Bundanon Literary Festival 2022
With Eyes Wide Open
On Saturday the 3rd of September, writers, illustrators, and audiences came together at Bundanon in a celebration of words and art to mark the end of Book Week 2022. Inspired by the theme ‘dreaming with eyes wide open’, South Coast Writers Centre programmed a series of author talks and workshops for the day together with Bundanon.
The day began with a stimulating conversation between Dr Delia Falconer and Dr Jonica Newby exploring writing about climate and concepts of landscape. This conversation tied in with the exhibition program at Bundanon and audiences were treated to a guided tour of the art museum’s current exhibition of paintings by Arthur Boyd, Landscape of the Soul, with many of these landscapes painted on sites across the Bundanon property.
Other highlights of the day included a spoken word workshop with hip hop artist and poet Kryton Stewart, and an inspiring conversation between authors A.L. Tait and Kate Forsyth on how fiction encourages us to dream. During the author conversation, Kate Forsyth shared the personal inspiration and writing process behind her novel The Crimson Thread, a reimagining of the Greek myth of the Minotaur set during the second world war.
The day concluded with a conversation between artists Diego Bonetto and Zanny Begg on the evolution of Bonetto’s art practice to his current practice of food foraging workshops, which he sees as deeply connected. After their conversation, audiences were treated to a foraging walk on the property where Diego shared his knowledge of edible weeds in the Australian landscape. On Sunday, participants were invited to take part in a poetry picnic at Bundanon or from home.
In the lead up to the mini-festival, SCWC and Bundanon commissioned four poets to write ekphrastic poems inspired by Uncle Ben Brown's works from the Bundanon Art Museum’s exhibition The River and The Sea. These poems by Julie Janson, Isabella Luna, Peter Ramm, and Gabrielle Journey Jones were shared on social media throughout Book Week and were published on the Bundanon website. The poems will also be printed in SCWC’s forthcoming 2022 anthology.
Written by Brooke Boland
