2017
Festival Time Again
16 October 2017 - Sydney
Just when you thought I had safely disappeared from your inboxes! It is October so the Writers Festival is about to burst onto the stages of Ubud to enthrall the likes of me and many hundreds of other fans. This is Festival Number 14 and I have been to them all! Either I am obsessive or else very privileged that it has been possible to get away to Bali at this time every year. I will be reporting from the front once again so brace yourselves for the onslaught of Bali news. A great line up as always, and more Indonesian and other Asian writers than ever. A highlight for me is I will get to meet the author, NH Dini, an early feminist writer whose novel Departures I translated a few years ago. This year I have been asked again to interview Ian Burnet on his latest book Where Australia Collides With Asia at a festival evening event - we are becoming quite the double act!
Life for the Balinese is full of uncertainties with Gunung Agung continuing to rumble - in fact the reports are that the "seismic activity is spiking". No one knows when the eruption will occur but it seems to be inevitable. I just need her to stay quiet till after next Saturday when I fly to Bali - though all indications are that the wind direction would not direct the ash towards the airport or Ubud. But come November, the month of the change in direction of monsoonal winds, who knows? I have dust masks for me and Cathy, just in case and some for Indonesian friends. If you are interested to read some fascinating, very human, on-the-ground reports from a well-known Ubud photographer, Rio Helmi, google his FB blog "Ubud Now and Then - Under the Volcano" scrolling back to the first one before reading up to the sixth. Every few days Rio takes his motorbike up into the danger zone and to the evacuee camps to report back. Jasmin's mother, Petra, is using her amazing skills in crisis management in fundraising for and working with the NGOs IDEP and Kopernik in the relief effort to support the 140,000 evacuees from villages on the volcano's slopes. Not the least of which is the training in the building of eco toilets for the camps!
Life for the Balinese is full of uncertainties with Gunung Agung continuing to rumble - in fact the reports are that the "seismic activity is spiking". No one knows when the eruption will occur but it seems to be inevitable. I just need her to stay quiet till after next Saturday when I fly to Bali - though all indications are that the wind direction would not direct the ash towards the airport or Ubud. But come November, the month of the change in direction of monsoonal winds, who knows? I have dust masks for me and Cathy, just in case and some for Indonesian friends. If you are interested to read some fascinating, very human, on-the-ground reports from a well-known Ubud photographer, Rio Helmi, google his FB blog "Ubud Now and Then - Under the Volcano" scrolling back to the first one before reading up to the sixth. Every few days Rio takes his motorbike up into the danger zone and to the evacuee camps to report back. Jasmin's mother, Petra, is using her amazing skills in crisis management in fundraising for and working with the NGOs IDEP and Kopernik in the relief effort to support the 140,000 evacuees from villages on the volcano's slopes. Not the least of which is the training in the building of eco toilets for the camps!
Of course I am hanging out to see Josh and Jasmin again, although I had them home here for the seven weeks of Jasmin's long vacation late June to mid August. The plan is for them to come back to live in Sydney permanently some time next year, not sure when yet. Jazz will start high school here in 2019.
She is growing up- just turned 11 in August. Even has her own key!
I will have a few days to settle in before the festival starts on 26th. Cathy, a fellow festival junkie, arrives a couple of days after me, fresh from adventures in Bhutan! Two of my friends are renting Josh's granny flat at the moment so we will coincide for a few days and do some outings together, but they leave after the first day of the festival.
Those of you who have not heard from me since I was last in Bali in April will recall that I was in the midst of a huge translation job - a 600 page novel. I somehow managed to meet the unrealistic deadline of 3 months, delivering 150 pages every three weeks. The nearest thing I have done to resemble a full time job since retiring. I will be receiving my copies sent by the publisher to a friend's address in Bali. The translation has been taken to this year's Frankfurt Book Fair on now, to try to find a Western publisher to buy it. The author posted this on FB with the comment:
‘Thanks to Toni Pollard, the dedicated translator who intensively built a warm communication about the ideal-form of the translation. Fyi, Bersetia spends 606 pages, can't predict how many pages for "Faithful". Whatever, hope there will be an agency/publisher paying-interest to its English version in that international book event :)”
I will have a few days to settle in before the festival starts on 26th. Cathy, a fellow festival junkie, arrives a couple of days after me, fresh from adventures in Bhutan! Two of my friends are renting Josh's granny flat at the moment so we will coincide for a few days and do some outings together, but they leave after the first day of the festival.
Those of you who have not heard from me since I was last in Bali in April will recall that I was in the midst of a huge translation job - a 600 page novel. I somehow managed to meet the unrealistic deadline of 3 months, delivering 150 pages every three weeks. The nearest thing I have done to resemble a full time job since retiring. I will be receiving my copies sent by the publisher to a friend's address in Bali. The translation has been taken to this year's Frankfurt Book Fair on now, to try to find a Western publisher to buy it. The author posted this on FB with the comment:
‘Thanks to Toni Pollard, the dedicated translator who intensively built a warm communication about the ideal-form of the translation. Fyi, Bersetia spends 606 pages, can't predict how many pages for "Faithful". Whatever, hope there will be an agency/publisher paying-interest to its English version in that international book event :)”
I just wish the publisher had got me to write the cover blurb! Who came up with "Tea Lady"? A different connotation entirely for us English readers!! My translation was "Tea Woman" for the character's title due to her mastery of tea making and tea blending. And my title for the book was "Being Faithful" to align better with the Indonesian verbal form of the title, not the adjective "Faithful". I had already discarded "Fidelity" which had been my earlier thoughts on the title. It would have been better than "Faithful". But the translator is usually ignored once the manuscript has been delivered, in my experience.