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“Hi, my name is Annah Faulkner.

I’ll be reading  from the beginning of my new novel, The Beloved, to be published mid 2012 by Picador.

The story opens in 1954, in Melbourne, before moving to expatriate life in Papua New Guinea.

The narrator is six-year-old Roberta.

Mama had eight arms. Like the Indian goddess Kali in my encyclopaedia, her arms were everywhere at once – stirring porridge, flipping toast, pouring milk and dealing butter, marmalade and Vegemite on the worn damask cloth faster than Dad dealt cards.

Through the big kitchen window you could see gum and wattle trees shimmying in the wind. Fat roses, pansies and dahlias painted the fence red, yellow and gold and beyond them the Dandenong Mountains swelled purple against the sky. But it was Mama we watched – Dad, Tim and I. Her name was Lily May but Dad called her Bean, short for coffee-bean, on account of her skin. She wore a blue gingham apron like you saw on ladies in fashion magazines who pulled trays of biscuits from their Early Kooka green enamel ovens. We had an Early Kooka oven with a Kookaburra, but there weren’t many biscuits.

‘I cook because I have to,’ Mama said. ‘Darned if I’ll be a slave to it.’

She tipped porridge into four bowls without slopping even a drop and pushed them across the table. Dad put aside his paper, twirled the imaginary ends of his moustache and sprinkled brown sugar over his bowl while his eyes roamed Mama’s face. ‘You’re a wonderful cook, sweetheart, a great housewife. You run a tight ship.’

‘I’m not a house-wife, Ed’, said Mama. ‘I’m your wife and this isn’t a ship, nor is it one of your ruddy aeroplanes.’

We thought Dad was a dill to call aeroplanes ships but he said all Air Force pilots did. He flew during the war and still said Roger instead of righto and Stand-by instead of wait. Mama said it was time he acted less like Biggles and more like the accountant he was supposed to be.”

ABOUT ANNAH FAULKNER:

Sporadic bursts of poetry and occasional short stories defined Annah’s early writing.

In 1996 experiences from a career in acupuncture prompted her to write a non-fiction manual. This was followed by a humorous biography, Frankly Speaking, which enjoyed considerable success in Australia and New Zealand. In 2007 her story, The Blood of Others, was published by the American literary journal Antipodes.

Earlier versions of The Beloved won the Marian Eldridge Award and the 2007 Longlines Award, beginning her happy association with Varuna. The Beloved was subsequently shortlisted with Hachette and again, through Varuna in 2010, with Penguin. In 2011 it won a Varuna/Pan Macmillan Fellowship and later, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award – Emerging Qld Author category.

The Beloved will be published in July 2012 by Picador Australia

PUBLICATIONS:

Frankly Speaking

“The Blood of Others”, short story in Antipodes, 2007

The Beloved, forthcoming July 2012, Picador Australia

 CONTACT:

alfydoodle@yahoo.com.au

or via Varuna

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form.

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“My name is Mireille Mardaga-Campbell, an archaeologist and writer from North Queensland. I am going to read from La Serenissima, a historical fiction, which was selected for the Varuna/PanMacmillan publishers fellowship.

I found her standing by the window, her head held high, as she gulped in the cool, moist air, with the avidity of one confined too long within solid walls.  She was wrapped in a coat of the deepest indigo, which a long plait of silver hair crossed like a ray of moonshine.  My mother was like Venezia this morning, clad in serenity, waiting for a watery sun to break through.  She did not turn to me when I entered, recognising my step and the rustle of my dress as her eyes had started clouding over, and the world reached her from the end of a long misty tunnel.  But her fingertips and her sharpness of  hearing made up for her failing sight.
‘Allegra, I was waiting for you.’ she said,
A letter lay unfolded on her chair.  She told me that it had arrived from Cathay with the morning tide.  By her side, her wooden chest was open, overflowing with precious silks, red, saffron and midnight blue, through which she had rummaged to reach another of her treasures, a satchel of embossed leather marked with the crest of Pope Innocent.  It held parchments and scrolls that gathered the blemishes of time, and which I had often seen her leaf through or hold on her lap without reading them, her gaze lost inside her memories.  The fine Chinese papers talked to her and she listened like one listens to the hum of the sea inside a shell.
When my mother was with her letters, she was no longer the quiet and mysterious lady belonging to the Polo family.  She was Chinua-dei, Princess of the Mongol.  She was proud of who she was, and in her veins ran the blood of Genghis Khan, founder of the greatest empire in the world, and of a Frankish woman, long dead and whom no one remembers.”

