Adelaide Festival Writers' Week wrap-up

The Women's Memorial Garden of Writers' Week has become a sylvan venue.

The tents are gone. Not only does it look so much nicer as a broad jigsaw of pleasant blue shade cloths, but it accommodates so many more people and it never feels too crowded.

Breezes flow freely and the greenery of the garden tree scape prevails.

The glory of stick designs backing the stages and welcoming arrivals from King William Road are reiterated. They were much admired last year and they add an art element which is interesting to the eye.

There are still a few tents, of course. Those twig artworks adorn the central roof spaces like chandeliers in the book tent which, long and airy, has its trestles so laid out that browsing space is entirely amenable.

There is another tent for caterers and the service area, some compounds working as loo blocks and the Green Room and some very special areas devoted to children.
Children swarming around the place are the new weekend face of Writers' Week.

 
As one sat in the morning sessions, listening to writers and pondering the fruits of thought, the eye was caught by periodic parades of vivid little ones - happy children flapping huge multi-coloured silken wings or dragging silken dragon tails. They have their own imagination corner, their own storyland, and their own book sections. Tomorrow's literary market is learning to love the word and rubbing little shoulders with some of the influential authors of our time.

It is just so beautiful and so right.

Meanwhile, those influential authors were pleasing their public no end.

People arrive really early at Writers' Week to ensure the best seats in the mornings. The first session is at 9.30am, the last at 5.30pm. Tables and chairs for dining, sipping coffee and wine away from the two stages make it quite possible to hang out for the whole day and many, luxuriously, did so.

Laura Kroetsch and the Writers' Week advisory mob spread the net wide for 2014 so throughout the week, there were delectable offerings for every literary appetite and an ample flow of unhurried people. However big the drawcard, there were always places to sit and hear, even if it meant filching a chair or two from the other stage.

Margaret Drabble was the superstar opener event. Seasoned, prolific and immensely admired, she packed 'em out.

Her rival later in the day was American Elizabeth Gilbert of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ fame. She has written a very different work, this time fiction with an historical background called The Signature of all Things Gilbert. The readers were keen to know of both incarnations of her writing and she turned out to be a vivacious and engaging performer.

Early in the piece, it was Gabrielle Carey, one-time partner with Kathy Lette in ‘Puberty Blues’ and the ‘Salami Sisters’, who drew the morning crowds to the Western Stage. Her latest book is a memoir called ‘Moving Among Strangers’ and it extrapolates upon her family's associations with the great Australian novelist and poet Randolph Stow. So, her session had not only star quality but an intriguing altruism, for Carey is a powerful advocate for the country to re-discover Stow and to recognise that he is up there with Patrick White, if not aloft. UQP has reissued some Stow works and they, along with Carey's gentle and thoughtful works, sold fast in the book tent.

Not everything was about higher thought, however.

There was one shit writer. Vet and scientist David Walter-Toews held forth on Poop - Past Present and Future as he talked to Chair Paul Willis about his book, ‘The Origin of Feces - What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology and a Sustainable Society’.  The subject attracted much interest among gardeners and cooks as well as scientists and all those interested in sustainability. Some later described the session as "hot shit". Unusual terminology at Writers' Week, but forgiven in the context.

War remained a strong theme and, here came yet another demographic. Even the Governor, Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce, was seen to have popped in from next door to listen to sessions on war history - notably that of Paul Ham, one of the world's leading authors of popular war history books. His session became just a bit edgy when he targeted the arrogance of academic war historians in their attitude to his genre. His chair, Clare Wright, just happened to be an academic engaged in war history.

Many people had not heard of American novelist Rachel Kushner. Unprepared for a hot Adelaide day, she turned up in black boots and long frock for her session beneath the dappled sun shades. All she had to do was to read an extract from her latest book, ‘The Flame Throwers’ and people started planning a dash to the book tent. She was the "discovery" of Writers' Week for many.

The word went out on Twitter.  Before each session, the chairs reminded audiences that the Twitter hashtag was #adlWW. Phones were turned to silent, but they were busy and a fine record of the week's event was broadcast.

Mandy Sayer provoked a few lively Tweets when she expounded on her life, subjugated and increasingly psychologically disturbed, as ‘The Poet's Wife’. Her memoir pulls few punches and the audience was fascinated by its potential legal minefield. Sayer assured all it had been well legalled. She also pointed out that "The Poet" was an American and her first husband. Her current husband, Australian author and playwright Louis Nowra, is entirely dissimilar.

Among the poets this year, it was Geoff Page who won hearts and minds. He is a Canberra-based poet with a bent for jazz music. Many had not heard of him but, on hearing his poetry read aloud, rushed off to buy the books.

Politics and love, crime and religion all took their place in the line-up. One could not cover it all. But the choices were there.

There were no notable scandals or misadventures, no last-minute cancellations, no great dramas to hit the gossip grapevine - unless it be that Gabrielle Carey forgot to bring her own book to the event and rushed into the book tent and paid full price for a new copy.

It was a joyful event. A great success. Very Adelaide.

Samela Harris

 

Photography by Martin Christmas