Breaking Through the Silence: NO REGRETS 3

No Regrets 3: An Anthology of the Sydney Women Writing Workshop. Published by the No Regrets Group. 1985. Review Published in Tribune – Summer Reading Issue (no 2406) 11 December 1985.

“Literary history and the past are dark with silences”, declared Tillie Olsen in Silences. These silences, she argues, were due to a number of factors ‘including class, colour, sex and the times and climate into which one is born.”

Over the last decade, women writers in Australia have been attempting to make themselves heard above that silence. A measure of their success has been the number of contemporary women writers being published and the growth of women’s publishing ventures such as Sybylla, Sea Cruise Books and Redress Press.

Another result of the revival of women’s writing has been the ‘rescuing’ of women’s writing from literary oblivion. The republishing of works  by authors such as M. Barnard Eldershaw, Eleanor Dark and Christina Stead among others, has created an alternative to the conservative, male dominated, traditional literary history of Australia.

The creation of an alternative structure to the existing literary hierarchy has been one of the most important long-term results of the women’s writing movement. It is probably this aspect that the literary establishment finds the most threatening.

There are many reasons behind the growth of women’s’ writing which, of course, parallels the growth of the women’s movement in general. However, in part it can also be seen as a reaction against the writers of the so-called ‘generation of ’68’.

The generation of ’68 is a term used loosely to describe a number of young writers who first came to prominence in the late sixties. They saw themselves as ‘poetic revolutionaries’ attacking the bastions of traditional Australian literature. With a few exceptions, however, they were male. The vast majority of women in ‘the scene’ were there as girlfriends or wives.

In time, a number of women only writing  workshops were formed, one of which was the Sydney Women Writers Workshop (also known as the No Regrets Group) in 1978. For over seven years the No Regrets Group has met at member’s houses to read and discuss their work, as well as discussing practical and theoretical issues. Their influence, however, has extended beyond the actual group members through the compilation of three anthologies. Their most recent publication, No Regrets 3,  was recently launched at the Performance Space in Sydney. It contains work by sixteen women from the group, together with statements by each on their writing.

Although it is an often repeated assertion that all writing is political, it remains a concept which the literary establishment has difficulty coming to terms with. The women in No Regrets 3, however, repeat this assertion with a convincing directness  which comes from personal experience. Barbara Brooks, for example, says “You can hardly put pen to paper, or even open your mouth, as a woman writer, before you have to confront your experience as a woman, your power, or lack of it.” Anne Lawrence is a little more positive: “being a writer is just my way and I know that there are more women finding and owning their voices, power and creativity with honesty , integrity and great responsibility.” Uyen Loewald sees her writing in terms of her position as a migrant in a society where people refuse to try and understand her: “I began writing….when I realised that there was no other way to establish justice for myself and other people like me.”

The writing itself is varied and refreshing in its scope. It is particularly exciting to come across work by writers I hadn’t heard of before, such as Chitra Fernando, Marion Consandine, Coren Caplan, Anna Valerio, Loretta Re and Jo Garolis.

The influence of the first two No Regrets  anthologies has extended beyond the women’s writing movement. As the Adelaide based writer, Moya Costello, pointed out on a recent Crystal Set program (2SER-FM Sydney), a number of male writers have obviously been influenced, not just by the way women write, but by the supportive networks set up by women writers and the concerns which motivate many women to write.

No Regrets 3, together with the first two anthologies, provide useful models, not only for women writers, but all writers who feel surrounded by ‘silences’.