ABOUT MIREILLE MARDAGE-CAMPBELL:

“As an archaeologist, I have always enjoyed writing about the past but it was only when I broke free from scientific writing that I was able to experience the thrills of fiction writing. I found Rukshana, the Afghan woman who became the wife of Alexander the Great and took flight. In 2006 I started a medieval story, La Serenissima, based on the little known journal of a Flemish monk and the memoirs of Marco Polo. Since then, I have written two short stories and worked on a WWII novel. Last month, overlooking an Italian lake, I started a 1970’s retro love story, in French naturellement.

When I visited Varuna for the first time in 2006, it was as part of the Longlines program. This was the first and most important milestone for me as I had finally come out of the closet. All of a sudden I was a writer. Meeting an extraordinary mentor in Varuna’s creative director, Peter Bishop, gave me the confidence and drive I needed to pursue this exciting but challenging career. I returned another three times between 2009 and 2010, winning a short-listing with Penguin and a selection by PanMacmillan as part of the Publisher Fellowships, finding as always mentorship and support from the Varuna people and companionship from all the writers I have met there.”

CONTACT:

Mireille.Mardagacampbell(at)gmail.com
www.mireillemardagacampbell.com

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form.

Click on the arrow above to listen  (In emails: click on the title above)

Hi, my name’s Philip Hammial and I’m going to read a poem from my new poetry collection Detroit, published by Island Press Cooperative in 2012. Dedicated to Alan Sisley the director of Orange Regional Gallery, the poem is called “AND FURTHERMORE”.

AND FURTHERMORE

for Alan Sisley

since there aren’t any postcards in this hospital
I can’t send my friends pictures of:
my swollen testicle (left),
my infected bladder,
my pneumonia,
my mild heart attack.
Red alert: another nurse coming to collect
more unmentionables such as:
blood,
urine,
sputum,
faeces.
Yesterday afternoon Alan stopped by
for a chat about art, in my case:
the art of gritting your teeth when you piss
(because it burns),
the art of squeezing out one small marble
(because I’m constipated),
the art of not vomiting after eating
(because I’m nauseous)
and, by the way, before I forget, there’s the matter
of my art show at Orange Regional, titles & prices
to sort out, etc. It’s a survey show not,
as I keep saying, a retrospective. Apparently
a retrospective is what you have after you’re dead
which, in moments of self-pity, I feel
I might soon be. Anyway,
survey or retro, the head doctor assures me
that I can go to my opening
in a wheelchair, a thin grey ghost
packed to the gills with excrement.

ABOUT PHILIP HAMMIAL:

Born in Detroit in 1937, Philip Hammial migrated to Australia in 1972. To date he has published twenty-three collections of poetry (with two more in the pipeline), two of which were short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize and one for the ACT Poetry Prize. Hammial has represented Australia at six major international poetry festivals and for six months in 2009/2010 was the Australian writer-in-residence at the Cite e International des Arts in Paris. He has also published in 87 journals in nine countries, has been the Editor/publisher of Island Press Co-operative since 1979 and has published 58 titles. As well as being a poet he is a sculptor who has had thirty solo exhibitions and participated in over seventy group exhibitions including two in Paris. He was the director of the Australian Collection of Outsider Art which had 26 exhibitions in five countries.

“Between 1996 and 2002 I attended many Varuna open days and read my poetry at six or seven events. In 1998 I was instrumental in bringing Tanikawa Shuntaro, Japan’s most celebrated poet, to Varuna for a weekend stay. In 2011 I co-ordinated the World Poetry Movement reading at Varuna.” Philip Hammial

PUBLICATION:

Poetry:

 Selected Poems, Puncher & Wattmann, Sydney, forthcoming, 2013

The Beast Should Comply, Flying Island, Macau, forthcoming 2012

Detroit, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW, 2012

Drink from the Animal, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW, 2010

Skin Theory, Puncher & Wattmann, Sydney, 2009

Wig Hat On, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW 2009

Juggernaut, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW, 2007

25 poetes australiens, editor, Ecrits des Forges/Le Temps des Cerises,  Trois-Rivieres, Quebec/Paris, 2006

