RALPH WESSMAN   |    NORTH TO GARRADUNGA

LIVING WRITER'S WEEK, TASMANIA: AUGUST, 2006

Living Writers’ Week held in August throughout Tasmania is heavily marketed, so much so that arriving late at one of its opening events – a poetry reading at Hobart’s Hope and Anchor Hotel one Friday evening – it’s simply too crowded to enter. Strong attendances are correspondingly reported elsewhere around the state, a reading in Devonport drawing an audience of eighty or so.

For $80, I’ve half a table at the IXL Atrium in Hunter Street, Hobart on Sunday 13th August at the Tasmanian Book Fair to market various Walleah Press publications. I’m sharing the table with Pardalote Press’ Lyn Reeves, arguably the finest publisher today of quality, contemporary Tasmanian literature. Various panel sessions are being held next door throughout the day: one imagines the book fair will be quiet apart from a brief break between sessions when the place will perhaps be flocked by patrons curious to see for themselves the extent of contemporary Tasmanian literature. But - to our surprise - the Book Fair is packed with a couple of hundred people from its opening at 10am and remains that way till wrapping up at 4pm.

Keeping an eye on our table somewhat restricts me from listening to the panel sessions taking place on the Sunday, but I manage to take in a couple the previous day. Under the impression that ‘Investigative Journalism’, featuring Margaretta Pos, Lindsay Tuffin, Airlie Ward, Richard Herr and Wayne Crawford is the first event on the day’s programme, I arrive twenty minutes early to be certain of a seat – only to find actor/author William McInnes holding court in front of a packed room. McInnes, launching his first novel ‘Cricket Kings’, is in full flight, finishing one anecdote and carousing straight to the next. If literary journalist Jason Steger - with whom McInnes is sharing the table - is meant to be prompting McInnes, then his job is an armchair ride. Here – with the programme notes - lies the only fault I find with the festival. The panel sessions I’ve arrived to see (the first beginning at 10.45 am) appear on page 12 of the programme guide. McInnes’ launch is timed for 10 am, and appears on page 18 of the programme. I’ve overlooked it. Still, others manage to get it right even if I can’t.

Wayne Crawford is a fine choice as chair of the ‘Investigative Journalism’ panel, given the integrity of his even-handed investigative writing for ‘The Mercury’. Someone once defined news as what someone somewhere doesn’t want published, Crawford suggests, and points to a number of issues broken in Tasmania in recent times including ‘the reasons behind the Tasmanian devil’s facial tumor, the scandalous and tragic loss of millions of dollars by investors in a legal firm, questions about the financial practices by the Hydro,’ among others.

Introducing Lindsay Tuffin, Crawford portrays the print journalist and ‘Tasmanian Times’ editor as someone who doesn’t fit easily into the mould of respectability and conformity. ‘I notice he’s taken off his beanie at least!’

Tuffin speaks of his belief that investigative journalism within Tasmania is in a good state, expresses particular admiration for the work of Simon Bevilacqua, whose ‘quiet, enquiring mind has for years probed the darker recesses of Tasmanian public life with an admirable tenaciousness and consistency’, and for Sue Neales ‘whose journalism has flowered into a beautiful thing’. One of the unstated assumptions for journalists in Tasmania, says Tuffin, is that you have to play by the ruling party’s rules or you don’t play. Those who govern have a four-step response to taking care of ‘difficult buggers, the whistleblowers or the journos questioning and writing outside the tent’, he says. One. Deny the issue oxygen. (The issue doesn’t exist, ignore it). Two. The issue is not going away, so issue a veiled legal threat. Three. The issue is still around – ‘invite the Dissenting One to a private briefing which involves releasing selected private information which locks the Dissenter into confidentiality.’ Four. Ostracise.

Tuffin looks up from his notes. ‘I must be running out of time,’ he enquires diffidently.

‘You can have some of mine, I’m enjoying this,’ responds Airlie Ward, presenter of ABC television’s ‘Stateline’.

Tuffin wraps up his address by observing that the journo’s job is a tough one, particularly the battle with media management which is often conservative and subjective. He is critical of local media outlets: ‘The Mercury’, ‘The Examiner’, the ABC. ‘Sometimes I think the ABC balances itself out of existence – balance is appeasement … fairness is truth.’

‘Well Airlie,’ Wayne Crawford remarks as Tuffin steps down, ‘you’ve got about thirty seconds after that’.

‘Thank you: some very big shoes to fill after Lindsay.’

