A Traveller’s Guide To Aboriginal Australia

July 11, 2017July 11, 2017 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 2 Comments

(Warning: Indigenous Australians are advised that the content and some of the links from this blog include images or names of people now deceased.)

NAIDOC WEEK 2017 – 2-9 July

NAIDOC – National Aborigines & Islanders Day Observance Committee organises celebrations every year in the first full week of July.

This year the theme “Our Languages Matter” emphasised and celebrated the role that indigenous languages play in cultural identity by linking people to their land and water and in the transmission of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ history, spirituality and rites, through story and song.

Last year, encouraged by my good friend, writer, and award-winning blogger, Lisa Hill, I reviewed books in the ever-increasing catalogue of indigenous literature. Lisa hosts an Indigenous Literature Week on her ANZ LitLovers LitBlog.

This year, I’ve just returned from overseas and missed the deadline but because of travelling, I decided to review Burnum Burnum’s Aboriginal Australia, A Traveller’s Guide.

The book is a treasured part of my home library.

Most people I know who travel Australia will not have read this 1988 publication. It was an expensive coffee table book years ago but well-produced with an intensity of detail and gorgeous coloured photographs of iconic Aussie landscapes!

Some of the information is confronting, but all of it enriching. Adding to that important store of human knowledge. I guarantee it will change the way you look at the landscape of our continent and of many of the places you already know, and perhaps you may look differently at many of the debates around Aboriginal Land Rights, Australia or Invasion Day and the importance of retaining and teaching language and culture.

The book is –

A pictorial guide to Highway One, Central Australian and Tasmanian sites and places important to traditional and contemporary Aboriginal life; includes history, art, religion of particular clans, present communities and organisations, biographies; many archival photographs.

Trove entry

Here is a snippet about Hamilton near Geelong, the map showing many different language groups in that corner of Victoria alone – nine clans – how many of these languages left?

Aboriginal map of Port Campbell and Warrnambool area.jpg — part of page 276

To learn about the history of our country from those who have been caretakers for thousands of years, to learn about the spiritual places holding their sacred stories makes it a special traveller’s guide. A book worth reading again and again. To be read for understanding and appreciation, not for directions or entertaining experiences.

It is not a Lonely Planet guide or RACV road atlas!

However, it’s worth putting in the caravan, camper trailer, or four wheel drive if you’re touring ‘grey nomads’ or a family that tours together. This is the history not taught in our school curriculum, or just beginning to be included.

Not necessarily bedtime reading (unless you have a big bed and plenty of elbow room) but sitting around the campfire or when having a BBQ in a campsite, you can share the knowledge and/or book.

The book tells of many nations, clans and groups adapting to life in temperate coastal regions, tropical rainforests, living by inland waterways or mighty rivers, travelling wild coastline and surviving the desert by trading with other clans.

… the Mitakoodi people in the Cloncurry district used a small type of net which they obtained in trading from the Woonamurra people who lived to the north. The Kalkadoons acquired kunti (porcupine or spinifex grass gum) from the Buckingham Downs region to the south.

(Visit the Kalkadoon Cultural Centre located at Rotary Hill.) page 144

Sadly, some of the massacres and horrors detailed in this book have never been given enough national attention although a new map recording massacres during the frontier wars appeared in the news recently.

Burnum Burnum’s Guide was published in the year White Australia celebrated its Bicentenary and a year the author, an activist but “warrior for peace”, mirrored the theft of Aboriginal land in 1788, by planting a flag at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover on January 26, claiming possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal ‘Crown’!

Burnum Burnum’s Aboriginal Australia is the first book ever to offer a personal, Aboriginal vision of this, the world’s greatest island.

Through over 300 stunning colour pictures and 150 black and white archival photographs, many of which have never been published before, and through the words of one of this country’s best-known and most respected Aboriginal people, this unique book takes the reader on a journey around the continent, an unforgettable journey that reveals an Australia rarely experienced by its white inhabitants.

Creation stories are told and although most Melburnians are aware of Bunjil the eagle it’s fascinating to read slightly different versions and explanations for Port Phillip Bay, Mornington Peninsula, and the River Yarra’s twisting trail from Warrandyte.

This extract about ancient bones discovered in 1965 rivals the speculation about burial sites in Orkney and Shetland, where I just spent two weeks exploring.

I was 12 years old in 1965 but can’t remember hearing about this at school or university when I studied Australian history.

(For updated information on the Frontier Wars, prioritising indigenous input, a friend’s website created several years ago is an excellent resource. I’ve known Jane since Aboriginal Embassy Days. Her research scrupulous and commitment to sharing information comes from the heart and not reliant on funding or becoming embroiled in politics.)

Jane and I knew Burnum Burnum in the 1970s although he was first introduced as Harry Penrith. We saw his transformation after seeking to get closer to his Aboriginality he researched his family and took his Grandfather’s name.

A member of the Stolen Generation, he could finally be himself – Burnum Burnum!

Here is part of the Foreword…

For me this book represents a lifetime’s work, a journey to find my own roots in this great country. I was born in 1936, under the family gum tree at Mosquito Point, by the side of Wallaga Lake. But, under the policies of the day, I was seized by government officials and separated (at 3 months) from my family. For the next ten years, I grew up on a mission near Nowra, before being moved to the Kinchela Boys Home, near South West Rocks, where I became the first Aborigine to gain a bronze medallion in surf life-saving. My sister was sent to Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Home, separated from me by more than 1600 kilometres…

This book is… an attempt to give the traveller a chance to view this extraordinary country as it was seen by the original Australians… Modern ecology can learn a great deal from a people who managed and maintained their world so well for 50,000 years.

… Australians are gaining a new pride in their real heritage, the one which covers 2000 generations. The story has an inevitable edge of sadness, as we understand the process and pattern of dispossession suffered after 1788. This material has been included not to provoke guilt, but to give a perception of the extraordinary differences between the original Australians and the invaders who came in 1788.

In most areas of early contact, they were greeted warmly by the Australians, who had no idea that these strange white people intended to stay…

In Europe, as people developed their civilisation from the caves to the cathedrals, they left clear evidence of their achievement for future generations to admire. In Australia, the land itself is the cathedral and worship is not confined to any four walls. Each step is a prayer and every form in the landscape – and everything that moves in it – was put there specifically for the people to use and manage…

I hope the reader will find no bitterness in the story; the past cannot be turned back… The challenge of the future is… an acceptance of the past, the first step to a positive future… no one people have a sole franchise on the ability to feel an affinity with this timeless landscape.

This book resonates more with me now than when I bought it all those years ago because of the special connection to Harry/Burnum Burnum. I’ve finished a personal trek myself, returning to my birth country (touched upon in a previous post).

My father was Scottish and my mother Irish, and I visited Scotland and Northern Ireland retracing their childhood influences, and my own.

Here are Burnum Burnum’s thoughts:

All around Melbourne, the spirit of my great great grandmother is written on the landscape. When I drive through eastern Victoria I do so with a great sense of reverence, dreaming my way through the landscape of my ancestors and my birth, I can feel the spirit of my ancestors in many places.

This book weaves a rich tapestry of people, places, flora, fauna, history, mythology, reality and Dreamtime.

Forever relevant, it will earn its keep on your bookshelf for generations.

No Way But This, In Search of Paul Robeson, by Jeff Sparrow

March 13, 2017March 13, 2017 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ Leave a comment

In memory of my father who would be 95 today. He loved Paul Robeson and we played Ol’ Man River at Dad’s funeral. I grew up hearing stories about this wonderful man’s life, voice, and commitment to social justice.

This is a fantastic review by Lisa Hill – and here is the cover of one of the records I heard Dad play so often.

ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

There have been some distractions on the domestic front chez moi, so this review may not do this marvellous book justice…

Jeff Sparrow’s biography of Paul Robeson is great reading, even if you have never heard of Paul Robeson. The blurb actually says that Robeson is one of the 20th century’s most accomplished but forgotten figures – but surely not? Could this voice really be forgotten?

His performance of ‘The Song of the Volga Boatman’ is electrifying:

But Paul Robeson, superstar of the early 20th century that he was, was not just an extraordinary bass singer. His father the Reverend William Drew Robeson had been a slave and he was ambitious for his son. He saw to it that Paul transcended the institutional racism all around him under the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in America until 1965. Paul became the third ever African-American student at Rutgers University, and he graduated with both academic…

View original post 1,053 more words

Poetry – Personal, Political, Playful And Always A Sense Of Place

July 9, 2016July 31, 2017 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 12 Comments

(Warning: Indigenous Australians are advised that some of the links from this blog include images or names of people now deceased.)

Friend, and mentor in all things literary, Lisa Hill of AnzLit fame hosts an Indigenous Literature Week in conjunction with NAIDOC and despite best intentions, I have never participated.

However, this year, I promised myself I’d participate!

I wouldn’t classify myself as a poet but I love poetry and I want to promote three Aboriginal writers whose poems, other writings and artistic endeavours have made a profound impression on me and on the creative and literary landscape of Australia: Jack Davis, Kevin Gilbert and Oodgeroo Noonuccal.