Sugar Hits, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW, 2006

Voodoo Realities, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW, 2005

Swan Song, Picaro Press, Warners Bay NSW, 2005

In the Year of Our Lord Slaughter’s Children, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford, NSW, 2003

Auto One, Vagabond Press, Sydney, 2000

Bread, Black Pepper, Melbourne, 2000

Black Market (in The Wild Life), Penguin, Melbourne, 1996

Just Desserts, Island Press Co-operative, Woodford NSW, 1995

With One Skin Less, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994

Travel/Writing (with Ania Walwicz), Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1989

Outsider Art in Australia (co-editor), Aspect, Sydney, 1989

Pell Mell, Black Lightning Press, Wentworth Falls NSW, 1988

Vehicles (with Anthony Mannix), Island Press, Sydney, 1985

Squeeze, Island Press, Sydney, 1965

Swarm, Island Press, Sydney, 1979

More Bath, Less Water, Red Press, Sydney, 1978

Hear Me Eating, Makar Press, Brisbane, 1977

Mastication Poems, The Saturday Centre, Sydney, 1977

Chemical Cart, Island Press, Sydney, 1977

Footfalls & Notes, The Saturday Centre, Sydney, 1976

Anthologies:

AU/UA: Contemporary Poetry of Ukraine and Australia, 2011

The Indigo Book of Australian Prose Poems, 2011

The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, 2009

The Best Australian Poetry 2009

The Best Australian poetry 2008

Australian Poets Today: La traductiere, No 26 2008

25 poetes australiens, 2006

Light on Don Bank, 2006

The Best Australian Poetry 2006

The Best Australian Poetry 2005

The Best Australian Poetry 2003

Said the Rat! 2003

The Argument from Desire: The1999 Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology

The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, 1991

The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse,

The New Australian Poetry, 1979

Poet’s Choice 1976-1979

The Best of the Ear in a Wheatfield, 1973-1976

As editor

“Outsider Art in Australia”(co-editor), Aspect, Sydney, 1989.
“25 poetes australiens” (editor), Ecrits des Forges, Quebec, 2006.

Magazine & Newspaper publications:

Australia: Ars Poetica, Aspect, Blue Dog, Carapace, Centoria, Compass, Contempa, Cordite, Dharma, Ear in a Wheatfield, Etymspheres, Famous Reporter, Five Bells, Fling, H/EAR, Heart, Helix, Homebrew, Hobo, Imago, Jossour, LiNQ, Magic Sam, Makar, Mattoid, Meanjin, Meuse, Micropress Oz, New England Review, Otis Rush, Overland, P-76, papertiger (CD Rom), Phoenix Review, Ploughman’s Lunch, Poetry Australia, Poetry Monash, Post Migration, Razor, Redoubt, Scarp, SideWaLK, Siglo, Small Packages, Southern Review, Southerly, Spindrift, Surfer’s Paradise, Syllable, The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The New England Review, The Saturday Centre of Prose & Poetry, Thylazine, Ulitarra, Westerly, Wet Ink, Your Friendly Fascist.

Czech Republic: Babylon, Prague Literary Review.

Egypt: Jossour.

France: Empreint, La Revue Commune, La Traductiere, SUD.

Japan: Kyoto Journal.

Mexico: Excelsior (Arena Literary Supplement).

 New Zealand: Poetry NZ.

South Africa: Carapace, Green Dragon.

United States: Amaranth, American Weave, Artful Dodge, Co-Lingua, Down Here, Formes Poetiques Contemporaines Vol.7; M.O.O.N. Magazine, Nexus, NRG, Snowy Egret, The Antioch Review, The Minnesota Review, The North American Review, The Wooden Head Review, The Wormwood Review, Trace, Unlikely Stories.

Links
John Hawke reviews In the Year of Our Lord Slaughter’s Children in Jacket

Adam Aitken reviews In the Year of Our Lord Slaughter’s Children in Cordite

Martin Duwell reviews Sugar Hits in Jacket

Pam Brown ‘engages’ with Voodoo Realities in Galatea Resurrects

Three poems by Hammial in Jacket

CONTACT:

via Varuna

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form

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“Hi, I’m Dael Allison.

