The Tasmanian Writers Centre

The festival opened Friday evening, with Sir Guy Green launching issue 105 of Island Magazine, followed by a theatrical piece from Robert Jarman. Tim Bowden then introduced the writers featured in the festival.

The first session of Saturday’s program is entitled "Myths and Legends – Themes and Motifs in Antarctic Writing," and features Bill Manhire, Steve Martin, Allen Mawer and Elle Leane. It’s timed to begin at 10 am, but by 10 am there are no more than four or five people in the theatre – the panel speakers - standing around on stage, perhaps discussing the forthcoming reading, order of readers, where to sit. Besides yours truly, there’s not a soul in the audience. Festival director Joe Bugden patrols the aisle. ‘Hobart audiences’ he mutters, flashing a grin. His patience is rewarded as within the hour the audience builds to fifty or more.

Allen Mawer introduces the readers on the panel. "I think Bill Manhire could be called the Poet Laureate of Antarctica because I don’t think any other poet has been down to the South Pole." Elle Leane speaks of the way Antarctic myths have arisen, utilising as an example the legend of a mystery ship encountered in 1840 - crew dead, having been trapped in ice floes for the past seventeen years. Such stories generate their own interest, Leane suggests, Rosemary Dobson for instance referring to it in her poem ‘The Ship of Ice’. "There’s the idea that time flows differently in Antarctica," Elle concludes, "it seems to be a place of preservation whereby its layers of ice give access to past ages, I think that’s because of its remoteness. Nevertheless I believe it has a predictive function as well, is capable of informing us about future time."

Steve Martin, speaking of the career of expeditioner Ernest Henry Shackleton, foreshadows his talk as "somewhat morbid" given its concerns with the mythology of death. "The Antarctic tourist industry has developed around Shackleton," he points out, adding "Though I’m not complaining, because I’m part of it. One of my greatest life experiences was to stand on Elephant Island – where twenty-two members of Shackleton’s ship Endurance survived for nearly two years before being rescued - with my thirteen year old son last year."

Mawer turns to New Zealand poet Bill Manhire. "Bill, are you going to continue the tendency of this session to be morbid? Or will you perhaps explore the idea that Antarctica can take us back to a utopian ideal?" Manhire’s disquietening response is to report on a science conference held in Beijing a week or two previously where astrophysicist Stephen Hawking offered the keynote speech. Hawking’s message was that human society might be well advised to establish a permanent base on the moon in twenty years and a colony on Mars in the next forty given that continued life on Earth is subject to the disastrous possibilities of nuclear war and global warming.

"Interestingly," adds Manhire as he threads the relevance of Hawking’s message to the concerns of the panel session, "someone in the audience argued against his idea as impractical and expensive, that the idea of the colonisation of Mars was a great waste of money, and suggested that perhaps it’s Antarctica that’s the place to do it, the place that can take us back to a vision of utopia."

Manhire introduces quotations from writers familiar with Antarctica. "The excruciating purity of the environment allows the traveller to simplify himself," was science fiction writer Richard Matheson’s response to the experience of Antarctica. [Matheson - whose Antarctic experience as a tourist in 1989 changed his life forever – is these days a supporter of The Antarctica Project, a Washington, D.C.-based umbrella organization coordinating the efforts of different environmental groups to make Antarctica the first World Park]. The word ‘pure’ recurs throughout Manhire’s commentary. "When it comes to the early Antarctic explorers, the purity of the place – the human yearning for some kind of purity – has attached itself to those people … or perhaps they’ve attached it to themselves".

Elle Leane, in response, remarks that within the notion of purity lurks … something quite dreadful. She alludes to charges of cannibalism raised within an Antarctic context, while someone else points to the connection between purity and race. Manhire agrees. Hitler and his friends were "the great exponents of purity" he points out, adding that a strong impulse in the world of art is to find the pure within "the messy, impure things in life". "Another point I could make about Antarctica" he adds, his fertile imagination off on yet another tack, "is that it is often gendered as female – just as imperial, colonial literature everywhere genders Antarctic explorers as male. That’s normal, of course … it’s just that Antarctica manages to remain virginal."

A question from a member of the audience queries the failure of memory, particularly in relation to the myth of Shackleton as someone who "never lost a man", when in fact this was incorrect. "Not sure why people tend to ignore the Ross Sea party," is Steve Martin’s response, "perhaps the myth is neater, it doesn’t offer an awkward postscript".

"But it’s accentuating what we choose to remember, what we perpetuate as myth," the questioner persists.

"Which gets back to the question of why we need myth so badly in society. To be truthful, I don’t know!"

In summing up, Mawer suggests the themes covered are the universal ones, "projected on this huge panorama, which of course has nothing on it – so it is of course, about us."

Next is a reading, featuring Laurence Fearnley, Bernadette Hince and Anthony Lawrence.

"Rather than work on my novel, I spent my days working with glaciologists," observes Laurence Fearnley in explaining the day to day routine of her life in Antarctica. [Fearnley was awarded a New Zealand Antarctic Arts fellowship and travelled to the Antarctic in January 2004]. "What’s important to me with my writing is primarily location, then the characters directing the plot. I like to observe a place, learn about it over the years so I can accurately portray it in my writing. My terrible predicament with regards Antarctica was that my fellowship was only two weeks in length, and I believed I’d never return. During those two weeks I anxiously observed everything and

everyone, I watched the glaciologists like a hawk". Fearnley diligently – feverishly? - observed, recorded and wrote as much as she could during her two weeks on the continent. She concludes by reading a couple of pages - poignant and personal paragraphs - from the book resulting from her residency: Degrees of Separation, her fifth novel, published by Penguin in 2006.

Bernadette Hince is next to the podium, reading a prose extract capturing the perhaps naïve expectations of arrival at Casey – for instance, the expectation of an absence of smell. "This is of course not the case … there are beach smells, the odours emanating from penguin rookeries, the hut’s smouldering smoke fire fuelled by eucalypts transported from two thousand miles away. There’s a lot of smell in Antarctica."

