Wordfest in Sydney

Consul General Ma. Teresa Lazaro was instrumental, nay, solely responsible, in having me invited to the Sydney Writers Festival conducted on the last week of May.

Last year it was our very own Merlinda Bobis, international prizewinning poet, fictionist and dramatist, who teaches at the University of Wollongong and has lived in Australia for over a decade, who carried half our banner besides the sky.

For 2006, Con-Gen Lazaro wanted a home-based writer to represent our country. Thus she prevailed upon the festival board, if undoubtedly in a diplomatic manner, to invite someone from Manila. That we had met way back in 1989 in Bangkok when she was vice-consul and I happened to gain the SEAWrite Prize from Thai royalty, and again in New York in 1995 at the golden birthday bash of the United Nations, must have factored positively in my selection.

Actually, I had already attended earlier editions of the Sydney wordfest, twice in fact. The first was in 1992 when the literary gig was still a component of the Sydney Arts Festival. This was courtesy of April Pressler in Manila who led a very active Cultural Affairs section that had also sent outstanding visual artists Down Under, such as Santi Bose and Robert Villanueva, bless their souls now Up Over.

By the late ’90s, Englishman turned Aussie Michael Wilding, the esteemed novelist who was then teaching at University of Sydney, took over the chairmanship of the New South Wales (NSW) Writers Union and served as director of the Sydney Writers Fest when it became an event unto its own. I can’t recall where I met Michael – in Singapore, Hong Kong or Sydney – but we became fast literary friends, exchanging many books and much correspondence. I guested at the 1999 festival. The venue was a historic building the government had given the Writers Union. It was located within the Roselle hospital grounds that had also been notable for a mental asylum. Thus the joke then that one couldn’t tell the outpatients from the guest poets and writers.

Sometime later I also managed to get invited to the Melbourne and Brisbane literary festivals. The Melbourne gig was awesome in terms of the quantity and quality of international guests. The big-name tickets included Paolo Coelho (The Alchemist) and the brothers Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes) and Malachy McCourt. Playwright Kee Thuan Chye of Malaysia was the only other Asian. Us small shrimps had to content ourselves with enviously ogling the long queues of book-struck matrons seeking the superstars’ signatures.

But Chye and I enjoyed a special privilege other than a night out in a classy strip joint that offered lap dance acts. It may have been Michael Wilding who saw to it that both of us enjoyed another week’s jaunt as resident writers at the Varuna Writers’ Center in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains that was a tourist lure. Then we segued to the more modest Brisbane gig, memories of which include a manufactured white-sand beach by the river, the casino, and lunch hosted by Merlinda who was a co-attendee.

The long and short of it is that wordfests Down Under were no longer virgin territory. Still and all, I was grateful to Con-Gen Lazaro for the invite she wangled from festival director Caro Llewellyn, who has steered the Sydney gig to dizzying heights in the past four years, such that it has grown to become one of the most prestigious and best-attended literary fests in the world.

The Ninth Sydney Writers’ Festival welcomed 70 international guests and over 200 homegrown writers. Among the attractions were Booker Prize winner John Banville of Ireland, novelist Edmund White of the USA, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Neil Gaiman, Naomi Wolf, Elizabeth Kostova, and the bestselling Swiss author Alain de Botton, who closed the festival with a talk on "Buildings as Guides to Happiness" – delivered at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.

The keynote address – titled "Unspeak" after his latest book "about the use of language as a weapon in politics" – was rendered at the Sydney Theater by the young British journalist Steven Poole. Another highlight of the festival was Maya Angelou speaking via satellite from New York.

Poets, fictionists, essayists, memoirists, historians and journalists were joined by publishers and literary agents, booksellers and industry promoters. The New Yorker magazine sent several staff writers and an executive editor, who were joined by the New Yorker Festival director for a special session.

Program events were held at Piers 4 and 5 of the recently gentrified section of finger wharves extending out into the waters by the shadow of the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. Most events were ticketed affairs, while a few were free to the public that came in droves for the week, and who had to settle for choices among the simultaneous program modules.

Inuit writer-artist Alootook Ipellie fron northern Canada became a curious attraction with his long hair and ethnic getup. At least once, at the welcome cocktails at the penthouse of the InterContinental Hotel where the guests stayed, I was mistaken for Alootok. "No, I’m Alfred; Indio, not Inuit."

Hong Kong was repped by novelist Kevin Chong from Vancouver, or should we say the willowy guest observer Soo Jung Hyun of the Hong Kong Literary Festival, whom we met last March at that gig? Understandably, three writers came from neighboring Indonesia. The only other Asian was poet Alvin Pang, well known to Filipino writers, as he has been to Manila on a reading tour as well as having co-edited the Philippines-Singapore poetry anthology, Love Gathers All.

I participated in three program events. The first was billed as "Poetry Around the Globe I" – held at Bangarra Theater, "cabaret style," with Jan Zwicky and Aislinn Huntter of Canada and three Australian poets: John Tranter, Geoff Page and Gerry Turcotte. Sitting beside me onstage, Mr. Tranter allowed that he experienced a shock of recognition when I read my poem, "World Poetry Circuit," as he remembered its lines installed on the steps leading up to the main theater venue of the Rotterdam Poetry Fest which he attended last June.

Yes, I recounted, I had been there in 2004, and the organizers had guffawed over the poem so much that they actually offered to pay for installation rights for the following year, provided that I write another 25 lines from the viewpoint of the public attending a poetry reading. I complied, and duly earned, in euro, the highest fee I ever received for a poem. Make that a double-poem.

The second module I was asked to join was a panel discussion on the great themes of literature, billed as "All the Big Ones – Love, Loss, Redemption." Onstage were fellow fiction writers Venero Armanno of Australia and Salley Vickers of the UK. In the audience were Anne Brewster, an Australian poet and academic who over 20 years ago had joined a PLAC reading tour of the Visayas, and Jose Wendell Capili, who’s into his third year at Canberra, pursuing a PhD. What made the affair more significant was its venue: the Utzon Room of the Sydney Opera House.

"Hey," Wendell exclaimed during our obligatory photo-ops outside, before architect Utzon’s celebrated billowing sails in concrete, "now you can say you’ve performed at the Sydney Opera House!" Indeed, such are memories to be made of.

Also part of the audience were a couple of young Pinoy graduate students: Nicole Dy and Larissa de Villa, with the latter recalling that she had attended a Fiction workshop I conducted at Ayala Museum some years ago. Just as Anne Brewster had joined the lunch the day before at Circular Quay which Merlinda hosted, and where we had a lot of laughs over the memory of Freddie Salanga offering Anne a decent proposal at a disco joint in Dumaguete, this time Larissa and Nic joined Wendell and me on the walk back to the main venue at The Rocks, where we had lunched at a Chinese resto – for my first re-acquaintance with rice in three days.

Wendell related how he often saw the esteemed journalist Amando Doronila in Canberra. "And Mang Doro says to tell you to come visit us, as his casa es su casa." Hmm. Pity, such a tight sked. I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed countless glasses of white and red with The Dean.

My last event was a discussion on "The Essay" at the SDC Studio 2/3 at the wharves, together with three Aussie authors: Clive Hamilton who’s executive director of the Australia Institute, and novelists as well as non-fiction writers Louis Nowra and Beverly Farmer.

Indeed, a pity it was that the five days and nights in Sydney were too brief and so very hectic as to allow attendance at the other events. I even missed out on Alain de Botton’s closer, which I had told myself I wouldn’t. Blame it on the late-night partying at Simmer by the Bay, the blitz shopping for family, and the Pinoy buddies in Sydney who spirited me away every free hour we got.

Spent a full day with best bud from Ermita/Malate of the ’70s, the artist Jon Altomonte, who’s visiting Manila in October for a two-man show with Jaime de Guzman at the Pettyjohns’ gallery in Makati. Brunch with a view of the sparsely attended but sparkling winter beach in Coogee was followed by a walk in the park for pickups of banksia pods, which I have yet to germinate successfully. The trick is to heat them first by fire, said Jon; that’s how the pods break up and release the seeds. Okay, will do.

Dinner was at a Thai resto at Newtown, a busy bohemian quarter full of bookstores, eateries, bars and antique shops. There too was Jon’s studio and deep-pene massage room, with his glowing, ethereal landscapes and portraits – one of Merlinda as "Daragang Mayon" – in display for his clients’ metaphysical delectation.

On another free day, I had to entrust my sanity and sobriety to artist and political caricaturist Edd Aragon, who’s been a hit with Sydneysiders for his regular celebrity renditions for the Sydney Morning Herald. His partner Menchie, who works for ABS-CBN’s outfit in Sydney, and two-month-old immigrant Jim Paredes were already in Edd’s Cheech-and-Chong "Chedeng" when I was picked up from the hotel. It was a long drive through rush-hour traffic to French’s Forest for dinner hosted by artist, author and bookmaker Alfredo "Ding" Roces and his wife Irene. There we were joined by photographer Mario Aldeguer, originally of Bais and Dumaguete.

And a fine, convivial evening it was, enjoyed around a table where the artists sketched one another and shutterbugs took turns at documentation, especially when good ol’ Jim was handed a guitar and "Pumapatak na naman ang ulan…" led to a rousing sing-along.

On my last day I missed out on Alain de Botton and the farewell party. That’s because Edd came around again and drove me all the way out to his place in Blacktown, to a neighborhood with an address that read as Bataan Place corner Palawan Avenue. And that was where we raised a magical pencil Iwo Jima -style, by a basketball goal that welcomed serial three-pointers.

A typical Pinoy day Down Under, I suppose it was – featuring adobo for lunch, guitars and bongos and bongs for merienda, Belgian beers at all hours, a romp in the sculpture-strewn backyard in the company of free-range silken chickens, and beef with noodles by sundown – with laughter and craziness preserving the spirit of junior high-jinks for what otherwise would be called senior citizens.