The poem I’ll read is from my series on the iconic Australian painter Ian Fairweather.
Fairweather died in 1974. A wanderer, he travelled through a great deal of Asia and Australia in the 1930s and 40s, painting and living rough. The impetus for him to settle was his epic raft journey, made in 1952 at the age of 60 from Darwin to Timor: 16 waterlogged days on a craft so small he couldn’t stand.

Two notes of explanation:
Fairweather called his craft Lit Bateau, a name stolen from Collette.
Reckitts Blue is an old fashioned laundry whitener Fairweather used as paint.

This poem is based on Fairweather’s painting (Lights, Darwin Harbour ) 1957.

nightburst

men teeter on your edges darwin. strung to night’s ebb-tide filament-tight, cockle eyes attune to nuance of fish, their dangling legs sway to the lurch and wash of wave. you have no authority darwin. your pier lights do not arrest the dark, your static starbursts are as blind as mangrove mud. only prescient larrakia see lit bateau’s shadow slip across the sandbar away from fanny bay and scuttle quick as cuttlefish into the channel’s inky narrative of crocodiles and moonfish, barramundi, bombed ships, downed planes, disintegrating men. your strangling chrome-green, chrome-yellow outpost hell of people scumbles black behind me. wind squalls like a fretful child. water streams fluid as slapped paint out and out the ever-stretching gulf past east point past mandorah beneath charles point’s baleful lighthouse stare. flung like a skipping stone into the timor current, flotsam shadow random arrow sucked into distance, released from land’s tether into rising weather, freed from strangling green and suffocating kind, leaving Australia behind to face the empty seas. and they will be as deep and true as reckitts blue.”

ABOUT DAEL ALLISON:

Poet, essayist and novelist, Dael Allison won the 2007 Wildcare International Prize, 2008 Northern Territory Literary Award for Essay and 2009 LitLink/NRWC Award for an unpublished manuscript (a novel). Her Masters in Creative Arts at UTS (Sydney) interprets, in poetry, the 1952 Darwin to Timor raft trip by artist Ian Fairweather. The  poems will be published by Walleah Press in 2012. Dael will be working in Kiribati, in the middle of the Pacific, for the foreseeable future.

“I am an alumni member and am lucky to have stayed at Varuna three times due to being awarded the 2009 Varuna LitLink/NRWC Award for an Unpublished manuscript (residency Feb/April 2010) and a 2011 Varuna Retreat Fellowship (poetry) (residency in Jan 2012)” Dael Allison

PUBLICATION:

Shock Aftershock, Picaro Press, 2010
Adrift, poems responding to Ian Fairweather’s raft journey, NT Writers’ Centre, 2010
Semaphore Dancing (ed.),2009,Poetry At The Pub, Newcastle anthology
Secrets beneath stones (ed.), 2008, Poetry At The Pub, Newcastle anthology
Heart-weather (ed.), 2007, Poetry At The Pub, Newcastle anthology

CONTACT:

dael@mudlark.com.au

(Note: as I will be out of Australia this will be my only reliable contact for a year or two)

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form

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“Hi, my name is Tamara Pratt and I’m reading from a manuscript that I’ve been working on while staying at Varuna with Marele Day for Crime Week.

CHAPTER THREE

Abigail swung her cherry-red Panamera into the driveway and caught sight of Manny’s handiwork. The veranda rails were freshly finished. The man’s woodturning skills were masterful. Engraved in the horizontal ruts were individual leaves, shaped like the ones you’d find dangling from the branch of a dry eucalypt gum – brittle and scorched from the summer heat. Each hand-carved leaf twisted to a narrow point, the contour resembling a scorpion’s tail: poised, ready for a threat, ready to sting.
Something extra in her Highgate Hill house to make her feel at ease.
There was only one drawback to city living: small parcels of land, little room to move. There were no four-car garages or gated mansions set on hundreds of acres. Here, the houses closed in on hers like night on day, but that’s how she wanted it. She traded the space for the security of knowing there were nosy neighbours, and most lived up to their reputation.
The memories of the fire at Burbank still lingered. Richard had organised the rebuild of their house, but Abigail hadn’t returned. It wasn’t home anymore, not when she’d lost so much. Even her marriage couldn’t rise out of those ashes. The paradox was they had survived; and yet, they hadn’t.
She could hear the scratch and whine of her dogs at the backdoor. Dropping her car keys in the hallway bowl, she meandered through the house, zigzagging around the sofa, the coffee table, past a cabinet. In this house, she took particular care to position her furniture in a non-linear fashion. Harder for an intruder to move around; easier to escape if you owned the home and knew where you had staged an item. A lesson learnt too late in her Burbank property.
She pushed aside the French doors that extended beyond the open plan living room and let in chaos. The dogs leapt at her side, their gangly legs slipping and sliding on the glossy timber floorboards.
“Who’s missed me?” she said, scratching their backs and ruffling their ears. “You want your biscuits?”

