Even if one of my poems (tiger-shells) wasn’t included in the latest issue of extempore  (issue 3)  I’d still be plugging the magazine. Miriam Zolan and her team are doing a fantastic job bringing together and putting out a high-quality journal.

And it’s a hefty one, generally running close to 200 pages, full of poetry, photography, interviews (with current and legendary jazz folks – Joe Zawinul in Issue 3) reviews, essays (Issue 1 included a great critical look at the media’s attitude toward jazz, illustrated by Herbie Hancock’s visit for his last tour.) and fiction on or responding to jazz and improvised music. It’s well worth a read and each issue includes a CD compilation with work from Australian labels.

And of course, poetry! Oft times witty and always highly enjoyable to read. extempore is also open to submissions and is able to pay its contributors.

John Clare in full flight as extempore editor Miriam Zolin reflects.

Wangaratta Festival of Jazz opens with a journal

Yes, the latest – third – issue of the journal extempore has been launched at St Patricks Hall at the opening of the 2009 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz. Mick Nock set the volume on its way and editor/publisher Miriam Zolin looked relieved that it had all come together again.

And what a great edition. The printing and/or stock is not the key ingredient, of course, but it has greatly improved and the images are displayed superbly. Most importantly, there is a feast of reading again and anyone who buys a copy or subscribes will be deeply satisfied.

Zolin read from PS Cottier’s poem The point of Jazz, which was graphic and bloodily warm. Geoff Page read from his work and John Clare ably acted out a little of his verbatim piece “I cutta the balls off”, about becoming a professional writer.

All power to extempore.

After my last post I did get a chance to attend a couple of events at the Melbourne Writers Festival, so here (to make up for a bit of a blogging hiatus), are some recollections and thoughts. Better late than never!

I ended up only attending free events, but I was not disappointed! Though the festival began on Friday the 21st of August, my first event was on the night of Thursday the 27th: The Festival Club. This event, which was on most nights, offered a mixed bag of what the festival had to offer. The main portion of this event when I was there was the SPUNC Reading and Writing Spectacular. SPUNC stands for Small Press Underground Networking Community, for those not in the know, so it was a good showcase of small indie publishers doing great things! Three things stood out that night:

• Affirm Press’s Rebecca Stafford spoke about their upcoming Long Story Shorts: short story collections that they’re currently planning and accepting submissions for. If you’ve got a collection of short stories in your drawer, computer or mind, then you should send something their way. This is a publisher doing a great mix of things, and I’m interested to see what they come up with.
• Sleepers Publishing was represented by author Kalinda Ashton, whose new book The Danger Game had previously failed to entice me, but after hearing her give a reading, I think I might have to check it out. Sleepers is becoming more awesome by the day: they put out a weekly video newsletter, the annual Sleepers Almanac and, recently, The Age Book of the Year, Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam, which I can’t wait to read.
• Finally, I correctly answered a question (“What will Affirm Press’s short story collections be called?” See above!) and MC Angela Meyer rewarded my attentiveness with a copy of My Extraordinary Life and Death, a delightfully hilarious little picture book! Huzzah!

So my night was interesting, informative and I got a freebie!

On Saturday the 29th, I went along with friend and girlfriend to watch that day’s Artist in Residence: the author and illustrator Shaun Tan. If you haven’t seen or read his work, check out The Arrival. It’s a fantastic story about the immigrant experience told without words. And for no price beyond the tram ticket to get there, we could sit in our deckchairs and watch Shaun choose a little doodle from his sketchbook and then turn it into a finely crafted pen-inked drawing of a griffin mother and child, or wax crayon picture of a sinister penguin banker. We could either watch up-close or see his handiwork projected onto a huge video screen. He made it look so simple! He was a friendly guy; he would chat to people and answer questions as he was drawing. He even signed dozens of people’s books purchased from the nearby festival Readings store, including my friends copy of Tales From Outer Suburbia … I really must borrow it someday.

Shaun Tan giving a speech

(Photo by anna_t, under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license)

In our brief chat, I was intrigued to hear that he also did some of the preliminary concept drawings for the animated films Wall-E and Horton Hears a Who and is working on an animated short at the moment. This whole experience just cemented that he’s one of my favourite artists. It was so cool to get a chance to watch and engage as a talented artist created his work. Inspiring stuff! I just wish I could have seen some of the other artists and authors in residence.