Anthony Lawrence is solemn as he approaches the microphone, but light of tone and engaging of his audience when he speaks. He’s alternatively poet and fisherman, relating tales of his interminable travels in boats throughout the Great Southern Ocean, of sliding past the Hippolytes with its huge and wonderful cormorant rookeries, witnessing numerous baitballs of fish "ripped into by any species of fish". Anthony reads "Wandering Albatross", a poem that came to him on a fishing trip where he found himself in the excruciating position – for a poet – of being without a writing implement. "The poem was coming, but I had nothing on me to write it down. Eventually I found a sharpened screwdriver and scratched the opening words on the back of an aluminium lure tray … when I transcribed it I think I’d caught most of it". He continues with poems "Baitball", "Scarves" (playing loosely with images of the scarves we wear for style and warmth, the scarves we administer in wood ringbarking a tree, the scarf the poet witnessed worn by a satin bowerbird), and "Luge". "I wrote ‘Luge’ during the winter olympics, fascinated by the idea of heading feet first down the run, it reminded me of archival footage I’d seen of someone being buried at sea. I thought, okay, there’s a poem here".

The next session features Craig Cormick Terry Whitebeach, Laurence Fearnley and Tim Bowden: ‘JAFO’S AND JAFA’S. Are writer’s perspectives (as opposed to, say, scientists’) valid, naïve, romantic, realistic?’

"I’m intrigued to know why we even have to ask the question," admits Craig Cormick. "There are many different ways to write Antarctica, both scientists and writers are attempting to find elusive truths that at the end of the day bind us much more tightly together than you might think."

"I was in Dundee a couple of weeks ago where I visited the Discovery Point Antarctic Museum and where the research ship Discovery is on display. When I was little, I had a model of Discovery, so I was familiar with her shape. What I was unprepared for was the beauty of it, and I found myself thinking – here I am, by Shackleton’s cabin, imagining his daily routine. That’s what you have to do as a writer of course; you have to imagine, in an effort to take us beyond what is known."

"Imagination, again. Mawson, arriving back at base to find his ship has left, that he’ll have to winter at the base. In his diary is one short entry. That’s it! But what was he thinking? We don’t know, we have to imagine."

"These are not new debates, of course. Can male writers write about women’s lives? Can non-indigenous writers write with authority about indigenous life? etc. Of course, the scientific perspective is valuable. But sometimes the imaginative perspective captures an experience that surprises us, offers added dimension to what it is we’re trying to understand."

Terry Whitebeach’s response to the question of whether writers’ perspectives may be valid, naïve, romantic or realistic, is that yes, they may be any or all of the above. "As may scientists’," she adds. "I don’t see it as a dichotomy. As an either or. Although I do agree with Kathleen Jaimie, it’s poetry’s job to keep making sense of the world in language, to keep the negotiation going."

"Some scientists don’t acknowledge this. But then, some scientists once believed the earth was flat. And it’s a fact quantum physics is only just beginning to explore the territory well known to poets for centuries."

In response to the question of what writers and other artists have to offer scientific investigation of Antarctica, Whitebeach says that as a JAFO/closet JAFA she recognised it was a privilege to be on an Antarctic expedition "and I tried to fulfil my end of the reciprocally incurred obligation to the officers and IRs on board ship and the station staff in Antarctica by lending a hand wherever possible, by scrupulously observing regulations and procedures, and by not demanding too much of busy people, and to ANARE, by producing a radio play Antarctic Journey."

"I did not find such a great gulf between scientists and writers/artists as might be imagined. Many people in Antarctica are both, and, the way most people of intelligence and empathy approach the world is never singly dimensional."

"In 1993 I was approached to contribute poems for an Antarctic mid-winter exhibition with a difference: instead of being a public showing, the writing and artwork was to be photocopied and given to each of the winterers to read and view privately. And it was not writing about Antarctica that was requested, just the richness of one’s mind and heart and art, whatever word-gifts we had to offer to those far from home."

"Many scientists are also writers. In the old station logs I found poems, philosophical and historical musings, psychological analyses, motherly brooding over the men in their care, rapt descriptions of place, as well as crisp, recordings of facts. Temperatures, wind-speeds, repairs to huts, scientific readings of all kinds."

"The thing that unites most expeditioners to Antarctica is their passion for the place: and particularly enthusiasms, such as a passion for upper atmosphere physics, glaciology, Weddell seals, or polar birds, are not so different from the passion of a writer to find words for the particularness of life, for what touches the mind and heart; the desire to achieve in words a precision of sense and feeling that will point beyond, to what can’t be articulated but which nevertheless exists and is real."

"Kathleen Jamie reminds us, though, ‘If we always work in words, sometimes we need to recuperate in a place where language doesn’t join up, where we’re thrown back on a few elementary nouns. Sea. Bird. Sky. This is also one of the appeals of Antarctica. It can’t be proscribed or contained – by either science or art.’ "

"Barry Jones says ‘art has sustained me my whole life. It helps make sense of existence.’ "

"I have always been avid for facts, for details of Antarctica. And I have been grateful for those scientists who have articulated the place by means of their particular discipline. As a writer and as a person, I was overjoyed finally to fulfil my long-held dream to stand on the Antarctic continent. Everyone feels it. There are just not the words, always, for that feeling. It’s the love of the place, and science or writing or photography are the vehicles that transport us there: I found my own family in Antarctica. They gave me facts about engineering of ice runways, about glaciers, wind speeds, crevasses, the atmosphere, bow thrusters, snow petrels, Norwegian cookery. I gave them my humanity, my writer’s mind and heart, a particular way of seeing the world; I gave them my science – the discipline of the writer to craft what the senses, the memory, observation deliver to the human heart, to be transformed and reformed into gifts that then may become the property of whoever chooses to accept them."

