Finis.

Day 6. Time to go home. 

All good things must come to an end, but I was surprised at how sad I was that this adventure was coming to a close. As something that I imagined to be a long week of hard work, I would pleasantly surprised to find that it didn't feel like work at all. The people I met over the week were so smart, insightful and funny that I would have happily spent another week doing the same thing over. 

Another surprised was how close our group of students had become. On the second last day, after we nervously presented our awards to the writers and officially finished all lectures, we piled into two cars and drove out to the Perri Sandhills. The sandhill's are located outside of Wentworth, across the New South Wales border. For the first time, I saw the mighty Murrey River and wondered in awe at the long flat expanse of the Australian terrain that surrounded us. The earth beside the road was a rich red sand, and the fields were filled with orange trees and strange vines I had never seen before. The sky seemed to be this huge overwhelming blue; I had never been able to see so much of it before. It dominated the entire world, dictating all the colours below it. As we arrived at the hills, some of the smarter students had stopped at a bottle shop to get beer and cider and we wandered up to the top of one of the closer hills and gazed out at the strange land around us. The sand was a vibrant dark orange and the vines grew busily across the hills, sprouting small round melons. A few people tried eating them but to our amusement and their disgust, they were not edible in any way. We stood drinking on the hill, shaking off all our earlier nerves by cracking jokes and laughing with gusto. The sun burned hotly on our shoulders, easing the crispy cold winds that blew in our hair. The air was so silent around us that every breath felt loud and imposing and we laughed at the idea of filming a horror movie out in the sand. It was only after the sun had set and the cold became too much that we reluctantly returned to our cars and drove back to Mildura. We finished the night with dinner and more drinks at the only pub open on a sunday night and returned home when the barmaid kicked us out. 

The following morning we packed up all our stuff, went to our final class and eventually bid each other a final goodbye. If anything, I was sad to go home, sad that the experience was over and sad that I would probably never experience a writers festival in such an intimate way again. But I am excited to take everything I have learned from those 6 days and use it all in my own writing. I am excited to attend more writing festivals and I am excited to read everything I can get my hands on. 

I would like to thank Sue Gillett for creating this fantastic subject, it really was an amazing experience and Sue's enthusiasm for teaching is really exciting for students. I would like to thank all the writers, organisers and volunteers who worked on the festival and made it such a welcoming place to students, and finally I would like to thank Jenny and Brian Murphy who generously opened their home to me while I was at the festival and made sure I was fed and watered the entire time. 

 

Per.

Day 4 and 5. The festivities. 

Over the next two days I fell into a chaotic routine. Wake up early, pick up various people in my car, attend various lectures, eat hurried lunches and eventually having a knock off drink at one of the Mildura pubs. It was absolutely enjoyable to be away from home and all the stresses that go with every day life and simply take in all the talent, knowledge and wisdom that was being thrown at us hour by hour. While I could go into each individual session with great detail and enthusiasm, it would not be very interesting. Instead I would like to talk about a few key moments that stood out to me personally. 

Firstly I will begin with a session between Sharon Olds and Peter Goldsworthy. After reading both of their work and hearing them both individually speak during the festival, I found that these two authors have a kind of charisma that makes them stand out from the crowd. There is a certain confidence to them that gives you the feeling that they are aware of their gift, but that doesn't mean they are going to stop striving to be better. When asked about her early years as a poet and how she began, Sharon told the audience that she had studied poetry for years but when she decided she was going to start writing her own, she was willing to forget everything she had learned as long as she was able to find her own individual voice. She did not care if it was bad, and she admits freely that even now much of her poetry is not good, but as long as it was her own individual voice, that was what mattered. I found this willingness to pursue something that you do not succeed in nine times out of ten was really honest, powerful and insightful. I think like all new writers, there is a great fear that if you write something that is bad, thats it, you should never write again. It was inspiring to hear that an award winning poet like Sharon Olds does not write well all of the time. 

The next moment I would like to talk about occurred during a session with Eileen Chong and Anthony Lawrence. When Eileen was asked about how she came to write poetry, she told a story about her first full time job and the way that she found herself feeling physically sick after not being able to read anything for 8 hours at a time. Eileen then went on to explain that she is an obsessive reader and will literally read everything from the ingredient list on a packet of biscuits to instruction manuals. She told us how she is constantly reading and constantly absorbing new information. I found that a lot of other authors had also touched on this, saying that being a poet was as much about reading poetry as it was about writing poetry. I have come to realise that a lot of inspiration and motivation to write comes from reading. 

