It was a cool night on April 18th

It was a cool night on April 18th when I headed into the warm light of the Wheatsheaf Hotel for an evening I’d been looking forward to for weeks. It was the public Speakeasy, where I’d mingle with fellow writers, friends, and all those who enjoyed the simple pleasure of having people read stories to them. The work was of the usual high standard, ranging from Chris Willis’ cheeky humour to the potent, hypnotic phrases of Melanie Pryor.

The moment I entered the back room, I felt the familiar buoying feeling of being here, among a friendly bunch of people who loved words, and a sprinkling of starry lights. Joseph Moore called our eyes to the stage with some casually lovely guitar and soft, paperbark tree vocals. Delana Carbone, our MC for the evening, spoke her whimsical words and evoked images of circus smiles and flights of imagination, and we kicked off the evening with Mister Mario Pilla. Our favourite flame-haired fiend sauntered onto the stage, armed as always with his usual witticisms and a poem or two. He humorously and eloquently outlined some concerns in 'To a Lady Who Took Offence When I Turned My Back on Her to Find Sleep', insisting that ‘tis not that you’re uncomfortable. ‘Tis more that I’m uncomfortable.’ And received a ‘standing ovation’ after encouraging the audience to participate in a game of standing and clapping.

There were plenty more laughs to follow as Chris Willis passionately related the epic tale of facing his annotated story drafts. ‘The thought of editing this piece makes me sad. Sadder than when Mufasa died!’ He spoke with great enthusiasm and his richly intertextual work flitted along with vivid imagination. Piri Eddy entertained us as well with a hilariously fast-paced metafictional piece, playing two characters at once as they argued about the difference between positivity and realism, and the limits of their power as invented characters. ‘The writer… He knows.’

The mood came down as we all settled in and Samuel Williams lulled us with a lullaby in a murmuring voice. He then told us a moving story about the anxieties of growing up in 'Staying Up All Night with Andy'. An older brother seeks independence, while the younger seeks the closeness and simplicity of the past. ‘Had he always been this naked in the bath? It seemed unthinkable.’ Susan Nelson used vivid, almost tangible description in her piece about the slow degeneration of a grandparent’s health—the fragility, brightness and speed of life. And Melanie Pryor hypnotised us as always with her words, flowing like water, and vivid imagery. ‘Bone, the symmetry of boundless existence … silhouettes of summer legs in the sun…’

Kenneth Nixon employed light humour and a quick, neurotic tone about a character searching for narrative and passion in even the most mundane places, and Dominiek Neall spoke of youth, beauty and family in his story about a young girl. ‘Mishka danced beside me like a large, ecstatic golden retriever.’ Peter Beaglehole was our final student reader, concluding the set with a humorous work about apprehension toward adult responsibilities and the loss of childhood ease. ‘Skinny bastards, with their exoskeletons. You never see a fat ant.’

Our lovely headliner, Kalinda Ashton, author of The Danger Game (2009), concluded the night with a fascinating piece about dissociative disorder. She described the illness with remarkable perception in 'I Can Remember Much Forgetfulness' as her protagonist struggled to explain his experiences to a shrink: ‘I don’t feel … that they are just confused memories … It is merely that I know that this life I have is not my own … [This life] is an underexposed photograph.’ I listened, captivated, to a story of a man separated from the life he thought he had a right to, and went home to a wife he feigned knowing at all, and did not love. It was tragic and funny and intriguing—the perfect story to end the night.

We had pizza delivered in the interval and a raffle at the end, with fabulous prizes organised by the Speakeasy team, headed by Threasa Meads and Alicia Carter. Chatting pleasantly for a while afterwards, I wondered what more I could want in an evening out. It was yet another magical night, wrapped in sweet narrative. .



 

 Reviewed by Miranda Richardson Miranda Richardson is a third year BCA: Creative Writing student at Flinders University. She loves cloudy days, sweets, and art in all its forms.

At the Wheatsheaf Hotel April 18

Joseph Moore is a singer-songwriter from Adelaide. He likes to think of himself as, that guy you hear in the background at the local pub, strumming the guitar, singing chimey and pretentious songs about love, loss, the state of the world, and being a sappy prick. This extraordinary optimism has earned him the admiration of Arts students and family members everywhere.

Kalinda Ashton is the author of the 2009 novel The Danger Game, and has published short fiction extensively in Australian literary anthologies and journals. She lectures in literature and creative writing at Flinders University.

