Uncategorized

Guest Post from our Writers’ Group

4 Comments

The following excerpt is from a novel, as yet unpublished, by a member of Waverley Writers of F.O.W.L. Maureen would appreciate feedback from readers of this Blog. Please add any comments in the ‘Comments’ section, or on Facebook. wikipedia. Colorado Springs, Colorado. EvanS THE ROCK by Maureen Mendelowitz There is a rocky ledge that leans over the sea at Llandudno. It juts out on three sides, exposed to the changing shades of ocean and sky, the blues, the greys, the oranges and reds of sunset, and the pale violet hues of early dawn. It is a hidden place. A steep flight of steps hewn from rock leads down from the road to a pristine crescent of white beach. At the far end a pile of huge boulders are piled and lean haphazardly, one against the other. The rock is beyond the boulders. It is comfortable, flat and smooth. Below is nothing but the wide ocean – above, the wide skies. The sunrise sometimes bathes it in crimson hues, and sometimes it is fiery in the red flames of sunset. But in the dark of night its surface hardens in the glittering sparkle of stars and the moon etches its compact layers in a strong beam of white light. The rock is difficult to find. There are only small spaces and narrow crevices to crawl through – a secret rock – hidden behind an ominous outcrop of huge boulders that signals the end […]

Read More →

BIRTHDAY LETTERS

TWO WRITERS ON DAFFODILS

4 Comments

DAFFODILS – A poisonous flower, a harbinger of Spring, a Poet’s Muse? Below are two takes on these flowers, from Ted Hughes, where they symbolise his lost love, to Helen O’Neill, who has written a Biography of the Daffodil. Daffodils We piled their frailty lights on a carpenter’s bench, Distributed leaves among the dozens – Buckling blade-leaves, limber, groping for […]

Read More →

Elana Ferrante

Ferrante Fever

6 Comments

The Neapolitan Novels: what’s all the fuss about? I’m into the third of the quadrilogy by this mysterious writer, and finding it repetitive, clichéd, and, to be honest, boring. It seems to me  standard chick-lit dressed up with some social history.  Apart from being set mostly in Naples from the fifties to the present time, these novels differ little from standard soap opera fare. I admit to feeling disappointed with the endless detailed descriptions of Lenu’s and Lila’s every mood, move and thought. The plot moves slowly, ever so slowly, which to me is rarely a problem as long as the novel brings to life characters with whom I can identify and care about. I’m afraid this is not the case here. I’ve listened to a talk by a Professor of Italian Literature, who praised the book for its scope and honesty. I asked her about the translation: was it true to the text? Yes, she assured me, Ann Goldstein is a consummate narrator, mirroring the author’s original Italian as closely as possible. So one can’t blame the translator for the slow pace, romantic clichés, and unnecessarily complicated cast list. Ferrante (not his/her real name) writes under  a psoudonym ‘to protect her family’s privacy and ward off her inner censor’. (London Review of Books, 8 January 2015). In one of the author’s rare statements, she/he says that personal publicity would defeat the aim of hr novels, which unlike today’s fraught attempts […]

Read More →

CAPRICCIO

Sylvia’s Last Letter

Leave a Comment

  What do you think Sylvia might have written in that last letter? Sylvia Plath’s last days have been well documented, again and again giving us the same facts in the various non-fiction biographies. We know she wrote a letter just before she died, and asked her downstairs neighbour for stamps.. The letter, if it was found, has never been disclosed. […]

Read More →

SYLVIA PLATH

Ted Hughes and the Muse

Leave a Comment

  Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath In his his introduction to ‘Poetry in the Making’, the then Poet Laureate of Britain had the following words of advice for those of us whose passion is Writing, be it poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction, or something in between: Do you relate to these words? ‘You write interestingly only about the things that genuinely interest you. This is an infallible rule.. in writing, you have to be able to distinguish between those things about which you are merely curious –things you heard about last week or read about yesterday- and things which are a deep part of your life… So you say, ‘What part of my life would I die to be separated from?’ –Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making ‘It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions in the head and express something – perhaps not much, just something – of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are.’-Ted Hughes   Dina Davis Convenor Randwick Writers’ Group 📚 0418 115748

Read More →

Travel

Farewell Fiji: a salutary tale

Leave a Comment

Flood in Nadi, April 2016 Have just returned from Fiji, where cyclones, floods and fierce storms are the order of the day. The locals on the beautiful island of Viti Levu  greet each new disaster with equanimity, surveying the damage and getting on with the job of repair as if it’s just another day. Their positive attitude leaves no room for railing against the fates; such courage in the face of adversity puts to shame those of us privileged first worlders who complain of a shower of rain. We visited the village of Vadra Vadra, near Ba, and were treated like royalty by my brother-in-law’s family. No sooner had we arrived, in stifling 40deg heat, than his mother and aunt set about cooking us roti and curry on a little kerosene stove. Friends and relatives in Sydney donated clothes, bed linen and other goods to this and another village, to replace those lost in the recent Cyclone Winston. Two days before we were to leave the rains came, and with the rise of the rivers our access to the airport in Nadi was blocked. Until, that is, my valiant son-in-law hired a 4wd truck. After missing two flights, we set off at 5am and against all advice drove through raging floods in Sigatoka,  to reach the airport. We’d never have made it without the guidance of a local man who needed a lift, and proceeded to point out where the water […]

Read More →

WRITING

Approaching a literary agent

Leave a Comment

Australian Literary Agents’ Association Finding an Agent I’m a writer. How do I bring my work to the attention of a literary agent? First, read the information and advice on this page. You may wish to print it out for future reference. It is about three printed pages long. Second, look up a suitable agent from our list of member agents (click on the tab marked ‘Members’, above, to see the list), and phone them to check that they wish to see your work. Phoning first saves time and expense, because some kinds of writing are not of interest to some agents. Screenplays and plays are only dealt with by agents who specialise in that area, for example, and some agents may not wish to deal with children’s writing, and so on. Third, if an agent wants to look at your writing, they will generally ask you to post a copy of a one-to-two-page synopsis of your book, together with copies of some pages from one or two sample chapters (up to a maximum of fifty pages total), to their office. They usually do not want to see the whole work at first. Please note: send copies, not the originals. Always keep the originals in a safe place. Agents cannot be responsible for loss of material. Here are some further points to note. Please read them all carefully — it is very difficult to recover from an inadvertent bad first […]

Read More →

ASSIA WEVILL

Assia the Artist

Leave a Comment

Few people know that Assia Gutmann Wevill was an accomplished artist in her own right. She painted brightly coloured miniatures of birds, fish, and flowers, and gave them to friends. She also drew the illustrations for many of Ted Hughes’s works. Sadly these have not survived As well as her talents in the visual arts, Assia was a gifted translator. […]

Read More →