ABOUT TAMARA PRATT:

I am an author of short stories, and have a number of credits to my name. I currently have two novels in draft.  My genres are predominantly thriller, crime and suspense, and I  particularly like to create story settings in Brisbane and throughout Australia. I reside in Brisbane with my husband and three children.

“From October 17 – 23 in 2011, I spent a Professional Development in Residency week at Varuna with Marele Day for Crime Week.” Tamara Pratt

 
PUBLICATION:

Various short stories published in USA anthologies.

CONTACT:

tamara@ptpratt.com.au

0423 282 620

www.tamarapratt.com

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form

Click on the arrow above to listen  (In emails: click on the title above)

“Hi, I’m Sheryl Gwyther and I’m reading from my Junior Fiction work-in-progress, FANGUS FEARBOTTOM.”

Chapter 1
I crouch on my window sill above the twilight garden. The mango tree branch is a long way off, the garden path a drop below.
Doubt sends a shiver up my spine. I don’t know anyone else who’s tested the Fourth law of the Great Vampyre Reformation of 1812.
Who am I kidding? I’m not testing, I’m about to break the fourth law.
I wriggle the fear from my toes and stare at the rising moon. If the vampyres of old could leap across space, why can’t we?
My puny leg muscles tighten, ready for the launch.
Five … four … three … two … one …
BANG!
The bedroom door flies open.
‘Stop!’ Mum shrieks.
‘No!’ Dad yells.
I wobble in fright. Then tip forward, clutching at the air. Dad grabs my pyjama shirt and hauls me back inside.
My hearts slides back into place as I straighten my shirt. ‘Phew! Thanks, Dad. I was trying to fly, well, not exactly fly, more like leap. Like the ancient vampyres.’
‘Fan-gus Fear-bottom!’ Dad’s voice wobbles. His face is grey, his moustache droops on either side of his mouth. ‘I’m … I’m … lost for words!’
Mum, unfortunately, has plenty of them. ‘How could you do such a stupid, dangerous thing, Fangus? You know the Fourth Law … You shall not shape-shift nor leap across space. What if the others saw you? They’d report us.’ She’s not talking about our human neighbours. ‘What possessed you to even want to break one of the laws?’
Granny Fearbottom shuffles through the door in her fluffy, bat-face slippers and dressing gown. Batty Bat perches on top of her silver hair. I think Granny must’ve been eavesdropping from the corridor.
She signs out a message with her fingers.
‘What’s she saying, Fangus?’ Dad asks. ‘It’s too fast for us.’
I translate Granny Fearbottom’s flickering fingers. ‘She says I can do it if I really believe in myself. Fly, I think she means. Or leap across space.’
Mum’s face turns red. Granny Fearbottom scuttles back to her bedroom.”

ABOUT SHERYL GWYTHER:

Childhood experiences in north-west Queensland’s dinosaur fossil country inspired my first Junior Fiction adventure novel. Since its publication, I’ve written short stories, magazine articles and plays, and visit schools and libraries promoting writing and books. In 2002, and again in 2009, I received ASA Mentorships and have also benefited from a May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust Fellowship.

“My week at a Varuna Masterclass (under Peter Bishop’s direction) rates up there with them. Brilliant experiences!
It was a fantastic opportunity and I learned so much from Peter’s insightful input. He also inspired me to keep going. I’ve never forgotten his wise words about the difference between ‘the writer’s copy’ and the ‘reader’s’.  It’s why I’m very happy to continue to support Varuna House.”