The words of all of these writers are accessible to everyone, not just because their published works are held in libraries (much of it available online), but because their use of the English language, including the nuances that often trip writers, is impeccable.

Today, I focus on Jack Davis

“Jack always had a fascination with words and when he was 10 he preferred a dictionary to a story book…

He worked as an itinerant labourer, windmill man, horse breaker, boundary rider, drover and stockman…

At 14, outraged and indignant at the treatment of Aboriginal people by white landowners, Jack began to write poetry as a means of expression. He was influenced by Worru… who came from the same area as Jack’s father, and Jack loved to listen to Worru’s stories and songs. He began to write Aboriginal words and learned the Bibbulmun language…

A humanitarian, Jack will always be remembered for his writing about Aboriginal history and culture and for his relentless fight for justice for his people…

He was of the Aboriginal Noongar people, and much of his work dealt with the Australian Aboriginal experience. He has been referred to as the 20th Century’s Aborignal poet laureate, and many of his plays are on Australian school syllabuses.”

http://www.PoemHunter.com

All three poets write poems that fit the title of the post: their deep attachment to country, their heritage, and culture, lived experience of heartbreaking poignancy, righteous anger, deadly and accurate observations of life expressed with humour when appropriate.

They have no need of obscure references or showing off academic knowledge, and apply a range of identifiable poetic techniques to satisfy lovers of verse.

I’ve taken the third book of poetry by Jack Davis (pictured above) published in 1988 by Dent Australia, to quote from and reference the themes of his work.

The blurb from the back of this edition explains:

Whether describing a bush creature with gentle irony and a twinkle in his pen, observing the mysteries of human behaviour, evoking with lyrical grace the Aboriginal love of land, or reaching out for mutual understanding across barriers of prejudice and ignorance, these poems speak simply and openly…

1988, a significant year because White Australia celebrated their bi-centenary while Black Australia held a mourning ceremony in commemoration of the Aboriginal tribes wiped out by the atrocities of early white settlers.

Aboriginal descendants conducted a silent protest on the opposite side of the continent to Jack’s birthplace of Western Australia. They stood by the Bay at La Perouse, displaying the names of dead tribes and casting wreaths into the water.

LP_1970_SMH — From the SMH at the time -elders wore red headbands symbolising bloodshed and carried signs displaying the names of tribes wiped out.

Jack Davis had already written about the tragedy of invasion and the selective memory of invaders and ‘winners’ writing history with their own spin.

His poem, One Hundred And Fifty Years, written in protest at the non-inclusion of Aborigines in the celebration of 150 years of European settlement in Western Australia, 1829-1979, tells the story from an Aboriginal perspective:

One Hundred and Fifty Years

I walked slowly along the river.
Old iron, broken concrete, rusted cans
scattered stark along the shore,
plastic strewn by man and tide
littered loudly mute on sparse growth
struggling to survive.
A flock of gulls quarrelled over debris,
a lone shag looked hopefully down at turgid water
and juggernauts of steel and stone made jigsaw
patterns against the city sky.

So now that the banners have fluttered,
the eulogies ended and the tattoos have rendered
the rattle of spears,
look back and remember the end of December
and one hundred and fifty years.

Three boys crackled past on trailbikes
long blond hair waving in the wind,
speedboats erupted power
while lesser craft surged along behind.
The breeze rustled a patch of bull-oak
reminding me of swan, bittern, wild duck winging-
now all alien to the river.
Sir John Forrest stood tall in stone
in St. George`s Terrace,
gun across shoulder,
symbolic of what had removed
the river’s first children.

And that other river, the Murray,
where Western Australia`s
first mass murderer Captain Stirling,
trappings flashing, rode gaily
at the head of twenty-four men.
For an hour they fired
and bodies black, mutilated,
floated down the blood-stained stream.
So now that the banners have fluttered,
the eulogies ended and the tattoos have rendered,
the rattle of spears,
look back and remember the end of December
and one hundred and fifty years.

This year NAIDOC celebrates Songlines: The living narrative of our nation and at last there is some progress as government bodies facilitate not only the sharing but celebrating of the stories from Aboriginal Australia.

Kingston Council has the important message of INTEGRITY, LOYALTY, RESPECT projected onto their clock tower by Aboriginal artist, Josh Muir.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I chose this book of poetry by Jack Davis deliberately because of the title and many of the issues raised in the poems – issues still unresolved. The book is ‘Dedicated to Maisie Pat, and to all mothers who have suffered similar loss.’

JOHN PAT

John Pat was a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy who died of head injuries alleged to have been caused in a disturbance between police and Aborigines in Roebourne, WA, in 1983. Four police were charged with manslaughter over the incident. They were acquitted.

Write of life
the pious said
forget the past
the past is dead.
But all I see
in front of me
is a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

Agh! tear out the page
forget his age
thin skull they cried
that’s why he died!
But I can’t forget
the silhouette
of a concrete floor
a cell door and John Pat

The end product
of Guddia law
is a viaduct
for fang and claw,
and a place to dwell
like Roebourne’s hell
of a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

He’s there- where?
there in their minds now
deep within,
there to prance
a sidelong glance
a silly grin
to remind them all
of a Guddia wall
a cell door
and John Pat

Guddia: Kimberley term for white man

I didn’t realise how sad it would resonate today as recent tragic events in the United States unfold. The Black Lives Matter Campaign in America covered by our media and the situation overseas probably well-known.

However, for generations, Aboriginal people have been dying in police custody in our own country. Where is the outrage in mainstream media to echo in our parliaments, and determination by Federal Ministers to oversee radical change?

Since the Royal Commission in 1991, indigenous incarceration and police custody rates have actually increased and the rate of suicide among Aboriginal youth in remote Australia is also at an all-time high!

Regrettably, the voices of poets and other creative people are not listened to more often and those with the power to act not energised to do so!

The foreword by Colin Johnson in John Pat And Other Poems states:

Jack Davis is one of the most important writers in Australia, and has helped to establish Aboriginal writing in English as a school within Australian literature. Prolific and energetic, he does not restrict his pen to any one genre, but has written poetry, drama, short stories and polemical pieces.

As an Aboriginal writer he is conscious that the writer has an important role to play within his community and in the wider Australian society. He has not hesitated to use his pen in aid of a cause, stressing the need for greater understanding and a growth of tolerance. His writings are not restricted to his own community, but extend beyond into universal themes of compassion and a common humanity uniting all without regard to creed or colour.

Jack’s work is marked by his humanity, although his life has given cause enough for bitterness to find expression…

A number of strands have thus come together to produce Jack Davis the man and the writer. They are all equally important and are reflected in his work. As a dedicated writer, he has also been anxious that his craft be passed on. For five years he served as the editor of the now defunct Aboriginal periodical Identity, and successfully furthered the cause of Aboriginal writing in English by promoting such voices as that of the novelist and short-story writer Archie Weller.

Jack’s wisdom again:

THE ENDING OF POVERTY

If we were constantly to remind ourselves
of the unbelievable immensity
of the universe,
the intricate pattern of our being;
recognise the fragility of our intelligence;
listen to our own heart beat;
remember that crosses like our own
are being borne by others,
that the core of our very existence
is the birth of pain…
Then we will have
mastered the art of living
and begun to remove
poverty from its pedestal.

In the title of the post, I also promised playful and from someone who loved words as much as Jack he is at his playful best observing native animals:

EMU (p34)… the last thing I saw, you were rounding the hill And as far as I know you are travelling still.

SWANS (p33)… Where are you going, majestic swan? I saw you and your flock fly over.

PELICAN (p36)…As she attempts to run for take-off she’s a total wipe-out when she takes her brake off.

KOOKABURRA (p28)… if we laughed away our anger, helped others in distress; then our path would be a smoother one, a walk to happiness.

CICADA (12)… Cicada, cicada, you sing the whole day long, and you have my memories within your summer song.

Another amusing verse within this collection that I loved was First Flight – a great ‘memoir’ poem. If you are working through a popular prompt topic ‘Write about your first experiences’ think of your first trip on an aeroplane.

I’m old enough to remember when flying was an expensive and rare way to travel, and children rushed outside to marvel as planes flew overhead.

FIRST FLIGHT

Yawning prodigiously I disconnected my lifeline.
While destiny voiced safety instructions
(- as we will be flying over water -)
I recollected clearly
the diving board at the old swimming pool.
Now at nine hundred and ninety k’s an hour
I counted heads in front of me,
blonds baldies brunettes blue rinses,
all targets of vulnerability.
A red eye winked
and spelt out terms for my survival,
so I re-strapped myself
into my last probable contact with synthetics.
I heard a dry choked-off scream,
not mine but
rubber protesting against bitumen,
a cool feminine voice
(- I hope you have enjoyed -)
and as we taxied in
I realised I was no longer a novice
but a calm suave veteran of the air.
Especially so
now that I was safe upon the ground.

