Stella spark
talk about Carmel Bird
By Andy
Griffiths
Thanks so much for the invitation
to speak tonight. I’m happy to be at an event celebrating literary woman as
I’ve spent my entire writing career surrounded, helped and inspired by many
women, one of the most important being my wife Jill who was the editor of my
first children’s book, Just Tricking,
back in 1997 and who has edited—and increasingly collaborated on the books with
me ever since.
I’ve often wondered whether part of
the success we’ve enjoyed with the books is due to this blending of our male and
female sensibilities. Despite the perception amongst some that our books have
special appeal to boys, our audience has always been made up of both boys AND
girls … and many of these girls are just as enthusiastic and amused by the
taboo & disgusting elements of the stories as the boys.
I’m wary of subscribing to gender
stereotypes but I will say that—over the years—I think I have helped Jill to
appreciate the humour of the physical slapstick of The Three Stooges (and not
just sit there feeling sorry and upset for Curly because Moe is being mean to
him) and—in return—she has brought me to a fuller appreciation for the verbal
gymnastics of The Marx Brothers.
But
before I met Jill I was fortunate enough to read, meet and then be taught by
Carmel Bird, a Tasmanian writer then living in Melbourne.
I
was aware of her fiction from a book called The
Woodpecker Toy Fact, a collection of highly original and darkly humorous
stories that were playful, self-aware, personal, honest and utterly unlike
anything I’d read to that point. She could take the most ordinary incidents or
objects and through sustained attention and exploration transform them into
little tableaus of wonder, sadness and delight.
So I
was thrilled to find her writing instruction book, Dear Writer, a practical, inspirational, common-sense examination
of all aspects of the writers’ life written in the form of a series of letters
from a fictional writer to an imaginary beginning student.
In
1990 I attended a two-day summer school writing course run by Carmel at the
then newly established Victorian writers centre. She waltzed into the room with
an ethereal air—looking not unlike a character you might expect to find in a
fairy tale—though whether good, evil or simply mischievous was difficult to
tell. She gave us each a piece of white tablecloth and invited us to use it as
the starting point for a piece of fiction. I can’t remember exactly what I
wrote but I remember it made her smile.
I
showed her a collection of writing fragments I’d been working on– and asked her
what I’d need to do in order to get it published. She suggested I organize it
in some way. I argued it was better to keep it random. “I know that,” she said,
conspiratorially, ‘and you know that, but publishers won’t know that.” And so I
began the long slow process of organizing—and rewriting—what was to become my
first officially published book—a creative writing textbook for use in high
school classrooms.
A
few months later she invited me to be part of a poetry/short story reading
night with her and some other established writers at a hotel in Fitzroy. It was
both an amazing show of confidence on her part and a terrifying prospect, but
it was reassuring to know that I was doing something right—though I wasn’t
quite sure what.
But
I kept practising, and two years later, as luck would have it, I discovered
Carmel was teaching a year-long graduate diploma of fiction writing at Rusden
College in Toorak.
So
in 1991 I took leave without pay from my high-school teaching job and enrolled
in Carmel’s Monday evening class and spent the rest of my time writing.
During
this year she taught me three hugely valuable things.
Firstly,
the importance of considering your reader. This was achieved through the often
gruelling practice of having to have our stories critiqued by the other
students in the class. Carmel would preside sagely over this process, stepping
in when things got too brutal.
Secondly
she taught me the value of reading widely and introduced me to many important
writers including Helen Garner, Henry Handel Richardson, Elizabeth Harrower,
Ruth Park, Katherine Mansfield and Barbara Baynton.
And
thirdly, by point blank refusing to tell me the magic secret of how to get
published—which I was sure all
published writers knew—she gently forced me to learn to trust my own
idiosyncratic voice and ignore the nagging feeling that because it was my own
idiosyncratic voice it must somehow be wrong … which was of course the magic
secret all along.
Because
of my fondness for writing humour she nudged me in the direction of writing for
children – we both agreed that what seemed to be missing from Australian
children’s writing at the time was the sort of rambunctious fantasy that we had
both enjoyed in the work of Enid Blyton. (She once wrote—or told me—I can’t
remember which that she thought the thing with Enid Blyton was not that her
stories and characters were unbelievable, but the opposite—they were TOO
believable.)
As a
fiction writer Carmel has experimented with many different genres and styles.
But I always come back to The Woodpecker
Toy Fact, especially the passage at the beginning of ‘A Taste of Earth’,
which—in retrospect—I think I took to be a sort of mission statement.
“When
I read fiction I want the words to take my spirit into the places beneath the
surface of the everyday world. I want the freshness of dreams to be again
revealed to me. I want to know the loveliness and terror of what lies beyond
the last star … to feel the anguish and exhilaration of the fiction writer’s
power to create and destroy.”
From
reading Carmel’s fiction I have no doubt about her power to create and destroy,
and from being a student in her class I can personally attest to her ability to
inspire—a true stella spark.
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