PUBLICATION:

‘Secrets of Eromanga’ – Lothian Books/Hachette 2006
‘Princess Clown’ – Blake Publishing 2010
‘Charlie and the Red Hot Chilli Pepper’ – Pearson Australia 2010
‘Corn Dolly Dead’ – Black Dog’s Short & Scary Anthology 2010
‘Anansi and the Sky God’s Stories’ – school play, The Schools Magazine 2011
‘Scaredy Crow’ – short story, New Zealand’s schools’ Junior Journal #42 2011

CONTACT:

via Varuna

http://www.sherylgwyther.net

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form

Click on the arrow above to listen  (In emails: click on the title above)

“Hello, my name is Péter Zilahy and you’re going to hear a short excerpt from my novel, The Last Window Giraffe.

Bath time was during the news. Every now and then mother would look in to see if I was all right. Dad was watching TV in the living room. To protect me from the lies they had to know the details. I could hear mother sighing – what a mess I was making, I’m flooding the apartment. I dived down. Under the water I heard a voice telling me what had happened in the world that day: a landslide killed a hundred and fifty people in Bangladesh, a revolution broke out in West Africa, a new kindergarten and an Olympic swimming pool were opened, and MTK beat Fradi 2-1. I had no idea who was sending the messages, or why, but clearly they had plans for me, because they also told me what the weather was going to be like. The following day I could distinguish several voices in the tub, which pointed towards an organization. This manner of communication seemed logical. I couldn’t send them messages, because you can’t talk under water, and they could only get in touch with me without my parents and teachers knowing during my bath time. I didn’t understand why it was so important for the organization that I should have detailed information on the latest war games in Poland, or which Transdanubian towns were being granted city status, but I knew that if I paid attention, sooner or later I’d be given a sign. My life gained a deeper meaning under water. When one Sunday mother was washing my hair and, unsuspecting, she pushed my head into the water, a pleasant female voice whispered in my ear that the harvest had been flattened by hail. I knew immediately what was expected of me, and to be honest, I had no objections: to make a big mess. Even before then, I used to battle submarines and fighter planes in the dark, after going to bed, and sometimes I would end up on the floor, so it was only due to my dogged persistence that in the end the victory was mine. From that day on, I sabotaged the development of our people’s democracy like a busy honey-bee. Earthquakes, power failures and gas explosions marked my way. I would figure out the location of military objectives on the basis of intelligence I received in the bathtub. When a factory or a power plant was inaugurated, I would be there, doing what I had to do. Comecon fiddled at repairs behind the Iron Curtain, little suspecting that a stone was being thrown inside the glass house.”

 Translated by Tim Wilkinson

ABOUT PETER ZILAHY

Péter Zilahy was born in 1970 in Budapest, Hungary, but now lives in Berlin. He is currently Writer-in-Residence at Varuna and will be performing his work at Varuna on Saturday 28th January from 1pm. His prose and poetry are widely translated and he often performs on stage, combining photography and interactive media in his work. His collection of poems, Statue Under a White Sheet Ready to Jump, was published in 1993 and won the Móricz Zsigmond Prize. His dictionary novel, The Last Window Giraffe, was published in 1998 and has since been translated into 22 languages and become a cult novel. It has won multiple awards including ‘The Book of the Year Prize’ in Ukraine, and has been adapted into an interactive CD-ROM and a live stage performance. It directly influenced the Orange Revolution, when activists in Kiev used the book to stage events on the streets. Since 1998 Zilahy has been senior editor of The World Literature Series, first at Jak Books and later at Gondolat Publishers. In 2001 he was a visiting scholar at New York University. He regularly publishes his essays in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in the Tagesspiegel, Die Welt, The Guardian, The Financial Times and most recently in the New York Times.

PUBLICATIONS:

Statue Under a White Sheet Ready to Jump, 1993 (poetry)

The Last Window Giraffe, 1998 (novel)

The Last Window Giraffe CD-Rom

Drei, 2003 (prose)

Three Plus 1, 2007 (several genres)

Der lange Weg nach nebenan, 2007 (theatre play)

Regular essays in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Tagesspiegel,  Die Welt, The Guardian, The Financial Times and the New York Times. Most recently, in January 2012, “The Aftertaste of Goulasch Communism”.