Later that evening, I got along to another Festival Club. The Age’s Literary Editor, Jason Steger, was there for a chat. Among the interesting tidbits was his revelation that he read War & Peace in just one day, spread across a couch at home. And he gives it two thumbs up!  Other than that, there was more from SPUNC:

• A representative from Spinifex Press spoke about their new work Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls. It sounds like a comprehensive and important work on a troubling topic. The brief interview gave me the impression that this is a bigger problem than I’d ever suspected.
• Emmett Stinson, who some of you may have had classes with, spoke about Wet Ink, where he’s the Fiction Editor. They were giving away free copies and I managed to bag one. I’ve had a look over a few issues now and it’s a quality publication. I’d like to subscribe once I get a real job as , say, a Fiction Editor?
• There were words with the editor of Extempore, a biannual jazz journal, which actually sounds really amazing, even though I know next to nothing about jazz.
• And Griffith Review, yet another journal that looks intimidating in its greatness. I don’t think I’ll ever have time to read all the snazzy-looking publications out there, thanks to events like this!

All in all, another great day and night at the festival!

My final part in the festival experience was a little bit of The Morning Read on Sunday the 30th, the final day of the festival. This event, chaired by Torpedo’s Chris Flynn, ran almost every morning of the festival and presented three authors reading from their works and fielding questions from the audience. I’d never heard of any of the three, but I was pleasantly surprised:

• Peter Bakowski was first, and he got past my misguided prejudice against the pretentious beret-wearing poet cliche with his gentle, wise and casually talented words and manner. His reading of Portrait of blood floored me. I want to get one of his books already.
• Petina Gappah, a Zimbabwean author, read some short excerpts. I’ll definitely keep her in mind, with her detailed and colourful tales of daily life in Africa.
• I didn’t hear Nicholas Rothwell read any of his work, but he did field some questions. He was so softly-spoken, introspective and thoughtful and used such descriptive language, I assumed he was a poet too. But upon internet research: nope! Journalist for The Australian!

Goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover!

Aaaaaand with that, I think that’s enough literary-related blathering for several weeks, at least on this blog. I promise my next post will be short, pithy, well-chunked and related purely to the interwebs.

In summation: There were so many events I wish I could have made it to, but I’m glad I saw what I did. I feel much more familiar with the festival and know exactly what sort of things I want to get in on early, next year. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see everything I want in 2010!

Beyond that, for anyone else who’s interested, the MWF Website has a roundup of all the blogging that’s been done about this year’s festival, as well as a selection of audio/visual recordings from the programme.

So that should have you covered if you missed out! Anyone else manage to see anything? Don’t let me be a lonely litnerd!

Il weekend è trascorso allegramente tra artisti e visitatori (numerosi ed interessati), risultando un bel momento di svago e di confronto: uno dei tanti ed utili banchi di prova per il proprio lavoro. Vorrei ringraziare l’organizzazione, come ogni anno impeccabile nell’accudire noi stravaganti artisti e nel soddisfare i nostri egocentrici bisogni (nessuno per fortuna è arrivato a chiedere se in cucina avevano avanzato un vitello per metterlo sotto formalina, chi ha orecchie per intendere intenda) oltre che per l’aver ideato incontri e conferenze stimolanti, che hanno sicuramente lasciato il segno in molti dei presenti. Il tempo è stato clemente con noi, altro ottimo segno. Poco altro da dire: ho portato un sunto della mia produzione (che tuttavia è riuscito ad occupare un notevole volume nel mio bagagliaio) che ha riscosso un discreto apprezzamento e confido che qualcuno abbia del tempo da perdere consultando questo blog.

Questa edizione dell’Equinozio mi ha visto impegnato nel campo fotografico, con l’obiettivo di creare un piccolo progetto incentrato sul tema degli artisti all’opera (come recita il motto dell’evento), liberamente interpretato, per cui l’opera è stata intrapresa da artisti molto in erba, ha come oggetto (piuttosto vittima) un artista di fama, e si tratta di un ingegnoso piano di lancio di gavettoni.

