Famous Reporter # 9 - Ralph Wessman: 'North to Garradunga'

RALPH WESSMAN

North to Garradunga

Do you know of an accident and illness insurance policy to cover writers? West Australian Barbara Brandt asked herself this question in 1992, and made a number of ultimately fruitless enquiries of insurance firms. Ironically, it wasn't long afterwards that she was involved in a car accident and unable to work or write for some time. As proceeds from her writing form a substantial part of her income, this caused a few financial headaches.

Not without coincidence, an accident and illness insurance scheme - administered by the West Australian Fellowship for Australian Writers and available to writers nationwide - comes into effect this month. Called Writesafe Insurance Scheme, it's underwritten by NZI Insurance. Premiums range from $150 to $600 per annum depending on the cover required. For details, ring Rob Finlayson of the West Australian F.A.W. at Tom Collins House, on (09) 384 4771.

Robyn Friend is back in Tasmania after a community residency with Outback Arts in western NSW. She says that writers in the west of NSW 'are very isolated - even more so that I feel here in Launceston where my only break is the occasional cup of coffee with Tim (Thorne) where we talk flat out about our gripes'. Robyn's latest manuscript 'The Godding of Mrs Lear' - of which she says 'I don't always like my books, but I like this one' - is in the hands of UQP at the moment. 'It's been with them for a while, but I'm in such a state over it, I don't dare ask.'

For Melbourne poet Warrick Wynne, a welcome first: an invitation to read at Montsalvat 1993. 'I loved the atmosphere of the festival and enjoyed the whole experience - though it was a bit intimidating going on after Alan Gould. He'd been working the audience and had them in the palm of his hand, a real professsional.' Wynne's first collection Lost Things [Butterfly Books, 1992] attracted favourable reviews and has sold steadily. 'But that doesn't make it any easer finding a publisher a second time round. The big two [publishers] weren't keen, they've a waiting list of a couple of years.'

Issue 14 of literary annual Going Down Swinging wasn't to hand at the time of writing, but by all accounts it'll be a special, bumper issue of some 200 pages, and the last by founding editors Myron Lysenko and Kevin Brophy who've been the driving force behind the publication since it first appeared in 1980.

'I've lost enthusiasm' says Brophy. 'I was determined to finish with GDS, but I wasn't sure about Myron. I thought he wanted to carry on. I think we played cat and mouse with each other for a while, but when I asked him straight out he said quite definitely, no, I'm getting out.' Each intends continuing with special publishing projects, similar to GDS's recent publication of Nolan Tyrrel's first collection, How To Think.

Going Down Swinging shall continue to appear. The names of Melbourne writers Kerry Loughrey and Lyn Broughton have been mentioned as possible editors.

Chris Mansell's next book will be published by Penguin, in the latest of their series of presenting four poets under the one cover. Besides Chris, the book will feature the work of Tasmanian Sue Moss, Sydney's Coral Hull (now living in Melbourne) and South Australian Jenny Boult. As part of her Community Writer's Fellowship, Chris is involved locally in the production of five plays in the town of Berry NSW where she lives. Which makes her one very busy woman; 'You wouldn't believe how flat chat I am'.

Speaking of Jenny Boult, she will be in Melbourne in July - for the staging of her play 'The Contortionist' directed by Fiona McHugh, July 12 to 25th - and in December for Monsalvat. She mentions that a few years ago, she'd intended to move to Tasmania to live ... 'and I bought some land I'm now trying to sell. You don't know anybody interested in forty acres of pastural property near Huonville, do you? Twelve acres of tall timber, two creeks and two dams?'

Poets Andy Kissane, Jennifer Compton, Heather Cam and Chris Kelen took part in 'Poets on Wheels' (organised by the NSW Poets Union) in March through country NSW, visiting Maitland, Wauchope, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Lismore, Inverell, Armidale, Tamworth and Varuna. John Bennett, a co-ordinator of the tour, says it's one of the Poets Union's biggest efforts to date, and hopes it'll become an annual event. Judging from attendances, the tour was hugely successful. The reading in Wauchope alone drew an audience of 170 and featured Les Murray as a local reader.

Andy Kissane recalls the tour highlights. 'It was a very busy schedule. We rushed from one reading to another, one city to the next, often not eating till midnight before heading back to the hotel and a glass of port. Our audiences were varied: from a mainly hippy Byron Bay lunchtime group of forty or so, to Coffs Harbour and an audience of people mostly in their sixties, to Inverell with a large contingent from a local writing group.'

'Do you know how sometimes when you read you can almost hear people listening? - that was what it was like in Katoomba. In Maitland we managed four encores. And a local in Wauchope read a marijuana poem of twenty-nine stanzas - well writteN, very funny and delivered with lots of aplomb.'

'I think I can safely say both bush and rhyming poetry is alive and well. The problem for country areas is that there's no access to good bookshops where people can see what's being written and published - which is one of the reasons for the Poets on Wheels Tour, allowing for the dissemination of poetry around the country.'

Poetry is alive and flourishing in Wauchope. 'Our readings often draw a crowd of seventy or eighty' says local organiser Trevor Corliss. It's a wide pool though a shallow one, the majority of readers have never been published. Readings are anarchic affairs, yet they happen to fit in with the mood of the area up here at the moment.' A radio station provides publicity and takes half the door, and a local pub provides a room, 'they're more than happy to get the trade over the bar on a Sunday evening.' The Wauchope readings ended in April, and fire up again around September, 'hopefully to bigger, brighter and better things with the occasional poet from Sydney, Newcastle or Armidale', Corliss says.

(Postscript: a Tour Anthology featuring all four touring poets along with local poets from the tour's eleven readings, sells for $7 - from the Poets Union Inc, Box 166, Wentworht Building, University of Sydney, NSW 2006).

Was it poet Lynn Hard seen careering downhill astride a block of ice during a memorable moment at Adelaide Festival?

Recent events in Tasmania have meant there'll be no Salamanca Writer's Festival in 1994. A Festival Committee has been set up, composed of three members of the Tasmanian Writers Union, two members of the Cultural Committee of the University of Tasmania, and two members of the Salamanca Arts Centre. These three organisations shall initially provide the umbrella organisation for the Comittee. Other members shall be: one representative from the Fellowship of Tasmanian Writers, one representative from Island magazine, and one representative from the State Library of Tasmania. The Committee will co-opt other people with expertise in particular areas as and when necessary. March 1995 is being considered as a possible date for the next Salamanca Writers Festival, should funding be available.

Eric Beach has indicated that he'd like to set up a fringe festival in conjunction with Salamanca - involving children's authors, playwrights, script writers, and others who customarily 'miss out' - with Arts Tasmania funding to be sought.

There've been some odd occurrences in Townsville recently. According to Writers in Townsville member Yvonne Crossan, members of the group - following a workshop on how to interview with a tape recorder - ventured into the rainforest to question a ufologist who became convinced one member was a celestial being. And during a second interview, this time with ethnic dancers, one writer dropped a tape recorder on a bare foot. My, how he danced!

Poet Bruce Roberts is currently engaged in a three-month Writer in Residency entitled 'Your Place or Mine'. The residency has taken him to all corners of Tasmania, and deals with the philosophy of land ownership, 'looking at whether land ownership is something that's in your heart or your head, at whether it can simply be ascribed to a piece of paper'.

Roberts' next poetry collection, due out later this year, is to be published by Cornford Press.