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Picto-memento post: Dog’s Tales at the Toff
It was dark. Stories and memories were shared. Images remain.
DBC Pierre warned us not to go drinking with lizards and snakes (before shedding his own skin).
Carmel Bird and her grandson shared some fun buns, surrounded by guns.
Josephine Rowe and her father were talking about birds and weren’t talking about birds.
Kalinda Ashton’s shopgirl character was perhaps misinterpreting the signs.
Tiffany Murray discovered music and father figures.
David Carruthers was thrust into a position of fear and responsibility.
And, because of a crush, Elif Batuman judged a unique contest and sat with a canoe.
On Women and story: Carmel Bird
Carmel Bird released two books in 2010, the novel Child of the Twilight and an edited collection of personal essays on the meaning of ‘home’ called Home Truth. Three of her novels have been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Here, she writes about women and story.
On my dressing table I have a tiny statue of the black madonna from Guadalupe in Spain. She is dressed in a robe of atmosphere-sensitive chips that change colour with the weather. When it is hot she is bright turquoise, when it is cold she moves through pale yucky pink to icy-blue white. She came from the display pictured. See the little black faces?
I was in Guadalupe doing research for my novel Child of the Twilight, some of which is set in Spain, and much of which is concerned with the theft of a religious statue. In Writing Women, I will discuss the question of the black images of the Virgin Mary – as well as other things.
At Dog’s Tales, I will be telling a story. It won’t be a story about black madonnas, so just so you know, the story of the lady of Guadalupe goes like this:
In 1326 a cowherd, in response to seeing a vision of the Virgin, dug up a casket which contained a black statue of Mary. The statue had been buried six centuries earlier by knights fleeing from the Saracens. It became an object of veneration, and is believed to have been responsible for many miracles. When Columbus set out to discover the New World, he began his journey from the steps of the cathedral at Guadalupe, and placed his ships under the patronage of the Black Virgin of Guadalupe.
A great story, I think.
MWF 2010 authors on… dinosaurs
I’ve given MWF guests a list of 15 random topics to respond to. The idea is to entertain and introduce you, the reader, to other sides of the MWF authors and their work, which may not be revealed on festival panels. The authors were allowed to respond in any way they liked, and were given no word limits. To learn more about the authors and what they’re doing at the festival, click their names through to their MWF bios.
STORY: A wisteria vine grows on the terrace outside my study window. Tiny blue wrens come there to swing on a particular
branch that balances on the cross-bar of another branch. I never succeed in getting there fast enough with the
camera. So one day recently I substituted a swinging plastic dinosaur for the wrens. As you do. He seemed to enjoy
the experience.
When did ‘dinosaur’ become a pejorative term?
As the author of ‘Grannysaurus Rex’, I am officially part of the dinosaur industry. This sometimes causes problems at schools as child dinosaur enthusiasts tend to know a fair bit more about them than I do. I know the Raptors, because they are a Canadian basketball side, and I know stegosaurus, because who doesn’t, but I can get in real trouble when I mix up my brontos and brachios. And not all the ones with wings are Pterodactyls – make that mistake and a room full of Grade 5s will rip you limb from limb.
Having a four year old has refreshed my perspective on these creatures. I am still unsure about what exactly is the reason for their magical appeal to little boys. Henry at age three could distinguish between a whole catalogue of dinosaurs and is especially interested in the distinction between herbivores and carnivores. He obsessively watches and re-watches a movie shown on a loop at the Australian Museum in Sydney that reconstructs what supposedly happened one day at some lake in ancient Queensland, and ends with one big dinosaur eating a small dinosaur for lunch and roaring in a terrifying way. ‘They eat each other,’ he announced, with sombre and resigned amazement, the first time we saw it. Ankylosaurus is my favourite. I love that this one dinosaur is known as both Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus. We spend hours every month in the dinosaur rooms at the Museum and it’s the one part of it that never gets boring. They have crazy looking ones there with feathers and scales and claws all at once, like something out of Maurice Sendak. I love trying to get my head around the meaning of the time scale they make you confront: millions of years.
Feel free to share your own responses to the topic, or to the authors’ responses, in the comments.
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 