During this edition of the meeting I worked with photography, trying to create a small project focused on the working artists (as says the motto of the event), interpreted in a funny way, so the masters at work are really young, and their work of art consists in attacking a famous local artist with an assault of baloons filled with water.

La serie fotografica intera è consultabile online cliccando qui (here is the link to watch the work).

Per ricevere una copia del libro è sufficiente inviarmi una richiesta via e-mail.

To receive a copy of the book, write me an email.

RAIN:Something that comes when you plan
for an outing but never comes at the arrival of
your tutor.

TRAIN:Becomes exceptionally punctual when you are just one or two minute late.

EXTEMPORE:An attempt to make you out of wit.

NEIGHBOUR:Someone who delivers a speech,when you ask an one word answer question.

IDEALISM:A term found only in the dictionary.

COLLEGE-LIFE:Youth breathes its first air of purest existence

EXAM-HALL:The most silent place next to condolence meeting.

MATCH-BOX:Vanishes itself when there’s power
cut.

POOR:Richer in poverty than anybody else.

PENCIL BOX:The best place to keep pocket-money.

The ability to speak spontaneously to an audience, straight from the heart, creates a link between audience and speaker that cannot exist when the barrier of the “prepared script” stands between them.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show “Wishful Drinking”, where Fisher, the actress who created the Star Wars character Princess Leia, sits on an over-stuffed sofa with drink in one hand and cigarette in the other and slightly gravel-voiced (just look how the Princess grew up!), talks about her life with a wit and humour that has the audience crying with laughter.

She has no notes, few props, and no-one to bounce off except the people in the seats before her. She appears to make it up as she goes along, just for us, just for tonight. One long spontaneous speech and the audience love her for it.

Of course, it isn’t spontaneous. We’re witnessing months of writing and rehearsing. It’s her ability to look her audience straight in the eye, and appear to be speaking without the safety net of a prepared script that creates the spellbinding link.

We can do much the same within sections of presentations. We can put our notes aside and depart from our script to speak from the heart so long as, like all the best spontaneous speeches, it’s carefully planned ahead of time!

Imagine yourself standing on one bank of a fast-flowing river. Where you’re standing right now is the start of your note-free speaking, and the opposite bank is where you will return to the script.

Stage one in preparing the speech is to make sure it’s structured to get you across that water nice and dry. Fix in your mind what specific idea it is that you want to  be most clear to the audience.

Focus on that destination. What is the over-riding point to be communicated?

If the destination is clear in your mind, navigating the presentation becomes easier. Challenge yourself with “What do I want everyone in this room to be saying as they leave?” and let that finishing point be represented by the opposite bank of the river. You now have to get your audience there by the simplest route possible.

It’s like the advice given to tight-rope walkers – don’t look down, keep your eyes on where you’re going.

The next question is how to physically get across the river. One approach would be stepping stones you can walk across. Speech-writers call these stepping stones “Divisions”; the individual sections of the speech.

Break the speech down into its logical units and let these individual pieces form a chain of stepping stones. In your mind you are moving from logical stone to logical stone, each step leading towards the opposite bank.

The journey is easier when we can see both how far we have come and the rapidly decreasing distance across the stones to our destination.

Through division of content into reachable stepping stones, which can be memorized, actors like Fisher can get from one end of a two-hour show to the other.

For the rest of us there is no reason we shouldn’t stretch ourselves to a similar section in our next presentation. Even just five minutes of this direct, note-free speaking will make a big impact. Consider politicians when, in a televised speech, they “step away from their prepared text” for just five minutes. Which bit makes the headlines? The spontaneous bit.

One final point. There is no surer way to make sure everyone knows you’re speaking off-the-script, than to tell them that’s what you’re doing! A Roman writer on oratory observed:

“observations please better when they appear conceived on the moment, and not brought from home, springing from the subject itself as we are discussing it. Hence the expressions, “I had almost forgotten,” “It had escaped me,” “You aptly remind me,” are by no means ill received.”

He is recommending us to underline moments of spontaneity with small statements that point out what we’re doing, emphasizing the spontaneous nature of the moment, just in case anyone has missed it!

Spontaneity from the heart best wins the crowd when it is pre-planned from the brain!