Author: Barry Lee Thompson

My first collection of fiction, Broken Rules and Other Stories, is published by Transit Lounge (September 2020). It's supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, and by a fellowship from Varuna, the National Writers' House. I'm currently writing my second book, supported by Regional Arts Victoria and Creative Victoria. Web: https://barryleethompson.com/

SILENCED COMPOSERS

Recent activity at Jennifer’s blog:

Jennifer Bryce's avatarlittlesmackerel

A couple of years ago I wrote about composer Messaien’s, The End of Time, written while incarcerated in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Last week, the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) reminded us of the music of those composers who did not survive – composers who were Jewish victims of Nazism. Three of these composers were in their 40s when they died/ were murdered, and one was only 26. We can only know their early and mid-career music, and must imagine what they might have created had they lived their natural life-spans.

All of the music in this concert was for wind instruments, some also with piano. The first piece was a wind quintet by Pavel Haas, written when he was in his early twenties, some years before the war. Although I play a wind instrument, I sometimes don’t like the medium of…

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Eileen Joyce

Here’s a piece from Jennifer’s blog about Australian pianist Eileen Joyce (1908 – 1991).

Jennifer Bryce's avatarlittlesmackerel

What was it like to live in the golden age of the piano virtuoso, in the first half of the 20th century – before the rise of hi-tech recording and challenges to the piano’s central position as queen of keyboard instruments? What was it like to come to that world from an impoverished childhood – particularly if you were a woman? These questions come to mind when one contemplates the life of Australian pianist Eileen Joyce (1908 – 1991) who grew up in Boulder, a West Australian mining town.

I’ve been thinking about Eileen Joyce after attending Julia Hasting’s musical play, Fame Fortune and Lies: the life and music of Eileen Joyce, performed as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Julia is an accomplished pianist and an actor and she combined these two skills magnificently to give an outline of Eileen Joyce’s life, illustrated by performances of appropriate…

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Laundry

Laundry, a piece of short fiction from Barry Lee’s blog:

Barry Lee Thompson's avatarBarry Lee Thompson

There are too many choices, and he can’t decide, so in the end he stays home and does some laundry. He sits outside on the battered chair and watches the washing drying on the line. While he watches, he smokes cigarettes and drinks milky coffee. He’s forgotten the ashtray so he flicks the ash onto the ground. He remembers how he used to drink his coffee black and long because that’s how they drank it in the American police shows on TV. Sharp artificial scents from the laundry reach him. As the fabrics dry, the smell softens into flowers and sweet afternoons. A friend phones. Just for a chat, they say. He tells them he’s been busy today. Busy, busy. Another friend calls soon afterwards. He tells them the same thing. He wonders why they called. He remembers his first mobile phone, and plays with his toes. The washing moves…

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Madeleine St John: A Stairway to Paradise

A review of Madeleine St John’s “A Stairway to Paradise” from Jennifer’s blog:

Jennifer Bryce's avatarlittlesmackerel

With the adaptation for theatre of her novel The Women in Black, the writer Madeleine St John has been rediscovered. She would now be well into her seventies, but she died of emphysema some ten years ago. Having enjoyed The Women in Black, centred around a store very much like David Jones, Sydney in the 1960s, I recently picked up another novel by her, A Stairway to Paradise.

This book has been described as ‘a dissection of desire’ and, although some reviewers see it as about a love triangle, I think that, far more, it is about the nature of desire and love. It is set in London – probably in the 1990s, the exact time doesn’t matter. Two men, Andrew and Alex, both married, love Barbara. But the desire between Alex and Barbara is the focus of the novel. Andrew, Alex’s squash partner has done what is perhaps…

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Decisions and discussions

Elwood Writers had its fortnightly meeting at a café on Carlisle St in Elwood last week. We’re a politically engaged group and so the early part of the session was inevitably spent talking about the then upcoming federal election. Decisions, decisions.