Laurence Fearnley laments the fact that it’s only twenty-four hours since she realised she was to appear on this particular panel. "And I assumed immediately the acronym had nothing to do with observers and administrators, that JAFA simply meant ‘Just Another F****** Aucklander’, at least that’s what it does back home."

"When it comes to our reception as artists and writers," she continues, "I don’t think we need to be treated as VIP’s, but I certainly think we need to be treated more equally. New Zealand artists find themselves with two weeks in which to gather material - very large bodies or work – but with no ability to develop the work over a period of time. I think it’s wrong. When I applied for the Antarctic Arts Fellowship, I had a very roughly structured idea of the project which – speaking from experience – was so broadly focussed that when I arrived I found myself at a loss."

"I came back home, seriously considering studying to become a geologist because I wanted so much to go back to Antarctica. I had the feeling that I didn’t have enough material for the novel; I felt the need to protect all that I’d experienced, replay it over and over in my head until I got it right".

"But I was fortunate. I got a second trip - even came to feel about Antarctica as a place where I’d like to live."

"In terms of change – I think I’m back to normal now [laughs], but I’d still like to do the geology."

Tim Bowden observes that "from an Australian perspective one is in no danger of being treated like a VIP, Laurence".

Terry Whitebeach admits she’d found it difficult to articulate her urge to visit Antartica, but it had always been there. "When I was younger, I used to go down to the wharfs with my children to where the Nella Dan was berthed. ‘See that ship?’ I’d say. ‘Mummy’s going on that ship to Antarctica one day.’ Well I didn’t go on the Nella Dan – unfortunately it sank, well no it didn’t sink, it ran aground off Macquarie Island and was eventually scuttled – but I managed to get there anyway."

"In Antarctica I felt I understood the origin of the religious impulse, the response to something overwhelmingly powerful and inexplicable. On the trip down I was hanging out the porthole, getting quieter and quieter, more and more inward as time went on."

Craig Cormick concurs. "Many who go to Antarctica are those with an Antarctic-shaped hole in their head or their heart. I’m intrigued by those who don’t have that perception, but who are changed anyway."

The next session is entitled ‘The Ulysses Factor’, in which writers investigate the ‘peopled’ Antarctica: the human relationships and communities of Antarctica, and ponder the types of personalities that hurl themselves against nature – again and again, and again… It features Steve Martin, Bill Manhire, Adrian Caesar, and Allen Mawer.

Steve Martin compares the way many view a visit to Antarctica as the experience of a lifetime, alongside that of the Russian experience. "Many Russians do it for a job. They’re poorly paid, blasé about it. Their experience is different from that of other nationalities, who build little communities within themselves, friendships, animosities, marriages … where the boundaries and descriptions of Antarctic communities are forever changing. Temporary, impermanent populations. Their personal and intimate nature is the reason people return to them, leaving what to some is a more complex society behind them."

Bill Manhire speaks of the Mount Erebus tragedy of 1979 when more than 250 people died as the result of an Air New Zealand flight crashing into Mount Erebus in the Antarctic. In 2004, Manhire was invited to write a poem marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy. It was read by Sir Edmund Hillary, who had been scheduled to take the flight but had pulled out due to prior commitments. "In the aftermath of the Mt Erebus accident, there were many and varied voices heard, but the two voices we didn’t hear were those of the mountain, and of the people who died," Manhire explained. "I attempted to give those voices a hearing in my poem ‘Erebus Voices’, which Sir Edmund Hillary read at the crash site on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy, in 2004."

Allen Mawer’s slant on Antarctic relationships takes in the fate of the animals taken to the continent. "They have names, they have characters – but we always knew that very few would come back." A historian, Mawer laments the lack of lower deck – as opposed to wardroom – records of early Antarctic expeditions. His tales reveal a keen sense of the ridiculous. "Let me read you of the attempts to claim the continent by throwing a flag on a pole onto terra firma - only to see it strike rocks and fall into the icy water, Antarctica’s first proclamation of sovereignty … floating out to sea."

In question time, the point is raised about the human presence in Antarctica – is it warranted? "Perhaps it’s the seduction of the possible," is the reply, "we’re there because we can be there."

Steve Martin agrees that he’s come across the notion of a sense of trespass in Antarctica, "The sense that perhaps we shouldn’t be there, but we’re going to be there anyway".

Antarctica "really put me in my place," Bill Manhire observes. "The place and the weather rule what is possible. I really understood that I was on an island, I could see the curve of the earth – absolutely."

"I think that’s where Scott’s difficulty lay," adds Adrian Caesar. "I think he was unable to accept the position that Antarctica – the weather, the terrain – was in charge. He came from a tradition that said an English naval sea captain could achieve anything. Nothing changed this."

Readings by Adrian Caesar, Steve Martin and Terry Whitebeach follow. Adrian Caesar’s poems explore the idea of Antarctica as metaphor. "For many people, the encounter with Antarctica gives them a heightened sense of meaning, but the icy terrain can also register as blankness, echoing back a blankness that can be terrifying … I suppose this is my meditation on the blank page of Antarctica."

Terry Whitebeach reads small excerpts for her radio play "Antarctic journey", and from her journal written in Antarctica. "And I’ll read a warm poem about sex," she adds. "But it’s not sex in Antarctica because as we all know it doesn’t happen there".

Steve Martin suggests that as the session has run out of time, he’ll settle for relating the tale of a marriage between two Russian crew, a couple serving on different ships who had only three days together before going their separate ways. The story ended with a chance meeting, a lover’s tryst, and a hasty retreat as one of the vessels got underway. "Had he managed to get off before the ship got underway? Yes, he’d taken care of himself; as I looked behind, there he was in his zodiac, following his wife on the Russian ship, gliding side to side in the waves, saying his goodbyes."

