1 - Eureka Street

More documents

Recommendations

Info

C OMMENT: 1A magazine of public affairs, the artsand theologyPublisherMi chael H. Kell y SJEditorMorag FraserConsulting editorMic hael McGirr SJAssistant edito rJon GreenawayProdu ctio n assistants:Paul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes,Catriona Jackson, C hris Jenkins SJ,Paul Ormonde, Tim Stoney,Siobhan Jackson, Dan Disn eyContributing editorsAdelaide: Greg O'Kell y SJBrisbane: Ian Howells SJPerth: Dea n MooreSydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer,Gerard WindsorEuropea n co rrespondent: Damien SimonisEdi torial boa rdPeter L'Estrange SJ (chair),Marga ret Coady, Marga ret Coffey,Valda M. Ward RSM, Trevor Hales,Marie joyce, Kevin McDonald,Jane Kelly IBVM,Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJBusiness manage r: Sy lva na Sca nnapi egoAdvertising rep resentative: Tim StoneyPatronsEureka Street gratefully acknowledges thesupport of Colin and Angela C
libraries. Part of the secret is to have a peppering ofbig names. This year the drawcard is Ruth Rendell,whose visit is funded by two publishers, the BritishCouncil and the festival itself. 'She'll fill any hall sowe'll do anything to get her,' ays Clews. Some of thebig nam es, however, are notoriously elusive.'Every year, for many years, we've sent a letterto Susan Sontag saying please come to the nextfestival. She's written back saying she couldn't possiblycome on only twelve m onths' notice. So w e gotclever and invited her to come in two years' time.She tol d us that she couldn't possibly plan so farahead.'Clews has also been keen to attract IsabelAllende.'Apparently she m akes decisions based on herdreams. So her publishers sent her a great delivery ofAustralian fluffy toys, thinking that if she went tosleep with a stuffed koala sh e might dream ofAustralia and com e h ere.'Brisbane's Warana Writers' Week, also held inOctober, is not similarly laced with overseas visitors.According to its director, Wendy Mea d, Warana simplyhasn 't got access to the support that would makethis possible. 'We don't get much h elp from the publishers because they are mostly based in Sydney andMelbourne, ' she says.'There is another side, however. They must beaware down south that most of the young literary prizewinners come from Queensland. Three of the last fourVogel winners are from here. We're proud of our regionalwriters and are quite consciously celebratingthem.'When Mead took over the 1994 program , shebrought to the job 20 years' experience in arts administration.She is aware of a challenge in maintainingthe relaxed atmosphere of Warana while keeping visitingwriters on their m ettle.Australian writers' festivals steer a middle coursebetween the two styles which predominate overseas.At the Toronto festival, apparently, writers wait backstagebefore the curtain rises and they go out to do areading like a singer performing an aria. The readerand writer don' t intersect . But there are otherextrem es: Clews found himself this year at the celebratedHay-on -Wye festival in England and wasastonished at how slap-dash it was.'We sat in badly erected tents which were blowingeverywhere in an English summer ga le. TheWomen's Institute had spelt out "Hay-on-Wye-Literary-Festival"in ivy across the back of the tent.' Clewesmight have added what Eureka Street's editor learnedwhen sh e visi ted it this year: Hay-on-Wye has a fewproblem s adapting to the literary tourists. The 'foreigners'who descend in their thousands to spend timeand money in this tiny village with its famous bookshopsare treated like carriers of a mild form of BlackDeath, and quarantined, as far as possible, in thewindy tents in the paddocks. Don't bother asking thelocal fo r directions!Australian festivals, by contrast, are amiable,often casual occasions. 'We're trying to bring readersand writers together in a way that makes them bothhappy,' says Wendy Mead.Many people do com e to gawk at their favouritewriters. But there's more. Clews says that people whocome for facile reasons som etimes make importantdiscoveries.He speaks of the difficult but important task thisyear of devising panels that deal with history, withthe responsibility of writers and the interplay betweenfact and fiction. These are issues that continue to burn,both in n ewspapers and in books.•Michael McGirr is Eumka Sueet's consulting editor.C OMMENT: 2D OROTHY L EEMissing the pointIT WAS A WARM wee OMc lot " cold Ftidoy night inwinter. A procession of wom en escorted the Professorin. When she reached the front of the hall, a folk-singersang a welcome and a dancer danced, celebrating women's spiritual and theological awakening-an awakening symbolised in the unassuming figure ofElisabeth Schl.issler Fiorenza, Professor of Divinity atHarvard Divinity School, and author of In memory ofher:A feminist theological reconstruction of clJiistianorigins ( 1984), now a classic of ch ristian feminism.After such a beginning, the lecture itself was ananti-climax: prosaic and hard work. The audience,m ainly women, filling the large lecture theatre of thePharmacy College and spilling upwards to the balcony,listened with grave attention, wending their waythrough long sentences, heaped-up
Page 2 and 3: ~ LORETO ~ ,~ , ~~,:: : 11,;: , Hal
Page 6 and 7: ca tive structures of oppression',
Page 8 and 9: LettersHate mailFrom Noel TurnbullP
Page 10 and 11: haves and have nots which make secu
Page 12 and 13: Vi EWPOINTNeither a borrower,nor a
Page 14 and 15: AN OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE & WORK INANO
Page 16 and 17: Home truthsL '" "'" MOOCconfirmed c
Page 18 and 19: T HE CAROLINE CHISHOLM S ERIES : 9G
Page 20 and 21: I suspect too that the bishops eta]
Page 22 and 23: their experience. The Church would
Page 24 and 25: REPORTJiM D AVIDSONScholars on the
Page 26 and 27: Gareth Evans, above,on another occa
Page 28 and 29: Speaking in 1965 of Dr Evatt's term
Page 30 and 31: gardcd as a procedural question) an
Page 32 and 33: At San Francisco, Evatt was acutely
Page 34 and 35: PoETRYIllacera to spiri toThe Tenor
Page 36 and 37: Mrs Laszlo's torteAs A CH'W I WAS A
Page 38 and 39: I understood Mrs Laszlo from The Sc
Page 40 and 41: THE CHURCHT , o"co"" mSOME LETTERS
Page 42 and 43: STORYTREVOR HAYSome desolate shadeI
Page 44 and 45: and laugh with his strutting aboutl
Page 46 and 47: P OETRYJACK HlBilERDEigh t poems fo
Page 48 and 49: BOOKS: 1P ETER STEELESouthern light
Page 50 and 51: and without too much irritatingecon
Page 52 and 53: BooKs: 3JIM D AV IDSONA timely life
Page 54 and 55:
BooKs: 4R AY C ASS INGoody GoodiesL
Page 56 and 57:
confronts Kafka with images fromhi
Page 58 and 59:
teen life: substance abuse (specifi
Page 60 and 61:
One's old manD'Artagnan 's Daughter
Page 62 and 63:
Show 'n' hell timeI ST AS OTHER RWG
Page 64:
&Aurora BoolzsSpecial Book OfferAus
show all

1 - Eureka Street

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?