glorious messiness.

Dominic Smith
The electric hotel
Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2019
349pp.
ISBN: 9781760528621

(Review copy courtesy Allen & Unwin)

Nhulunbuy Primary School, I saw we saw (#BookReview)

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Book coverA week or so ago, I wrote a post to commemorate this year’s Indigenous Literacy Day. In that post I noted that the book I saw we saw was going to be launched at the Sydney Opera House that day. It was written and illustrated by students from Nhulunbuy Primary School, up on the Gove Peninsula, and a number of them were going to read and perform from the original Yolŋu Matha language version, Nha Nhunu Nhanjal?, at the launch. I ordered my own copy of the book that day.

The books – the original Yolŋu Matha version, launched at this year’s Garma Festival, and the English version – were published by the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, which describes itself as a “national book industry charity”. Their aim is to “reduce the disadvantage experienced by children in remote indigenous communities in Australia, by lifting literacy levels and instilling a lifelong love of reading”. These two books came out of their Community Literacy Project, and were produced through a series of workshops with illustrator Ann Haddon and teacher-librarian Ann James, with local Yolŋu elders helping develop the story.

So, the English-version book. It begins with a brief introduction telling us that the Yolŋu people of north-east Arnhem Land represent one of the largest indigenous groups in Australia. Their main language is Yolŋu Matha, which, it explains, has twelve sub-languages, each with its own name. It also tells us that, for most Yolngu children, English is their second (or even third or fourth) language. I saw we saw, the English language version of their book, is, by definition, written in English, but it uses words from the Dhaŋa sublanguage to name the actual “things” seen. This is a lovely, effective way of introducing indigenous language to non-indigenous people (as recommended at the Identity session of the Canberra Writers Festival). However, this approach also creates a bit of a challenge for the reader – what is being seen, and how do you pronounce it?

Beach, north-east Arnhem Land

Beach, north-east Arnhem Land

Well, there is quite a bit of help for us in this. First, the text and illustrations provide a lot of clues. “I see a waṯu grab a stick from a man” is accompanied by quite a busy drawing with birds, fish, turtle, jellyfish, and a person fishing, but there is also a picture of a dog with a stick in its mouth. So, waṯu is dog! Sometimes, however, it’s not so easy to get it exactly right, either because of the busy-ness of the picture or the (delightful) naiveté of the children’s drawings. You can usually guess, but can be uncertain, nonetheless. In these cases, the illustration on the last page of the story, which shows most of the creatures with their English names, provides most of the answers. Finally, there is also the online Yolŋu dictionary which, in fact, I used to obtain the necessary diacritics since, funnily enough, they are not available on my Apple keyboard!

That’s the “what is being seen” problem solved, but what about the pronunciation issue? How would you pronounce ŋurula (seagull)? Or mirinyiŋu (whale)? This one is easily solved. At the front of the book is a QR code. You hold your tablet or smart phone camera over that to be taken to a website where you can hear the story read by child-speakers of the language. The whole story only takes 3 minutes or so. Of course, being able to then say the words yourself will take some practice.

The story itself is simple, traditional picture-book style. The pages alternate between “I saw …” and “We saw …”, with each “I saw – We saw” pair forming a rhyming couplet:

I saw a maranydjalk leaping high
We saw a ŋurula soaring in the sky

It’s a delightful book. The rhymes are comfortable, not forced; the illustrations are appealing, particularly to young people; and story introduces readers to the rich natural environment of Arnhem Land region. It also conveys the pride the young authors and illustrators have in their country. It would be a wonderful book to use in primary school classrooms. It’s certainly one I look forward to reading to Grandson Gums when he’s a little older (and I’ve practised my Yolŋu Matha).

You can purchase this book directly from the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, for $24.99.

