Mark Tredinnick’s writing course – A Dream with a Pen in its Hand – produced reams of writing, including Mark’s own poem on Savusavu. It was a week in which each writer made substantial strides in their work, gaining confidence in their style, developing their voice and experimenting with form. Working up in the yoga platfom they had a tranquil area with a stunning view all to themselves, and the dreams flowed though their pens. On the final evening they read out a selection of their work. Here is part of Mark’s poem, and some of the pieces that they presented.

Mark Tredinnick
Daku Sestets

The sky here is a mile
……………………….. too big for the bay’s boots. Savusavu—
This flooded arena in which nothing much, on the surface of things, ever happens,
To the enormous delight of the cava-mellowed mob of semi-superannuated
Mountains in their green flak jackets
…………………………………………. and their greener fatigues—Savusavu
Is morality play in countless acts of cloud and itinerant weather.
It’s where the whole world’s water cycle dress rehearses.

KATE:
On Savusavu
In the early morning by the bay I hear a lone car pass. Something falls on the bure roof, something hard, a nut? I am alone in bed, far from home. There’s no company in my room except a humming fridge and the ceiling fan which turns above my head like a lazy chopper. I think of people I have known, men I have loved, friends in foreign cities. Back home the bins will be collected at this hour, and as the truck bangs and clatters outside my house I will commend myself for remembering the bins last night, or curse myself for forgetting. But here, by the bay, there’s nothing to remember or forget. My mind can rest at last in the arching palms above the bure.

JILL:
HELL’S GOING TO BE LIKE THIS, ONLY WORSE
I was dreading this meeting. The executive committee of the body corporate had elected me to the position of chair person; at the A.G.M. in September 2011. It wasn’t that I was the most suitable person; it was just that they did not want Mary.

I’d cleared the table of photographs and coloured cards, gluing- tape, scissors and pens left from making Christmas cards. I’d filled a jug with water placing it, with five glasses, on the colourful runner in the centre of my wooden table. Now to psych myself into a confident, informed, assertive, state of mind.

Confidence : I last felt full of it when I stood on a desk before a classroom full of school girls; as a newly elected house captain. That was so long ago it doesn’t count.
Informed : When I taught a well crafted Feldenkrais class; but then everyone was lying on the floor.
Assertive: Germaine Greer and The Dog Whisperer talk about being like that; it sounds easy but isn’t.

The door bell chimed. Hiding under the table pretending I wasn’t home wasn’t an option because my neighbours had a key.
I opened the door. No Mary, only the Treasurer and Robyn.

“Nice unit you have here” they commented.
As they were moving to the table the bell rang again, The Secretary and Mary.

Time to get on with it.
I opened the meeting with the usual formalities; I was as tight as a laced up corset.

On with the business: After the treasurer gave his report it was Mary’s turn to speak on her area of responsibility, Building – whatever that means; we already have a building, three in fact.
Mary went on about the need for an Engineer’s report on the water problems in the complex, which was useful. She then complained of ongoing problems in her unit . I reminded her that a special levy had been raised to help her. She denied it. I let that slide.

Mary changed direction,
“Robyn give your gardening report, she demanded.
“You might be surprised to know that you’re not running this meeting, Mary.”
Her face went white, her jaw tightened, she fell silent.

We worked on through the agenda.
Mary was not finished with me.

Three meetings later she was given the job of ringing a builder to ask him to start work on a water penetration problem in Robyn’s unit. It didn’t suit her to ring him for another six weeks. It was pouring with rain.

I sent her a questioning email; this set her off like a fire cracker. She emailed every person on the committee, abusing me for pounding the table and shouting at her during our first meeting. Adding, “I’ve put in your letter box suggested ways of conducting a meeting, especially a meeting of peers.

Jill turned into Enid (as my kids would say)
Thank you for your informative email, Mary. I have been elected as chair person so I will run the meetings as I see fit. When you or any other member of the committee holds this position you can run them as you choose. By the way, at last count on google there were eighty nine thousand different ways of running a meeting.
In the mean time I ask for your co-operation.

Hell’s going to be like this, only worse!

CD’s of Mark reading his poems can be found through riverroadpress.net
The River Road Poetry Series is an innovative venture into sound publishing. It creates an audio collection of Australian poets reading their own work. You can buy the CDs directly from this website or visit good bookshops that stock the series.

Diana Plater attended Jan Cornall’s writing retreat in March and this article appeared in The Weekend Australia on 23 April 2011.

The benefits of a creative writing course at a simple resort on the island of Vanua Levu.

by Diana Plater

TEN years is a long time for a manuscript to sit in a bottom drawer, especially when it hasn’t been completed. But that’s the situation with my latest book. I’ve done most of the research and interviews, written an outline and a couple of chapters, given it a title, attempted to turn it into a play and considered a chick-lit conversion.