Mario, Speakeasy veteran, whilst searching for an idea, accidentally happened upon three. One, he owes to tobacco, the ingestion of which, while considered very unhealthy nowadays, wasn't so unhealthy in the early 1800s. The other two he owes to Lord Byron, whom it was considered rather unhealthy to ingest in the early 1800s, but whose ingestion is very much encouraged now.

Chris Williss laboured long and hard trying to think of some witty and clever bio for you, some words that might impress or entertain you as a preface, if you will, for his story reading. However, as he sits, tea in hand, pen lid securely gripped between his teeth, legs sprawled on his bed, and his laptop between them and his toes facing upwards at an angle of approximately 45 degrees, he realised that he has, precisely, jack all. So he instead wrote this.

Susie Nelson is from England. She’s at Flinders studying a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing. There are two things, well three really, that she’s most proud of having achieved in her life. The first two are her boys, James and Matthew. Her third achievement is having the courage to turn her life upside down and come to Australia, to get a different perspective on the world we inhabit, and improve her writing skills.

Ken Nixon enjoys university, history and the odd drop of Pimms around Christmas. This is nowhere near as interesting as the things he hates. At the top of this list are fussy felt patterns, BBC period pieces and writing bios! Piri Eddy is a writer. Sometimes he has trouble thinking of what to write. He plans on making a career out of it.

As we approach the London Olympics this year, Dominiek Neall is very disappointed that the poetry composition event is no longer running. Being absolutely craptastic at sports, Dominiek turned to poetry after accidentally shooting her P.E. teacher in the leg with a misguided arrow. Her prize-winning sonnet ‘You plus Me equals Eternity’ composed for Johnny Depp has resulted in high acclaim from Johnny Depp fan-girls and one restraining order from Mr Depp’s lawyers.

Samuel Williams is a third year BCA creative writer whose work has been published here and there. He's addicted to being frantically busy and having no time to scratch himself, so he likes snappy writing and short books – the shorter the better – and poems, so long as he doesn't have to spend hours trying to figure out what they mean.

Melanie Pryor’s work has featured in poetry competitions, street press and short story anthologies. She is studying Honours in Creative Writing, and has found a library growing in her house, full of gods and myths and all that falls in between. There are also a lot of abandoned cups of tea.

Peter Beaglehole is taking Honours in Creative Writing at Flinders University; he also performs as a musical comedian.

Delana Carbone

Speakeasy in the news on April 27

Our headliner and musical talent for April 18 at the Wheatsheaf Hotel

Kalinda Ashton is the author of the 2009 novel The Danger Game, and has published short fiction extensively in Australian literary anthologies and journals. She lectures in literature and creative writing at Flinders University.

Joseph Moore is a singer-songwriter from Adelaide, Australia. He likes to think of himself as, "that guy you hear in the background at the local pub, strumming the guitar, singing chimey and pretentious songs about love, loss, the state of the world, and being a sappy prick." This extraordinary optimism has earned him the admiration of Arts students and family members everywhere.

Speakeasy at the Wheatsheaf April 18

Permission to Laugh

By Peter Beaglehole

Being a comedian is a strange thing. It’s not something you want to tell someone you’ve just met. They’ll turn on you, expecting you to be gregarious and witty, or worse they’ll ask you for a joke. Generally comics are the quiet and insular types, who look forward to being another stranger at the party. Admittedly, this is because they’re subconsciously working on material. Everything they observe can be funny, a small lie turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, fallacy into truth, or the rational to the absurd. That’s what comics do; they give us permission to laugh. Comedians see the world’s strange happenings and tweak our habitual responses. They ask us, ‘Why?’

We take life seriously, we take people seriously and sometimes we shouldn’t. Comedians are the child in the cinema asking the question about the profound plot hole, the drunk Uncle telling your racist Grandpa where he can stick the soup ladle. Comedians are excessive and simple; they occupy some strange place between reality and how reality could be. Which probably explains why nobody really takes them seriously, except for certain branches of government who would rather that nobody even imagine that the way they live could change. 