AWW Challenge 2019 BadgeNhulunbuy Primary School students, with Ann James and Ann Haddon
I saw we saw
Broadway: Indigenous Literacy Foundation, 2019
40pp.
ISBN: 9780648155492

 

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Shortlist, 2019, announced

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As you know, I don’t announce all literary awards shortlists, but the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have an “interesting” history, so I plan to follow them more closely than I originally did.

The press release says that over 500 books were submitted across the 6 categories, much the same as last year in fact. Last year, I listed all categories, but this year I am just listing the three that feature most often on my blog.

Rodney Hall, A stolen seasonFiction

  • Rodney Hall’s A stolen season, Picador (my review)
  • Gail Jones’ The death of Noah Glass, Text Publishing
  • Melissa Lucashenko’s Too much lip, University of Queensland Press (my review)
  • Suneeta Peres da Costa’s Saudade, Giramondo Publishing (Lisa ANZLitLovers’ review)
  • Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s Beautiful revolutionary, Scribe Publications

While last year’s list was male-dominated, this year’s tips the balance just over to the women’s side. Also, last year’s list seemed a little conservative, sticking to tried and true authors, while this year’s list mixes it up a bit. Indeed I barely know two of them. Best of all, last year I had read none of the shortlist, while this year I’ve read two! Hall, Jones and Lucashenko have appeared on a few lists this year, with Lucashenko, of course, recently winning the Miles Franklin Award.

Maria Tumarkin, AxiomaticNon-fiction

  • Cynthia Banham’s A certain light: A memoir of family, loss and hope, Allen & Unwin
  • Gabrielle Chan’s Rusted off: Why country Australia is fed up, Vintage Books
  • Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell’s Half the perfect world: Writers, dreamers and drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964, Monash University Press
  • Chloe Hooper’s The arsonist: A mind on fire, Hamish Hamilton (on my TBR) (Lisa AnzLitLovers’ review)
  • Maria Tumarkin’s Axiomatic, Brow Books (my review)

A mixed bunch, as you’d expect from something broadly described as “non-fiction”, but I’m pleased that again, unlike last year, I have actually read one of the books, and have another on my TBR. I like the judges’ description of Tumarkin’s exploration of her axioms, that she “turns them upside down and uses them to explore the intersection of past and present memories and the entanglement of human frailty.”

Clare Wright, You daughters of freedomAustralian history

  • Billy Griffiths’ Deep time dreaming: Uncovering ancient Australia, Black Inc.
  • Anna Haebich’s Dancing in shadows: Histories of Nyungar performance, UWA Publishing
  • David Kemp’s The land of deams: How Australians won their freedom, 1788-1860, The Miegunyah Press
  • Meredith Lake’s The Bible in Australia: A cultural history, NewSouth Publishing
  • Clare Wright’s You daughters of freedom: The Australians who won the vote and inspired the world, Text Publishing (my review)

Like last year, university publishing houses have done well here, with UWA Publishing, The Miegunyah Press and NewSouth Publishing taking three of the five spots. But, unlike last year, this year I have actually read one of the books! I am also particularly keen to read Billy Griffiths’ book which explores not only Australia’s archeology but the history of archeologists’ relationship with indigenous people and their knowledge and ideas about Australia’s “deep past”. While Griffiths and Haebich address indigenous Australia in their histories, I’m disappointed that there are no indigenous-authored histories here. Were any published or submitted this year I wonder?

The complete shortlist with judges’ comments can be seen on the website (Click on each book for the comments).

Thoughts, anyone?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Teachers in Australian novels

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What’s brought this on, you are probably wondering, but I can explain. Firstly, my Jane Austen group has, over the years, discussed Jane Austen from the point of view of roles and professions, so, for example, we’ve discussed professions like the clergy, and roles, like brothers, in Austen, and have enjoyed the research and the discussion. Secondly I’ve been in Melbourne this weekend visiting our family, and it just so happens that Son Gums is a teacher. Why not, then, I thought, look at how teachers are portrayed in Australian novels.