The last poem in the book emphasises not only Jack’s connection to the land but also a plea that those who came to rule try to understand the spiritual as well as the temporal importance of his country.

If more people read and listen to the stories and voices of Aboriginal people the future may give him his wish.

CURLEW

Weerlo, weerlo,
Some liken you to loneliness
And distances apart
But your dirge of spirit things
Twines around my heart.

You are my people crying
Bereft without their land.
Oh God!
Reach out and teach the white man
How to understand.

Let There be Light and Enjoy The Illuminations

March 5, 2016March 5, 2016 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 4 Comments

I read for emotional engagement – a resonance in my heart as well as mind – and a love of story. Often I don’t finish a book, or take too long reading because it’s a struggle to engage with either the characters, plot, themes or the use of language.

However, a poorly edited book will be finished if the story is powerful or the characters grab me. Cliched I know, but a book must leave something with me to think about long after it’s been returned to its owner, library, put back on my shelf, or passed to a friend.

I have no interest in writing about books I don’t like so can never claim to be an objective book reviewer – I’ll leave that to experts on other sites like writer and friend, Lisa Hill.

I’m attracted to writers who can teach me something about writing, and Andrew O’Hagan is one of my favourite authors. His use of words crafted into delightful and poignant metaphors and similes; minimal but evocative descriptions and always stories and characters with layers of meaning. He deftly structures his novels to lead to surprising revelations and links that have you nodding your head in amazement because of an ‘ah, ah’ moment of understanding.

I’ll be unashamedly partisan, O’Hagan’s lyrical prose speaks to me in more ways than one because he’s Scottish and many of his beautiful passages capture the Scotland and the people I grew up with and know so well. Even although it’s been many years since I lived full-time in Scotland, I can picture places he describes and hear beloved voices. The memories evoked pure nostalgic indulgence.

I haven’t read all his offerings but first came across his writing in The Missing, a non-fiction book that had a profound impact. I might review this another time because like his fictional works I’ve read, Our Fathers, Be Near Me, and Personality and now this latest offering The Illuminations, O’Hagan tackles relevant social issues and newsworthy events and weaves them into his characters’ lives. He researches and champions important issues affecting the human condition, makes us think and generates empathy for people and situations we may otherwise ignore.

If you become captivated like me, you’ll seek out his other books – I tend to do that with authors. I remember Mrs Saffin, the librarian at Croydon High School in 1965 trying to break me of the habit of working my way through the shelves by reading all the books of a particular author before moving on to a new writer. (She had limited success.)

On reflection, because I always wanted to be a writer, I don’t think it was a bad idea on my part. When I found an author I liked, I was probably subconsciously studying and learning their craft and how/why they earned my loyalty!

Thanks to a Christmas book voucher I bought The Illuminations at one of my favourite Melbourne bookshops The Hill of Content . A 40 minute train ride worth making. It’s an oasis of intellectual delight where I often discover books you may not pick up elsewhere and the customer service is second to none.

Andrew O’Hagan’s novel The Illuminations is as the blurb suggests ‘a beautiful, deeply charged story, showing that no matter how we look at it, there is no such thing as an ordinary life.’

The novel’s chapters alternate between family events in Scotland and Captain Luke Campbell’s experiences in Afghanistan. Luke’s regiment, the Royal Western Fusiliers carry out the decisions of the powers that be who now believe, ‘creating electricity and irrigating the warlords’ poppy fields was a better idea than blasting the population from its caves.’

However, this policy unravels along with the mind of Luke’s commanding officer and mentor, Major Scullion, whose ‘friendship used to be like a winter coat to Luke.’

When Luke examined his face he saw the eyes of a little counter-assassin from Westmeath. They were fogged with humanitarianism and strict orders, but they were still the eyes of a man who knew what to do in a dark alleyway.

In Scotland, we are in the world of Luke’s Canadian-born grandmother, Anne Quirk, once a well-known photographer. Anne lives in a sheltered housing complex in Lochranza Court, Saltcoats on Scotland’s west coast, but her mind is unravelling with the onset of dementia. She faces the loss of independence because ‘any resident incapable of working a kettle would have to be moved to a nursing home.’

Fortunately, for Anne, her next-door neighbour, Maureen has a fascination and fondness for the ‘quirky’ resident. ‘Maureen considered herself the warden’s deputy. It wasn’t a real job or anything like that but she could help the older ones with their laundry. She watered the plants and went for the milk, tasks that gave her a feeling of usefulness she had missed.’

Retirement complexes, small towns and villages, streets full of longterm residents all have, indeed need, their Maureens, who while coming to grips with the present, mourn the past when they looked after children.

‘And one by one they left the house with their LPs and their T-shirts. That’s what happens, Maureen thought, That’s how it is, You kill yourself looking after them and then they get up and leave you. She never imagined she’d end up in a place like Lochranza Court, but it had been six years and she was used to it.’

The novel is really about Anne whose relationship with her daughter, Alice is strained. Maureen observes there ‘was clearly a part of Anne’s life that was off limits or stuck in the past, but the dementia was bringing it out.’ (This ‘illuminating’ of the past is the crux of the novel.) Maureen feels sorry for Alice and keeps her in the loop regarding her mother. She also writes to Luke on Anne’s behalf and keeps that relationship vibrant.

We learn of Harry, Luke’s grandfather, a war hero in Anne’s eyes, and of Luke’s father Sean, another soldier, also a member of the Western Fusiliers, who was killed in Northern Ireland. Anne’s dementia and occasional episodes of lucidity hint at unresolved traumas from the past and conflicting opinions about the present and future.

“…in “The Illuminations,” the Scottish novelist and critic Andrew O’Hagan has created a story that is both a howl against the war in Afghanistan and the societies that have blindly abetted it, and a multilayered, deeply felt tale of family, loss, memory, art, loyalty, secrecy and forgiveness.”

Dani Shapiro, NewYork Times.

At the beginning of the book, O’Hagan thanks Abdul Aziz Froutan and colleagues in Afghanistan, as well as members of the Royal Irish regiment for answering questions. And in peculiar serendipity as I was reading the novel the ABC was broadcasting the documentary series Afghanistan Inside Australia’s War featuring the same period as the novel.

In their own words and their own extraordinary, never-before-seen helmet-cam battle footage, Australia’s fighting men and women lay bare their hearts in an epic series – not just how they waged a war, but why and to what end.

O’Hagan did his research and it shows with his depiction of life in Afghanistan. He reveals the importance of violent Xbox games and heavy metal music to modern soldiers, the amount of pills popped and marijuana smoked, the physical, emotional and mental price paid abroad and at home. The horror of the fighting fascinating, but stomach-churning reading. No wonder there is a prevalence of post traumatic stress syndrome in returning soldiers.

Sitting on the wall, he smoked a cigarette, watched the water. It was a loss of spirit that had occurred in him… He later wished he could capture the peace he had known over those hours on the seawall as he looked into the the black distance, the lighthouse on the Holy Isle beating out a message just for him. The mountains of Arran he felt he had seen in another time, a recent one, but there was no gunfire or flares, no broken sleep, no enemy below, just the mountains themselves, the steady return of the fishing boats and the light that came with the morning.

After a mission goes horribly wrong, Luke leaves the army and in his quest to try and make sense of life he takes his grandmother on a road trip to Blackpool to see the famous Illuminations hoping to shed some light on the part of her life she has kept secret. In his reminiscing of growing up with a special relationship with this grandmother he reflects, ‘There was endless chat about how life used to be, with details missing.’

In the packing up of Anne’s life for the trip to Blackpool and the inevitable move to a nursing home when they return, Luke discovers letters and photographs which in Anne’s lucid moments she can explain. He begins to appreciate how talented she was as a photographer and wants to understand why she gave it all up.

In the observations and discussions about photography, the novelist has again done his homework. Another thank you at the beginning of the book is

...to Yaddo, and to Mary O’Connor and the keepers of the Joseph Mulholland Archive at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he studied the papers of the photographer Margaret Watkins.

Serendipity struck again – on March 13th my father would be 94 years old if alive. He died of dementia in 2005. He was an amateur photographer and although many of his photographs are of family there are others where I wonder what motivated him to take the picture? What did his artist eye see? What essence was he trying to capture?

And here in this novel we learn so much about Anne Quirk through the discussion of photography and photographs despite her dementia. I remember visiting with my dad and having conversations about the past. But did we talk about what happened? what never happened? what he wished had happened?

Dad manufactured stories to protect himself from past traumas and it seems O’Hagan’s Anne Quirk does the same. ‘You don’t see the connections in your life until it’s too late to disentangle them.’

This novel stirred many connections in my life, even the chapters set in Blackpool a place I visited in 1984 with my late husband just as they were setting up the illuminations. The B&Bs, the dance halls, the promenade, the pubs, the grey sea – all wonderfully captured by O’Hagan.

Memory resides in the simplest things but to remember is a complex and complicated task. Are we remembering reality or an imaginary world? Is a photograph an accurate memory? What did the lens not see? Are photographs worth a thousand words?