Airlie Ward points to the differences between print and television journalism, the way it’s impossible to base television journalism solely on documents. ‘Television needs people. Its strength lies in the opportunity it offers people to say the story in their own voices.’

‘There aren’t many journalists who have the time, money and resources to build up an investigative piece,’ she says. ‘I envy others their resources, but for a programme like "Stateline" I have to be realistic. Every week we have to get up a half-hour programme. Sometimes I get bogged down with other issues, find myself thinking, my God it’s nearly Friday and there’s nothing in the kitty. That’s the reality, the day to day routine of "I have a deadline, I have to find a story". What makes for good investigative journalism anyway? It’s getting behind the story, finding out who benefits, who loses. How do you find the story in the first place? Freedom Of Information? But that often alerts the department you intend to investigate, and as often as not you’ll get a friendly call, someone suggesting "hey, that’s not a story!" Or your FOI request is knocked back. Or if it does get up, you find yourself with a sheet of paper that’s been so blocked out that all that’s left is Dear Sir and Yours sincerely. These are decisions made in the public interest, we are told – but who is it that decides what is in the public interest?’

Wayne Crawford introduces Margaretta Pos, a writer from a teaching and arts background, who has worked in places as far afield and diverse as Delhi and Sydney, whose journalism has won many awards. ‘And I suspect somewhere that there might be a novel in the bottom of the drawer.’

Margaretta Pos speaks of her years spent with The Mercury, when she wrote a column entitled ‘Positively Speaking’ – ‘some who disliked me figured I should call it "Negatively Speaking"’ – and of the changes to her journalistic life since leaving The Mercury. ‘The spin doctors really don’t like you when you work in the maverick fields such as writing for Crikey.com, or for Tasmanian Times, because they can’t exercise any control over you’.

"I hope you don’t mind me saying this Richard,’ Crawford ventures, introducing Richard Herr, ‘but perhaps you too are something of a frustrated journalist.’ Herr laughs. "I’m sometimes frustrated with journalists," he goes so far as to admit.

Herr refers despairingly to the habits of the newspaper-buying public who’ve given up buying the quality press in favour of tabloids. "I regret this bitterly for the implications it has had on the maintenance of an effective civic culture," he says, adding that public expectation is also a factor in the ‘dumbing down’ of journalistic outputs. As Herr sees it, the problem areas for investigative journalism lie in the general weakness of daily news reporting, the lack of a strong and accomplished professional body of reporters within the existing pool, the reduction in the size of the state parliament with the result that there are too few opposition MPs to contest the Government, an emphasis on personality politics, and an editorial penchant for sensationalism at the expense of a fully formed story. Tasmania needs quality analytical reporting today more than ever, Herr maintains, but points out that presently ‘the Tasmanian voters as consumers of the media are not demanding enough and the media as producers are not always as professional as they should be’.

Another of Saturday’s panel sessions is ‘Writing for an audience: fiction, poetry’. Gina Mercer, editor of Island magazine, chairs this session, which - she contends – is the most relevant of Living Writers’ Week. ‘I was walking along the beach this morning wondering, can I make this grand claim? Well: put up your hands those who consider yourselves readers? Okay, a hundred percent – (and you lot on the panel, you should have put your hands up too!) Now, hands up those of you who consider yourself writers? Hmmm… well, I’d suggest that far more of you than those with their hands up are writers. Consider….’

‘The other day, when I had to go out somewhere or other, I cooked a meal which I left along with a note: "Your dinner’s in the oven." Sometime later I received a telephone call on my mobile, ‘Hello darling, how are you?’ – his voice concerned, perhaps even a little defensive. He’d interpreted my message in a completely different context from the way that I’d intended. I forgot that perhaps it could be taken another way: I forgot my audience. I forgot to say, "Sorry I can’t share dinner with you, however…", I forgot to say "Looking forward to seeing you once I get home." So: audience!’

‘Even when we perform the most secretive or private of writing, we need to consider our audience in our heads – whether it’s an audience of one or of 100,000. We’re lucky today to have four very fine writers to share their views of audience.’ Gina turns to introduce novelist Monica McInerny.

‘The morning Monica finished her first novel – she was living in Hobart at the time - she learned of a competition for writing a best seller, so she entered it. She was living in Hobart at the time. At about the same time she bought a ticket in a raffle, first prize was an air ticket to Dublin. She won the prize, and travelled to Dublin. On the day she arrived she received a telephone call letting her know she’d won second prize in the ‘write a best-seller’ competition, and second prize was a three-book contract. Isn’t that a wonderful story? Monica….’