And finally,  I would like to mention Anthony Lawrence in the talk he gave the morning after he won the Phillip Hodgkins Memorial medal. He went into detail about his writing process and gave the audience some very personal details about exactly how his writing comes to be. He told us that he cannot force himself to write and that his inspiration generally comes from nature and he is physically overcome with the urge to write. It was interesting to hear that unlike most other professions, a lot of writers can not simply sit down and write. I guess this kind of inconsistency would make it quite a stressful and uncertain job. I imagine there would always be a fear that the inspiration would simply stop and you would never be able to write again. Anthony also talked about how he feels the default emotion in his life is melancholy, and that when he is not writing he is unhappy, but when he is writing he is also unhappy. It sounds like an utterly miserable existence, but I can understand what he means. As someone who is highly in tune with the world, it would be difficult to only see the good and ignore the bad. The bad is what makes the world interesting and where inspiration comes from.  

Medius.

Day 3. In the thick of things.

Day three began for me with an early morning walk around the town of Mildura. Being born originally in the mountains of Gippsland and then moving to the hills of Kew, I have never experienced a Victorian town that is so flat. I guess this comes from being so near to the desert and the centre of Australia. In my early morning brain fog, I just assumed that I had become much fitter over the last few days and that was why I was able to walk so briskly. In retrospect, this probably was not the case. 

In what was becoming our morning ritual, Lewis and I jumped in the car and picked up Emel and Vince on our way to the first session for the day. We arrived at the Art Vault with our notepads ready to be filled with notes for the day. The first speaker was Tracy Farr, another writer I had yet to read but was interested to learn more about. Tracy had recently written her first novel The Life and loves of Lena Gaunt and was living in New Zealand. As we sat down in the large open gallery I saw some familiar faces from the previous night. Sharon Olds was sitting in the back row, hair in pig tails and sporting some sort of camouflage hunting hat. The woman next to her was knitting a pair of gloves and many of the women had blankets on their knees. It was quite cold in the room and we sat as close to the heater as possible. As Tracy was introduced and the discussion began, we learned that she had previously worked in science, something that I found to be quite common with writers (Peter Goldsworthy and John Keats to name a few). She spoke about the idea of home and finding your own place in the world. Her novel was about a woman who played a theramin, a strange instrument that normally is only found in horror movies. Tracy talked at length about the publishing world, her own writing process and the life of an up and coming author. 

After Tracy, Sharon Olds and Peter Goldsworthy were introduced to the stage. I was right in the thick of Goldsworthys Three Dog Night at this point and was eager to hear more from the author. Right from the beginning, these two authors put on an entertaining show of humour, innuendo and passion for writing. It was an enthralling hour and the audience found themselves in stitches for the most part. 

Later in the day we went to the Mildura Brewery and saw Alexis Wright talk about her writing and her passion for the environment. She spoke eloquently about her own writing and what inspires her, and also touched on the importances of caring for the land that we live on and having respect for the original owners. It was a very touching session and really gave the audience a good insight into the passion that writers have. 

Initium.

Day 2. The opening.

I woke early on the first official day of the festival and found myself greeted in the kitchen by my housemate for the week. Lewis, another WIA student, had arrived late the night before and was making coffee in the kitchen. Jenny had set out breakfast for us and after a quick bite we were ready to go. As we arrived at the Latrobe building where we would be attending classes for the day, I came to the realisation that all my ideas about Mildura being much warmer than Melbourne were extremely misguided. It was freezing. We hurried into the classroom and our teacher Sue explained the ins and outs of the festival, our subject and how the rest of the week would work. Sue had an infectious excitement for the subject that quickly rubbed off onto everyone and we were well on our way to blogging, filming and not asking the authors stupid or annoying questions (eg. "So like ahhh, what inspires you?").