Hmmm, I can think of many films, though I admit that I’m talking internationally here, about inspirational teachers. They abound, in fact, but where are they in novels? Even where teachers are not negatively portrayed they seem more likely to be weak and/or ineffectual, than proactive and successful. It was hard to search the internet for my topic, however, because searches tended to retrieve hits about teaching fiction, or teachers’ resources for fiction, rather than hits about teachers as characters in fiction. I did, though, find a blog post from 2012 in which blogger and educator, Darcy Moore, asked “where is the inspirational teacher in Australian popular culture literature and film?  I wasn’t surprised to discover that he didn’t find much either. 
BookCover

So what is there? Some novels featuring teachers fall, loosely, into the mystery-crime-thriller genre. There’s Kenneth Cook’s debut 1961 novel Wake in fright which chronicles the nightmarish school holiday of a rookie teacher in outback Australia, Joan Lindsay’s famous 1967 novel Picnic at Hanging Rock in which teachers lose some students during a picnic, and Gabrielle Lord’s 1980 novel Fortress that was inspired by a real abduction of a teacher and students in Victoria in 1972. At least in that story the teacher does manage to escape with her students. It’s probably not surprising, given the dramatic nature of these novels, that all three have been made into movies. I have read two of these books, but before blogging.

Dymphna Cusack, Jungfrau

Some books feature teachers, but aren’t significantly about their work. Dymphna Cusack’s 1936 novel Jungfrau  (my review) is one such. Cusack, who had herself been a teacher, writes here about three women, obstetrician Eve, teacher Thea, and social worker Marc. They are modern young professional women, but the book’s focus is more their personal and social lives, particularly as affected by Thea’s affair with a married professor, than their working lives. Indeed, early on, Thea, defending her adulterous relationship as her right “to get something out of life”, says “my work doesn’t mean anything to me”. Hmm …

Book coverThen there’s Tom Dorahy in Thea Astley’s 1974 novel A kindness cup, my first Astley, which I read long before blogging. He’s an idealist, a humane person, who returns to his home town for a reunion, but what he really wants to do is right the wrongs of a massacre of Aboriginal people that occurred during his time there, twenty years previously in the 1860s, and for which the perpetrators were never properly punished. It’s interesting that Astley, inspired by a real massacre, was writing about this in 1974! She really was a special and fearless writer. However, again, the book, as I recollect, isn’t so much about his teaching.

Book coverElizabeth Jolley’s 1983 novel, Miss Peabody’s inheritance, also features a teacher, but perhaps not quite in the way most parents would be looking for. This is a novel-within-a-novel, in which an Australian novelist sends instalments of her novel-in-progress to a fan in England. Her novel is about three middle-aged single women, including headmistress Arabella Thorne, who holiday annually together in Europe. This particular year, Thorne brings along a sixteen-year-old student to give her “a little finishing”. The finishing she gets, as she becomes caught up in Miss Thorne’s emotional entanglements with her women friends, is not exactly the usual!

Book coverHmmm, so, are there any teachers actually being good role models in Australian novels? I’m sure there are, but the only one I can remember right now is Phil Day who appears in Julian Davies’ 2018 Call me (my review). Phil Day is not, admittedly, the novel’s protagonist, but his student Pip is – and Phil Day plays an important role in Pip’s coming-of-age trajectory, by listening to him and discussing life with him, rather than by telling him what to do.

Good, wise and/or supportive teachers do appear, I know, in other coming-of-age stories, but I can’t think of any that stand out particularly.

So I’m going to end this post, by returning to Darcy Moore, who concluded his post with:

In an era where teachers are often criticised by politicians and our standing in the Australian community is often talked down, certainly in comparison to Asian and Scandinavian countries, it is important that we work to build an improved attitude towards learning. … It would be wonderful to build a vision into something tangible, something that that allows us to have a society where such positive imagery about teaching and teachers enters our popular, cinematic and literary culture and is not viewed as pretentious, elitist or cringeworthy. Wouldn’t it?

