woodpecker

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Copyright © Carmel Bird 1987.
All rights reserved.

This collection of short fiction was published in Australia with the title The Woodpecker Toy Fact and in USA with the title Woodpecker Point. The American edition is available in hardback and paperback from www.amazon.com

see below for reviews and a short essay

REVIEWS
1) from Sydney Morning Herald July 4 1987
Reviewer: Peter Goldsworthy
I think Carmel Bird's stories are terrific, and the first thing any review should say is, simply, buy them. It's hard to say anything more, because it's hard to categorize her style. There is something of Vonnegut or Mark Twain in her deadpan, mock innocent ironies, and something of Barbara Hanrahan's wide-eyed breathlessness in her detailed description of weird events.
She is never without humor - even when at her most embroidered. And she is always unexpected, always heading off at a tangent to whatever direction the reader may have been led to expect.
In 'The Woodpecker Toy Fact', describing two gossiping (magging) neighbors, she writes:
Over the back fence these maggers passed hot scones wrapped in tea-towels, cups of sugar, bowls of stewed plums, and a continuous ribbon of talk. They sifted through the details of everything they heard and saw and thought, and arranged them into art.
There is something gossipy about Bird's own fiction, albeit gossip arranged into a very high art. There are many wonderful pieces here. My favorite was the devastating 'Cherries Jubilee - or Whichever Way You Look At It' - a story which affected me deeply. And a story which, like all her pieces, jerks the reader teasingly this way and that, as if on a spit.
2) from The Australian July 4 1987
Reviewer: Viki Wright
These short stories are of the rare sort that you should avoid reading alone. They are full of good bits to read aloud and giggle at with someone, which yields double the pleasure. Carmel Bird's touch is deft, bright, and accurate, like a good miniaturist portrait painter. She is particularly good at handling the shadows. Her stories, some of which are set in the suburbs, are about people we could never have guessed were so loveable.

The following essay is a reflection on the motif of El Niño in my fiction. He first appeared in the title story of
The Woodpecker Toy Fact.
EL NINO OF FICTION AND FACT

One of the characteristics of memory is that it invites images from the apparently vanished past to come forward in the mind’s eye, and to linger there as if into a room of present time. A potent image from my childhood is that of the silver decoration on a very small horn box. The box was about two inches square, and shaped like a book. Pressed into the silver on the cover of the book was the image of the Infant Jesus dressed in the glamorous robes of a medieval king. And inside the book was a tiny horn rosary. Loved, lost, gone, but, thanks to memory, not forgotten, not ever forgotten. And the memory is freighted with many sharp and nostalgic details too. My mother bought the box for me at a little old shop like something out of a storybook, situated near the gates of the City Park in Launceston. The air there smelt of gas because the park was near the gasworks in Cimitière Street . We knew the street name meant ‘cemetery’ in French, but my father said it was named after a Monsieur Cimitière – is that a likely story? I don’t know, but in any case the smell of gas seemed even then to carry its own dark suggestion of death and decay. There were swans in the park, and a huge dolls’ house where rabbits lived. Also a conservatory, and a real cannon on the grass from some old war. We often went there for picnics, sitting on the cannon in the sun, marvelling at the dewy luminescence of the bleeding heart begonias in the steamy green light of the conservatory. And in the low burrow of a shop where a woman sold Spanish soap and powder and perfume, and black lace mantillas, my mother bought me the rosary of the Infant Jesus of Prague.

I knew the book and the beads were fashioned from the horns of animals, probably cows, but I used to like to imagine they were really maybe amber, and even now when I begin to wander in memory’s echoing rooms, I have to make an effort not to transform the humble horn into glorious amber where whole miniature bees might perhaps be trapped in a miracle. The power and mystery and sophistication of the astonishing, regal, festive Infant Jesus in his fancy clothes set him apart from the naked pink Holy Child of the Nativity, and he haunted my imagination. He first appeared in my fiction in a short story published in 1987, and has hovered here and there in my work since then. Recently that story was re-published in a new anthology of Australian short stories, and I saw a certain neatness and coincidence in the fact that my next novel, to be published early in 2004, brings him to the fore, not so much in his Czech manifestation, as in his Spanish and South American. He wears the hat of a pilgrim, decorated with cockle shells. On his staff he has tied a gourd for his water. His feet are shod in rough sandals, and his pink dress is more like a caftan than a kingly religious vestment. But it’s the same little fellow, beaming somewhat fatuously.