Next follows "A View to a Krill", a session in which writers discuss how the alternate modes of travel prepare and transform writers’ assumptions, expectations and perspectives during their approach to Antarctica. It features Laurence Fearnley, Bernadette Hince, Tim Bowden and Bernadette Hall.

"I notice," begins Laurence Fearnley, "that I’m again the only one without notes for this session."

"I’m a very excitable traveller. When I’m flying, I’m often at the check-in counter before the check-in staff have arrived. On the occasion of my first visit to Antarctica, I arranged a 3am wake up in order to get to Christchurch airport on time. [I didn’t know the plane had been cancelled]. I had to go through the whole process the following day … fortunately it went this time. While on the plane I realised people were wearing different coloured uniforms, depending on the level of cool one had attained. I was dressed in blue, yellow and green, or the uncool end of the spectrum. After five hours we arrived in Antarctica. I had no idea the plane had even landed until they opened up the doors to unload. And from this really noisy, really dark enclosure, I found myself facing the most beautiful sight I’ve ever experienced. Arriving in Antarctica was like being given the gift I’d always wanted, but it was kind of bittersweet – to arrive at the place where you’ve always wanted to be is a bit like being alive when being alive means that at the very same moment, you’re dying."

"We’d have no need for notes either if we could all speak as elequently as you, Laurence," observes Bernadette Hince.

Tim Bowden speaks on how from an Australian perspective, the sea voyage equalled the ritual of moving into another world … of the way that new arrivals think their year will be different from any other, of their observations of the first faint smudges of pack ice on the horizon. " ‘I must not photograph any more icebergs,’ I said to myself, many times, ‘and then … oh, but l-o-o-k!’ One had access to the bridge at all times, and first timers would flock there to drink in every aspect of this wonderful journey."

"We’ve talked about how the experience of Antarctica changes people, in my case it turned a cynical old journo towards poetry," Bowden adds, before reading the poem he wrote to his wife, while in Antarctica.

Bernadette Hall speaks of her journey to Antarctica by Hercules aircraft. "We’d been warned it was the journey from hell, warned it could be a boomerang flight. My preparation for Antarctica was to see it as a metaphor for possibly … a place of spiritual loneliness, depression, possibly purity. I found the experience far more physical than I’d ever imagined. There was virtually no time to read, we spent all of our time travelling."

"It took us two weeks to get to Antarctica on the Icebird in 1995," recalls Bernadette Hince. "Travel lifts away the burden of everyday life, a great freedom is conferred on you … we experienced two weeks of animated conversation on our way down, but on the morning of our arrival we stood on the bow of the ship, silently watching, experiencing a very special moment coming into a quiet place. It was raining that morning – it hadn’t rained in Casey for four years."

For Bill Manhire, the most difficult aspect of travelling to and from Antarctica was the sudden arrival back home in New Zealand by aeroplane. It was a difficult adjustment. "God this place is vile, dirty," he thought to himself, "I noticed some orange marigolds in a flowerbox at the airport … I just wanted to pull them out."

Bernadette Hince’s arrival home coincided with the Port Arthur massacre. "That was a great contrast - from my safe, closeted Antarctic lifestyle - to arrival back to the horrors of modern existence."

Tim Bowden’s arrival home was to the smell and smoke of bushfires in southern Tasmania. "I had the impression I was coming back to a much more complicated life."

Bernadette Hall’s belated reflection came during the 54 km drive home from Christchurch Airport. "I suddenly came to the realisation that for twenty minutes I had been concentrating purely on long sightedness – as you do in the icy white panorama of Antarctica - that I’d not short focused at all ... God knows if I ran any red lights or not. That was among the first impressions of my return."

"Out in the Cold" features Julia Jabour, Marcus Haward, Eric Philips and Bernadette Hince, in which writers debate who ‘owns’ Antarctica. Who are the outsiders there, and who is legitimate? How are the claims and interests of scientists, environmentalists, tourism operators, and writers and artists, etc. represented? Marcus Haward gives some background to the problem of overlapping claims to the area. ‘Japan was prohibited from making a claim as a result of its post World War II peace treaty,’ he explains, alluding to the tension that now exists between Japan and Australia over whaling operations off the Antarctic shelf. ‘The other way of looking at ownership is common heritage, where the role of artists is perhaps very important. The images and stories that non-scientific figures are able to share with the rest of the community may provide a way of understanding the complexity of the problems facing us in Antarctica. Are we in danger of over-exploiting our marine resources, for instance?’

‘I’m feeling a little like a Patagonian toothfish out of water sitting here amongst the current gathering,’ Eric Philips begins by way of introducing himself. ‘I’m not a scientist, neither do I have a detailed knowledge of the law. I’m an adventurer. And adventurers, it seems to me, have a lot at stake in Antarctica. Just this year, a Spanish expedition staged an incredible crossing of the continent powered solely by windpower - in sixty-three days, the fastest ever. Over 4,500 kilometres on their wind powered sled that may revolutionise polar transport … a fantastic story of endurance and of reliance upon sustainable energy that captured the world’s imagination.’

Philips is founder of Icetrek, specialising in expeditions to the polar regions - Antarctica, Greenland, Patagonia, Alaska, Iceland, Siberia and the Canadian High Arctic, he’s trekked them all. ‘Should there be so much opposition by governments to private expeditioners?’ he asks. ‘I’ll be interested to hear the responses of my fellow panellists!’

‘I believe adventure tourists can offer a very good perspective,’ comments Marcus Haward. ‘I think the level of impact of small tourist ventures is minimal when compared to some of the major engineering features of the bases and constructions being built. How do we address this? We need to put pressure on our governments – let’s not have fifty seismic research programs, for instance, all working on the same studies.’

‘I also see that of the 30,000 tourists that may visit Antarctica annually, 28,000 will return convinced of the need for action in Antarctica. I’d argue that the treaty system has to come to terms with the new Antarctica, not the old Antarctica.’