Still, comedians are very fragile, or more accurately egocentric, creatures who are dependent entirely on an audiences’ willingness to laugh. It’s difficult to convince a room of strangers to laugh because laughter is something we share with those closest to us. However, this difficulty is usually assisted by the presence of a bar, but it puts the comic in a place that they hadn’t imagined. Not a theatre or lecture hall, but at a bar where they might find their name scrawled above the urinal, accompanied by the words “sucks dick”. Nevertheless, there are good times, times when a slightly inebriated punter will say, ‘You were heaps funny’. This massages the ego but doesn’t last, the comic longs for the day when a punter will tell them, ‘You were heaps funny, and now I’m going to go home and switch off my lights and vote for a politician who has some rational capacities and work on my slightly homophobic tendencies.’ Every clown wants to be Hamlet, but they want a different kind of prince and different kingdom. So they give us a chance to laugh, at least for a moment, at the chaos and sadness, they let us enjoy what is inherently amusing, like our strange anatomy, but to do this they need an audience. Otherwise they spend time at home inflating their ego with self-indulgent writing like this. In summary you should come and see this show:

 

Adelaide Comedy Next Generation

Rhino Room - Upstairs

Feb 21- 25 at 6pm

Feb28- Mar3 at 6pm

Preview $15

Adults $20 Concession $18

.

Speakeasy on campus 11.11.11

It was another sunny afternoon when the doors of the Flinders Uni Function Centre were once again thrown open to the ever-eager Speakeasy crowd. Now in its third year, Speakeasy has grown in leaps and bounds to become somewhat of a creative writing institution for talented Flinders undergrads and honours students, as well as for the staff and post-grads who help ensure the events run smoothly. As the venue filled up with nervous readers and excited spectators, MC, Delana Carbone, got things off to a flying start.

Delana began by throwing open a question to the audience regarding collective nouns. What would a collective noun be for a group of writers? Considering so many were present at the event one might have expected a few more suggestions from the crowd, but Delana sorted it out for us anyway, deciding, quite rightly, that ‘a creation of writers’ might be most appropriate. ‘An anxiety of writers’ as well as ‘a paranoia of writers’ came pretty close runners-up.

With nods of approval from those present the delightful Delana then threw over to Mario Pilla who gave a hearty plug for the new Speakeasy Zine, available for the first time on the day. Then we truly got under way with what everyone had come for: the readings. There were a lot of new faces to the podium this time round, and some familiar ones too.

Piri Eddy kicked off proceedings with his hiphop stylings, lamenting the difficulties of domestic chores, while alerting us to the fact that he could quote just about every episode from the first ten series of The Simpsons. Next up was Sean Stockham, a new face to the stage, who drew the audience in with his sinister yet melancholy ‘Strangers’. Alice James read her fitting ‘The Library’, about a girl’s love for her mother’s collection of books, while Susie Nelson’s moving piece reflected on her memories of her grandmother.

Dominiek Neall rounded off the first set with her hilarious short story ‘Me and Pluto Down by the Milky Way’, about the often astronomical trails of friendship. After a quick break, in which the majority of copies of the new Speakeasy Zine were snapped up, Chris Williss grabbed the crowd’s attention once more with his imitations from 007 and Back to the Future in a ‘literary fiction story about a guy trying to write a literary fiction story.’

Scarlett Pinhorn-Veasey warned about the dangers of having parents who unwittingly leave you stranded behind at petrol stations, while Kenneth Nixon taught us about the joys of life through touch in his story ‘Tactile Living’.

Caysey Sloan then stepped up to read a section from her project for NaNoWrMo - that arduous challenge to write a novel in a month - and Peter Beaglehole finished off the second set with a piece reflecting on those awkward moments in conversations we’ve all experienced, as well as doing a fairly convincing impression of yelling at dogs, which was so loud that it snapped this reviewer bolt upright in her chair.

The final set started with Samuel Williams, who read a series of ninety-nine word stories dealing with a range of topics from snake tattoos to footy crowds and violinists, as well as the things that can happen on the way to find Harry Potter. Miranda Richardson delighted with a tale of talking fox spirits, asserting that if you make people promise you things they’ll be yours forever.

Luke Bartholomew bemoaned the curse of too much luck, at least until love gets in the way, and Melanie Pryor’s wordsmithery of song lyrics and lone musings drew the audience into her ‘Melodies of the Midnight Hours.’

Mario Pilla capped off the readings with some thoughts about excretion and secretion, making some audience members concerned that he may have already ‘catharted’ on a few chairs in the venue.