Towards the end of the novel Luke discovers how good a photographer his grandmother was when he unearths a series of rare private photographs of The Beatles 1962:

‘Luke had to stand up, astonished at the scale and the mystery of what she’d done…For all her mistakes and her bad luck, she had managed this…’

And Andrew O’Hagan has managed to create believable characters and take us into their world to make us care what happens to them. Along the way his writer’s toolbox produced some wonderful descriptions and observations. You’l look at the night sky and the variations of light differently after reading The Illuminations.

I’ll give Andrew the last word from his essay explaining the inspiration for Anne Quirk:

My search … was also a search for the women I had grown up with on the west coast of Scotland. … I realised the book was a tribute to the hidden creativity of those women. I was always drawn to them as a child, and their sense of themselves, their pain and their Glasgow houses, were a kind of haunting thing for me. I was always aware of a certain amount of thwarted ambition on their parts, and by the sense of duty that clung to their gingham “pinnies”, their tabard overalls. As a novelist you come to know that people can be metaphors of one another. My fictional elderly lady has a grandson who is a captain in the British army fighting in Afghanistan. She is interested in reality, as every photographer is, but her own story, and the masking of her talent, play a part in explaining the daily news coming from the battlefront… One’s job as a writer is sometimes to find new proteins for the ideas that matter to you, and the story of this forgotten photographer locked on to my family history in a way that gave the novel the building blocks of life.

What more can I say – read and enjoy – or let me know what you don’t like about it!

Room – Riveting, Revelatory and Rugged – but Important Reading.

February 19, 2016February 19, 2016 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 2 Comments

Room, the novel, not the recently released movie, had me hooked from the beginning. The first few intriguing pages disconcerting until I adjusted to the rhythm of the voice of the narrator, five-year old Jack – and then, I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

Jack is celebrating his fifth birthday imprisoned in a room with his mother (Ma) but because he has never been outside, the room is his world, his reality. The only other living person he knows is their gaoler, Old Nick, a scary visitor in the night, but also their benefactor because he supplies food, clothes and other material needs.

Reading Room, I relived my experience with The Lovely Bones, and recently reviewed Wartime Lies. I didn’t want to stop reading until the last page, and couldn’t put the book down, despite the range of emotions stirred by confronting the dark side of human nature.

room

One of my students gave me the novel after a discussion about the current crop of films at the local cinema this year.

‘I still haven’t finished reading The Dressmaker because I saw the film first,’ I told her. ‘One of the main characters is so different in the book but I can’t get the movie out of my head.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Betty, ‘but our bookclub read Room years ago and we’re only going to see the movie now. I’ll let you know if it’s a good representation of the book.’

‘I don’t know whether I can cope with the movie considering the subject matter,’ I said, ‘it looks like harrowing viewing, but I’ll give the book a try.’

And so I read Room by Emma Donoghue, a book shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. A book I’d never heard of, probably because in 2010 I was too busy coping with a cancer diagnosis and adjusting to life after a mastectomy.

My choice of reading material that year escapist genre fiction and a delightful collection of short stories by seven of the best contemporary Irish writers. Afterwards, I gave Finbar’s Hotel to my surgeon to read and hope it’s still doing the rounds of a hospital ward to brighten the lives of other patients!

Since reading Room (not a book to brighten anyone’s life) I’ve discovered how controversial the book was in 2010. Apparently, you either love it or hate it. Lisa Hill, a friend and well respected reviewer is in the latter category and her adverse review can be read here.

For me, Room is a novel I’m glad I read. Emotionally engaged with the story it was an apt book to read in a week when many decent Australians are in uproar about plans to return 267 asylum seekers, including 37 babies back to detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island. Most of these refugees are women who have been sexually assaulted and abused. Who knows the lifelong damage to their psyches from the past and proposed incarceration? The effects of childhood experiences very much on my mind.

Creative writers are pirates, we steal stories from everywhere. Characters and worlds imagined from triggers: real life experience (our own and others), casual remarks, media reports, dreams, fantasies, nightmares – you name it, we expand, embellish, push the boundaries.

Some critics believe Donoghue exploited the story of the horrific experience of Elisabeth Fritzl, an Austrian woman imprisoned by her father in a basement for 24 years to be repeatedly raped, forced to bear his children and remain imprisoned until the truth of their existence discovered.

The media has exposed other cases of young women and children abducted, held hostage, abused, sexually assaulted and exploited – too many heinous happenings in a society claiming culture and civilisation!

Some of these cases came to mind when I began to read Room. I understood and appreciated what the author was trying to do and applaud the courage and talent of Donoghue, writing from a child’s perspective. This originality was what probably got the book on the prize list.

I’m sure it would have been easier to write from Ma’s perspective, or even one of the relatives or officials, who appear in the second half of the novel. It must have been difficult keeping Jack’s point of view and voice.

There are instances of author intrusion and although Jack has the precociousness and maturity found in many home schoolers some observations are too adult, even if relevant and insightful.

However, I found these lapses and imperfections easy to overlook. The story is powerful.

I’m grateful for Room. Women and children in similar circumstances have been given a heartrending and memorable voice. The sad soundbites of tragic news we picture like the stories from world war two are just overwhelming tragedies until detailed in an individual life story.

The description of Jack’s suffocatingly, tiny world of a 12 foot square room. The intense love and devotion of Ma. The strangeness, adjustments and adaptions explored when freedom experienced.

How would I cope in a similar situation? What would I do? How could you maintain mental and physical health trapped in a claustrophobic room? The stirring of so many questions and thoughts.

My daughters are young women now, but I can still remember dreary days of feeling frustrated and isolated when nothing seemed to placate their bad mood or mine. How would I have coped corralled in a cell for 5 years, 7 years…and more?

Fictionalising an important narrative such as Room gives us a distance and saves our sanity. It allows empathy, sympathy and understanding without sleepless nights trying to rid ourselves of stark images of the real life horror.

Stories on the TV, Radio, and momentary newspaper headlines actually happen, but they are easily dismissed and forgotten for the next drama unless writers like Donoghue set our heart racing, move us to tears, challenge our perceptions and perspectives. Show or explain how people rebuild destroyed lives or fail to recover.

‘Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it’s over you look up, the world looks the same but you are somehow different and the feeling lingers for days’

Audrey Niffenegger, author Time Traveler’s Wife

The ingenuity of Jack’s mother is amazing, the games invented, the filling-in of time, the explanations of life within the confines of the room and then the shattering of his world when escape is planned. Jack must comprehend that the world of television does actually exist.

Ma loves Jack when she had every reason to hate or resent him. He is a constant reminder of her abuser. But he is also her comfort, her companion – her love. The bond of breastfeeding particularly poignant.

Old Nick is evil, keeping them prisoner, but he hasn’t killed them, he brings food, clothes, vitamins and even a birthday present for Jack. What are we to make of this monster/man?

Donoghue doesn’t dwell on these psychological or philosophical questions and several characters remain shadowy or stereotypical. These are left to the reader’s imagination and interpretation, along with the lingering impressions and memories all good stories leave.

Donoghue’s attention to detail, descriptions of daily life and the regular sinister visits of ‘Old Nick’ is painful and chilling reading. However, there is humour in the second half of the book as Jack adjusts to life beyond Room, and we discover the other lives disrupted when someone is abducted, presumed dead, or believed to be alive somewhere.

This is a compelling read about a disturbing and unfortunately too frequent phenomena but also about the power and persistence of a mother’s love and devotion.

The novel is structured logically and is an unusual and gripping read. I enjoyed it but I also loved The Time Traveler’s Wife, another fascinating story told in an original way, which others in my writers’ group hated. I guess liking the way stories are told is a matter of taste.

I’m glad I read Room but still haven’t made up my mind whether to see the movie!

Was Man Made To Mourn?

January 21, 2016January 22, 2016 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 5 Comments

I began to cull yet another bookshelf and the first book I picked up was Wartime Lies by Louis Begley. It hugged Elie Wiesel’s, Night, but I couldn’t remember reading it. The blurb on the back announces it is the winner of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award and is:

An exceptionally beautiful first novel. It is delicate in recounting the grossest of tales and it is sunny in the face of Stygian darkness. Somehow Begley has written an entrancing novel about hell, a fairytale from the inferno. I read it compulsively and I cannot forget it.

Christopher Hope.

DSC_1892-3

When I was studying history at high school and later university, I read lots of books about WW2 and the Holocaust. Now, working with adults in writing classes and hearing many wartime experiences firsthand, or the pain of the aftermath of growing up in families affected by the Holocaust (especially Jewish refugees from Hungary), I often murmur the lines coined by Rabbie Burns in his poem Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge, 1785:

‘Many and sharp the num’rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And Man, whose heav’n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, –
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

I obviously bought this paperback printed in 1992, from an op shop along with others to read, to help me teach memoir and life writing, but it has sat on the shelf unread – until today.

I started to read and didn’t put it down until I finished the 198 pages. Breakfast dishes congealed in the sink, washing sat in the machine, time literally stood still, although my mind and body suffered emotional upheaval.