Craig Cormick, Bill Manhire and Bernadette Hince take part in "Writing the Unimaginable" in which writers consider how one writes about Antarctica. How do writers describe the place? Or is it "unwritable?" Bill Manhire likes the idea of the writer as bricoleur, comfortable with the unfamiliar – the scavenger sorting through villagers’ trash cans and rearranging their trash into other shapes and forms before offering these back for consideration and reappraisal. ‘It’s hard being a bricoleur scavenger in Antarctica - for the type of writer I am, Antarctica is a huge challenge. There’s not that huge messiness to work in and respond to, just the white blank space – an absence – talking back at you. Antarctica left me – both elated and calm at the same time.’

‘I had this experience of working with a glaciologist,’ Manhire continues ‘who was returning to New Zealand at about the same time as I was. I asked him, what will you do when you return home? "A couple of weeks of data reduction, then I’ll have a bloody good holiday," he replied. That was a good response, I thought. Whenever anyone asked what I intended doing on my return – holiday? write? - "data reduction", I’d tell them.’

‘It’s very difficult to find metaphors and images for Antarctica, the only ones you can come up with are usually completely banal. Like "icing". None of them fit … well they fit, but they don’t fit the quality of the images you’re perceiving.’

‘Can you write about Antarctica without having been there?’ asks Craig Cormick, rhetorically. ‘How many times did Shakespeare visit Denmark, do you think?’

This review of Ice Cold Words is by RALPH WESSMAN, Tasmanian publisher and Editor.

Friday 23 - Sunday 25 June 2006
Ice Cold Words - an Antarctic Writers' Festival .
The Peacock Theatre, Salamanca Arts Centre, 77 Salamanca Place, Hobart.

As part of the 2006 Antarctic Midwinter Festival the Tasmanian Writers' Centre is presenting Ice Cold Words; a weekend festival of readings, discussions, debates and interpretations of Antarctica.

The festival will include Australian and international authors who have either travelled to Antarctica or have published fiction, non-fiction, plays, poetry and prose set in Antarctica.

Apart from "Write Down the Line" on Saturday night, all events within Ice Cold Words are free, and you are welcome to be part of the audience.

Books on Antarctica can be purchased prior to or during the festival from the Hobart Bookshop - the official bookseller for Ice Cold Words.
Ph 03 6223 1803 or email goodbooks@hobartbookshop.com.au

Please note that this program is subject to change without notice. Please confirm events prior to committing to attend.

Saturday 24 June in the Peacock Theatre

Saturday 10am “Myths & Legends - Themes and Motifs in Antarctic Writing” in which writers will consider some of the contemporary v. the historical approaches to writing about Antarctica: the Gothic, the Heroic, Sci-Fi, A play-ground for modern day Adventurers. With Bill Manhire, Steve Martin, and Allen Mawer. Chaired by Elle Leane.

Saturday 11am Readings by Laurence Fearnley, Bernadette Hince, and Anthony Lawrence.

Saturday 11:30am “JAFOs & JAFAs” Are writers’ perspectives (as opposed to, say, scientists’) valid, naive, romantic, realistic? What do writers and other artists have to offer scientific investigation of Antarctica? With Craig Cormick, Terry Whitebeach, and Laurence Fearnley. Chaired by Tim Bowden.

Saturday 12:30–1:30pm Break for lunch or to have authors sign copies of their books. Books by participating authors are available at the Hobart Bookshop prior to the festival or on the day.

Saturday 1:30pm “The Ulysses Factor” in which writers will investigate the ‘peopled’ Antarctica; the human relationships and communities of Antarctica, and ponder the types of personalities that hurl themselves against nature – again and again, and again… With Steve Martin, Bill Manhire and Adrian Caesar. Chaired by Allen Mawer.

Saturday 2:30pm Readings by Adrian Caesar, Steve Martin, and Terry Whitebeach.

Saturday 3pm “A View to a Krill” in which writers discuss how the alternate modes of travel prepares and transforms writers’ assumptions, expectations and perspectives during their approach to Antarctica. With Laurence Fearnley, Bernadette Hince, Tim Bowden, Bernadette Hall.

Saturday 24 June 7.45pm in the Peacock Theatre.
”Write down the line” is a new performance-based game show devised for the Antarctic Midwinter Festival. Eight leading writers, comedians and 'local characters' have been given a month to prepare a themed performance piece to present in an audience-participation show to be held at the Peacock Theatre.

The individual presentations can take the form of performance poetry, stand-up comedy, story-telling or singing to the accompaniment of a single acoustic instrument. A mixture of these styles is also acceptable. But the overall emphasis is on FUN. Come along and warm the cockles of your heart with a good laugh. Who knows - you may even get to play a key role! General admission only. All tickets $10 - available at the door.

Sunday 25 June
10am “Out in the Cold” in which writers debate who ‘owns’ Antarctica? Who are the outsiders there, and who is legitimate? How are the claims and interests of scientists, environmentalists, tourism operators, and writers and artists, etc. represented? With Julia Jabour, Marcus Haward, and Eric Philips. Chaired by Bernadette Hince.

Sunday 11am Readings by Bill Manhire, Eric Philips, Teresa Dikkenberg, and Allen Mawer.

Sunday 11:30am “Publish or Perish” How has writing (as well as reading and performance of writing) been employed as a survival technique (both historical and contemporary) during the Polar winters? A presentation by Elle Leane.

Sunday 12:30pm-1:30pm. Break for lunch or to have authors sign copies of their books. Books by participating authors are available at the Hobart Bookshop prior to the festival or on the day.

Sunday 1:30pm “Writing the Unimaginable” in which writers consider how one writes about Antarctica. How do writers describe the place? Or it "unwritable?” With Craig Cormick, Bill Manhire, Anthony Lawrence, and Bernadette Hince.

Sunday 2:30pm Readings by Bernadette Hall, Craig Cormick and Tim Bowden.

