Lesley's Blog
2011 Mountains Belong to the People who Love Them: Slow Journeys in South Korea and Eastern Australia is now released by Post Pressed. Queensland Poetry Festival has invited me to read from this work on Sat 27 August at 11.45am at the Judith Wright Centre. Sound will be courtesy of Lila Meleisea and the short film 'Slow Days on Old Pathways' by Alan Hoggett. The Concert Hall of QPAC will reverberate with the sounds of St Peter's Chorale and the Qld Korean Orchestra singing 'Jiri San', a poem written about South Korea's tallest mainland mountain.
Brisbane's dramatic summer of floods has given way to the calm balmy days of autumn and winter. The questions below are spot-on for life story writers, indeed for all human beings.
The poet Dennis Haskell asks: What are you doing here/racing through the uncontrolled landscape/of your life?
Kant asks: For what may I hope?/What can I know?/And what ought I to do?
I challenge you to pause in the race through life and to reflect on your life in words. May all the conditions be in place for you - including the confidence that your story matters, and at least one beautiful friend.
Happy writing, 2011.
2010 Finished my own full-length memoir, 'What the Lovely Girls Did' and also a long essay on walking meditatively around the forests of Eastern Australia. Finding the right publishers comes next. My gratitude to the team at the Society of Editors, Qld who assisted with the memoir. Completion's a great feeling - ask Bob Cleland. I helped Bob with his memoir of kiap life in PNG in 1953. Big Road is now published by Red Hill Publishing. Congratulations Bob.
2009 My workshops resonate for years afterwards - I'm so pleased when I hear they've added something special to people's life journeys. It was a thrill to hear feedback such as 'Pittsworth's still talking about your workshop!', or a bumping into a client from the Nine Lives Project who said, 'We all love the book you did for us. Seeing my story published makes me feel so proud!'
Delightful feedback from Courier Mail-published feature, 'Living it Up' on the residential icon Torbreck in Brisbane (built in 1959). See www.torbreck.com.au
Spring 2008 The Kurilpa Poets celebrated their second year and invited me to read at Ahimsa House, West End, Brisbane. To celebrate Essence of Mind: Talks by Zen Master Sen Shin which I edited, I featured Buddhist-inspired poetic works such as those written during my spring in Korea.
A perfect start to spring is The Natural Connections writing workshop, again held at the koala sanctuary 'Epraphah' at the invitation of the Redlands Arts Council. Again the participants wrote a group poem. This year's include the lines: It's early spring. Rain has fallen./Frogs drum, wattle blooms./Insects make lace of leaves ...
Autumn 2008
The Royal Historical Soc of Qld invited me to present a paper about Australia's most famous gold explorer, 'Lasseter: the men who believed, who didn't and why.' The Broadkill Review (US) published 'Forest Wanderer' a poem inspired by a trek through northern NSW national parks last spring. The Courier-Mail continues to publish my book reviews, notably 'Stories from the Heartland', a review of 3 books by Queensland-born writers: Three of Queensland's Best'. www.courier-mail.com.au/entertainment/books
Summer is a great time for reading - and writing book reviews.
Dotlit from QUT published my romantic summer short story Poetry Man. www..dotlit.qut.edu/au/journal/prose/index
Spring began with a Natural Connections workshop for the Redlands branch of QAC. Local residents, all keen nature lovers, attended as well as people whose childhoods were spent in such diverse places as a Welsh village and a Bahrain apartment. A group poem resulted. Here's an excerpt:
Ah! there! scooting down a blue gum - a koala, awake mid-afternoon ...
Paperbark trees and scribbly gums - whisper Aboriginal stories to the wind.
Scribbly gums, those eucalpyts marked with the bizarre 'writing' of burrowing lavae, fascinate writers and poets. Imagine my joy in late September when I treked through a whole forest of them near Minyon Falls in northern NSW. I hope to write new work about the World Heritage forests of the Tweed Caldera in Australia for an updated version of my poetry collection, Mountains Belong to the People who Love Them. The uniqueness of the area was brought home to me by Nigel Turvey's book Terania Creek, see Writing Samples.
The Australian winter months are perfect for life story writing. Lots of writers in Cairns, Brisbane and Rockhampton have embraced the joys and challenges of the genre and are hard at it while the cool weather lasts. Thanks to Queensland Writers Centre, TAFE and the North Rocky Library for inviting me to teach.
Subscribers to Australian Writers Marketplace online (Writing Resources - Articles) are able to read my advice on accomplishing that miraculous first draft: 'Steering Your Memoir to a Safe Harbour'. www.awmonline.com.au
It's been a great honour to assist a Zen Master (no less) with turning a series of her talks into a manuscript ready for publication, working title Essence of Mind. Zen Master Sen Shin, originally from the United States, is the resident teacher of the Queensland Zen Centre.
I used an early draft of an award-winning short story called Apron Strings to contribute an artwork to a group exhibition initiated by visual artist Sue Lee. The group exhibition has since journeyed to Korea and Canada, collecting new works as it goes.
In late 2006 I was invited back to my hometown to read ‘When the Americans Came to Town' at the launch of Kookaburra Shells: Port Curtis Literature by Robyn Sheahan-Bright. It's a prose poem about the influx of American families during the construction of an alumina plant, way way way back in the 1960s! It's in Writing Samples.
2007 has been another good year for book reviewing. I wound up being Book Review Editor for Social Alternatives and began reviewing for the Courier-Mail and other publications. A review of Dr Nigel Turvey's Terania Creek about the conservation of World Heritage forests is in Writing Samples.
For writers, no news is absolutely not good news.
There's a fabulous Manuscript Services Offer for past writing workshop students. Check out Writing Services and the Zing Price List.
Are you a past writing workshop participant who'd like to share news of your writing journey? Contact Me with an item for Community News for Life Story Writers.