Seven years after that post, things are still much the same I think in terms of how our teachers are perceived. Why is this? And would it help to have some positive depictions in literature – and the other arts? I’m not one to prescribe what writers should write about, but that doesn’t stop me wondering whether positive portrayals would help (if that makes sense.)

Meanwhile, do we have some great depictions in Australian literature that I’ve missed? I’m sure we do, so here is your chance to tell me.

Indigenous Literacy Day 2019

/ Whispering Gums / 26 Comments

Today, Wednesday 4 September, is Indigenous Literacy Day, which the Indigenous Literary Foundation (ILF) describes as “a national celebration of Indigenous culture, stories, language and literacy”. The day is intended to both promote awareness of disadvantage in indigenous communities, and to  “encourage the rest of Australia to raise funds and advocate for more equal access to literacy resources for remote communities.”

I have been donating annually to ILF for the last few years, but there’s more I can do to support them and raise awareness. Writing this post is one of those ways.

It seems particularly relevant for me to do this this year, because the importance of supporting indigenous literacy, and, related to this, of spreading knowledge about indigenous languages was the impassioned parting message from Tara June Winch, Yvette Henry Holt and Jeanine Leane, at the Canberra Writers Festival Identity session.

Nha Nhunu Nhanjal? project

Book coverA few weeks ago, I received an email from the ILF reminding me about Indigenous Literacy Day and telling me about a book they are publishing, commemorating both this day and this year’s International Year of Indigenous Languages. The book is Nha Nhunu Nhanjal?, and is the product of a special project. It was “written and illustrated by Yolŋgu Matha-speaking students from Nhulunbuy Primary School on the Gove Peninsula in North East Arnhem Land and was launched at this year’s Garma Festival”. An English edition of the book, titled I Saw We Saw, will be launched at the Sydney Opera House today, Indigenous Literacy Day. Students from Nhulunbuy, 4,000 kilometers away, will be present to read and perform from the Yolŋgu Matha version.

In the email, ILF quoted well-known Australian author Richard Flanagan, an ILF Ambassador, speaking at the Garma Festival:

“Every language is a universe, and each universe allows us to understand what it is to be human in a different, larger and richer way. Like a basket woven out of many pieces of grass, many languages make our societies stronger and better.”

ILF says, reiterating Winch and co’s message, that

It is vital for young children to have access to books in their language. And seeing their way of life reflected in books their own children and community have created, ensures that cultural identity and connections to country remain strong.

We all know this don’t we? Many of us love reading about other cultures, but our first home, our starting point has to be, and for most of us naturally was, books about our own culture.

How can you support indigenous literacy and culture?

There are many things you can do, of course, depending on your skills, abilties, interests and wallets. Here are some ways:

  • donate to ILF (here)
  • buy a book (or two) from the National Library of Australia’s Bookshop, online or in store, today, between 9am and 5pm, as they all be donating 5% of all sales made to the  Indigenous Literacy Foundation. (Or from any other bookshop offering a similar donation to ILF today.)
  • buy the English version of the book, to keep, give away and/or donate to your local school.
  • hold your own fundraising activity, such as a Book Swap (doesn’t have to be today!)
  • advocate for ILF on social media, tagging @IndigenousLiteracyFoundation on Facebook and Instagram, and @IndigenousLF on Twitter

Let’s do what we can to help indigenous Australians’ literacy. And let’s also do what we can to increase non-indigenous Australians’ understanding of an ongoing 60,000+ years culture that no other country in the world is lucky to have. I mean, really, how fortunate we are.

Monday Musings on Australian Literature: Canberra Writers Festival 2019 Recap

/ Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

Just when you thought it was safe to return to my blog, I’m at it again, talking about this year’s Canberra Writers Festival. However, if you are like me you are intrigued about what other readers and festival goers like, so I thought I’d share what the Canberra Writers Festival sent us subscribers.

