Kim Goldberg, Winona Baker, Mary Ann Moore
Photo © David Fraser

Here we are… blinded by the lights of our own fame and glory. The 3 Wordstorm prize winners from Tuesday night at Demeter’s Coffee Vault in downtown Nanaimo: Kim Goldberg (2nd prize), Winona Baker (3rd prize), Mary Ann Moore (1st prize).

Thanks to David Fraser for taking the photo and for organizing Wordstorm all these years! This was the last Wordstorm of the season. Wordstorm will return in September on the last Tuesday of each month at The Vault. Deets here: 
http://www.wordstorm.ca/

Personal Mythology of Organic Poetry 

with Seattle Poet Paul Nelson

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This is an entertaining workshop for serious writers of all levels of experience, led by Seattle poet Paul Nelson. The four-hour session includes lively discussions and sound from interviews with poets McClure, Myles, Rothenberg, Ginsberg, Waldman. Through a series of intensifying creative writing exercises, you will develop an understanding of your own personal mythology and write at that deeper level of consciousness using spontaneous writing exercises and prompts. This workshop takes participants to a deeper level in their writing that can be intense, but extremely liberating.

Paul E. Nelson is a poet, broadcaster, interviewer, author of Organic Poetry and A Time Before Slaughter, and founder of SPLAB and the Cascadia Poetry Festival.

Reserve your seat in this special Organic Poetry Workshop with Paul Nelson through David Fraser/WordStorm Society of the Arts: ascentaspirations@shaw.ca

 Jeremiah 1:6 “Then said I: “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.”

 God’s calling always goes to those who least expected it. Divine assignment is not reserved for the qualified, the wise, the strong, or the rich. God’s chooses, and works through the insignificant and unrecognized individual in the society. More often than not, the initial feelings of people that receive God’s call are always that of inadequacy. Even when God chooses the so called qualified person, He does not use him for what he is qualified for. He does this so that your confidence does not rest in your qualification, but in the Lord who has called you. When Jeremiah received God’s call, he was surprised, because he felt; there are better candidates in town, qualified adults, eloquent in speech and excellent in communication. Jeremiah said, “AH Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.”

 I have learnt that God never bends at men’s reasoning and logic when He calls, because His decision to use you was made in the womb of eternity, before you were formed in the womb of your mother. Your excuses will only stand as a confirmation that you are the man for the assignment. Get ready; because there is a kingdom demand on you. God is not going to change his mind until you embrace His call. The good news about God’s call is that He never makes a demand on you without adequate supply of what it takes to fulfil it. What God requires from Jeremiah is what He requires from you, OBEDIENCE. “Whatever I command you, you shall speak.” I pray that every contention and confusion about God’s call in your life shall be settled this month, in the name of Jesus Christ.

This statement was released by the Holy Spirit through Bildad, one of the friends of Job, in his attempt to comfort Job during his season of affliction. This statement implies that Job was familiar with laughter and accustomed to shouts of joy. The Holy Spirit was therefore assuring Job through this word that laughter shall not be taken away forever, and the shouts of joy will soon be restored in the house of Job. It assures Job that God has not finished with him; because He is getting ready to fill his mouth again with laughter. God is very thoughtful of us. He never leaves us without a word; He knows our pain, disappointment and expectation. He does not condemn us, but rather comforts us in our pain.  This word actually came to fulfilment in Job’s life; his affliction ended and there were shouts of joy and laughter in his house again.

 Now this statement is coming directly to you, and it is the word from the Lord for you this month of November. You may not have experienced what Job experienced, but God is saying, I will once again fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.  The Holy Spirit is saying, you will laugh again, you will shout for joy. There shall be seasons of rejoicing in your household. There is hope to anyone that is connected to Christ. Nothing lost, is ever lost forever where Christ reigns. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. I hear the Lord saying, your morning begins now, your night is past, and this is the dawning of a new season in your life. This month you shall drink from the river of God’s pleasures and you shall experience gladness, joy and laughter throughout this month in Jesus’ name.

When a man is endowed with power, possession and position, he must not forget that he is not the owner, but a steward. John the Baptist said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.” There is nothing we can boast of in the sight of the Lord, He owns everything and He has entrusted it to us. It is therefore important that in our dealings with one another, our possession, position and power must not be employed to oppress, impress, or harm, but to help and be a blessing to others. It is written, “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.” That sums up God’s purpose for His gifts in our lives.

 Laban did not have a sense of stewardship, he talks as if the power belongs to him, he says “it is in my power to do you harm.” Such statement must not be heard from the righteous no matter the height of provocation, because it moves the Almighty God to defend the oppressed and fight the oppressor.  While Laban was devising his strategy in the night, the real Owner of the power came to him to sound him a warning. The Lord said to him, “Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad. Remember! He gave you everything on trust; you cannot use it to destroy. We must come to a personal decision that our mouth will not be used to curse anyone, because our mouth is a gift from God to bless, encourage, comfort, edify and strengthen God’s people. No matter what happens, our tongue must come under divine restrain. We must not fall into the error of Laban, we must not use anything that we have, or that we are, to harm a fellow brother or sister but rather, to help and bless.

