Editorial 'fourW thirty-four'

 

Editorial   fourW thirty-four

David Gilbey, Editor of fourW and President, Booranga Writers' Centre

Language played  huge part in the recent unsuccessful Voice Referendum – Indigenous and non-Indigenous language, political and legal language, television, radio and social media language, crowd-rallying and door-knocking language – it was a Babel of competing voices, cacophonous and contestatory. Maybe 2023 Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Shankari Chandran was prophetic in Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens when one of her protagonists writes, pseudonymously in a much-followed social media post about a challenge to ‘mainstream’ Australia’s idea of what it means to be Australian: ‘… It reminds us that we are all immigrants on stolen land …’

I’m writing this editorial from Japan, having just attended the 17^th Japan Writers Conference in Nagoya where, at the declaration of the Voice Referendum’s ‘No’ vote many delegates expressed surprise: an American quipped, “Welcome to Trump Towers!”; a Brit added, “Just like Brexit!” and a Japanese poet asked wryly, “Are Australians racist, too?”

The language of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, like the Voice referendum itself, invites Australians to ‘walk in two worlds’ – something ‘we’ were unable to do, so ‘we’ said ‘No’. The Statement’s language is multi-layered, mixing poetic, legal and political registers: maybe the rejection not only shows Australians’ unacknowledged anxiety of occupation but some uncertainty about how to read poetry. The Statement is framed by Aboriginal language: both ‘Uluru’ and ‘Makarrata’ are words that inscribe worlds of Indigenous cultural awareness. The first sentence positions the reader in language that is documentary and historical (‘the 2017 National Constitution Convention’), cosmic (‘from all points of the southern sky’) and corporeal (‘from the heart’). Throughout the Statement, the language veers between scientific, social and hortatory registers, requiring readers to acknowledge ‘spiritual’ ancestors alongside the ‘thereto … therefrom … thither’ of legal discourse. It presses a case based on demonstrable inequalities and incarceration and makes an ethical and administrative appeal for fairness. The Statement relies on a closing metaphor of an invitation to a journey towards ‘a better future’. It’s a carefully constructed manifesto poem, at the same time strikingly clear and memorably complex – it speaks in several voices. Maybe it wasn’t Tik-Tok enough …

fourW thirty-four anthologises new work from seventy-six writers from all over Australia and from overseas: more than twenty stories and more than fifty poems, including pieces by two of our 2023 writers-in-residence, Judith Beveridge (an edgy, tensile ‘hymn’ to mountain goats) and John Stephenson (a retro-speculative satire on AI).

The winner of this year’s Booranga Prize for Poetry goes to Linda Albertson for ‘Some Woman’, a sculpted dramatic monologue which negotiates several registers between celebration and cynicism as a woman explores the meaning of her decorated, scarred body. The short-listed poems were 'Pneumatic: Eight 'Sigh'-ku', by Lachlan Brown; ‘The Baby Locket’ by Cary Hamlyn; ‘Chinese New Year, Gangtok’ by Mark Macleod; ‘Gimcrack’ by Neill Overton and ‘Midnight Trolleybus’ by Jena Woodhouse.

This year’s Booranga Prize for Prose goes to Christopher Scriven for ‘So much depends’, a finely-crafted, playful homage to William Carlos Williams using a bookmobile librarian (is she?) to refocus a sense of the minutiae of life, love and death in a small US town. The short-listed stories were ‘The Thing about Things’ by Jane Downing; ‘Carrot’ by N. G. Hartland; ‘Underground’ by Coco X. Huang; ‘Down the Line’ by Karla Portch and ‘Birthday Girl’ by Jennifer Severn.

I know you will enjoy reading these diverse, multi-layered & polyvocal writings. And these celebrated pieces are just a few of the gems in our ‘treasury of literature’. I’m looking forward to meeting as many of the writers as are able to come to one of our launches and having ongoing and online conversations about this terrific collection. I hope, too, that the writers are happy with the glittering company they find themselves in.

I want particularly to thank Juanita McLauchlan for the use of her striking and thoughtful artwork. Earlier in the year Booranga collaborated with the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in convening an ekphrasis workshop in the context of an exhibition featuring work by Nicola Dickinson, Hayden Fowler and Juanita. It’s fair to say Juanita’s work particularly affected the participants and she was moved by the writers’ responses. Her use of stitching, weaving, possum fur, blankets, eucalyptus leaves gave us a strong sense of country, time, colonisation – to use the title of one of her works – of ‘Everywhen’.

As well, I’d like to thank our designer Adam Bell for his fine sense of the significance of small details and textures of this year’s cover in making meaning and having impact – as well as his clever, attuned shaping of the writers’ words to the pages of fourW thirty-four.

I’d like to express my gratitude to Booranga’s Business Manager, Greg Pritchard for communicating with writers and collating the work for the selection committees to read through the submissions – it’s an intricate and tricky task!

To my fellow selectors: Claire Baker, Maurice Corlett, Jan Pittard and Ian Stewart – thanks for your willingness to take on the – mostly pleasurable, I think – processes of reading and rating the submissions. I appreciate your commitment and kindness and I value your insights and judgements.

Finally, our collective thanks go to Booranga’s esteemed Artistic Director, Kathryn Halliwell for keeping the yacht fourW thirty-four in trim, responsive to the winds, whether tacking, pitching or yawing.