Wartime Lies is a fictionalised account of nine-year-old Maciek’s survival in Nazi-occupied Poland. His comfortable middle-class family torn apart in 1939 when his doctor father leaves to fight as an officer in a Polish regiment.

The Russians have been routed by the Germans in an area of Poland bordering the Ukraine, but nationalistic Poles make a valiant, futile attempt at defence. Maciek’s father does ‘the right thing’ against the advice of Catholic friends who encourage him to flee to safer parts of Europe like other Polish Jews.

Maciek’s mother is already dead and he is shown as a sickly, fearful, spoiled boy. His mother’s sister, Tania, has been a surrogate mother running the household and choosing nannies and it is her courage, wits and determination to survive and eventually reunite Maciek with his father that forms the novel.

Tania is an incredible character. If I ever had to face the annihilation of my lifestyle with the heartbreaking brutal assaults and hardship the Jewish people suffered, this book would be my survival incentive and guide.

Tania’s forward planning, realistic plotting, unrelenting scheming, and inventive adaptations to circumstances puts James Bond to shame. The description of how she manages to escape the eviction and slaughter of the Warsaw population after the failed partisan uprising, is harrowing but pure nerves-of-steel genius.

Tania is determined never to be the victim. A fighter, who will do anything to ensure nephew Maciek, and her parents survive and only in a couple of rare scenes do we see her waver. Grandfather is a wily survivor too, having lived through pogroms, but her mother is sickly and a hindrance rather than a help.

Vulnerable but smart, Tania buys false identity cards. The family pretends to be Polish catholics, befriends kind Germans and others to miraculously escape the fate of so many Jewish people. Tania keeps her parents alive longer than most on the run despite the efforts of the SS, Jewish militia and savage Ukranian troops.

The tale is extraordinary, the style minimalist and deserving of the Hemingway Award it received. It deals with the Holocaust through the eyes of a child caught up as an observer and confused participant. The final paragraphs gut-wrenchingly sad as the reader understands that children who go through a war or similar traumatic experience are like the narrator with ‘no childhood he can bear to remember’.

(Think of those poor boy soldiers used by various ‘freedom fighters’.)

Before the war intrudes there are details of class divisions and family ructions and personalities that set the scene and immerse you in a world few people would have experienced.

However, war crushes the innocence of childhood and creates broken adults.

Night after night our TV screens are filled with the horrors from the Middle East and the African continent where wars have simmered, flared and exploded for decades. We herd asylum seekers into camps or hound and vilify ‘foreigners’ and ‘Muslims’ as undesirables and enemies, reminiscent of the world of Wartime Lies. How often do we examine our moral compass?

The power of Begley’s writing is the framing of this semi-autobiographical story as the recollection of a man reflecting on his childhood and trying to understand the man he has become. He is aware it is not a ‘new’ story.

The first three pages show:

‘ a man with a nice face and sad eyes, fifty or more winters on his back, living a moderately pleasant life in a tranquil country. He is a bookish fellow… He reveres the Aeneid. That is where he first found civil expression of his own shame at being alive, his skin intact and virgin of tattoo, when his kinsmen and almost all others, so many surely more deserving than he, perished in the conflagration…

Our man avoids Holocaust books and dinner conversations about Poland in the Second World War… Yet he pores over accounts of the torture of dissidents and political prisoners, imagining minutely each session. How long would it have been before he cried and groveled? Right away, or only after they had broken his fingers? Whom would he have betrayed and how quickly?

He has become a voyeur of evil, sometimes uncertain which role he plays in the vile pictures that pass before his eyes. Is that the inevitable evolution of the child he once was, the price to be paid for his sort of survival?…

The man with the sad eyes believes he has been changed inside forever, like a beaten dog, and gods will not cure that…’

Would you lie to survive? How often and to what extent? Does the end justify the means? How will the choices you make affect the rest of your life? What if the lies strip you of ‘honour’, your identity, forces you to accept and approve actions alien to your beliefs? How do you cope with ‘survivor guilt’? What does it do to a child to have the adult they admire and love not only condone but plan lies and deceit? How do we ‘unlearn’ behaviours?

The questions raised by Wartime Lies relevant to the debate we are having in Australia about asylum seekers arriving by boat and the flood of refugees into Europe. What would you do to flee horror and persecution? What effect will this trauma have on the thousands of children? Will they ever recover and rebuild broken lives? Do people have to wait, suffer indignities and torture before they’re ‘allowed’ to seek a better, safer life?

Apart from the introduction’s philosophical pondering there is no moralising in the book or attempt to make definitive judgement. The story of Tania and Maciek’s survival unfolds with the horrors of the war and the extermination of the Jews in Poland, as a backdrop.

Revelations of terror interspersed with scenes of believable normality. But you can’t turn the pages fast enough, the tension breathtaking. Morbid fascination and nerve trembling fear follow the central characters – will they succumb to the cruel human beings surrounding them? How will they get out of yet another tight spot? Will this person be friend or foe? And always the little voice saying what if this was me…

When asked in an interview, if the novel was autobiographical, Begley replied:

‘It is, in that I was born in Poland and I’m Jewish… I spent the war on ‘Aryan papers.’ I lived in Warsaw during the uprising, but what is in the interstices is fiction…

I’d be doing the reader a disservice if I tried to distinguish the grain of sand from what hope is the pearl that formed around it.

A child’s memory is not like that of a man who keeps diaries. If one wanted to recall precise events, one would be left with what would fit in the palm of a hand. If one wants to tell what really happened in an emotional sense, one has to imagine and invent the facts.’

Not a memoir, not an entirely factual story, but a powerful memorable telling of a period in a child’s life grounded in real life events. The truthful elements completely engage your emotions along with the fiction. An example of great story-telling and writing to remain in memory longer perhaps than if it had been a true life “I” account.

This is a book to remind us of the fragility of human decency and how easily a community can unravel if prejudices and intolerance are encouraged to fester. If ignorance and envy are allowed to devour clear thinking, decent behaviour and mutual respect.

Wartime Lies shows the worst of humanity, but also the best. There seems no limit to what human beings can do to destroy each other, but also no limit to what the human spirit can endure and still survive. Cruelty is countered by compassion, violence is calmed or outsmarted, and fear is conquered.

Apparently, Stanley Kubrick wrote a screenplay based on this novel but scrapped plans because Schindler’s List was being produced at the same time. Yet, this story begs to be filmed, to remind another generation of the damage wreaked on the world by prejudice and war.

Will enough of mankind ever say this can’t go on, intervene and stop the cycle? Or are we forever destined to mourn?

This book remains on my bookshelf.

c96d8120b6c2d95c1e7929c15f50933f

Laughter- Just What ‘Dr House’ Prescribed!

December 30, 2015December 30, 2015 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 8 Comments

hugh-laurie-comedian-quote-i-dont-have-a-single-complete-show-or.jpg

After having just read The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie, I’d say he’s nailed the comic/satirical novel! I thoroughly enjoyed the read.

The Gun Seller was submitted under a pseudonym. Once publication was assured Laurie revealed himself as the author. Considered a talented comedian, writer, actor and musician, it’s admirable he wanted his novel to be judged on merit not reputation.

A reputation that included: Blackadder, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, and House.

41YCzmopPgL._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

The Gun Seller , Laurie’s first, and to date only novel, certainly has merit – a book I didn’t want to put down so finished reading in a day. The perfect antidote to the busyness of end of year classes and the lead up to Christmas. It is light holiday reading – take it away with you and pass on the joy to another traveller.

Laughter is proven to be the best medicine and sometimes you need a belly laugh. My dear friend and writing buddy Maureen knows my sense of humour and gave me Laurie’s book. She’d read it years ago and never forgot it. First published in 1996 by William Heinemann, it’s been published and reissued: 1997 Mandarin Paperbacks, Arrow Books 1997, 2004 and 2009 ( the edition I have).

Laurie told a London audience that ‘there will never be an American edition because, well, Americans can’t take a joke.’ Of course, it sold well and still sells in the good old U S of A!

I’m indebted to Maureen who felt I needed to lighten up (true); Laurie’s humour did the trick. It’s a while since I’ve read a book with laugh-aloud scenes and lots of giggles. The storyline is also interesting enough to be a page turner. The convoluted plot has more twists than a head full of dreadlocks.

Amazon’s blurb advises:… A wonderfully funny novel from one of Britain’s most famous comedians and star of award-winning US TV medical drama series, House.

The Gun Seller is witty and satirical, poking fun at all the cliched characters, plots and dialogue found in classical spy novels. There’s over- the-top action sequences too. Several involve the hero’s unlikely choice of transport, a Kawasaki ZZR 1100 motorcycle. The scenes have authenticity because the bio at the front of the book, declares Hugh Laurie is ‘utterly devoted to motorcycling.’