So far I’m having a ball – I’ve met so many wonderful writers, teachers, librarians and little reading rabbits. These festivals are put together by an amazing group of people who love books and the kids who attend are wonderfully enthusiastic. On the flip side, sleep is suddenly hard to find and I’m living out of a suitcase, but that’s kind of an adventure in itself.

If you want to catch me over the next few months, I’ll be doing talks and workshops and readings at the following places:

• Aug 8th: Voices on the Range, Toowoomba based youth literary festival
• Aug 20th-24th: Book Week, at various school around Brisbane and Toowoomba
• Sept 5th-9th: Brisbane Writers Festival, both WordPlay and the adult program
• Sept 11th-13th: Write Around Qld, an amazing program organised by the BWF that tours children’s authors around regional Qld
• Sept 14th-16th: Cairns Tropical Writers Festival, kid’s and adult program
• Sept 29th: Brisbane launch of Brave Squish Rabbit, at Black Cat Books
• Oct (date TBC): Melbourne launch of Brave Squish Rabbit
• Oct 28th: Making Picture Books Workshop (for adults) through the QWC
• Dec 27th-31st: Woodford Folk Festival, kid’s program

Here’s a photo diary of the festivals and such that I’ve been involved in this year that have already slipped by:

May: Darwin Writers Festival (WordStorm) where I did a number of school visits and adult writing workshops and didn’t get eaten by crocodiles

June: Out of the Box Festival, which celebrates children’s books in big circus tents by the Brisbane river

July: CYA Conference, for adult writers of children’s and YA lit. I’m posing with the delightful Penny Whitehouse in front of Craig Smith’s playful illo

July: Setting up for the Brisbane Square Library ‘Journey of a Book’ Exhibition

July: Squish Rabbit glass cabinet display at the Brisbane Square Library

July: Whitsunday Voices, Mackay youth literature festival. Dave Hackett did awesome caricatures for all the presenters (which were very accurate – I think he had secret intelligence on us all…)

July: Whitsunday Voices – life sized bird-monster I drew with the help of some creative kids in an illustration workshop

July: David and I with Peter Carnavas at the launch of his latest picture book, the delightful ‘The Children Who Loved Books’

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But I wont be able to convince you it’s all just work. Here’s some evidence that relaxing happened too…

Beach and sunset in Darwin. There may also have been wine…

Post festival breakfast on my parent’s back deck in Mackay

There were book launches, and writers reading their works under the trees in Civic Park (of course, I didn’t think to take photos at the time, so you will have to just imagine lots of white chairs, a café tent, a microphone and people reading and listening)

and in the Town Hall ruins (imagine a marquee, with more chairs and people).

Brown’s Mart Theatre hosted discussions on all sorts of literary topics, as well as housing the comedy debate on Sunday night

and the rehearsal space out the back provided space for writers to hone their skills in a series of writing workshops.

There were literary breakfasts, lunches and afternoon teas, typewriters where you could start a story for someone else to finish, and a raft where you could pin your poetry to the sail. Sadly for me, I only realised the festival was on a few days beforehand, so I didn’t get to go to as many things as I would have liked.

As a New Zealander at an Australian writers’ festival, I didn’t always know who they were talking about, and to be honest I had never heard of any of the writers who were there, but I saw that as a good opportunity to find new authors to read.

I have already found a copy of Alex Miller’s ‘Lovesong’ in a book exchange.

One of my favourite authors at the festival was Marie Munkara, a local Indigenous writer whose book, ‘Every Secret Thing’ won the David Unaipon Award in 2008, and the Territory Read NT Book of the Year Award in 2010. The book is full of stories of her family’s experiences in the mission on Bathurst Island. I had the opportunity to listen to her reading one of the stories, and it was warm, funny and genuine, much like the author herself.

Dymocks had a tent at the festival, and I really wish I had bought her book and asked her to sign it for me.

Even though I only managed to make it to a few events, there were lots of highlights. These included a poetry performance by Emily Zoey Baker; Sophie Constable’s work in progress about an alternative history where Stalin dies before he is able to do any harm; Ali Cobby Eckermann, Lionel Fogarty and Marie Munkara’s discussion of Indigenous literature; and the concept of Women of Letters, a series of events involving afternoon teas and penwomanship, dedicated to the dying art of letter writing. They had a Women of Letters event at the Festival but that was one of the things I missed, unfortunately.

The final event of the Festival was the comedy debate, and Aaron and I both went to see it (I managed to get him to one panel discussion, and to listen to a couple of people reading, but it wasn’t really his thing). The topic of the debate was that “Sonnets are better than sex”. The affirmative team, consisting of poets Ghost Boy and Joelistics, and playwright, Mary Anne Butler, took the title over the negative team, Sandra Thibodeaux, Ryan van Winkle, and Gail Evans, who really should have had it in the bag, I thought! There was discussion of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, cunning linguists, the Van Morrison clause (a comparison of Van Morrison’s poetry versus physical appearance that frankly I kind of wish I hadn’t heard), and references to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee?” from both sides. Even Aaron laughed out loud a few times.

It was a great evening out, a stimulating and engaging weekend, and yet another reason to love Darwin to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach!

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