Sunday 3pm “We May Never Pass this Way Again” Saying ‘Good-bye’ to Antarctica and adjusting to ‘civilisation’ once again. What images, memories (and other souvenirs) do writers take home with them? What do they put into their writing, and what do they leave behind, and leave out. With Adrian Caesar, Phillipa Foster, Bernadette Hall. Chaired by Elle Leane.

Sunday 4pm Conclusion to Ice Cold Words, and thanks to those who supported the festival and contributed to it.

TIM BOWDEN is a broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, oral historian and author. He was born in Hobart, Tasmania, August 2, 1937, and is married, with two children. He hosted the ABC-TV listener and viewer reaction program 'Backchat' from 1986 to June 1994.

Bowden's background in journalism includes current affairs, news, feature and documentary work. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Asia and North America and in 1969 was the first executive producer of the ABC radio current affairs program 'PM', before becoming a producer with the ground-breaking television current affairs program 'This Day Tonight' in the early 1970s. In 1985 Bowden founded the ABC's Social History Unit. Among his major productions are the award-winning 24-part series 'Taim Bilong Masta - The Australian Involvement with Papua New Guinea', and 'Prisoners of War - Australians Under Nippon'.

His published books are: 'Changi Photographer- George Aspinall's Record Of Captivity'; 'One Crowded Hour- Neil Davis, Combat Cameraman'; 'The Backchat Book'; ’The Way My Father Tells It - The Story of An Australian Life'; ’Antarctica And Back In Sixty Days' and 'The Silence Calling - Australians in Antarctica 1947-97', ‘Penelope Goes West – On the Road from Sydney to Margaret River and Back’, ‘Penelope Bungles to Broome’. ‘Spooling Through – An Irreverent Memoir’,’ This Can’t Happen to Me! – Tackling Type 2 Diabetes’, ‘No Tern Unstoned – Musings At Breakfast’, and most recently ‘The Devil in Tim – Travels in Tasmania’ published in April 2005.

For the last fifteen years Tim Bowden has been actively broadcasting, writing and researching Australian activities in Antarctica. He has produced six radio documentaries 'Australians in Antarctica' in 1987, and in 1993 was commissioned by the Antarctic Division to write the official history of ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) 'The Silence Calling - Australians in Antarctica 1947-97', published on 11 June, 1997.

Bowden's six half-hour documentaries 'Breaking The Ice' (on current ANARE operations, following visits to all the Australian stations at Macquarie Island, Casey, Davis and Mawson from October to December 1994) were broadcast on ABC-TV in April and May 1996, and have been released as an ABC Video.

In October 2002, the Premier of Tasmania, the late Jim Bacon, appointed Bowden Tasmania’s first Honorary Antarctic Ambassador – a two-year term. During that time His Excellency has endeavoured to promote Tasmania’s Antarctic related activities, particularly during the annual Antarctic Midwinter Festival in Hobart.

Tim Bowden received an Order of Australia for services to public broadcasting in June 1994. In May 1997 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Tasmania.

ADRIAN CAESAR was born in England in 1955 and educated at the University of Reading (BA Hons. PhD). He has lived and worked in Australia for over twenty years. He has held appointments at the Flinders University of South Australia, and the University of New England. Until recently he was Associate Professor of English at UNSW@ADFA, where he worked for sixteen years, and where he remains an Honorary Visiting Fellow. In 2004, he left academe to write full-time, and in the same year was awarded a two-year project grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

Adrian Caesar’s articles, reviews and poems have appeared in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and books in Australia, USA, and England. He has published four volumes of non-fiction: Dividing Lines: Poetry, Class and Ideology in the 1930s (Manchester University Press, 1991); Taking it Like a Man: Suffering, Sexuality and the War Poets (Manchester University Press, 1993); Kenneth Slessor (Oxford University Press, 1995); and, The White: Last Days in the Antarctic Journeys of Scott and Mawson 1911-1913 (Picador, 1999).

The White won the Nettie Palmer prize for non-fiction in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2000 and the ACT Book of the Year 2000. His publications also include four books of poetry: Hunger Games (Polonius Press, 1996); Life Sentences (Molonglo Press, 1998); The June Fireworks: New and Selected Poems (2001); and High Wire (Pandanus Press, 2005). Adrian is currently working on a novel and a literary non-fiction project provisionally entitled, Shots in the Dark: A Private Investigation into a Family Murder.

CRAIG CORMICK is an award-winning Canberra author and journalist. He has been Chair of the ACT Writers Centre and tutors in creative writing at the University of Canberra.
Craig has published and edited several books with both small and mainstream publishers and his writing awards include the Max Harris Literary Award (1998), ACT Chief Minister's Book of the Year Award (1999) and he was short-listed for the Australian/Vogel Award in 1994 and short-listed for a Queensland Premier’s Award in 2004.

Craig has published over 100 short stories in anthologies, literary journals and newspapers, including Meanjin, Island, Westerly, Scarp, Overland, 4-W, Redoubt, and the Phoenix Review. He has also published over a dozen literary articles and essays in publications including Redoubt and Island. He has hosted sessions or been a guest speaker at several literary festivals, including the National Word Festival in Canberra in 2001, the 'I'd Rather Be Reading' seminar at the National Library of Australia in 1999 and 2003, the Tasmanian Readers and Writers Festival in 2000 and he was an invited speaker to the inaugural Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival in 2004. Craig first became interested in Antarctica while working as a journalist for the Department of Science, overseeing information on Australia’s Antarctic Division. Craig has visited the Arctic, living for a year in both Finland and Iceland, has flown over Antarctica, and is intrigued by the ‘polar opposites’.
His published work on Antarctic themes includes, the satirical short story ‘Lady Shackleton’s Freezer’ – published in Unwritten Histories (Aboriginal Studies Press, 1998 - Winner of the 1999 ACT Chief Minister's Book of the Year Award), which has been performed several times in public, with accompanying photos of Shackleton’s expedition, and the short story ‘Shackleton’s Drift’, published in 'The Princess of Cups' (Ginninderra Press, 2003 - short-listed for the Queensland Premier’s Award’s Steele Rudd Award, 2004.). Craig has also completed a novel, as yet unpublished, based on the story Shackleton’s Drift, set in both a contemporary era and during Shackleton’s expedition.