After giving away some very impressive door prizes the proceedings came to an end, and a few drinks later we had wrapped up the last Speakeasy for 2011. But, never fear! Speakeasy will be back in early 2012, and hopefully we’ll be seeing all of the faces from this event again next time around.

Review by Alicia Carter
Alicia Carter has just finished her second year of a Bachelor of Arts at Flinders University, majoring in Creative Writing. She has also recently embarked on her journey as Assistant Director for Speakeasy.

Speakeasy on campus 11.11.11 - set 1

Piri Eddy

Sean Stockham

Alice James

Susie Nelson

Dominiek Neall

Speakeasy on campus 11.11.11 - set 2

Chris Williss

Scarlett Pinhorn-Veasey

Kenneth Nixon

Caysey Sloan

Peter Beaglehole

Speakeasy on campus 11.11.11 - set 3

Samuel Williams

Miranda Richardson

Luke Bartholomew

Melanie Pryor

Mario Pilla

'End of the Night Girl' a novel by Amy T. Matthews

Dear Publishing Houses of Australia,

We need to talk about Amy Matthews' End of the Night Girl. I'm sure you remember it. It's the novel you showered with rejection letters for ten years, until it eventually won the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. Perhaps you thought that nobody would buy it – that it was too strange, too complex, too gloomy a mixture of holocaust trauma and modern day malaise.

Well, take note: I did buy it, and I'd happily buy it again. End of the Night Girl is exactly the kind of fiction that I will be spending my hard-earned cash on in the future. It's innovative. It's tight, brusque, engaging. It wears its Australian–ness comfortably and quietly. It's well-written (which counts for a lot when you're a creative writing student who woke up one morning halfway through first year to find that Dan Brown suddenly made you cringe.)

To call End of the Night Girl a 'holocaust novel' would be to sell it short. We've had far too many of those already. Matthews takes one step back from the typical story of cruelty and starvation, and instead gives us Molly, a young waitress from Adelaide who, for reasons that she herself struggles to understand, is writing a novel about the holocaust. The metafictional element is strong but subtle. Molly's story is carefully interwoven with that of her protagonist, Gienia; a polish woman who haunts her through her futile job, her nights spent drinking, her failed relationships, her family problems.

Though the novel received positive reviews, quite a few readers and critics seem intent on unwrapping Gienia's story and throwing away Molly's. Christopher Bantick in The Australian even went so far as to say that Gienia's story 'matters' while Molly's does not. Quite aside from the fact that I personally connect more with Molly than I do with Gienia, I could not imagine one story without the other. It is the relationship between the two that sets End of the Night Girl apart. Together, they form an exploration of how we use fiction to make sense of our own lives; how we find ourselves in characters who have never existed. 'I don't expect her to do more than stare,' says Molly of her constant, ghostly companion, 'so I'm surprised when she reaches out to comfort me.' In the face of bewildering reality, literature provides not only comfort, but also clarity.

Molly's character is just as full and convincing as Gienia's, and her suffering is no less important. Gienia starves because she is in a concentration camp. Molly starves even though she is surrounded by the peace and plenty of twenty-first century Australia. The question of why is far more interesting to me than yet another description of holocaust suffering, however evocatively rendered. As Molly attempts to piece together the fragments of Gienia's story, she confronts the lack of a linear plot in her own life; the difficulty of tracing patterns of cause and effect. 'I try to find the beginning,' she writes, 'the first moment that led to all the other moments – but all I find are loose ends, long threads weaving in and out of one another.'

Far from being bewildering or aimless, however, the novel itself is needle-sharp. Matthews guides us through Molly's nights and days, moment by moment, plunging into her past as the opportunities arise. The result, somehow, is a satisfying novel about dissatisfaction, a precisely structured story of structural breakdown.

So, for the benefit of any editorial button-pushers reading this, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not interested in 'more of the same'. I'm interested in more books like End of the Night Girl – books that are refreshing and challenging and just plain good.

Oh, and Wakefield Press – you're off the hook, obviously. Please publish more of Matthews' work. I look forward to reading what else she has to offer her generation of Australian writing – a generation that looks better and better with every book I read.

By Samuel Williams

The new Speakeasy Zine is coming!

The inaugural issue of the Speakeasy Zine will be available at the next Speakeasy on campus event, this Friday the 11th of November. It contains a mash up of poetry, prose, art, interviews and reviews by the creative and talented folks at Flinders University. So don't forget to bring a few extra dollars with you to secure your copy.

Get amongst it!