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Perth Writers Festival 2016

New directions emerged from a potpourri of themes at this year’s Perth Writers Festival (PWF)
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Hosted annually on the University of Western Australia’s garden campus since 2008, this year’s Perth Writers Festival (PWF) interlinked writing with other art forms such as cinema, music and fine art.

Authors introduced their favourite movies, resulting in PWF screenings of A Hard Day’s Night, The Servant and The Philadelphia Story; The Human Library featured 20 individuals or ‘living books’ including a neuroscientist and a bee-keeper, all made available for personal hour-long conversations with rotating PWF visitors; a tranche of 10 From Paddock to Print segments centred on sustainable gardening, the ‘new vegetarianism’, cookbooks and food.

The writers and editors this reviewer spoke with were pleased with PWF’s re-focus on the crafts of writing and publishing. There was no shortage of celebrities, from empathy guru Roman Krznaric and neuroscientist Lisa Genova (Still Alice), to comedian Magda Szubanski (Reckoning, 2015) and bestselling author Simon Winchester (Pacific, the Ocean of the Future, 2015).

A miscellany of PWF offerings on Saturday 20 February:

The We Are Australian panel discussion waded bravely into sticky multicultural issues, with commentator George Megalogenis (Greek heritage, Australia’s Second Chance, 2015) steering a panel comprising Indigenous journalist Stan Grant (Wiradjuri/Irish heritage, Talking to My Country, tba 2016), refugee advocate and author Rosemary Sayer (British convict heritage, More to the Story, 2015) and mechanical engineer Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Sudanese-Middle Eastern heritage, Yassmin’s Story, tba 2016).

Stock themes were tossed around: what are core Australian values? Is assimilation the goal? A passionate Grant lamented that there had been no ‘fair go’ for Indigenous Australians. A defining moment for him had been ‘the Adam Goodes affair’ where footy spectators’ boos were the ‘sound of 200 years of suffering and political injustice’. A fascinating discussion centred on new migrants’ ignorance of white-settler annexation of indigenous lands, their disconnection from Australian history, and also their ‘drawbridge mentality’, erecting barriers against newer migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Finally, the panel settled peaceably in agreement that Australia had managed multiculturalism more successfully than most countries, and that there was much to be optimistic about.

Megalogenis featured again in a separate session, Open Doors, in conversation with ABC Radio interviewer Richard Fidler. Wielding an impressive array of statistics, Megalogenis demonstrated that Australia’s historical cycles of national prosperity had always coincided with open migration policies encouraging an influx of migrant energy, while closed door policies partnered economic depression. He felt the nation was now recreating its original 19th-century dynamism through conscious migration policy choices, but was also at a crossroads where taking the wrong direction for whatever perceived reason could blow its ‘second chance’ and ‘make another excuse to fail.’

The unexpected social, spiritual and health dimensions of sustainable gardening surfaced during the Sustainable Table panel discussion featuring former broadcast journalist and city balcony gardener Indira Naidoo (The Edible City, tba 2016), all-rounder farmer, chef and TV presenter Paul West (The River Cottage Australia Cookbook, tba 2016), and leading Western Australian land management expert Chris Ferreira. Among the panel’s inspiring findings: males can’t give birth but instead can experience nurture in growing plants, a process inducing negativity to ‘fall out of your life’ (Paul West); from no more than an apartment balcony you can generate 70 kilograms of fresh produce within just one year and small produce farmers can form communities together that combat the loneliness of cities, sharing surplus produce (Indira Naidoo); you can’t be totally self-sufficient in food without stressing yourself, but if you try bartering with producer neighbours instead, you will again create community (Paul West); we live in possibly the driest — and fastest drying — continent on the globe, often with poor soils, so we shouldn’t expect too much of it (Chris Ferreira). The panel concluded that it was urgent to reconnect all citizens with their stewardship of the land and with issues of food security, and also actively to encourage young people onto the land with structured training programmes.

Sensing the depth of his anger about the global abuse of the English language and its infiltration by business management jargon, you have to worry about former political speech writer Don Watson’s stress levels. His body language in his Worst Words presentation was at once depressive and aggressive. This was vintage Watson. He sees the overuse of portmanteau words such as ‘impact’, ‘issue’ and ‘outcome’, and of obfuscations like ‘learnings’ (for ‘lessons’), ‘unpack’ (for ‘analyse’) or ‘assist’ (for ‘help’), together with phrases like ‘going forward’, ‘in terms of’, and other rampaging gobbledegook, as ‘a systemic threat to the English language’. He yearns for the simplicity and beauty once found in the language, as evinced in Churchill’s iconic ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’ speech of World War II.

More soothing was the launch of Fremantle Press’ commissioned non-fiction anthology Purple Prose, hinting at a real reader’s book. Purple is a colour associated with the feminist movement but this volume is not solely a compendium of feminist writings, rather a diverse collection of musings on the colour purple from 15 female authors: purple as in bruises, orchids, Roman Catholic vestments, Phoenician dyes, perhaps even Prince’s Purple Rain, purple for all people, a colour code from ancient times.

Rating: 4½ stars out of 5.

Perth Writers Festival 2016, Perth International Arts Festival

18–21 February 2016

Partners: University of Western Australia; Lotterywest.

www.perthfestival.com.au 

Ilsa Sharp
About the Author
Ilsa Sharp was formerly a journalist and author in Southeast Asia and is now an editor working from Perth with both Asian and Australian clients. She has written several commissioned institutional histories, including the history of the Singapore Cricket Club and the history of the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Penang, Malaysia, as well as a guide to the Australian lifestyle and culture for newcomers, Culture Shock! Australia.