LAURENCE FEARNLEY is the Tasmanian Writers' Centre's Antarctic Writer in Residence for the month of June. She was born in New Zealand in 1963 and spent the first few years of her life in the mid Canterbury rural town of Fairlie before moving to Christchurch. She studied at the University of Canterbury, obtaining a BA in Art History and American Studies and a MA in American Studies, before moving to Wellington where she worked for several years as the Curator at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt. A period of overseas travel followed, more work in Art Museums (The Robert McDougall in Christchurch, The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, Te Papa Project Office, Wellington) interspersed with more travel: spending large amounts of time in France. As a result she wrote her first novel, The Sound of Her Body (Hazard Press, 1998). In 1997 she was admitted to the MA in Creative Writing course at Victoria University in Wellington. Shortly after this, she married and moved with her husband to Würzburg, Germany where she lived for four years, working on Room (Victoria University Press, 2000) and Delphine's Run (Penguin, 2003). Room was short listed for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2001. Returning to New Zealand in 2002 she completed Butler's Ringlet (Penguin 2004).

In the summer of 2004 she was awarded the New Zealand Antarctic Arts Fellowship and travelled to the Antarctic in January 2004. As a result of this residency she completed her fifth novel, Degrees of Separation, which will be published by Penguin in April 2006. She returned to the Antarctic in December 2005 and plans to write a series of short stories and poetry set there.
She has had short stories published in Sport, Radio New Zealand and various anthologies including, The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica (ed Bill Manhire), The Picnic Virgin (ed Emily Perkins) and Great Sporting Moments (ed Damien Wilkins).
Laurence lives in Dunedin with her husband and four year old son.

PHILLIPA FOSTER arrived in Tasmania in 1980 with the Antarctic Division. Where she trained as a Deputy Voyage Leader (DVL) on the Thala Dan; Voyage 5, and participated in the 1981 re-supply for Casey and Macquarie Island (which remains the most memorable journey for her). In the early 80's Phillipa worked as DVL on the Nella Dan and later on the (then) Icebird. She went “AWOL” for several years and applied for a job as summer storeperson in 1990 (the first time these positions were available) and travelled on the Icebird to Casey for summer, which she repeated at Casey the following year and then again at Mawson for the 2 summers in 93/94/95. Phillipa has published an article, “Phillipa's feeling for snow” in 40 deg. South and has done many writing/readings for Bush Telegraph (on Radio National).

BERNADETTE HALL’s sixth collection of poetry, ‘The Merino Princess: Selected Poems’ was published by VUP in 2004. The book design was by the Dunedin visual artist, Kathryn Madill, with whom Bernadette went to Antarctica in December 2004 on an Artist's in Antarctica Fellowship. An earlier collaboration with Kathryn, ‘Settler Dreaming,’ was shortlisted in the 2002 Spectrum Print Book Design Awards in New Zealand, and in the inaugural Tasmania Pacific Poetry Award in 2003.

Recently Bernadette has edited ‘Like Love Poems’ a major collection of poems by the well-known New Zealand artist, Joanna Margaret Paul. She has also written a series of poems to accompany photos of the controversial Stations of the Cross sculpted by the Christchurch artist Llew Summers, and displayed in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Christchurch. Both books were published in April 2006. Bernadette lives in a small community at Amberley Beach in North Canterbury, 50 kms north of Christchurch, where she writes full-time. However this year she is in Wellington, enjoying life as Writer in Residence at Victoria University. Her aims include completing the Antarctic project she and Kathryn Madill are engaged in, an illustrated mythical Romance aimed at a young adult’s readership. And also a collection of Antarctic poems, with the working title ‘The Ponies.’ Several poems from this collection have already appeared in Sport and Landfall.

MARCUS HAWARD is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Government at the University of Tasmania, and is Program Leader, Policy Program, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE -CRC) University of Tasmania, Hobart. His research interests include Antarctica, fisheries management and marine and oceans policy and governance and published extensively in these areas. Marcus has visited Macquarie Island as part of an ANARE voyage and has been a member of Australian delegations to CCAMLR and to APEC Fisheries and Marine Resources Conservation Working Group meetings.

BERNADETTE HINCE is so keen on cold words that she has written a dictionary of them — The Antarctic Dictionary: a complete guide to Antarctic English (CSIRO/Museum Victoria 2000) — and is now researching a second book linking this vocabulary with the English words of the Arctic.

She summered at Davis, Antarctica, to work on Weddell seals and words. She later visited Macquarie Island and returned to Antarctica, as an Australian Antarctic Division arts fellow. In 2005 she completed an environmental history of subantarctic islands for her PhD.

JULIA JABOUR works as a University Lecturer in Antarctic law and policy in the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies’ Undergraduate and Honours program and an online unit in Antarctic Tourism, which she developed and coordinate. Julia is also Deputy Leader of the Policy Program at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC. She was a member of the Australian delegation to Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings in St Petersburg in 2001 and Madrid in 2003, and has been to Antarctica five times, visiting Casey Station in the Australian Antarctic Territory, the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Sea region of East Antarctica. Julia has lectured on Antarctic cruise ships departing from Ushuaia in Argentina, Hobart and Lyttleton in NZ.Her research interests include Antarctic and international law, international relations, tourism, science communication, ethics and maritime law and policy.