After a long day, we packed up and went home, only to quickly get changed, eat some of Jennies hearty lasagna and attend the opening night of the festival. I also got to meet Brian at this point, Jennies husband who was a Doctor and also a committee member for the festival. The evening was being held in the Mildura club, a beautiful building with high ceilings, large open fireplaces and rich tapestries that hung from the roof. Tom Keneally was set to be In Conversation with Stefano di Pieri, a local cook and restaurant owner who also was very involved with the creation of the festival.  By a stroke of bad luck (or good luck as it turned out) Tom Keneally had a delayed flight and was missing in action. Sharon Olds stepped in to entertain the masses while we waited for Keneally to arrive. At this time I knew very little about Olds except that she was an American Poet who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013. As soon as she opened her mouth I immediately recognised a certain familiarity though, she had an identical accent to my Aunty Connie who lives in Washington and is roughly the same age. After some brief introductions, Sharon began what I now recognise as her trade mark easy going and funny nature. She was relaxed and at ease with the crowd and happily told us her amazement at her recent experience with a magpie and her delight at the way he wagged his tail at her.

But it wasn't until she decided to read a poem that she had written on the flight over to Australia that I understood the hype surrounding her. Her words were so accessible and honest that I straight away understood exactly what she was feeling when she put pen to paper. I was also blown away at the absolute beauty she was able to create, harnessing the power of human nature and the natural world in a perfect symmetry that spoke directly to me. There was a raw honestly in the poem she read that I later discovered was one of her signature qualities.

Eventually Tom Keneally arrived at the building and we were then entertained by his hilariously honest and intelligent views on writing, Australian politics and life in general. Some notable quotes from the evening were Tom Keneally quoting Fred Hollows "Great humans do not believe they've made the bullet that will get them" and Keneally himself noting that "You've got to be a bit of a bully to be a great human, you've got to command the moral conscious". All in all, it was a great first day and I was excited for what was to come.

Adventus.

Day 1. The arrival.

After a frantic night of packing and desperately trying to read as much of Peter Goldsworthys 'Three Dog Night' as I could, the day of my departure to Mildura arrived. By a stroke of poor timing that seems to follow me (I am always either desperately busy or full of free time, sort of like a millionaire, but without all the money), I had to attend a job trial at an Optometrist in the morning before driving up to Mildura with the mysterious couple Emel and Vincent. Having only met on Facebook through the WIA forum, there was a small chance that they would bail me up and chop me to bits the moment they got in the car, Natural Born Killers style. Fortunately this was not the case at all and Emel is a vegan so I think this would go against her nature anyway. So after a few brief introductions, we piled our stuff into my tiny yellow car and set sail for Mildura. I was excited to find out that Emel and Vince were filming a documentary on the festival, and while they played around with cameras we talked about our hopes and hesitations for the festival. After speaking with other group members later on, we all seemed to have the same fear that we would be spending a week sitting in lectures by day and eating microwave dinners alone in our seedy hotel rooms at night. As you will find out in later posts, this was not the case at all.  

After what felt like weeks of driving, we finally arrived in Mildura at 7pm. I dropped Emel and Vince to their hotel room and drove to the house I was staying at for the week. A local couple had offered up a bedroom in their house for the week free of charge and I jumped on the opportunity due to my lack of funds and deep fear of seedy hotels. As I knocked on the door, Jenny answered and informed me that she was having a Tupperware party that evening and I was welcome to join in. The array of fancy salmon toast and champagne meant that I settled into their home instantly. After a lovely night of mixing with the local women of Mildura and hearing about some pretty nifty cleaning products, I climbing into an enormous queen size bed and sunk into a deep sleep. 

Books that have changed me.

Sue has thrown out the challenge to write about books that have changed us, and because I couldn't even come close to picking one book, I have compiled a list below of books that have had an impact on me. As you will be able to tell, I fell in love with reading as a child and never really progressed past the genre of children's fiction. I will probably need to have some kids of my own at some point so I can justify re-reading them again (and again, and again...)

1. The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

My Mum read this series of books to me when I was probably around age 5 or 6 and I can still vividly remember being snuggled up on the bed, staring at the pages trying to read ahead because I was so absorbed in the story. The story is about a family in the midwest region of America in the late 19th century. Its a very simple story, with a child like narrative. Every part of their life is ordered and everything has its place. Great detail is placed on the joy of receiving a bag of white sugar (a rare luxury) for Christmas or the process of hunting deer and preparing them to be stored away for winter. This book opened up the world of reading to me, and from a young age I found delight and escape in books.

2. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis

I would not be surprised if this appeared on most peoples lists as it really is one of the best series of books written in my opinion. I have read the series at various different times of my life, and each time found a new reason to love the world of Narnia that Lewis created. I first read it when I was around the age of 10 and was blown away that there could be an entirely new universe just waiting at the back of my wardrobe, ready for me to explore. Over time I have been able to recognise the various religious and mythological themes within the text and can really appreciate the beautiful world of Narnia and the mastery of Lewis as an author. I feel like this book opened up the world of fantasy to me and showed me the limitlessness of imagination.

3. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

If you haven't read this series, you need to stop what you are doing, go directly to your library, book shop or e-reader and get this trilogy immediately. My boyfriend recently lent me the first book of this epic trilogy, and after months of him pestering me to read it, and me stubbornly ignoring him (I hate people recommending me anything; books, movies, menu items, medical advice, speed limits...) I finally gave in and read Northern Lights. After finishing it in about a week, I demanded he lend me the second novel and ravenously devoured that too. By the time I got to the second half of the third and final book, I attempted to read it as slowly as possible, because I knew that this was the kind of story that I should savour, because reading a story like this for the first time was an experience that very rarely happened and I should relish every word that I had left. It reminded me of reading the final Harry Potter book, there is definitely something magical about reading a story that good for the first time.

4. Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

This is one of the few 'adult' books that has really touched me. I first read this as a teenager. I grew up in a small country town in Gippsland and could hardly wait to finish school and move to the big city. What really captured me was not initially the story line, but the way Garner writes about Melbourne. It made me fall in love with a city I had only visited a handful of times. I craved to ride my bike along St Kilda road in the middle of a summers night and to feel the chill of winter in a run down old terrace house in Carlton. As I grew up and moved to the city, I re-read Monkey Grip and found a whole new appreciation of the honesty of Garners writing and the accuracy of her depiction of Melbourne.

5. Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes

For the final book on my list (I could keep going, but you're probably a bit bored by now) I had to include something by Marian Keyes. Rachel's Holiday would have to be one of the funniest, saddest, most romantic and interesting novels I have ever read. From the cover, it appears to be your standard 'chic lit' book, just a bit of light and fluffy nonsense to tide you over during a long flight. But you know what they say about book covers and judging. This book takes a look into addiction at its rawest, ugliest angle and gives the reader an insight into the mind of a junky. But it has a key element that makes it different to anything I've ever read; Marian Keyes is probably one of the funniest writers to ever exist. I have found myself wiping tears from my eyes and silently shaking with hysterics on tram rides reading this book. I have annoyed my friends by constantly reading passages out to them. I have shoved this book into the faces of strangers who look a bit sad on the street. I have found myself thinking about parts of this book at work and having to make strange ugly faces to try and hide the giggles that overwhelm me. This book, as well as pretty much anything Marian Keyes has written has shown me that there is a fine line between comedy and tragedy and there's no reason why the two can't mix. In fact it's a lot nicer if they do.

My first blog post!

Hello all and welcome to my blog!

It's the Sunday before the festival and I am finally getting everything sorted in preparation for the week ahead. Having never written a blog before (or been to a writers festival) I figured the best place to start would be to introduce myself to those reading. My name is Elizabeth Lane, I am 25 and currently in my final year of an Arts degree at Latrobe Bundoora. After months and years of agonising about what career path I will take once I finish my degree, I have finally settled on Librarianship! This is exciting, but also slightly devastating because my Mother is also a librarian and following in her footsteps goes against every teenage angst filled fibre that remains in my body. She is very excited about it though and keeps sending me Buzzfeed links like this and telling me librarian jokes.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to the festival, although I am slightly dreading the 6 hour drive. Fortunately I have been given a spare room at one of the committee members house, so I can't wait to meet them and find out even more about what the week will bring. I am also thoroughly looking forward to an increase in temperature and hopefully some sunshine in Mildura, because the weather in Melbourne right now is quite agreeable if you're a duck, but pretty awful if your a human being that has hair that likes to resemble a troll doll at even a hint of moisture.