 

David Gilbey

October 2023

'fourW thirty-four' Wagga Wagga launch

 fourW thirty-four Wagga Wagga launch speech 

Dr. Tim Kurylowicz

I’m delighted to launch fourW thirty-four: New Writing 

I’m an Arts Administrator by trade, which means I have the rare privilege of getting paid to be excited about the arts. This is an all too rare thing these days. Having said that, I’ve never launched a book and am deeply honoured at the privilege.

Like some of you here today, I do have some experience as a writer, although the stuff I write hasn’t yet been accepted into the mainstream. If there is ever a compilation of great arts grant applications or eloquent letters of support, perhaps then my artistry will be recognised! More importantly, and I suspect the thing I have in common with everyone in this room, is the fact that I am a reader, a lover of books.

So let me start by reporting the sheer pleasure it has given me to spend some time in recent weeks dipping in to an advance copy of fourW thirty-four: New Writing. This year’s collection of stories and poems is a delight. You’ve got the features we’ve come to expect from a four W: A smorgasbord of Writings from across Australia in an enticing range of genres and styles, with a generous stable of Wagga Wagga writers and themes to anchor the mix and earn those four W’s. You’ll find writings formal and cheeky, speculative and intensely personal. Globs of magnificent prose that are chewy like toffee, whose beauty sometimes mask surprise and threat, as in Sarah Tiffen’s piece The Snake (that’s not a spoiler, the scary thing is in the title!). Clever turns of phrase that illuminate deeper truths, like Robyne Young’s talk of “D&M’s (and M&Ms)” in Who Needs Paris? – sounds like a perfect night in to me.

We should acknowledge from the outset the efforts of the selection panel of Claire Baker, Maurice Corlett, Jan Pittard and Ian Stewart in bringing together this diverse collection, in cahoots with 4W’s tireless editor David Gilbey. The gorgeous cover art, which highlights an exquisite detail from the work of Juanita McLauchlin deserves a linger. And I must take this moment to cross promote the incredible exhibition down at the old Ambulance Station that opens this afternoon – a mind boggling collection of exquisite textile works marking 50 years of the Wagga Wagga embroiderer’s Guild. Go see it!

Booranga's stalwart artistic Director Kathryn Halliwell and project officer Greg Pritchard also deserve our appreciation today for the work they do running Booranga’s program and projects.

Like any work of art, 4W is a work in time. I felt a knot in my throat as I read David Gilbey’s introductory essay, which records the national moment of Australia’s Voice to parliament Referendum loss. There’s something about reading it out of a book that makes it more final, something perhaps about the difference between memory and history. Perhaps this essay primed me to notice how many of these works focus on pivotal and profound moments, or perhaps that was a masterly curatorial decision: but this volume records moments in time that deserve pause, reflection and recounting. 

As you settle into your favourite reading chair with this book, you’ll encounter

• The moment a recovering child rings a bell in the children’s ward (Claire Baker’s 'Seventeen Months On')
•  A daughter contemplating what to say to her dying father (Sally Chik’s 'Good morning silences')
• A split-second moment of terror during a tree-lopping mishap in Mike Greenacre’s 'Seconds Between Us'…“as fear shot up my legs and spine as if a surgeon’s incision, two lives sliced together with only seconds between us.”
• And speaking of split-second reveals, Andy Kissane’s heart-rending short story 'The Amber Necklace' captures the moment before a lover deploys for war. In a single moment it traverses a sliding doors moment in a relationship and begs the question: is it possible that the tragedies of love can rival the terrors of war?

Moments where things pivot, where truths materialise, where characters are revealed.

As I contemplated the examples I would share today, I got thinking about an element of the written word that I find magical.

It’s about the gap between what the author sees in their mind, and the words they can conjure to capture that onto a page, and then there’s another leap of meaning as the reader – reading those words on the page a great time or distance away from the context in which those words were written – mediates those words through their own experiences and idiosyncrasies into a wholly new mental image as they read. How wonderful to think about all the profound experiences and images that have been had by readers, that no author ever thought of?  Isn’t that magic? Isn’t it a mystery and a joy, and perhaps also a sadness?

Maybe that is another special thing about a locally-edited collection of new writings. In terms of cultural context, time and distance, we the reader get to experience something that was written a bit more near to us. Maybe there are elements of this moment in time that will shape our collective experience of these writings.

In its 34^th iteration, fourW also teaches us something that I think we societally need to cherish: that is the value of an institution. Through their steadfast annual tradition of publishing fourW: New Writing, the Booranga team have created a generational, historical legacy for our nation, and yet another reason to be proud to live on Wiradjuri land.

To bring it back to the specific National moment referenced in the introduction of fourW thirty-four, The Guardian Essential report in October revealed that while 53% of all Australians voted ‘no’ in the referendum, if you cut the data according to civic participation, you see a very interesting trend.

It turns out that people in Australia who participate in something larger than themselves, whether a church, a sports club, a civic group or a union, were dramatically more likely to have voted in favour of change. It’s as if the simple act of spending time with people, of opening one’s mind to the lives of others plays a part in people choosing the more prosocial outcome. I wonder if this is true of the experience of reading also? Reading is a portal into someone else’s thinking, a way we can offer empathy and a listening ear to other lives.

If you’re looking for connection, or solace or a fellow traveler, I say look around this room. Join Booranga, and sign up for their newsletter at their website, participate in an upcoming workshop or open mic, or find a reading group at our wonderful library.

In our increasingly atomised, disconnected world, the chance to read, to imagine, to write and to share seem not only desirable, but foundational.

Well, those are just some musings. If you’d like to experience the much more eloquent thoughts and stories of more than 70 Australians writing today, why not buy this book instead! I’m absolutely delighted to launch fourW thirty-four, and grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with you all today.