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from the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2nd ed.). William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, Barry Andrews eds. The author A brief CV	an entry from The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature BIRD, Carmel (1940- ), born Launceston, Tasmania, was educated at the University of Tasmania and lived for a period in Europe and the USA before settling in Melbourne. Bird's fiction blends real and surreal, mundane and macabre with inventive irony, reflecting her perception of Tasmania itself as an 'ironic' island, whose picturesque surface masks deep secrets and is haunted by the ghosts of Aborigines and convicts. She has published two novels, Cherry Ripe (1985) and The Bluebird Cafe (1990), and four collections of short stories, Births, Deaths and Marriages (1983), The Woodpecker Toy Fact (1987), Woodpecker Point (1988) and The Common Rat (1993). She has also written a guide for writers, Dear Writer (1988), and edited a collection of short stories, Relations (1991). A witty writer with a wide but always highly original tonal range, Bird raises what is often potentially dour or even sinister or horrific to something approaching comedy. Disease, deaths and violence are staples in her fictional world, which has similarities with Barbara Hanrahan's Gothic sensuality and feminist irony, although Bird's deadpan humour is a distinctive, determining element. The stories of Woodpecker Point, for instance, focus on the common emotion of sibling jealousy which has the uncommon consequence of a dual death, on marital infidelity and the sterility of close relationships, on failed lives, madness murder and extreme domestic violence; the stories of The Common Rat are linked with common themes of death, madness and crime. Bird's approach to these themes, however, is both detached and involved, a search for a pattern which may have simply the satisfaction of art or approach a more essential truth, which may represent meaning or just the arbitrary effect of language. As the semi-autobiographical narrator of 'The Woodpecker Toy Fact' comments after describing her childhood inference of a special meaning in 'Toy Fact', a result of her ignorance that a toy factory's shop sign was truncated, and her subsequent search for imaginatively significant facts, 'trapping them, bright birds in flight, planets in amber', the quest offers either the possibility of metaphysical discovery or aesthetic production: 'I am still uncertain as to whether I will ultimately discover The Toy Fact, and so complete the pattern, or whether, by placing the final fact I will produce The Toy Fact.' She is fascinated by the power of memory and the capacity of mundane scenes, incidents and sensations to trigger it into life as well as by the truth-telling power of fiction and its ability to mine and represent the past more effectively than the single-minded pursuit of documentary fact. As she has commented in an article titled 'Fact or Fiction', 'Life is a crude inventor; fiction will only be convincing if it is more artful than life'; she has also described herself as 'interested in the play between fact and fiction, interested in the moment when the metamorphosis takes place, when the grub of fact becomes the butterfly of fiction'. Finely observed details -- snails crawling over love letters, a grandmother's patchwork quilt, the solemn brown eyes of a cow -- are often the hinges of her short fiction, the points at which external sketch and first-person reminiscence blend in epiphanies of insight. Some of her stories, such as 'The Woodpecker Toy Fact' are as much demonstrations of the art of fiction-making as they are themselves fictions, although artful play and seriousness exist side by side as do gloom and joy. The Bluebird Cafe is set partly in Copperfield, a once prosperous mining town in north-west Tasmania, but now a ghost town, inhabited by a single inhabitant, Bedrock Mean. Bedrock mourns the disappearance of Lovelygod, her perfectly formed but stunted daughter, conceived in an incestuous relationship with her brother Carillo, whose fate resembles that of several real-life Australian children who have mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, at Launceston, Copperfield is replicated in the 'Historic Museum Village of Copperfield, a theme park under an immense crystalline dome. Here Virginia O'Day, now a successful New York novelist and playwright, who has returned to her birthplace, finds her memories of childhood both simulated and distorted. Underlying the novel's quirky semi-Gothic surface is a polemical concern with the commercial destruction of the Tasmanian landscape and with the isolationist attitudes of its inhabitants.
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Return to homepage	A BRIEF CV PUBLICATIONS 2002 Open For Inspection - psychological thriller 2000 Unholy Writ - psychological thriller           The Penguin Century of Australian Stories - a hundred             short stories by Australian writers, spanning a hundred             years. (editor)   1999 The Cassowary's Quiz - a picture book for children illustrated by Anita Mertzlin. 1998 March: The Stolen Children -- Their Stories (editor) February: Red Shoes, a novel and CD-Rom 1997 Daughters and Fathers, an anthology of essays by Australian Writers (editor) 1996 Crisis, a  comic novel Automatic Teller, a collection of stories and essays written since 1993 The Mouth, a teenage horror story with illustrations by Anita Mertzlin Red Hot Notes, an anthology of Australian writing on music (editor) 1995 The White Garden, a novel (short-listed for seven major awards including the Miles Franklin) 1994 Not Now Jack -- I'm Writing a Novel , a manual for writers 1993 The Common Rat, a collection of short stories 1991 Relations: Australian Short Stories (editor) 1990 The Bluebird Cafe, a novel, was short-listed for three major awards including the Miles Franklin 1988 Dear Writer, a manual for writers 1987 The Woodpecker Toy Fact, a colection of short stories; also published in US and UK as Woodpecker Point 1985 Cherry Ripe, a novel 1983 Births, Deaths and Marriages, a collection of stories   RESIDENCIES AND TEACHING 2003 Writer in Residence at La Trobe University 1996 Victoria College of the Arts - three month writer in residence Canberra Centre For Writing - one day masterclass for novelists 1995 Methodist Ladies College - two-week residence Canberra Centre For Writing - one-day masterclass Council of Adult Education - three lectures National Book Council - two-day workshop on how to teach writing RMIT - lecture to design students on book design Box Hill Library - lecture Caulfield Library - lecture Victoria College of the Arts - lecture Siena Convent - four-day residence 1994 National Book Council - two-day workshop on how to teach writing Victoria University - lecture RMIT - lecture Presbyterian Ladies' College - one-week residence Box Hill Library - lecture Lauriston School - one-week residence Mandeville Hall School - residence 1993 RMIT - lecture Victoria University - lecture Camberwell Girls' Secondary College - one week Box Hill Library - lecture Ruyton School - lecture Melbourne Zoo - two weekend workshops in writing 1992 Canterbury Girls' Secondary College - residence Preston Institute - lecture RMIT - lecture Methodist Ladies' College - residence 1991 Deakin University - short story course 1990 Rollins College Florida - residence MLC - residence San Antonio Texas - lecture at language conference Deakin University - short story course Fintona School - residence 1989 Council of Adult Education - short story course University of Technology Sydney - lecture Sydney University - lecture Monash University - residence MLC - residence Arts Victoria - young writers' program 1988 RMIT - course on writing novel MLC - residence 1987 Holmesglen College - short story course Box Hill TAFE - lecture Cheltenham TAFE - lecture 1986 Holmesglen TAFE - short story course Council of Adult Education - short story course 1980 - 1985 Council of Adult Education short story courses 1961 - 1973 various appointments as secondary school teacher of English and French FESTIVALS Between 1989 and 2003, reading and speaking at Australian Writers' Festivals, as well as Vancouver and Toronto. EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts (Tasmania) Diploma of Education (Tasmania) Diplome de Langue (Paris) Licentiate of the London College of Music Spanish 1 (Monash) AUSTRALIA COUNCIL GRANTS 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2002 EDITING Founding co-editor of Syllable and Fine Line Fiction editor of Voices 1995 Former fiction editor of New Post (formerly Australasian Post) Formerly on editorial staff of Aurora Australis, an electronic magazine about recent Australian writing (no longer current).
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