Here’s an extract from page 18:

“Now I won’t deny that the Japanese were well off-side at Pearl Harbor, and that their ideas on preparing fish for the table are undoubtedly poor – but by golly, they do know some things about making motorcycles. Twist the throttle wide open in any gear of this machine, and it’d push your eyeballs though the back of your head. All right, so maybe that’s not a sensation most people are looking for in their choice of personal transport, but since I’d won the bike in a game of backgammon, getting home with an outrageously flukey only-throw 4-1 and three consecutive double sixes, I enjoyed it a lot. It was black, and big, and it allowed even the average rider to visit other galaxies.”

Like the Kawasaki, the novel moves fast with a perfect blend of thrills, intrigue, and laughs. An easy uncomplicated read that’s difficult to put down. Laurie’s comic timing added to impressive research or believable lies. He describes technological gizmos worthy of James Bond, the tension builds and you imagine an episode of Spooks. To break the rules or poke fun at the genre, you must know it as well as Laurie.

No political correctness of course, and the occasional f-word dots the pages, but where expected. The sex is limited and the novel’s a safe read for any teenager who understands satire.

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the American CIA have their foibles, failures and funding scrutinised and satirised, but underlying the humour is a well deserved pot-shot at the power and amorality of the military industrial complex – a term bandied around in my Anti-Vietnam War days and not often mentioned since. Laurie knows his history! His hero once an officer in the Scots Guards and a veteran of Belfast is under no illusions about who are the real bad guys.

The usual bureaucrats, terrorists, diplomats, femme fatales, bank managers and lawyers are all bruised by Laurie’s wit, but the sensory detail and observations necessary for a good storyteller are there along with some original descriptions delivered in Hugh’s inimitable style:

“uglier than a car park” “skull that dipped and bulged like a balloon full of spanners” “flattened fighter’s nose apparently drawn on his face by someone using their left hand, or perhaps even their left foot”

“my heart was going like a road drill” “sucking in suitcase-sized chunks of air” “gradually, grumpily my heartbeat sorted itself out and my breathing followed at a distance”

“her long brown hair waved and cheered as it disappeared down her neck” “the sort of eyes that can make a grown man talk gibberish to himself”

“lit a cigarette and smoked my way to the corner”

“I think I’d known she was going to be American before she opened her mouth. Too healthy to be anything else. And where do they get those teeth?”

Stereotypes abound but the laughs have no malice:

“… the guards at the door let us through with no more than a glance. British security guards, I’ve noticed, always do this; unless you happen actually to work in the building they’re guarding, in which case they’ll check everything from the fillings in your teeth to your trouser turn-ups to see if you’re the same person who went out to get a sandwich fifteen minutes ago. But if you’re a strange face, they’ll let you straight through, because frankly, it would just be too embarrassing to put you to any trouble.

If you want a place guarded properly, hire Germans.”

*****

“I found a cab eventually, and told the driver in fluent English that I wanted Wenceslas Square. This request, I now know, is phonically identical to the Czech phrase for ‘I am an air-brained tourist, please take everything I have.’… When the driver told me how much money he wanted, I had to spend a few minutes explaining that I didn’t actually want to buy the cab, I just wanted to settle up for the fifteen minutes I’d spent in it. He told me that it was a limousine service, or at least he said ‘limousine’ and shrugged a lot, and after a while agreed to reduce his demands to the merely astronomical.”

Thomas Lang, The Gun Seller’s hero reminds me of smooth talking Jim Rockford the private detective in The Rockford Files, a popular TV show of the 70s. Not a stupid smart ass, but willing to talk his way into or out of anything — a cool dude with style. However, Rockford never carried a gun whereas military and martial art expert Lang can handle guns, rifles, rockets, bombs… nothing phases him and he has a plan for all contingencies.

It’s not a literary masterpiece but the 339 pages are satisfying and funny. If you’re looking for relief from the real world terrorism that surrounds us, then escape to a quiet corner with The Gun Seller!

Laurie makes the writing seem effortless – it’s a great debut novel and I hope he takes some of his own advice and writes another one.

b7e539a3a6677bf2b9a2b88a3d47f528

Maureen ordered my copy from Benn’s Books in Bentleigh. Be prepared to have to order too because the shelf life in traditional bookshops is a matter of weeks and this book has been around a long time. Probably your best bet is to buy online.

Poetry – a way to release and remember our inner child

July 24, 2015July 24, 2015 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 4 Comments

You get your ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.

Neil Gaiman

I spend much of my time thinking up writing prompts and triggers to inspire my students and then more time planning lessons around the craft to improve the readability of their writing.

Often we write for ourselves, but if most of us are honest, we write to share our thoughts and ideas and receive a boost to ego when someone appreciates our words. Competitions or requests for submissions on a particular topic are good exercises to flex writing muscles, move out of comfort zones, find a home for a story or poem, or just enjoy the challenge of polishing a piece to share with others.

For this reason, I make an effort to send work to Poetica Christi Press who, as their latest anthology Inner Child, boasts have been ‘Proudly publishing Australian poetry for 25 years.’ I also encourage my students to send their work ‘out there’…

Tomorrow Poetica Christi will launch another anthology. I’m thrilled not only to again have one of my poems selected, but also a poem from one of my students, Jan Morris who excels at performing Aussie Bush Poetry usually with a backdrop of a painting she has done. Her canvas for the paintings, old curtains salvaged from op shops – curtains with special backing to block out the sun.

Jan incorporates humour in the short stories she writes in class and is an example of someone who makes the effort to ‘Always look on the bright side of life‘. A retired nurse and a widow of a Vietnam veteran affected by Agent Orange, she has an amazing stockpile of sad stories, but chooses to concentrate on blessings, jokes, eccentricities and funny events!

In the Foreword of the anthology the editors say:

‘…the inner child is celebrated, recalled, reinvented and shared. The poems are a poignant, honest and often humorous reminder that our inner child is only a heartbeat away.

Jan reminisced about her childhood when milk was delivered by horse and cart:

Another poet in the anthology is Avril Bradley, whose poetry often wins awards. Avril is widely published. I first met Avril when we were both involved in the Red Room Company’s Poetry about the sea project. (Several of the poems are still online on Flicker and I guess will be forever!)

Winner of the Poetica Christi 2014 prize was another accomplished poet, Chris Ringrose:

There are many other poets, some with several poems. Each anthology inspiring other writing and giving me something to aim for to improve my own efforts. As someone who doesn’t consider themselves a poet – rather a writer who tries to write poetry – I’m thrilled one of my poems was included. It tells the story of an object from my childhood, a link with my mother and my children. It’s the kind of poem you can write in a memoir or life story class and as I often tell my students, ‘memory poems’ are a great way of recording the past.

I wrote about a shell that sat by the fireside in Scotland when we lived there, then sat on the sideboard when we migrated to Australia. I have no idea what beach it was first washed up on or its true origins – writer’s imagination kicked in. I may never have written this poem, if the prompt of the competition hadn’t arrived in my email box!

This poem by editor Leigh Hay made me smile, reminiscent of the day I caught daughter MJ trimming Barbie’s hair!

I can’t attend the launch because I’m volunteering at Open House Melbourne tomorrow – my fifth year at this event. However, I’m sure there will be plenty of others attending – the wordsmiths of Poetica Christi Press put on a wonderful afternoon tea, great performances by some of the poets and always a lovely classical musical recital. If I close my eyes I can picture the hall and the event, but I’m so glad I have the book to dip into whenever I want to get in touch with my Inner Child!

‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’

C.S. Lewis

Ten Steps to writing your own memory poem:

1. Write down in a couple of sentences of the first memory you have as a child when you were outside by yourself, or another vivid memory you often think about.

2. List the words: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

3. Next to these words jot down whatever you experienced related to these senses.

4. Write what happened: what were you feeling at the time? Where were you? Why do you think this memory remains significant? Write this in prose so you get everything down.

5. Revisit the words you wrote alongside the 5 senses. What descriptions capture the emotions you have written about in your prose?

6. Cross out or ignore everything else unrelated – a poem, like a short story doesn’t have to include everything and is stronger if you concentrate on the important details.

7.What emotion do you want to convey about the time? How do you want the reader to feel after reading it? It will probably be complex, but no one is going to read your exploration/explanation about what you were trying to do! They’ll be reading your poem and interpreting it from their point of view and experience. However, it’s always a bonus if people “get it” and understand the emotion of the writer.

8. Remember poems don’t have to rhyme, but usually there are line breaks and punctuation so the reader knows the rhythm and captures the mood of the poem. Think of pacing – do you want the words to move slowly or quickly over the tongue.

9. Write your poem now – whatever way you want – remember to include action – strong verbs, concrete nouns, the emotion you felt.

10. Revise your poem by cutting out any words or phrases that don’t fit in with the feelings and mood you decided to create.

Let the poem sit for a few days before final revision – and if you’re anything like me, you’ll revise it every time you read it!!

Happy writing! And please feel free to share your poem or thoughts.

Alan Spence – His Writing Memorable and More Than Fine

July 11, 2015July 12, 2015 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 5 Comments

I’m not sure Somerset Maugham‘s quote is accurate for all texts, but the books I cherish have certainly resonated deeply and a recent gift from a writer friend is a case in point. Dave, who does have Scottish ancestry, but sounds as ocker as they come is a wonderful friend who shows he is thinking of me by gifting books he discovers in opportunity shops, secondhand bookstores, or passes on books he has enjoyed.

