TGSC 8 November 2023 – Maggie Ball and Cristine Gilmore

Blackwattle Books
The Great Story Club - Magdalena Ball

Image: Gregory Ferris

Magdalena (Maggie) Ball

Magdalena (Maggie) Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer, interviewer, vice president of Flying Island Books, and managing editor of Compulsive Reader. Her stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and interviews have appeared in a wide number of journals and anthologies, and have won local and international awards. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, most recently, Bobish, a verse-memoir published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2023. She read from her verse memoire Bobish (Puncher & Whitman, 2023), about fascinating story about the life of her great grandmother Rebecca Lieberman, who left Eastern Europe and emigrated to New York at the age of fourteen, alone (!), to escape the pogroms.

In a review in the Sydney Morning Herald, Pip Smith said: “As the collection progresses, we glimpse Bobish as she travels to New York, works in sweatshops, marries a fish smoker who will drink her hard-won savings away, bears four children and reads tea leaves for extra cash by night. And it is this, Bobish’s clairvoyance, that becomes a portal, one that Bobish can use to breach her miserable present, and Ball uses to burrow her way back, via her DNA, to the past. Poetry is the right form for a project such as this. Each line an attempt, hurled like at the page a javelin, at answering the question what was it like when, thanks to the subject’s class and nebulous identity, there are so few extant clues. The white space that surrounds each poem as silent as the record books.”

Bobish is a short, sad, densely layered and fascinating read, and I agree that poetry is the form for such a story. I was hooked from the first stanza, of this beautifully written book.

Every object has its own Resonant frequency Run a finger along the rim: ghost hum….

The some of the last

How far can you go back

You can never go back
The Great Story Club - Cristine Gilmore

Cristine Gilmore

Cristine Gilmore arrived in Australia in 1963 from Scotland. Moved from QLD to Melbourne in 1969 after her father died of heart failure at 43. Was a born again Baptist for ten years until she learned to think for herself. Became a professional pilot. Got married five times. (Resulting in two children) Tried to transition in 2003. Failed. Tried again in 2021. Succeeded. Lives quietly in Ashfield with her three cats where she’s totally amazed people think she’s worth reading. ‘What a surprise life is!’ Hates being called: ‘Hey there’.

Cristine has had many incarnations personally and professionally. She arrived in Australia in 1963 from Scotland. Moved from QLD to Melbourne in 1969 after her father died of heart failure at 43. She was a born again Baptist for ten years till , in her words, ‘she learned to think for herself’. She became a professional pilot, got married five times and has two children. Cristine says she tried to transition in 2003 and failed. When she tried again in 2021 she succeeded in living her former self (known as Craig) behind. She lives in Ashfield with her three cats and says that she’s totally amazed people think she’s worth reading. It was not amazing at all to those of lucky to have heard her read at TGSC.

The provisional title of Cristine’s memoire is ‘Deep Voice for a Girl’ and she has substantially completed the first volume. The first volume is a beautifully described homage to a time in Australia long disappeared but remembered in vibrant detail. It is the first part of Cristine’s life story and covers the period from her emigration to Australia from Scotland in the fifties and focusses on the period during which her father took the family on a round Australia trip in a Zephyr car. It was not a vehicle at all suited to the task. From hair-raising scenes, such as, crossing a flooded Queensland River when Cristine’s father asked his children to open the doors to let the water wash though (without apparent concern some of his children might also wash through too), to laugh out loud moments, where a young Craig thinks he might be drowning in crocodile infested waters off Cairns, and almost gives in to the tide, only to find he is in standing depth water. The work is threaded through with historical references given more depth and meaning by reference to a young boy’s thoughts whilst living a life over which he had no choice and at the behest of a parent driven by his own demons.

OPEN MIC – was exciting and funny and ultimately a confirmation of the wonderful talent of writers in Sydney. Amaya made us laugh with her story, which included an apt description of her cervix as a ‘pink donut’. Dylan entertained again with another epic poem about the Wolf King. Courtney’s story about not making it home was sensitive and moving. Givan’s work lead us into other dystopian worlds.

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