But, I’ll start with my 7 posts, and their popularity (by number of hits):

Interesting. The two which specifically featured local authors and/or local subject matter were the most popular, despite my international readership. Maybe some local authors shared the link and a lot of hits were local? Anyhow, these were followed by the two most literary sessions I attended – Tara June Winch and Brian Castro. This doesn’t surprise me, given my “brand” here. And then the last three, which had about two-thirds the hits of the top post, are a mixed bag of, generally, more popular subjects.

Before moving to the Canberra Writers Festival’s report, I’d like to point you to a post written by one of this year’s New Territory bloggers, Shelley Burr. She wrote on the Wonder Women panel (which featured Australian historical fiction novelists.) You’ll have to read her post to find out who they were!

Panel picture
Picture of the panel
Picture of the two conversant
Pomeranz and Beresford
Holt and Winch
Castro and Jacobs

Now, were my most popular posts reflected in the most popular sessions attended? Sort of. The Canberra Writers Festival wrote that the “Top Ten” sessions “include”:

  • Simon Winchester in conversation with Richard Fidler
  • Capital Culture
  • Never Never
  • Defining Moments – True Crime Panel
  • For Whom the Pell Tolls
  • You Daughters of Freedom
  • Best of the Best: Book Club Favourites
  • Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing
  • Is Hate Our New Normal?
  • David & Margaret

I’m not sure how to interpret this, because they say “the top ten include“, but there are ten here, so I’m presuming these are the top ten? Let’s presume they are, and that they are in order (though I’m surprised that the session featuring Behrouz Boochani from Manus Island is not in the list.)

Anyhow, certainly Simon Winchester was in a 300-seat theatre and was sold out. Capital Culture was sold out too, but in a smaller space. I’m intrigued that three of the sessions I chose were in the top four of the Top Ten, though what that says, I’ll leave to you. It’s interesting, though, that the most popular session, by this list, was not my most popular post. A couple of other sessions listed here – such as Never Never, about “the role that the bush plays in our collective imagination” – were ones I had to miss because of clashes. I didn’t mind missing You daughters of freedom because I had heard Clare Wright speak about her book last year.

It’s clear that the Festival’s “political” slant works well for the organising committee, with sessions on George Pell (including David Marr), Gender (including Gillian Triggs), and Hate (also including Gillian Triggs) all being popular.

The Canberra Writers Festival email also told us the best-selling books at the festival:

  • Capital culture (ed. by Suzanne Kiraly) (I bought this)
  • On disruption (Katharine Murphy) (I have given this as a gift)
  • Cardinal: The rise and fall of George Pell (Louise Milligan)
  • On patriotism (Paul Daley)
  • Brain changer (Felice Jacka)
  • Unbreakable threads (Emma Adams)
  • Just add love (Irris Makler)
  • On indignation (Don Watson)
  • Plots and prayers (Niki Savva)
  • Leading lines (Lucinda Holdforth)
  • You daughters of freedom (Clare Wright) (I have reviewed)

Hmmm … I haven’t heard of some of these, but it’s interesting, given the signing line I saw, that Exactly isn’t listed here. Given there were different booksellers at different sites – including, the NLA bookshop, Harry Hartog and Dymocks – it’s possible that this list does not concatenate across all the booksellers? Anyhow, it’s also interesting that the little “On…” books published by Melbourne University Press are doing well. I recently posted on Stan Grant’s On identity, from the same series.

As for my purchases, I am way out of step. Besides Capital culture, I bought Brian Castro’s Blindness and rage and Simon Winchester’s Exactly (for Mr Gums). I also bought Brian Castro’s After China during the Festival, but at Muse. And, I already had some of the books I heard discussed, including Nigel Featherstone’s Bodies of men, Karen Viggers’ The orchardist’s daughter, and Tara June Winch’s The yield.

All this is fascinating, but the best thing is that the Festival, now in its fourth year, appears to have done well with good pre-sales and, they say, “significant impromptu attendance”. This augurs well for its continuation. And that, of course, is what we want.