But two chapters do not a novel make.

I am greatly in need of inspiration and ways to break writer’s block. As Jackie Collins once advised: ‘‘Write, don’t talk about it.’’

So when an invitation arrives to do a creative writing course in an exotic location how can I refuse? And especially when it’s titled Breakthrough Writing in Fiji.

The course, taught by playwright, novelist and performer Jan Cornall, is one of several types run each year at Daku Resort, on Fiji’s northern and less-visited island of Vanua Levu, just a kilometre or so up the road from the colourful town of Savusavu.

Cornall runs courses in Australia and overseas destinations and this is her second at Daku. Delia and John Rothnie-Jones, who own the resort, have been running courses since 2004 in subjects as diverse as literature appreciation, painting and bird watching.

This year they are also including painting, singing, beading, snorkelling and marine life and yoga workshops on the agenda.

Daku Resort offers friendly, no-frills accommodation, which in some ways makes it easier to concentrate on the craft of writing.

The lush gardens and gorgeous views through the coconut palms help play on the senses, another aspect of the course.

As I arrive earlier than the other five members of the group, Delia takes me on a boat trip across the bay where we swim and collect shells. That evening the group arrives, looking a bit worse for wear. They’ve flown from Sydney to Nadi and then Suva to Labasa followed by a hairy taxi ride across the mountains to Savusavu.

Air Pacific assures us that when its two new TwinOtter aircraft arrive in June it will resume frequent services to Savusavu and other islands from Nadi andvisitors won’t be faced with cancellations
and mountainous taxi trips (although I do enjoy the ride on the way back).

The next morning we get stuck into the first of our daily three-hour lessons conducted in an open-air room overlooking palms and sea that Delia says is the only ‘‘custom-built yoga shala in the south Pacific’’.
We are working on a variety of books on very different themes: a memoir, a historical novel, a war history-cum-memoir  and three contemporary novels, including mine.

I am pleased to see the other writers have similar problems to mine. They have their stories, characters and themes worked out, but are stuck and none has a completed manuscript. A couple have some trepidation about reading to the group, but we all find the encouragement gentle and genuine. And breaking into pairs to work on mapping plots and themes is also helpful.

Cornall’s aim is to help you focus on what’s swirling around in your mind, access it and get it down on paper in your own voice. She uses meditation and creative visualisation; yoga on a few mornings as well as swimming and snorkelling also help, giving us time to think (or not think), as does the solitude and
peace of writing in a bure.

After a daily 6pm reading session together, we have group dinners with other guests at Daku; meals are simple but substantial with all meals included in the week-long course’s cost.

I’ve had a few distractions since returning home but I’ve almost completed another chapter and I’ve made a big decision: this book is definitely not chick-lit. The course has given me the breakthrough I needed.

Jan returns to Fiji in 2012 for another week of Breakthrough Writing from 17 – 24 March, 2011.
Read more here »

Writers Get Creative Amid Palms in Fiji – News article from Yahoo!7

We’ve just had the first of this year’s courses – Island Writers Lab with Jan Cornall – and what a terrific week it was. It was small – we’re seeing the effects of the economic downturn, just like everyone else in the travel business  – but enormously productive. Those writers sure did write! They’d stop for lunch, maybe have a massage or a swim, and then back to the keyboard or writing pad for another thousand words before dinner.

Jan says they were the most disobedient group she’d ever had – always doing their own stuff rather than the things she set them, going off on tangents, arriving late, arguing – but wonderful in their enthusiasm, dedication and good humour. And by the end of the week she’d whipped them into some sort of shape and we held a formal reading of the work.

At the time, we had a lot of guests at the resort who were on their way to the Tony Robbins’ Life Mastery course at nearby Namale Resort (it’s a one week course about getting your head and body and thus your life into focus, and a lot of the participants arrive a day or two early and stay around Savusavu: we had 15 staying). Eight of them sat with us for the reading, and gave us an invaluable outsiders’ reaction to what was being presented- laughing, clapping and even weeping.

In brief, we had
–    a summary of a memoir the daughter of a Czech spy who worked as a double agent for the CIA
–     a travel yarn which was a very funny account of mature age travel – a sort of On the Road with Two Game Grey Ladies
–    a short story about the lunatic edges of writing courses
–     and a totally absorbing account of a terrible car accident 25 years ago, read out from her wheelchair by the woman who was the driver.

During the week we had time for some snorkelling, some walking, some drinking, some shopping (I personally never thought there was much to find in Savusavu – until I went shopping with Hilary!), some local culture – and endless talks around the dinner table. A great week to start the year’s Paradise Courses programme .