‘Thank you, I’m delighted to be back where I wrote my first book,’ Monica begins. Addressing the concerns of the panel session, Monica explains she’s unable to write for an audience beyond herself. ‘I think of one reader – I am that reader, the first reader of my book – and I’ll probably read it a hundred times by the time it’s reached a publisher. And I have to remain interested in my writing – of course, I’m not going to be surprised at how the book ends – but my goal is to entertain. I ask myself: what appeals to me? … what do I write about? … cry about? The answers include writing - about family, about being surprised by life, about stepping outside my comfort zone…. Some will like what I have to write, and others not at all, but you can’t control that. You need to come to terms with bad reviews, negative responses to your work. But I attempt to offer my humour and my heart and hope my readers and audience will respond.’

Gina introduces Louise Oxley, ‘a very fine poet … with a deep understanding of the way language works, and its structure.’ Louise speaks of her early years as a writer when she questioned whether or not to send her work out to magazines. Was it vain to do so? A close friend advised that it was vain not to. The questions – who am I writing for? why am I writing? – came as she persevered with her craft. "After a few rejections, ‘I began to wonder why am I writing at all?’ she adds. Louise continues to write because it gives her a sense – and greater understanding - of the world. ‘It lends me a semblance of order, allows me the opportunity – as writing does – to say something new and original, to utter words people don’t expect me to say.’

‘I learnt along the way that there are conventions – but that you can break them. Becoming a writer provides me with an opportunity to honour language. I write for my own sake. I write in the hope of an audience, but the problem with the idea of audience is the collective one. The encounter with the poem is a very private affair, so really I think of audience for a reader as an audience of one, and the ideal reader is the reader who reads in good faith, who opens the bottle and wants to know what is inside.’

Gina introduces Anthony Lawrence as someone ‘found by poetry’ at the age of fifteen. She alludes to his habit of ‘borrowing’ books from the library of his boarding school, an act he says he’s never repaid. ‘I don’t believe him,’ adds Gina, ‘it’s been repaid by the publishing of a dozen books of his own - though whether any of those books ever made it back to his boarding school…. ’

‘It’s an honour to have Anthony with us,’ Gina continues, ‘and if you ask politely he might even discuss with you the audience for email correspondence.’

‘Thank you Gina. I was wondering, actually, whether that might come up.’

‘Well, I had to ask….’

‘That whole thing’s been blown out of the water, it’s a folly,’ he states, referring to reportage on John Kinsella, Bob Adamson and himself that’s appeared recently in the national press.

‘When I was about eighteen,’ Lawrence begins, ‘I worked as a jackeroo on a cattle station. Dad gave me an Olivetti portable typewriter, I drove everyone mad writing all the time. Mum, in her wisdom, made a phone call to someone she believed might be able to help with what she saw as my problem, she picked up the telephone book, went through the white pages looking under "P" for poetry and telephoned the Poets’ Society of Australia. The person she spoke to – synchronicity, isn’t it Gina? – was Robert Adamson. She told Robert she thought her son was a poet and that naturally she was worried about it.'

‘Through Robert I met a good many poets, the first poetry session I sat down to included, among others, Robert Adamson and Judith Beveridge and the incredible American Robert Duncan who was visiting the country at the time….’

‘I threw myself in at the deep end, though I had no idea of this at the time. I was writing rhyming doggerel about working as a jackeroo – poems typically about my dog, about a water rat - poems I still keep and look on with tenderness. About this time, writing poetry took on such an intensity that if I wandered through Hyde Park and saw someone writing, for instance, I’d wander up to them and ask - are you writing a poem? They’d just look up from the shopping list or whatever it was they were scribbling – probably the draft of a restraining order put out against people coming up to them asking if they were writing poetry….’

‘It’s well known that it’s mostly poets who buy poetry. Poets do not write to make money, if your book sells 5,000 copies – 2,000 copies – you’re pretty much on the way to immortality. These days I write for myself, and have done for a long time. I’m at my happiest – and at my most vulnerable – when I’m writing a poem (unless it’s a love poem). The best audience I could ask for comes not as the result of a review, but is simply the comment of a stranger who appreciates something I’ve written. That’s the best. An audience does exist, but it’s a dangerous thing - for me at least – to anticipate in any sense.’

Gina introduces Katherine Scholes as ‘a stunningly diverse writer with several children’s books to her credit, and a young adult novel Blue Chameleon. A significant portion of Katherine’s audience live in Germany, and I think I’m right in suggesting that you don’t speak German, Katherine? No! So that’s an interesting slant on the concept of audience.’

