Short Story Winners

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This afternoon the winners of the Geelong Writers/Advertiser Short Story competition were announced at a function at the Woodbin Theatre. There seemed to be about a hundred people there as some of us had to stand until an opportunity arose when someone moved out. The winning story was by Dulcie Stone and told from the point of view of a Greek man. We only had a taste of the top stories as the writers only could read for less than five minutes so it was a guessing game where each story would go from there. One story written by a 24 year old young woman was read by a friend because the writer had recently died so that was very touching. Here are some photos from the gig. Smiles for the camera do not tell the whole story. As I chatted with friends and strangers I came to realize how some lives have been changed suddenly by illness or chance. I used to be active in the Geelong Writers organisation as Secretary but passed on the baton to others. Then my writing of short stories and poems fizzled out - losing words - and I went back to drawing and photos. Peceli suggests I gather some of my photos/drawings and place them with some of the shorter poems, or extracts and get a book designed page by page. Perhaps.

Later:
The winning story has been published in the Geelong Advertiser today- Monday January 24th with a photo of Dulcie Stone. It's a great read. The other two winning stories will be published on Wednesday and Friday.

Geelong Writers

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Yesterday was the Annual Meeting of the Geelong Writers which has been going for about twenty years and the new committee members are pictured here. We usually meet in the art studio behind the Shearers' Arms Art Gallery which is an inviting place, though not posh, or as comfy as Beav's Bar where we used to meet. I took a few photos around the place. I was Secretary of Geelong Writers for about ten years but handed over a few years ago (when words started to fail me a bit) and it's good to get fresh ideas. An upcoming event will be at the Geelong Art Gallery with ten responses in words to paintings in the Fletcher Prize exhibition. This is always a very good event. Funding for some of our events comes from the Victorian Writers Centre.

Three poets in Geelong

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Yesterday the Geelong Writers hosted a visit of three women who write very exciting and thoughful poetry; Patricia Sykes, Diane Fahey and Jordie Albiston, all quite different with the focus on healing, family connection or disconnect, the environment, myths, legends, identity and the land, strange true tales. They read from their work then later answered questions from the audience. The Geelong Writers group meets in various locations and yesterday we were at the Shearer's Arms Art Gallery studio so the room was backgrounded with paintings, easels and tables covered in paint!

A sam;ple of their writing: Diane Fahey wrote about Narcissus in her poem 'But First...' and here is one verse.
Support me in those healing waters,
plummet me one depth more than I can bear,
give me aspiration, give me tranquillity;
give me the nerve to fail, the curiosity
to go on nd on and on.

Geelong poets in the library

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I didn't go to the Neighbourhood Watch meeting last night. I really want to pull out of being the editor for the local area newsletter as I'm not really into locks and keys and the kind of articles they want printed. I was asked to help out when their old editor left so I did it for several months. But when we wanted to be pro-active and give citizenship awards to teenagers (instead of complaining about their behaviour) we were told, the schools are outside out allocated streets.

Anyway instead, I went to the Newcomb library where ten local poets were reading after several workshops they participated in. It was a nice evening as I knew nearly all of them from my association wtih Geelong Writers. But why don't they learn to speak up louder! I could hardly hear half of them. Maybe I AM going deaf. Anyway here are two pictures from last night. The poems were thoughful, many sad and touching and some lovely descriptive poems of places nearby. Reading on the page is different from performance and we need both to engage with the text.

Click on pictures to see larger.

A string quartet steals the show

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Perhaps I wasn't quite in the mood for Greek poetry and translation but at the Geelong Writers' recent gig for Pako Festa I enjoyed the music by Ad Astra, the Geelong College String Quartet and I drew one of the violinists as they played Ravel's Pavane.

One of the readers, Richard Kakol, who is blind and used a machine with earphones as his prompt, read some evocative poems he had written about Greenland. His poems are always thoughtful, and visual which is unexpected. Other readings were from Maria Takolander, with references to Finland, and Ouyang Yu who migrated to Australia from China who read some of his personal poems about the transition. When Elias Maniatakis and Andrew Fraser played some boussouki music I wanted to dance but everyone sat stolidly in their seats! Readings of poetry by Sappho and Kavafis and Kolosiatou were read in Greek with some English translation and it was good to hear the different language and guess at the meaning. Polyglots at Pako is an annual event and the theme is always about the celebration of different languages and cultures.

Geelong Writers' Book Launch

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Another book launch, this time our Geelong Writers anthology for 2007, called Tributaries. Over recent years I have helped with editing, layout etc. of several Geelong Writers' books but not this time, and hey, this looks like an excellent read. I sketched some of the serious faces in the audience as they listened intently to readings from the new book.
(later: I've read about a third of the book and there are some strong stories and poems and the collection includes some well-known, experienced writers which is good.)

Writers at the Geelong Gallery

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The newspaper got a few things wrong in the page of pics about our gig at the Art Gallery. We had adjourned to Three Towers bar afterwards. I read my story 'The Babel Tower' there and we had eleven other readers and an audience of about 100.