ANTHONY LAWRENCE has published 11 books of poems and one novel. His individual poems and books have won many of Australia's most prestigious literary awards. His most recent collection, The Sleep of a Learning Man (Giramondo Press, 2005) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Award. the Age Book of the Year Award, and the Tasmania Prize. A sequence of haiku, written in response to various aspects of Antarctica and the Great Southern Ocean are on permanent display at the Tasmanian Art Gallery & Museum's "Islands to Ice" exhibition. He lives in Hobart.

ELIZABETH (ELLE) LEANE is a lecturer in the School of English, Journalism and European Languages at the University of Tasmania. She holds undergraduate degrees in both Physics and English Literature, and a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Oxford. Her research interests include the relationship between literature and science and representations of Antarctica. In 2004, she was awarded an Antarctic Arts Fellowship by the Australian Antarctic Division, which enabled her to travel to Antarctica and Macquarie Island on the expedition ship Aurora Australis. Her first book, Reading Popular Physics: Disciplinary Skirmishes and Textual Strategies, is forthcoming (2007) with Ashgate Publishing, and she is currently working on a second book, provisionally entitled Fictions of the Far South: Antarctica in Literature.

BILL MANHIRE was born in Invercargill in 1946, and grew up in small hotels in Otago and Southland, an experience beautifully evoked in his short memoir, Under the Influence. His first book of poems, The Elaboration, was published in 1972, and contained drawings (including a portrait of the poet) by Icon Artist Ralph Hotere.

Over the years, Bill has worked often with Ralph Hotere, especially in the MALADY poems and paintings, and in the dance-performance work Song Cycle. He has published many collections of poems, winning the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He is also the author of a prize-winning collection of short stories. He was the first Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate, and in 2004 was the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, France.

Bill is probably one of the few poets ever to reach the South Pole. A long-standing interest in Antarctica took him to the ice in 1998 as one of Antarctica New Zealand’s inaugural arts fellows. The experience is reflected in a major sequence of poems, Antarctic Field Notes, and in the innovative anthology The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica, which includes work from the great Italian poet Dante through to more recent writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Vladimir Nabokov, and Pablo Neruda. Bill also wrote the moving poem, “Erebus Voices”, for Sir Edmund Hillary to read at the commemorative service at Scott Base to mark the 25^th anniversary of the Erebus tragedy. He has been a significant figure in promoting New Zealand poetry and literature – not only through his internationally acclaimed creative writing course at Victoria University but also through his work as a critic, anthologist, and broadcaster, and in his appearances at writing festivals around the world.

STEPHEN MARTIN is a writer, researcher and Senior Project Manager at the State Library of New South Wales. He is currently the Co-ordinating Curator of the Nelson Meers Collection Heritage Gallery. Stephen regularly gives talks to school students and to the public about Antarctica and has assisted the NSW Department of Education and Training in videoconferences about Antarctica to remote schools in NSW and Queensland.

Stephen has visited Antarctica many times, as a tourist, sailor and lecturer/guide. In 1998 he visited Mawson’s Hut and completed some work for the Mawson’s Hut Foundation. He returns to Antarctica next summer for another brief visit.
He has written three books, and curated many exhibitions, some with an emphasis on Antarctica. His History of Antarctica was published in 1996 and his latest exhibition Lines on the Ice was displayed in 2002. Lines told the story of Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914. His recent article on the best of Antarctic non-fiction was published in Good Reading (Dec 05-Jan 06). Stephen’s latest publication, The Whales Journey concentrates on the history of whaling, including in Antarctica. He is currently preparing two books on the long history of people’s association with albatrosses and penguins.

Since leaving the Commonwealth Senior Executive Service a decade ago, ALLEN MAWER has devoted most of his time to maritime history. His books include Fast Company: The Lively Times and Untimely End of the Clipper Ship Walter Hood (1994), Most Perfectly Safe: The Convict Shipwreck Disasters of 1833-42 (1997) Ahab's Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling (1999), which was shortlisted for the Queensland and NSW Premiers’ History Prizes. South by Northwest: The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica. (2006).

Allen is member of the national steering committee of Australia on the Map 1606-2006, which this year is commemorating four hundred years of documented European contact with Australia. He has contributed to the Australian Dictionary of Biography and has reviewed maritime books for the Times Literary Supplement. When not researching and writing, Allen pretends to be a sheep grazier in the Yass district of NSW, where he is also does volunteer work to repair the environmental damage done by, among other things, sheep.

ERIC PHILLIPS spent his formative years living and playing in the Adelaide Hills. Regular family camping trips took him to the Flinders Ranges and the Grampians where he learnt to love and respect the Australian bush. So much so that he became an Outdoor Educator, graduating from the University of South Australia in 1985 with a Diploma of Teaching, a Bachelor of Education and a Graduate Diploma in Outdoor Education. Eric has worked as an Outdoor Educator in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, and has taught at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.
As an adventurer, Eric has visited every continent on earth, often leading lightweight and self-supported expeditions to remote areas. He is now regarded as one of Australia’s leading adventurer’s, specialising in expeditions to the polar regions, and is the only person to have skied the world’s four largest icecaps, and, together with Jon Muir, the only Australian to have skied to both the North and South Poles. He is often engaged as a consultant to polar expeditions from around the world.

Some highlights from Eric’s career as a teacher and adventurer include -

TERRY WHITEBEACH is a published poet, novelist, biographer and playwright. She was awarded a humanities berth to travel to Antarctica on the ‘Polar Bird’ on a summer expedition in 1995/96. She was particularly interested in the SOUNDS of Antarctica. Her radio play, “Antarctic Journey”, was produced by the ABC for Airplay in 2001 and a section of the play has been published in the award–winning anthology of poetry, “Living Room”, by Ptilotus Press.

Ice Cold Words is presented by the Tasmanian Writers' Centre, as part of the 2006 Antarctic Midwinter Festival, with the support of Festivals Australia, the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems CRC, The New Zealand Book Council, and the National Archives.