CONTACT:

http://www.zilahy.net/

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form

Click on the arrow above to listen  (In emails: click on the title above)

“Hi, my name’s David Spitzkowsky. I’m reading a piece of short fiction called “Fantasy”.
You want to hear my fantasy?
Here goes: I just disappear into Canada. Since I was eight years old I wanted to do that. Must’ve been the trip to Niagara Falls, all the old photos of those crazies coming over the edge in barrels. After I get way up into the Yukon I stop at this little roadside cafe. The woman behind me won’t stop smoking. I get asthma you know.
‘Would you mind, I’m sorry, I just…asthma…’ Oh holy shit. It’s Joni. It’s Joni Mitchell.

Bloody Joni Mitchell.
I’d had to get out of Canberra and I was leaving on the 7 pm bus to Melbourne. My lover was half the afternoon in his studio with his staple gun listening to Hejira. Again. I was furious. It happened when I was in the shower I guess, when he was cleaning his teeth at the sink and still managing to bang on about Joni Mitchell and about being misunderstood. ‘Do you really think you’re so different to everyone else?’ I asked.
‘At least I don’t think I’m better than everyone else.’ The knife through the shower curtain and both our guts all over the bathroom floor.
I took my doona, I got on the bus. When everyone was asleep I carefully reached up to the overhead rack to get my ham sandwich. I pulled down my bag and unzipped the zipper. Something fell out and rolled away from me: two foot long and eight inches wide, all pink and white tulle. Ribbons and giant orange lace bows for goodness’ sake. I had to scurry down the aisle to get it. On the Pioneer bus in the middle of the night, just near one of those endless turn offs to Wagga Wagga.
Neil had spent hours packing and wrapping me his canto recorder. It’s the sorriest thing I ever owned. Someone once said that the saddest three words in the English language are: it’s too late.

Now Joni’s brash but shy and sensitive so I’m not sure what to say. I decide to pretend I have no idea who she is.
‘I love you Joni,’ it tumbles out of me.
We’re supposed to drive off across the prairie together but it always ends like this.
‘Get a goddamn life,’ she says and turns away.”

ABOUT DAVID SPITZKOWSKY:

David lives in Melbourne still inspired by the triumvirate Patti, Joni and Laurie (Smith, Mitchell and Anderson). Undertaking the RMIT Professional Writing and Editing Diploma and working on a novel, short stories and some non-fiction.

“I came to Varuna on a two week writing fellowship retreat in March 2011 and returned for more words and contemplation in Sep 2011.” David Spitzkowsky

PUBLICATION:

short stories and fiction in Victorian Writer, Page 17, Visible Ink and the upcoming spring/summer edition 21D
CONTACT:

spitzk(at)hotmail.com

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

If you would like to be part of Writer-a-Day submit your application via our online form

Click on the arrow above to listen  (In emails: click on the title above)

“Hi. I’m Meg McKinlay and I’m going to read two poems from my collection, Cleanskin. Both of these were inspired by travels with my young daughter past a cemetery near our house in Fremantle, Western Australia.

and the first is called On Being Agnostic

She’s weeping because Atlantis
is drowned and there are no more
dinosaurs. The earth as they knew it
erased by a comet and these things still
madly orbiting our lives. And all I can give her
is what are the odds?, trace the shape
of an ancestor in a crocodile’s ridge-hard
lines. But hope’s not enough when what you mourn
is a wild meat-eater, a reed-necked
creature. What she needs is the lion
lying down with the lamb, old bodies
made new again, stones rolled away. She’s weeping
because she wants a spiny-backed
brother, because the sun’s light takes eight minutes
to reach the earth and you never know
when you’re already living
on dead time. Every morning, traffic backs up
past the cemetery and there are so many graves,
she says, how can the earth hold them all?
In her dreams, she’s hunting
infinity; my only offering plus one,
plus one.

And the second poem is Ancestor Games

In Hong Kong,
they give you 7 years – no more,
to shake loose that heavy flesh
and settle your bones into the earth,
Then they crumble you into brass,
to spend the rest of your death
squatting on mantels,
blind witness to the living.

In Japan, you find a corner
of the house, sometimes a seat
at the table, compact and sweet:
mandarins are the flavour of death.
And they pause, now and then,
in the midst of their breathing,
to open and close shutters
on the quiet business of the dead.

Here, our lavish bones crosshatch
the suburbs, push skyward
in columns of vehement stone.
Unruly skeletons lay
stubborn claim to acres; we picket
our dead yards, drunk still
on horizons, this luxury of air.