We met for a Senior’s meal at the local Mordialloc Sporting Club and he gave me a recent find.

First published William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1977. Later Phoenix Paperback, 1996.

I don’t often do book reviews because as a writer I’m more comfortable reading and writing short stories and I’ll leave book reviews to my dear friend Lisa Hill who has a well-deserved prize winning blog prioritising books by Australian and New Zealand writers, but who was kind enough to have me as a guest reviewer last year.

However, Its Colours They Are Fine is thirteen interlinked tales in Alan Spence’s first collection of short stories. Set in Glasgow, they depict aspects of life recognisable to the majority of Glaswegians who grew up there in the 50s and 60s. As someone who was born in Greenock in 1953, a ‘kick in the bum’ or ‘stone’s throw’ away from Glasgow, I found the stories irresistible and meaningful.

Memorable, not because of what happens, but on account of the mood that is created and the shifts of feeling that are revealed. They are memorable because they ring true. They are rather like Chekhov’s stories. Spence, too, takes a little moment of ordinary experience and transforms it, in the simplest possible manner, into something significant… In an age of ugly preoccupation with violence, he draws attention to moments of beauty and stillness. He is a gentle writer, but never sentimental. The beautiful moments have always been earned… he is a writer to cherish, one offering deep and fulfilling pleasures.

The Scotsman Review

Spence’s dialogue in vernacular (braid or broad) Scots, evokes tenement life, the slums and their inhabitants, with voices of the young and old, Catholic and Protestant, Tinkers (gypsies/travellers), immigrants from Commonwealth countries, the employed and unemployed, the hopeful and disillusioned – and beneath the surface, the deeper currents of the Irish connection, the Protestant and Catholic divide manifested through adherence to Rangers or Celtic football club.(The Old Firm).

I’ve seen some statistics that say 60% of the Glasgow population has Irish ancestry and having an Irish mother that figure wouldn’t surprise me. There have been plenty of books and films about Glasgow, showcasing the harshness of life in the tenements, but also the humour and resilience of the people. The hooliganism and open violence associated with the two major football teams, the bigotry fuelled violence manifested in street games, school playgrounds, pubs and clubs and of course family life, still provide high drama today.

Billy Connelly’s honest humorous presentations of growing up in Glasgow, uses language and subject matter not to everyone’s taste. This video of Billy singing I Wish I was In Glasgow is sentimental and expresses feelings I can relate to, although I’d substitute Greenock. However, we are both ‘West Coasters’!

When I was reading the various stories, I kept having flashbacks to my childhood, remembering snatches of stories from the long after-dinner sessions of storytelling from Mum and Dad. Homesickness has been described as nostalgia for the past – well I experienced plenty of nostalgia from these stories, but also admired how he elevated moments in the lives of ordinary people to memorable, magical and unforgettable events with language of poetic potency.

The title of the book comes from a story about the Orange Walk, a day when the main character Billy declares ‘God must be a Protestant’ and can’t wait to sing The Sash My Father Wore, the chorus being:

It is old but it is beautiful, and its colours they are fine
It was worn at Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne.
My father wore it as a youth in bygone days of yore,
And on the Twelfth I love to wear the sash my father wore.

Like many of the stories, it is peopled by working class Protestant characters, many flawed and bigoted, but they also can be loyal, warm and humorous friends. This particular story has the march starting off on a sunny Saturday and by the end of the day they’re in a field in Gourock amid pouring rain. “Wher’s yer proddy god noo!” asked his friend.

In a few pages Spence explores the religious divide, the bigotry, the violence and the ignorance that feeds the Orange Walk and other inappropriate symbols and celebrations, but also the spiritual dimensions to everyday experiences, the importance of rituals and how people can enjoy spectacles without fully understanding their cultural or historical significance. Maybe one day the Orange Walks will go the way of the Confederate Flag , another symbol well past its used by date. Hopefully, people in Northern Ireland, Scotland and beyond will see the divisive celebrations around July 12th for the anachronism they are and consign them to history books.

Other stories focus on family relationships with Tinsel exploring a child’s excitement at putting up the Christmas decorations in a tenement flat with a father ill and out of work and a mother doing her best to keep everything together. The bright decorations and warmth and love inside contrasts with a city still reeling from the damage of world war two, cramped and crowded living conditions, and high unemployment.

The decorations left over from last year were in a cardboard box under the bed…Streamers and a few balloons and miracles of coloured paper that opened out into balls or long concertina snakes. On the table his mother spread out some empty cake boxes she’d brought home from work and cut them into shapes like Christmas trees and bells, and he got out his painting box and a saucerful of water and he coloured each one and left it to dry – green for the trees and yellow for the bells, the nearest he could get to gold.

This story stirred memories of my mother making do; determined to give us the trimmings of Christmas. She helped us make decorations from crepe paper, and even the bright coloured milk bottle tops were useful to cluster together as bells. We cut up cardboard breakfast cereal packets and covered shapes with the silver paper from inside cigarette packets, and colourful sweetie and chocolate wrappers. There was never the disposable cash to be able to buy the glittering ornaments available today, nor the distraction of all the screen-based entertainment. Making objects and decorating the tree and the house was ‘something special to come home for… and feel warm and comforted by the thought.’

Dad’s sister Mary (Aunt Mamie) holding me

The story Sheaves about Harvest Sunday is told from a young boy’s viewpoint too as he tries to understand the deeper significance of Bible texts and parables in relation to his own life. Torn between pleasing his Mother by getting ready for Sunday School yet envying and wanting to play with his friends. The ritual of Sunday best, the giving of fruit and vegetables and other food to thank God for the seasons is another strong memory for me, especially singing a favourite hymn:

We plough the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land;
But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand:
He sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain,
The breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.

Chorus:

All good gifts around us
Are sent from heaven above,
Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord
For all His love.

Spence has the Sunday School teacher remind the city children who have no experience of cultivating the land and who struggle with understanding the language of the Bible:

And no matter what happens to you, even if the dirt of the world seems to have settled on you and made you forget who you really are, deep inside you are still his golden sheaves. And no matter how drab and grey and horrible our lives and this place may sometimes seem, remember that this is only the surface. And even the muck of hundreds of years cannot hide that other meaning which is behind all things. The meaning that we are here to celebrate. That God is love and Christ is Life.

The inscription at the beginning of the book is “To Nityananda and Shantishri (Tom and Maureen McGrath)” and a couple of the stories reflect Spence’s interest in the Indian spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy. A recurring theme in the stories is that there are greater cosmic forces beyond earth and although it may be fleeting we can all experience or gain insight into this at different times in our lives, a spiritual dimension to everyday life.

The Rain Dance is a wonderful rich story with many layers about a “mixed” marriage (a Protestant marrying a Catholic) in a registry office and the rituals and festivities surrounding this event. From the noisy “hens” party parading the bride-to-be in the streets for kisses and pennies to the Scramble for bell money – the father of the bride throwing a handful of coins after the church ceremony to be scrambled for by waiting children and other onlookers.

Ah remember reading,’ said Jean, ‘that scrambles go right back tae the olden days, when the didnae keep records an that. An it wis so’s the weans an everybody wid remember the wedding. then if they ever needed witnesses, they’d aw mind a the money getting scrambled.

My parents had a registry office wedding in Glasgow in 1948. No member of Dad’s family attended because they objected to him marrying Mum – upset he chose to marry an Irish woman! Fortunately, Mum’s brother Tom and wife Bessie caught the overnight boat from Belfast and along with the best man witnessed the marriage, and shared a celebratory meal and drink in a nearby hotel. My parents eventually made up their differences with Dad’s family, but I often think how sad their ‘special day’ probably was and try to imagine the ceremony and their feelings.

mums weddingEDIT — Dad and Mum married at registry office Glasgow 16/12/1948

Mum and Dad's wedding day with Tom and Bessie Courtney, Mum's brother and wife — Mum and Dad’s wedding day with Tom and Bessie Courtney, Mum’s brother and wife

Spence describes the day in a way that is culturally specific to Scotland yet full of universal observations and emotions and the description of the actual ceremony particularly poignant for me.

It was over so quickly… awkward, on the pavement, trying to keep out of the wedding-group photos of the couple that had just come out; confusion over which door to go in, then somebody showing them the way; hustle along the corridor, a few minutes’ wait, hushed, in the hall; a door opening, another wedding-group bustling past; another door opening and the registrar ushering them in.

In a low, bored drone he intoned the preliminaries… Brian was staring at the pattern on the carpet, as if he could read there the meaning of it all, the meaning they all knew at that moment. Not the lifeless ceremony, the cardboard stage-set, the dead script, the empty sham. Not that, but something at the heart of it, something real. In spite of it all, they knew, and that was what moved them, to laugh or to cry.

