On Sunday morning I returned to La Trobe’s Mildura
Campus, where Sharon Olds would take to the final stage to deliver the final
speaking event of this year’s festival. I was reminded again that this was the
first writers’ festival I’ve ever attended and it was already coming to an end.
I guess all the best things run on especially limited timelines.
Meanwhile, our class groups were gathering our wits and
every piece of insight we could lay our hands on in preparation for the WiA
Awards, which we would present to the corresponding writers during the Finale
Lunch. In sifting through our notes over the past four days and finalising our
awards, I realised just how much I’d been given, how much I’d learnt from these
writers, lessons that couldn’t have been taught anywhere else or in any other
setting, at any other time. Is there anything better, apart from the act of
writing itself, for someone who hopes one day to achieve literary success
themselves?
There was an existential tone present during Sharon Olds’
event, evident both in her recital of a poem detailing a narrator rushing
through an airport in a bid to reach their dying father before he departs the
world, and of a poem written in tribute to her friend and fellow poet, Galway
Kinnell. Yet Sharon melded this seamlessly with the playful and insightful mood
of her other poems and her coinciding commentary, culminating in a thoroughly
triumphant finish for the festival events.
We waited at the Finale Lunch whilst the writers and the
other guests ate for our award presentations at the end. I was an ocean filled
with dread (lol @ that metaphor though). I’ve never been at ease presenting an
oral piece even in front of a classroom of people I know, let alone a room of
between 50 and 100 people, most of whom I haven’t even exchanged a spoken word
with. But my piece was short, and was over within ten seconds, and I didn’t
die! It also helped that I was in a group of people who did a wonderful job, as
well as the rest of the class, and the writers and guests really seemed to love
the award presentations. I think we all walked out sighing, relieved that we’d
pulled it off and it was over.
The next day, our last, we returned to where we started
off on Thursday at 29 Deakin Avenue. I think we were all just marvelling at how
much had taken place since the last time we were there. Jen Douglas from ABC
Open arrived to talk to us about writing and posting content online, following
which our class debriefed, discussing the festival and the tasks to complete
for the subject.
Then we were finished, and one by one, we said goodbye
and started to go our separate ways. Sunraysia Daily came around that point to
talk about the subject and the festival and for some reason I was picked to
talk to them? (I was at my Nan’s house on Wednesday and I answered a phone call
from her friend who I’ve known for ages and she immediately started the
conversation with “OH Zach I saw you on the front page of the paper yesterday!”
to which I obviously replied, “Yeah, our class? We’re all celebrities now!”) A few of us went to the Pizza Café for lunch,
reflecting on where we’d been, where we were at and what was to come, as a
group of people who, six days earlier, would not have known one another to say
hello to in the street. What kept coming up in conversation was how great an
experience this was, and how much we had taken and learnt from it, and really,
what more could we ask for?
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