The inaugural Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival will take place in Belgrave on 17-18 October.
The festival program was launched last Thursday, with tickets to more than a dozen panel discussions and workshops available for purchase NOW.
The festival’s theme this year is “A Sense of Place”.
As festival chair and local author Marian Matta pointed out, it’s a notion with “unlimited possibilities – place as home, place as state of mind, place as inspiration or threat or query”.
A place makes sense and remains meaningful because of people – those who live and work here, those who spend time exploring and embracing its beauty, those who are informed and empowered by its resources, and those who cherish and celebrate its potentials.
In other words, a sense of place arises from our connection with it.
It’s through our relationship with a place – something that we strive to establish and maintain – that we can claim to know and love it. Indeed, we refer to ourselves as the “locals” only after we have contributed to and in turn been shaped by the place we call “home”.
Without a sense of place to position and anchor us, we can’t have a sense of belonging.
As novelist and poet Wendell Berry once suggested: “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”
Writer William Kittredge described it even better: “Places come to exist in our imaginations because of stories, and so do we. When we reach for a ‘sense of place’, we posit an intimate relationship to a set of stories connected to a particular location, thinking of histories and the evolution of personalities in a local context.”
At the festival program launch, Lyster Ward Councillor Peter Mcilwain recalled how he used to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to his young son.
As much as books help us develop empathy and “put us in other people’s heads” as he described it, such endearing and everlasting memories with family helped cement his sense of home in the Dandenong Ranges.
Meanwhile, local author Lia Hills remembered how the hills have nurtured many writers and artists throughout the years.
When Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder visited the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival to discuss his international bestseller Sophie’s World, it’s Hills who invited him for a drink in Upwey, in the “outskirts of Belgrave” as she fondly described it.
Both Mcilwain and Hills emphasised the importance of discussing and exchanging ideas in a time of division and polarisation.
In the latter’s words, of ultimate significance is an environment “where the community is committed to the deeper engagement required when reading or writing a book”.
To borrow local journalist Charisse Ede’s words, the forthcoming Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival will be a superb opportunity for people to “come together to think, explore, be challenged, laugh and share ideas”.
It’s time to reflect on our sense of place, to celebrate our vibrant community, and to enjoy our diverse cultural richness.
