Paradise, by Helen McDonald

Elwood Writer Helen’s poem Paradise is published by Celapene Press in Short and Twisted 2016. Short and Twisted is an annual anthology of short-stories and poetry with a twist at the end. Congratulations, Helen!
You can read Helen’s poem below. And if you’d like to enjoy more of this wonderful anthology, the book is available here.

Paradise

Under brooding skies
beside the sheening metal sea
scuttling children, two-legged crabs,
tunnel to China, heads down bottoms up,
side-stepping drifting jellyfish
lazy see-through saucers just off-shore.
A seaside edge of seaweed currants
tortured palms, abandoned spades.

A flock of yachts strains, bows to the breeze.
Gulls on matchstick legs, beaks to the wind,
sentinels to the barricades banked along the sand
stretching out to claim the beach.
Signs that scream ‘Keep out’.
Paradise
It’s not for you

Helen McDonald

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!

Coming soon to your radio …

Very excited that the Elwood Writers have been invited to provide the material for this year’s Mother’s Day edition of Vision Australia Radio’s Cover To Cover literary program. Tune in on Friday 6 May at 8:00 p.m. or listen to the re-broadcast on Mother’s Day on Sunday 8 May at 1:30 p.m.

Cover To Cover is heard in Melbourne, Albury/Wodonga, Bendigo, Geelong, Mildura, Shepparton, Warragul, Warrnambool, Adelaide and Perth. Follow this link to find the frequency of Vision Australia Radio in your area:

http://radio.visionaustralia.org

In January 2015, the Elwood Writers provided the material for a Cover To Cover program themed around Starting Over; that program was featured in a Best Of series later the same year. We’re thrilled at this opportunity to continue our involvement with Vision Australia Radio and to support the important work it does in the community.

Podcasts of Vision Australia Radio programs are available to Vision Australia library members via the i-access online catalogue. Information about joining the library is available at:

http://www.visionaustralia.org/living-with-low-vision/library/join-the-library

We’ll be posting more information about the program in the next few weeks.

Helen’s Reflections on Adelaide Writers’ Week

Looking back I barely dipped into the rich lucky dip of writers and their works on offer at this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week. A smorgasbord of talent on offer, it was hard to pick and choose which sessions to attend. Fortunately everything will be up on podcast within a week, so I can listen to my heart’s content to those authors I missed.

I had the sensation that bees were coursing through my veins, such was the level of excitement around the Festival hubs. My creativity leapt and each night I lay in bed with thoughts and ideas sparking randomly and uncontrollably. In short, I was beside myself.

I took a lot of notes so that, in the words of Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe, the ‘immortal words’ I heard would not prove to be mortal. I wished I’d seen more. In the written expression of the human condition I learnt from New Zealanders Kate De Goldi and Fiona Farrell how it is to survive a devastating earthquake and record those experiences in both fiction and non-fiction forms. Hyeonseo Lee took me on her journey as a defector from North Korea’s strange cult of the ‘Dear Leaders’, into hostile China and finally South Korea, where her welcome was not as warm as she might have anticipated. Her perspective was fascinating to me as I lived in South Korea for four years in the 1980’s and had stared across the impregnable 59th parallel into a North Korean mock village, its communist soldiers bizarrely laughing and pointing at us.

French novelist Muriel Barbery – ‘The Life of Elves’ – is exploring a deeper understanding of her life, as she tries to live it more slowly as she ages. It was heartening for this slow writer to know she has taken eight years to write this, her second book. It’s OK to take time! I loved her sense that the novel is ‘more intelligent than you’, taking on its own life while she writes.

Annabel Crabb and Jane Caro entertained with their wit and quips while American Jim Shepard inspired with his extensive research into the voices of Polish children in the 20th century for his latest novel ‘The Book of Aron.” New Zealand’s first Poet Laureate, Bill Manhire, advised us to write what we don’t know. How encouraging to hear inspiration is what happens when he’s NOT working. First time UK novelist Max Porter thrilled with his readings from ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers”. In the same session (recorded for ABC Radio National) Oxford English literature Professor Jonathan Bate’s erudite reflections on the life and work of poet Ted Hughes was dramatically enhanced by original recordings of the poet reciting his work at the Adelaide Writers’ Week forty years ago. It was haunting.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe, a national treasure, uses all language in his poetry, mixing linguistic styles, the professorial with the profane – and he travels without Gods. Nothing is unavailable and he believes lyric poetry turns sound into language.

I took away the message from Max Porter that nothing should get in the way of the reader. There should be no connection between the lived experience of the writer and the word.

But most of all it made me want to write!