This blog feels unfinished, so here’s the last entry. I just
felt like this entire thing needed some kind of tangible end. The BWF has been
over for months, but those months have given me the time to properly reflect on
it. I went into the festival feeling like I wasn’t expecting much, but looking
back, I don’t think that’s entirely correct. In actual fact, I think I went
into the festival with preconceived ideas of what a festival consisted of. The
only writers festival I’d experienced before was the Melbourne Writers
Festival, which was very different. The MWF is spread out because of the amount
of participants involved, but the BWF took place over the course of a weekend.
When I was attending the festival I didn’t really feel like
I was making it to enough sessions, but by the time it was all over I felt
exhausted; a sure sign that I’d dragged myself to session after session after
session. I tried to pick a variety of sessions and events to attend, and now
that’s it’s all done and dusted, I can highlight two sessions that really stood
out. One was the ‘Talk right, speak better’, session (which my group actually
gave an award). It was just the right mix of funny and engaging, and I actually
felt like I was being talked to, instead of being talked at. The second was the
‘Deep and meaningful’ session which took place down in the old mine. I donned
my hardhat with a terrified Marney, and we descended into this funny room; the
walls still rocky and uneven. It was cold down there, but I don’t think that
the songs and bush poetry would have worked if they hadn’t taken place in such
a bizarre setting.
More than anything, I found the BWF interesting in
unexpected ways. To be honest, the
amount of people who actually signed up to take the subject surprised me. Who knew
there were so many people who were actually passionate about literature? Who
knew there were so many people passionate about writing? This blog has come to
an end, but that memory of the festival as a place that brings people together
will remain.