(Here, in this comforting vastness,
we spread our deaths
across all tomorrows,
as if the end of us were also
the end of the world)”

ABOUT MEG MCKINLAY:

Meg McKinlay is a poet and children’s writer, with publications ranging from picture books through to a poetry collection for adults. She lives near the ocean in Fremantle and is an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Western Australia, where she has taught Australian Literature, Japanese, and Creative Writing.

“In 2003 I spent a glorious week at Varuna attending a Residential Masterclass and every year since have made ‘absolutely definitely this year without fail’ plans to return. While life conspires to keep me away, I make do with a photograph on my desk of Varuna’s delightful admonition, ‘Please Do Not Disturb the Writers’. It was at Varuna that I first began to believe that ‘writers’ was a group that might legitimately include me.” Meg McKinlay

PUBLICATIONS:

Poetry
Cleanskin, 2007

Meg’s poetry has also been published in journals such as Westerly, Blue Dog, Famous Reporter, LiNQ and Etchings.

Children’s Books

No Bears, 2011
Surface Tension, 2011
The Truth About Penguins, 2010
Duck for a Day, 2010
The Big Dig, 2009
Going for Broke, 2008
Annabel, Again, 2007

CONTACT:

email : meg[at]megmckinlay.com
website : www.megmckinlay.com
blog: http://megmckinlay.blogspot.com/

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.

Click on the arrow above to listen  (In emails: click on the title above)

Hello, my name is Michael Giacometti and I’m reading an excerpt from Elijah Upjohn, public hangman.

Hanging is a fine art and not a mechanical trade. Is not a man an artist who can painlessly and without brutality despatch another man?

- Charles Duff, A Handbook on Hanging

I come to prepare him & he be ready. It be a little after 9am & he just been brung up to the last room. After this no more room, no more cell. If I be a godly man then I might say diffrent but no god can love him. Hair falls to the bluestone floor, long dark hair from his beard & head. I sharpn the razor & think maybe I can end this early, but I be wantin to do my first job well. Today Im the ringer & I run him over like a prize ram. His skull come up good & shiny. I dont leave no nicks.

I done the measurments & Mister Doctor he help me my sums not bein good. The culprit he says must be weighd evryday so it can be done proper, not messy. He show me this book he keeps writ all fancy with pictures of knots & bones. I grunt at the knots, paw at the pages. I dont tell him I’m unread but he know.

The Doctor be very particlar that it not be messy. He dont want no bruises or cuts. He say it be like crackin a whip. I think it like pullin a black snake from the grass & crackin its neck. A quick death makes good eatin after, the flesh be sweet & tasty.

I like the feel of his shiny bald skull. I be quick, not be suspishus. But I aint felt another for longer than my life is worth. It be so smooth. I can feel the heat risin from the roundness. I take special attenshun to the small dips & lumps, run my finger along the scar above his right ear. It be not less than five inches I can tell even with my eyes closd.

ABOUT MICHAEL GIACOMETTI:

Michael’s fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction have been published in Meanjin, Island, and several anthologies including Fishtails in the dust, How to look after your poet in the event of a cyclone, and Bruno’s Song and other stories from the Northern Territory. His story about Ned Kelly’s hanging ‘Elijah Upjohn, public hangman’ won the 2010 Trudy Graham Biennial Award (Prose). He is a Café Poet with Australian Poetry, and a Clubs & Societies poet with The Red Room Company. Michael is working on his first novel ‘This landscape of failure’ with mentor Melanie Ostell.

“I participated in the Varuna LongLines Community Week, October 2009. A very supportive and constructive writing environment. I yearn to return. To write. And walk in the hills.” Michael Giacometti

PUBLICATION:

close up, beyond (2011, poetry), acquiesce & four other fictions (2010, short stories) both self published and available from the author
CONTACT:

 http://michaelgiacometticafepoet.wordpress.com

In March 2012 Varuna is hosting its inaugural “Doctors Who … ” event. You can view the program and MJA writing competition by clicking here.

Varuna has been funded by the Australia Council to produce a Varuna Writer-a-Day “app”. When we have recorded 365 writers the app will be made available via the iTunes store. In the meantime, if you subscribe to this free blog, you can receive a daily reading delivered to your email inbox which can also be directed to your mobile phone. To find out more about Varuna’s programs, residencies, events and support services for writers click here.