Before looking at the pieces of work we’d submitted for review, we talked shop. We discussed the literary industry, and visited the recurring issue of how to make ends meet as a writer, and how to balance financial pressures with the demands of a creative practice.

What happens to a piece of writing when it’s out of our hands, and to what extent should we be concerned with how our work is interpreted by an audience? It was interesting to consider the possibility of misinterpretation by readers and whether this matters. Maybe there is no such thing as misinterpretation. Once a piece of work is released and shared, it ceases to be controllable. Readers bring themselves and the sum of their experiences to the writing, and they place themselves inside or alongside the work, and so all interpretations and responses have a claim to be valid. There’s the reader and there’s the writer and there’s the work, and they all exist in a fluctuating relationship. An author’s biographical notes, a writer speaking at a festival, an artist’s stated political position: these are experiences which can affect the way we read and respond to a piece of writing.

After critiquing each other’s submitted pieces over a couple of coffees, we dispersed into the busy afternoon. And now the federal election has come and gone, and at the time of writing the outcome remains unknown. There’s a possibility that the outcome will still be unclear by the time of our next meeting.

In case you missed it …

We’re thrilled to share the podcast of the special Mother’s Day edition of Cover To Cover from Vision Australia Radio. The entire program featured work from the Elwood Writers. And thanks to Tim McQueen and Vision Australia Radio, we were given the exciting opportunity to read our own work on the air.

Here’s the podcast link:

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/zc2fq-5f2e5d

We’d love to hear what you think of the program. Let us know in the comments section below. Happy listening!

Stories on the Wireless.

It’s all about mothers on Friday evening at 8:00 p.m. as Cover To Cover on Vision Australia Radio features writing from the Elwood Writers for a special Mother’s Day edition of the program. What better way is there to spend an autumn evening? So turn on and tune in, then settle back and lose yourself in an hour of storytelling. We’re especially thrilled that for this program some of us will be reading our own pieces on the air.

There’s a handy frequency-finder drop-down menu here, and the program can be live streamed here. Don’t forget that VAR now broadcasts in Perth too. Details here.

For Melbourne listeners, the Vision Australia digital radio service is on your digital radio under ‘VAR Digital’. Or you can listen in at 1179AM.

The program will be repeated on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. Or, you can listen to the podcast as soon as it’s available on the Vision Australia Radio home page, here. If you’re listening in Adelaide, Cover To Cover airs once-weekly at 7:30 p.m. on Sundays.

We hope you can join us.

Thank you for listening.

Elwood Writers

Lit on the Radio

Don’t forget to tune in to Vision Australia Radio for this year’s Mother’s Day edition of Cover To Cover. The program is currently in production, and will feature the work of the Elwood Writers. We’re very excited to bring you a taste of what to expect from the literary line-up:

Jennifer Bryce was prompted to write her short story ‘The First Day’ when she read her 97 year-old mother’s autobiography. In it her mother describes ‘the overwhelming sense of responsibility’ when she brought the new-born Jennifer home from hospital. In this story, Jennifer imagines her mother’s feelings at that time.

For this special Mother’s Day program, Helen McDonald explores the darker intensities of the mothering experience through poetry and creative non-fiction with her pieces ‘Forbidden’ and ‘The Lake’.

The post-war decades of the fifties and sixties were hailed as the boom times. But what was life really like for a young mother of five, married to an injured ex-serviceman who’d spent four years in a German prisoner-of-war camp? Find out in Margaret McCaffrey’s story ‘My Mother, Lawre’.

In Barry Lee Thompson’s story ‘So Much Lemonade’, a small family picnics on the clifftops at a secluded coastal spot. Sounds delightful, doesn’t it. But will anyone be smiling when the rug’s unfurled? The event is explored through the eyes of the young son.

You can catch the program on Friday 6 May at 8:00 p.m. or listen to the re-run on Mother’s Day on Sunday 8 May at 1:30 p.m.