25.May.2009 My Quick Summary of 2009 Sydney Writers’ Festival (Part 1)
I’m going to pretend to talk really fast to summarize the Sydney Writers’ Festival that I went to last weekend. I went Friday night, a whole day Saturday, and a tiny bit of Sunday. Most of the Festival was located at Walsh Bay, Circular Quay. They did have a $1 shuttle bus to go there from somewhere near Circular Quay station, but if you know the shortcut, you can walk there in around 10-15 minutes.
FRIDAY, 22 MAY 2009
Playing Poker with the SAS (4:30pm-5:30pm)
Arrived a little bit over 4:30 pm. They didn’t allow me to go to the Event that I wanted because it’s full. I hung around a bit and the gatekeepers said I could go to Studio 1 if I wanted to. I said, sure, why not, whatever that is. They said, just be prepared, he may make fun of you (because I was late). The guy’s a comedian. I think they were just trying to scare me. No drama, I sat at the back.
Apparently he’s an Australian stand-up comedian who went to the war camps in Middle East to entertain the troops, names Tom Gleeson. We had good laughs. His experiences sounded interesting and funny. He said comedian is often seen as sort of a foolish profession. So he found the experience hugely rewarding, because he felt he did good for many people. There was a soldier who approached him and thanked him for making him laugh, with tears streaming down his eyes. He hadn’t laughed for 3 months. Tom was a bit choked up when he told us about the soldier.
NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (6:00pm-7:00pm)
Missed Celebrity Chefs Exposed, because I was worried to miss the next event at 6pm, so I went to Sydney Theatre across the street and queued up. We had Chloe Hooper, Louis Nowra, Rachel Perkins and Tohby Riddle on the panel. I never heard of any of them, but got to know them better after the night.
Chloe talked about how she did her research on Palm Island (Aboriginal community) for her book, The Tall Man, a non fiction book about a death in custody of Cameron Domadgee. Rachel Perkins is known for directing and writing a bunch of Australian Indigenous Film and Documentary. Her latest is called First Australians. Louis worked with Rachel for that documentary. Tohby writes and illustrates a bunch of children books. One of his books could be the one that inspired Madagascar– the story about 4 animals running away from the zoo (but of course, Hollywood wouldn’t admit it :). I saw his books on the way out, and they look lovely. I loved his art style.
SATURDAY, 23 MAY 2009
Will the Real Writer Please Stand Up? (10:30am-11:30am)
Emmanuel Jal, Chris Bray, Sarah Blasko, Miles Merrill
I went to this event particularly for Emmanuel Jal, a Sudanese/Kenyan hip hop artist who also wrote a book about his experience as a boy soldier (Warchild). I read A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah a while ago, also an authobiography of a boy soldier (only he’s from Sierra Leone), so to meet a real ex boy soldier was quite an experience.
Apart from him, we had Sarah Blasko, a songwriter; Chris Bray, an adventurer/journalist/blogger; and Miles Merrill, a spokenword artist. The real host had an accident, so Miles was being really nice by becoming both host and guest. The idea of this event is to talk about various forms of “writing”. About the hope and possibility to be taken more seriously academically. Take songwriting for example. What do you think if it’s taken as a literary form that can be studied in Universities?
Everybody got to pick a piece of their “writing” and show it to the audience. Sarah was singing. She’s an ARIA award winning Australian musician. Lovely lovely voice. Then we went to Chris Bray. He read two pieces of his blog journals, about his adventures in the wild, meeting a pack of wolves and all.
Then Emmanuel! Absolutely the star of the show IMO. He started by singing his hip hop song, asking everybody to stand up and dance (sort of). Miles asked for a second piece without the background music, so we could concentrate even more to the lyrics, and he did so wonderfully too. What a poweful performance. I guess it can’t not be powerful if you had gone through such a horrible experience in your life and survived. Music is his painkiller. It’s what makes him survive. Interestingly, he became a singer by accident. He was sort of forced to sing. He wanted to become an engineer. He studied in UK for a while and got top scores, but couldn’t renew his visa so he had to drop out. He got famous in Kenya as a hip hop singer, then they gave them his visa. Funny.
He’s been moving around a lot so he thinks any comfortable place is a place he can call home. He hopes someday he can return to Sudan. Kenya is his second home. I can definitely relate on the experience of moving around a lot and the impossible circumstances to call your birth country home.
Another interesting story from him was how George W. Bush is considered a hero in Sudan. A lot of people name their kids Bush. He said the whole world blamed him for starting the war in Iraq, but Sudan made peace because Iraq was attacked. So unknowingly to a lot of people, there’s a good side effect of that war to a totally different part of the world. God works in interesting way. It’s a fact that basically made everybody nod and go “wow…”
Emmanuel was wonderful. You can tell that he has a kind heart, and probably a softie. I got to take picture with him afterwards. I hope to read his book in the future, check out his movie and songs.
We hadn’t finished. Sarah, Chris and Emmanuel worked together to “interview” Miles. As example of his work, he performed this short drama about him, a white person, and an Aborigin. I had never heard anything like that before. Well, not in person anyway. It’s like he was performing three people, including sound effects. Well, like a very good storyteller. He’s an African American who was born in Chicago and was mistaken as an Aborigin when he arrived in Australia. He has a few CDs available at the on-site bookstore. I imagine it’s very hard to classify his work. It’s neither book or music. He’s not an actor nor a (pure) comedian. He performs stories (or as the SWF site says, a spoken-word performer). It’s a shame if that cuts his audience though, because he sounded very talented. I hope to check out his works some time in the future.
We went to see them afterward. Emmanuel was no doubt the most popular. We just had to take picture with him!
With Emmanuel Jal
At the Pier, Walsh Bay, Circular Quay (where the Festival was)
Oops I’ve written a lot. I guess I’m still kinda excited. I’ll just make my report into a couple of parts. So check out Part 2 tomorrow :)
mee