The other stories observe detailed fragments of life in Glasgow. Spence draws on his own childhood, with real and imagined stories. The prejudice and violence often confronting and embarrassing, none more so than Gypsy when he reveals the shameful bigotry and bullying of the people we referred to as tinkers. How sad that those at the bottom of society’s pecking order have to find other more marginalised people to despise.

And finally, the book closes with Blue, a first person account from a grief-stricken boy coping with the death of his mother who had been ill for sometime. He works through the various connotations of “blue” whether it be his Ranger scarf, his Catholic friend’s explanation of the colour and significance of Mary’s robes, the lyrics of diverse songs like Blue Moon and Singing The Blues…

It was as if part of me already knew and accepted, but part of me cried out and denied it. I cried into my pillow and a numbness came on me, shielding me from the real pain. I was lying there, sobbing, but the other part of me, the part that accepted, simply looked on. I was watching myself crying, watching my puny grief from somewhere above it all. I was me and I was not-me.

As a writer and a reader (and as a Scot), I’m grateful Dave discovered this book for me. It is 232 pages of powerful storytelling and as the young boy in the closing story learns, despite the tragedy of his Mother’s death, life does go on and the rest of the world goes about their business. The next day “was the same. It was very ordinary. Nothing had changed…”

Except the reader – the stories will make you ponder the complexities of the human condition and engage your emotions. Trust me, you don’t have to be Scottish to enjoy them!

Flexible Writing Forms, Write a Villanelle and Have More Poetry Fun

January 2, 2015January 2, 2015 ~ mairineilcreative writer ~ 4 Comments

‘Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow, whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die.’

Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching.

Farewell to 2014 and welcome to 2015. Like many people, particularly in my age group, I wonder where the year has gone and if it’s true that it disappears more quickly the older you are!

If I still lived in Scotland I’d celebrate Hogmanay in the traditional manner and in years gone by I’ve kept up several of the cultural traditions, but confess to having a quiet evening at home on New Year’s Eve, allowing my partying dark-haired daughter to bring in the lump of coal I left at the front door.

Actually, it is a briquette (a lump of compressed coal) from the family home at Croydon. Mum gave it to me to use specifically for the ‘first foot’ over the door on Hogmanay, when I moved into my own home in Mordialloc over 30 years ago.

This time of year lends itself to reflection as well as remembering cultural quirks. Reflection is an important part of growth and change, especially for someone like me who teaches as well as writes.

What lessons worked, what ones didn’t inspire?
What writing resonated with others, when did the words fail?
What new methods can I try to inspire other writers?
What new techniques and tools will I introduce in this amazing digital age?
How will I grow and change as a writer forever seeking to improve and connect?

It’s no secret to those that know me that I’m passionate about writing and reading – because of course, they go hand in hand. I love sharing knowledge and encouraging others to be equally as passionate about the craft of writing and to expand their reading lists and writing repertoire. As I encourage others to move out of their writing comfort zone, so must I.

On New Year’s Eve I read a book that had me laughing aloud (good for the health) and admiring the pithy, witty, insightful and succinct use of the English language as well as the skilful political observations of many fellow Australians. Pardon me for mentioning… Unpublished Letters to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald is a collection of letters commenting on the Aussie political scene late 2011- early 2013 that never made it to print (until now). It is unashamedly topical, but even if you missed some of the events (not sure how) the cleverness of the writers will impress you and the laid-back trademark Aussie humour abounds. After reading this book you’ll look at some of the names and wish they were regular published commentators of life here in Oz! (Although with our current PM, I’m guessing the 2014 edition will be unprintable!)

One letter writer quoted on the back cover:

If I get good service in a restaurant I usually tip 10 per cent of the bill. If the service is poor, the tip I leave to the waiter is: ‘Don’t overwater your bromeliads in winter.’ John Byrne, Randwick

My tip is don’t hold a cup of hot tea or coffee in your hand while reading this book especially in the chapter: Crimes Against the English Language. Yes, as well as being amusing, the book can be used as a learning tool – what better way to learn editing skills and original clever angles than to try and encapsulate what you want to say in the strict word limit of “Letters to the Editor”.

I’ve had several letters published in the past, but like many others, read my newspapers online now and I haven’t sent a letter for some time. However, this book has reignited interest and presented another writing challenge for 2015. When reading their statistics, they receive more than 2000 letters by email a week, plus faxes and handwritten missives, therefore to be published your letter needs to have that something extra – and isn’t that what we’d like for all our writing? I’m sure I can organise a lesson for my students to perfect letter writing and thinking positively, some will be published!

Last year I introduced different poetic forms to my classes. I mentioned the pantoum in a previous post. After showing some examples, I challenged the class to choose a form and write a poem to suit. The results were magnificent, poignant, touching, funny – the whole gamut of emotions encapsulating life experiences.

Dreams Afloat – a pantoum

Ships on the horizon with cargo varied
Stirring memories of long ago
Migrants dreaming of homes adopted
And of lives they must let go.

Stirring memories of long ago
Ships called into ports enchanted
The passengers must let history go
Seek new friends and spirits kindred

Ships called into ports enchanted
Exotic foods like mango and sago
Tempted passengers and spirits kindred
Amazing changes they’d undergo

Exotic foods like mango and sago
Migrants introduction to homes adopted
Aware of new seeds they must sow
From ships arriving with cargo varied.

Mairi Neil 2014

According to American poet, Conrad Geller, ‘One traditional form of poetry that can be fun to write, is technically easy compared to the most challenging forms, and often surprises the poet with its twists and discoveries…’ He refers to the villanelle and suggests the name derives from the Italian villa, or country house.

The Poetry Foundation say that it is, ‘A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain.’

Whatever its origins, a well-known example of a villanelle is Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas. This powerful poem can be read and heard here.

My offering much simpler, but even so, I suggest a good rhyming dictionary will come in handy and should be added to your toolbox along with a normal dictionary and thesaurus. There is a free Rhyming Dictionary online here worth bookmarking if you don’t want to go to the expense of purchasing hard copy.

As Time Goes By – a villanelle

Age brings reflection on each passing year
Sometimes nostalgia like a fever burns,
Loves and lives lost, births many a tear.

Childhood remembered. Time to conquer fear
Learning that paths have many turns
Age brings reflection on each passing year.

Like an uprooted tree, farewell those dear,
The roots left behind for memory churn
Loves and lives abandoned, births many a tear.

Building a new life; opportunities near
Success or failure? You must discern
Change brings reflection on each passing year.

Time marches on, the well-worn maxim clear,
No immunity from grief, mistakes to unlearn
Loves and lives lost, births many a tear.

And when the end of the road draws near
Count blessings. Hope your life did no harm
Age brings reflection on each passing year,
Loves and lives lost, spills many a tear.

Mairi Neil 2014.

Here’s to a happy, healthy and productive 2015 where the words will continue to flow and grow!

Up the Creek with a pen …

fishing for words to hook readers

book review

A Traveller’s Guide To Aboriginal Australia

NAIDOC WEEK 2017 – 2-9 July

Poetry – Personal, Political, Playful And Always A Sense Of Place

Today, I focus on Jack Davis

One Hundred and Fifty Years

Kingston Council has the important message of INTEGRITY, LOYALTY, RESPECT projected onto their clock tower by Aboriginal artist, Josh Muir.

THE ENDING OF POVERTY

EMU (p34)… the last thing I saw, you were rounding the hill And as far as I know you are travelling still.

SWANS (p33)… Where are you going, majestic swan? I saw you and your flock fly over.

PELICAN (p36)…As she attempts to run for take-off she’s a total wipe-out when she takes her brake off.

KOOKABURRA (p28)… if we laughed away our anger, helped others in distress; then our path would be a smoother one, a walk to happiness.

CICADA (12)… Cicada, cicada, you sing the whole day long, and you have my memories within your summer song.

FIRST FLIGHT

CURLEW

Let There be Light and Enjoy The Illuminations

Room – Riveting, Revelatory and Rugged – but Important Reading.

Was Man Made To Mourn?

Laughter- Just What ‘Dr House’ Prescribed!

Poetry – a way to release and remember our inner child

Alan Spence – His Writing Memorable and More Than Fine

Flexible Writing Forms, Write a Villanelle and Have More Poetry Fun

NAIDOC WEEK 2017 – 2-9 July

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Today, I focus on Jack Davis

One Hundred and Fifty Years

Kingston Council has the important message of INTEGRITY, LOYALTY, RESPECT projected onto their clock tower by Aboriginal artist, Josh Muir.

THE ENDING OF POVERTY

EMU (p34)… the last thing I saw, you were rounding the hill And as far as I know you are travelling still.

SWANS (p33)… Where are you going, majestic swan? I saw you and your flock fly over.

PELICAN (p36)…As she attempts to run for take-off she’s a total wipe-out when she takes her brake off.

KOOKABURRA (p28)… if we laughed away our anger, helped others in distress; then our path would be a smoother one, a walk to happiness.

CICADA (12)… Cicada, cicada, you sing the whole day long, and you have my memories within your summer song.

FIRST FLIGHT

CURLEW

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: