Monday, July 20, 2015

Great Forest Storytelling & Hunter's Moon: Sophie Masson



Report:


We enjoyed Great Forest Storytelling on Saturday 18th July at Toby's Strathvea Guest House by Toolangi Forest, intermingling members of the Australian Fairy Tale Society, Storytelling Australia Victoria and The Monash Fairy Tale Salon. As a proud member of all three, I was glad to foster this cloverleaf between these groups.

Storytellers of Great Forest Storytelling, pictured below: 
Roslyn Quin (standing back right), Toby Eccles (standing back left), Niki na Meadhra, Lana Woolf (bead necklace), Cora Zon (beside her), Jackie Kerin (back centre), Fiona Price (front), JJ Retailer of Tales (zig-zag jumper), Louisa John-Krol (sparkle skirt)


Great Forest Storytelling at Strathvea, Healesville / Toolangi, 2015
Strathvea Guest House

Listeners included journalists, writers, eco-activists and fellow storytellers. Our circle fostered a love of fairy tales and other stories, of many cultural origins from Macedonia to India and the Flyways from Siberia to Australia. Interculturalism was evident not only between but within presentations, e.g. in Jackie's use of a Japanese tradition Kamishibai for a tale from The Mahabharata.

We also learned about the local habitat of Toolangi (Aboriginal for "tall tree"): last home of the endangered Leadbeater's Possum, known as the fairy possum.

Next day, our hosts showed us an example of "windfall": an uprooted mountain ash tree no longer able to hold its height, due to loss of neighbouring trees that had once formed a storm buffer. We heard firsthand tales of Black Saturday. Of how the bushfire threat worsens with faster-burning regenerated foliage or the wind-tunnels of open carnage, in contrast with slower-burning old-growth. Of smoking trees that act as Roman Candles, asphyxiating their tiny occupants. As this blog is not a political platform, I recommend these sites for advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8loIsmDoABw
http://leadbeaters.org.au/
http://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/how-save-forest-fairy-extinction
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/280/054/094/


Leadbeater's Possum is nocturnal and very shy.

Review:


"Hunter's Moon" - a novel by Sophie Masson 

Review by Louisa John-Krol


In the Australian Fairy Tale Society’s annual conference, Australian fairy tale author Sophie Masson launched her Snow White spin-off, Hunter’s Moon (Random House Australia) on 21st June at the NSW Writers Centre, Sydney. Her heroine’s name is Bianca, which means Snow White. 

"Hunter's Moon" by Sophie Masson
The faery hue “green-gold” shines prominently in Sophie’s novel, notably on pages 51 and 107, featuring in the passage that she read aloud from Hunter’s Moon at the launch, befitting our conference theme, “Transformations: Spinning Straw into Green and Gold”.

Until reading Hunter’s Moon, it had never occurred to me that the name “Snow White” echoes the two-syllabic rhythm and rhyme as “moonlight”. Sophie highlights this in the novel’s opening, by describing garments in lunar hues invoking pearl, mist, silver, rain and wisps of cloud. She sustains this metaphor throughout the novel. 

If descriptive detail defies the popular maxim “show don’t tell”, Sophie artfully channels it through Snow White’s memory, for the tale is narrated in the first person. Not that abundant description need worry us one twiddle. Action and dialogue have ample space in our extroverted era. It can be just as enjoyable to experience language as a dance between sound and image: between such musical devices as alliteration or assonance (on the musical side) and similes or other metaphors (on the visual side), with words forging a sensual alchemy of both.

Of particular note is the seventh chapter. It is here that the book’s title, Hunter’s Moon, is most overtly established as a metaphor. This is the turning point in Bianca’s coming of age, from passive girl to woman of action, determined to survive and avenge her father’s death. Ironically, she must recognise her role as hunted prey, before she can truly leave victimhood behind to become a hunter. 

Numerically, this chapter mirrors the seven rescuers - healers, fellow outcasts - who are neither all male nor all dwarfs. As an underground musician I relate to this motif of outsiders, having often explored them in lyrics, from Holderlin’s novel Hyperion, to the poetry of Cavafy, who lived in exile in Alexandria; also in the myth of The Golden Fleece, not only in Jason’s banishment, secret tuition under a centaur, or dangers confronting the Argonauts, but also the Otherness of the witch Medea. Fortunately there’s not simply one dwarfish den, but a vast network of caves or warrens; havens for freaks, like sets in the TV series’ The X-Files or Carnivale.

Sophie’s Prince of Outlaws reminds me of Robin Hood, a tale my Welsh Dad told with verve. To me Bianca’s prince also personifies Hermes / Mercury (ref: Karl Kerenyi’s book Hermes, Guide of Souls), in the god’s guise as protector of exiles, granting disguise to those who flee persecution. Hermes personifies paradox. He may guard homes from robbery, classically appearing as a garden statue, or a sentry of stone, as in Peter Greenaway’s great film The Draughtsman’s Contract, yet is also Patron of Thieves! Who better to protect us from deceit, than the trickster himself? Such contradictions are relevant to a young person in danger, who is learning how to hunt. 

The stereotype of Snow White as a blank sheet of innocence, calls for such rounding or deepening. After all, the moon’s gleaming brightness is transitory, and bears a dark side. Thus the psychological landscape of this tale is both the lunar world of Artemis / Diana, and the riddling world of Hermes / Mercury. In this lunarscape of disguise, dreams, revenge, curses and mirrors, we remember a lesson from Shakespeare: that things are not always what they seem. Surprises ride on the narrative device of giving readers a head-start in dramatic irony. We suspect that something is wrong, ahead of the protagonist, for whom romance weaves its own self-deception. One suspects that moonlight may be involved in enchantment, as in Romeo and Juliet; or that spirits of nature, from witches to fairies, may be implicated, as in Macbeth, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The theme of double-dealing, of echoes and mirrors - not only as literal glass but as a newspaper (The Mirror) that flashes reality back at celebrities; and as automatons that simulate life - highlights the nature of moonlight. The latter at once reveals and deludes; illuminates or conceals; delights or haunts us. In the final demonstration of witches in Macbeth, a king within a vision holds up a mirror or magic glass to the audience, at which moment Shakespeare’s punters surely wondered, what did their own king, James I,  really see? Did he catch himself in that reflection, and contemplate his own heritage or future legacy? His predecessor, Shakespeare’s other great royal patron, Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, emanating her own kind of snow-white purity, and was acutely conscious of image. So a queen in a timeless fairy tale wonders how people see her. So we, too, wonder if our lives might find an echo. What impression do we make? How many will remember us? For how long? And how so?

Admirers of Marina Warner’s book Women who Run with the Wolves, or fans of the television series Once Upon a Time, will surely appreciate Sophie’s interpretation of wolves, appearing in various guises. It’s not possible to be more specific without dropping spoilers. So I’ll just speculate about the similarity of adjectives “lunar” and “lupine”; moonlight and wolflike. Somehow these images and sounds belong together.

Sophie Masson, photo by Zoe Walton
Publishing over 60 books, Sophie has mentored many writers. Snow White moves through an intercultural landscape whose inhabitants hail from many origins, bringing an array of myths and customs to the tale. The author herself was born in Indonesia, of French parents, and speaks many languages. After our conference Sophie flew to Europe to research The Pied Piper.

I highly recommend this crepuscular pearl and look forward to reading more of Sophie’s oeuvre.


- Louisa John-Krol

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Great Forest Storytelling - Strathvea

Strathvea Peacock

Great Forest Storytelling



We have a couple of spare rooms for guests wishing to stay overnight after Great Forest Storytelling at Strathvea Guest House, 755 Myers Creek Road, Healesville / Toolangi, Saturday 18th July.

Participants include Jackie Kerin, Lana Woolf, Toby Eccles, JJ Retailer of Tales, Cora Zon, Louisa John-Krol and Rachael Hammond.

Saturday has two storytelling sessions: family-friendly 2:30pm & evening 7:30pm. Each session is $15. Or $25 for both. This ticket fee is waived for overnight stayers. Reduced room rates apply for this weekend only: $130 to $165. You are welcome just to listen, or share a tale.

Enjoy fairy tales, songs, wonder stories, myths, poems, ballads, ditties, legends and other yarns by the fire in the beautiful 1920s ambiance of Strathvea Guest House, surrounded by tall trees of Toolangi in the Yarra Ranges, last refuge of the fairy possum.


The Fairy Possum is critically endangered




bird in Toolangi

















For room bookings, directions or info on meal planning, Tel Strathvea: 5962 4109
Email Strathvea Guest House 
Copy me in so I can assist you with liaison: Louisa
Or request addition to the Great Forest Storytelling event page via my Facebook profile.
Toolangi Forest
Meet Moët, the Strathvea Watch Peacock


Following day, weather permitting, we go into the forest to explore trees and temperate rainforest gullies of the Toolangi Forest. Maybe have lunch at the Singing Gardens, where larrikin poet C. J. Dennis lived. We respect diverse needs as to how long you stay, whether you tuck in early with a book, commune with fairies or spin yarns all night by the fire. 

Welcome Fairies!

Other News:

Wonderwings Fairy Shop reunion - April 2015 at Myths & Legends Fairy Shop, Gisborne - was fabulous. My report of it entails a history of Wonderwings for which I'm still compiling imagery.

News from The Monash Fairy Tale Salon: our celebration of the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - part of Glen Eira Storytelling Festival, Caulfield, June 2015 - was, dare we say, wonderful, from cats to cards. My full fey report will follow soon with pictures.

I was delighted to sing at the Australian Fairy Tale Society conference - Transformations: spinning straw into green and gold - at the NSW Writers Centre, Sydney on 21st June 2015. Every presentation inspired me, each in its own idiosyncratic way, from pantomime history to savvy subversion, quilting to glass-blowing. Great to meet authors, whose books I read over the next days: cheeky Refugee Wolf by T.D. Luong, and luminous Hunter's Moon (launched at the conference) by Sophie Masson.

Fey regards, Louisa