Katherine Scholes admits to knowing little about the people who read her books. ‘My publisher talks of numbers, but that’s not me. If I want clues as to who my audience might be, I might turn to magazines – I’m something of a magazine junkie. I like all kinds of women’s magazine for the insight into human experience they can offer. I am, of course, a subscriber to Australia’s premier literary journal Island, edited by Gina. I also like to read a title or two from the Booker Prize shortlist, for example.’

‘When it comes to considerations of audience…. In the end, you’re writing the book you’d most like to read. It has to be a book you can live with, because you’ll likely be living with it for a couple of years. And it has to be a book that the audience you’ve established for yourself will be interested in reading.’ Scholes maintains that the single most important thing about writing style – her style, in any case – is to offer a limited point of view and tell a story through the eyes of one of the main characters. ‘It’s worked for me and probably for my readers. It would be a big decision for me to make to not continue in this fashion’.

During question time, Anthony reminisces on looking back over his earlier poems, ‘with their so many failings and inconsistencies and poor craftsmanship. But you recognise this about your writing, and – if you were looking for work to include in an anthology, for instance – you wouldn’t change them. It’d be a travesty to change them. They’re of their time, they’re markers in the time piece of your life.’

‘I feel a tenderness towards my early poems too,’ Gina confirms. ‘While I know they might be bad, it gives me a sense of relief to be able to recognise that.’

‘Not that recognising it makes it any easier to write the next poem,’ adds Louise.

‘Oh yes: it’s always easy to write a bad poem,’ Gina agrees.

A member of the audience asks whether good covers sell books. ‘I know that I buy books on their covers,’ Anthony quips. ‘And music. I play Russian Roulette with music in this way - but I’ve found some great stuff!’

Much else is happening besides. Enjoyable is the Five Islands Press session featuring six Australian poets launching their first poetry collections, including local writer Francesca Haig. There’s grateful acknowledgment of the pivotal role of Ron Pretty (manager of Five Islands Press) in Australian poetry publishing, and hopes for his speedy recovery, (Ron has been hospitalised two days beforehand, and unable to make the trip to Tasmania). A number of other book launches and planned as well, along with literary lunches, writers in schools, poems written for significant trees in the royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, a poetry trail with more than a score of sculptures on display, even the annual Bridport Writers’ Festival slots perfectly into the programme. ‘The whole thing has been such a success,’ someone ventures, ‘that maybe we’ll all be doing it again in two years time.’

OVERHEARD

From one of the publishers represented at the book fair, Living Writers Week, Hobart – August 2006.

"If books had tyres, most of these people would be kicking them, wouldn’t they?"

LEBANESE & ISRAELI BLOGS

Last issue, Famous Reporter ran a blog entry by ‘Perpetual Refugee’ (a Lebanese blogger) in which he expressed hope at the possibility of Lebanese exiles returning soon to their homeland.

Weeks later, war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah.
Commentary on the war is more or less outside my brief, but it's nevertheless decidedly painful to see go down the drain the openness - the potential for dialogue - that had sprung up between Israeli and Arab bloggers over recent years. That idealism they shared was a palpable thing … how far down the track before it returns?

ON THE LOOKOUT

A friend’s writing an application for a residency at Varuna. ‘Just looking for 900 good words,’ she confides.

Aren’t we all?

LAUNCH, ESTHER OTTAWAY COLLECTION

There was a good turn-up in response to the launch of Esther Ottaway’s Blood Universe in Hobart; lots of pregnant women and prams in attendance, along with a strong male contingent. Blood Universe, Ottaway’s first collection featuring a series of poems on pregnancy and childbirth, was published by the Poets Union in September, though it had been accepted for publication as early as late the previous year. ‘In fact, one of the first things I asked my publisher when the book was accepted,’ said Esther, ‘was how long it might be before it appeared in print.

"Mmm . .. about nine months," was the reply.’

THE IMPETUS FOR WRITING

Ah, the things that bind.

Adrienne Eberhard, reading at Hobart’s Republic Bar & Café in October, spoke of the impetus for some of her most recent poems, with their emphasis on cleats and sheets, reef knots and sheepshanks.

‘My husband’s passion for sailing lead him to suggest to me that I attend a TAFE course on knotting', Adrienne explained, 'he was somewhat concerned as to what might happen if it should ever be my responsibility to tie up the boat at the end of the day’s sailing."