Impressions of Writers’ Week

Perhaps because of the coloured marquee with elm leaves pressed against the top like alien faces watching, Writers’ Week had a slightly theatrical air which added to the pleasure. All kinds of people were there, in all kinds of clothes, so that one was torn between wanting to watch the crowd and to listen to the speakers. The marquee seats three hundred people – it was always full, and the organisers estimated that on each day, another two hundred stood outside to listen. Certain threads ran through the speeches and discussions – the inevitability of the third world war, Aboriginal land rights, and on every side, I heard, quietly, the Voice of Women. The highlight of the week was seeing and hearing Leila Rankine. Maureen Watson, and Cliff Coulthard telling Aboriginal stories and legends in the Festival Centre Amphitheatre. In front of a large audience, Maureen Watson started the show. A beautiful, vibrant woman who kept everyone spellbound; she has chosen to stay within the tradition of her people by not publishing her work. One of her stories pointed out certain similarities between black and white cultures, a point easily taken by one used to seeing near-nude bodies with white-streaked, zinc-creamed faces lying supine on the beaches of the Queensland Concrete Coast. Leila Rankine, who read some of her poetry and told stories of her youth, belongs to the Aboriginal people who used to own – still owns – the land where the Festival Centre has been built. She spoke gently, but her message was clear – the idyllic life of her childhood was swept away by the white invasion. Cliff Coulthard, a ranger with the South Australian Department of the Environment, told tribal stories about the formation of landmarks in the Flinders Ranges. At another session, ‘Fictive or Real Worlds?’ writers spoke about the quantity of fact contained in what they had published as fiction. Helen Garner told how the autobiographical nature of her book Monkey Grip had affected her relationships with friends. She ended by telling how, when she was writing another book, she searched unsuccessfully for a page of notes she needed, and of the feeling of exhilaration and relief she’d felt when she knew she wouldn’t ever find it and would have to improvise. Nick Joaquin, poet, playwright, and fiction writer from the Philippines spoke about the way truth is transformed within the mind of a writer, so that the real world enters and comes out later as the character Fagin or as Old Man Karamazov. Maxine Hong Kingston from America talked about her successful book, The Woman Warrior, and subtly made the point that no one knows, not even the writer, what is truth and what is not. It seemed that everyone in Adelaide was talking about David Hare’s play A Map of the World. (Another of his plays, Dreams of Leaving had been shown on ABC Television the week before the Festival.) This playwright spoke of his work for over an hour one morning. He talked about the difference between writing for the stage and for television, and he tossed a few gems into the crowd along the way. Afterwards, his speech was as much talked about as his play. He delighted sections of the audience by pointing out that the British use good manners as a form of hostility, and others by saying that writing, especially his own, is the outcome of neuroticism. All this was delivered with wit, charm, and a Cambridge accent as well! On another day, four writers spoke on the Writer as Social Conscience. It could have been a dull topic, but it didn’t turn out that way. The writers were Ward McNally, Elaine Feinstein, Judith Wright, and I Min Chu. Ward McNally told of his youthful delinquency and imprisonment in New Zealand and of the bitter fight he has had to establish himself as a respectable citizen in Australia. Because of that fight he set himself to tell the truth through his writing and has always maintained that position. Judith Wright spoke movingly of the place of writers in society and pointed out that they are the only people free to tell the truth. She spoke too of a writer’s capacity for feeling. ‘We feel more deeply,’ she said, ‘because our imagination makes us wince when someone else screams.’ Elaine Feinstein from England said she felt that the writers in Britain no longer have the power they have in Germany, France, and even Russia. ‘No poet’, she said, ‘writing in England today, can give Mrs. Thatcher one minute’s anxiety.’ I don’t agree with that view, but it gave us plenty to talk about later, especially in the light of Mr. L’s speech, which was delivered in Chinese, then translated, and judging by the translation, toed the party line so closely that it said nothing at all. For ‘A Commemoration of Miles Franklin’, Val Kent and Brian Matthews had put together some of the best of Franklin’s writing so that it formed the story of her life and work from the writing of My Brilliant Career until her death. It was narrated by Val Kent, and readings were done by Anna Pike and Kerry Walker, who made the prose live. It was a superbly presented tribute to the Australian writer. This account leaves out all the fun of meeting friends, dining out, going to coffee shops and so on. But let me say that I loved every minute of Writers’ Week. It gave me back some of the precious things I lost living in Queensland. I’ll be at the next one. If the bomb doesn’t get me first …

Georgia Savage

From the New Issue

The New World Disorder: How the West is destroying itself by Peter R. Neumann, translated by David Shaw

‘Calm Voice’, a new poem by Anders Villani

Three recent short story collections

No Church in the Wild by Murray Middleton

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