He appears in the novel in this Spanish and South American incarnation. El Niño. The story reveals in fact at least three facets of the term ‘El Niño’. One is a very strange man who, early in the narrative, drugs his extended family in a hall and sets fire to the building, killing everyone. One is the Baby Jesus, and one is the category of weather events called ‘El Niño’ which so dramatically affect climate around the globe. In Australia the severe drought of very recent times is the result of the activity of El Niño. In primitive terms it can seem as if the planet is suffering from the upheaval of the raging temper tantrum of a wild and tempestuous child-god. In more rational but no less alarming terms is is a weather event characterised by a wide-scale weakening of the trade winds, and a warming of the surface layers in the eastern and central equatorial areas of the Pacific. Either way, it demands attention and respect and action. I always think ‘Pacific’ is such a nice name for an ocean.

The weather events have gained their name because long ago, fishermen in Peru and Ecuador observed that their catches went down dramatically during the time of the warm ocean currents around Christmas. The anniversary of the birth of the Christ Child gave the fishermen time off to mend their boats and their nets. Although the events are irregular, they occur on average, every three to four years, when the warm currents last from December to May. They last too long, and they are accompanied by flooding rains. Towards the end of the twentieth century, observably beginning in 1982, the events, with their storms and droughts and floods and wild crazed bushfires have severely and drastically affected agriculture, and therefore life in general. I realise this part is not really news to anybody, and I have described it in the simplest possible way.

My novel where El Niño appears as a character is largely set at Cape Grim which is located at the far north-west wild tip of Tasmania . The air right there is strangely pure, as the roaring forties have blown it (if I can describe things in that way) all the way from Africa without interference. And at Cape Grim there is a lonely and remote weather station which monitors – well, the weather really – and which collects vital data on the temper of the air and wind and rain.

But I wish to move on to talk about a sweet coincidence that came about when I began to research El Niño weather patterns in the course of writing the novel. One of the characters who has been present in one form or another in my fiction since 1985 is a man called Carrillo. Imagine my pleasure when I discovered, in 1998, that the Peruvian naval captain who is credited with first naming it, in public and then in print (in 1892) was named Camilo Carrillo. Clearly an ancestor. I had always known that Carrillo was an unusual name for a character in north-west Tasmania , and at last here was his Peruvian family to explain everything.

Moments such as this happen when you write fiction. They are part of the fun of it, really. At a Geography Society meeting in 1892 in Lima , Camilo Carrillo said:

‘Peruvian sailors from the port of Paita in northern Peru, who frequently navigate along the coast in small crafts, either to the north or to the south of Paita, named this current El Niño, without doubt because it is most noticeable and felt after Christmas.’

Well, my Camilo Carrillo’s aunt, as it happens, is shipwrecked in Bass Strait and she founds the Van Diemens Land branch of the family. Could it be that she was the great-grandmother of the woman in that weird little shop near the City Park , selling her mantillas and perfumes and El Niño rosaries in boxes made from the horns of animals? I daresay she was. Another likely story. Of such elements as all these is fiction fashioned, blown into shape by the winds of fact, memory, history, science and coincidence – and some other things I have yet to name.

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Return to homepage Copyright © Carmel Bird 1987. All rights reserved.	This collection of short fiction was published in Australia with the title The Woodpecker Toy Fact and in USA with the title Woodpecker Point. The American edition is available in hardback and paperback from www.amazon.com see below for reviews and a short essay REVIEWS 1) from Sydney Morning Herald July 4 1987 Reviewer: Peter Goldsworthy I think Carmel Bird's stories are terrific, and the first thing any review should say is, simply, buy them. It's hard to say anything more, because it's hard to categorize her style. There is something of Vonnegut or Mark Twain in her deadpan, mock innocent ironies, and something of Barbara Hanrahan's wide-eyed breathlessness in her detailed description of weird events. She is never without humor - even when at her most embroidered. And she is always unexpected, always heading off at a tangent to whatever direction the reader may have been led to expect. In 'The Woodpecker Toy Fact', describing two gossiping (magging) neighbors, she writes: Over the back fence these maggers passed hot scones wrapped in tea-towels, cups of sugar, bowls of stewed plums, and a continuous ribbon of talk. They sifted through the details of everything they heard and saw and thought, and arranged them into art. There is something gossipy about Bird's own fiction, albeit gossip arranged into a very high art. There are many wonderful pieces here. My favorite was the devastating 'Cherries Jubilee - or Whichever Way You Look At It' - a story which affected me deeply. And a story which, like all her pieces, jerks the reader teasingly this way and that, as if on a spit. 2) from The Australian July 4 1987 Reviewer: Viki Wright These short stories are of the rare sort that you should avoid reading alone. They are full of good bits to read aloud and giggle at with someone, which yields double the pleasure. Carmel Bird's touch is deft, bright, and accurate, like a good miniaturist portrait painter. She is particularly good at handling the shadows. Her stories, some of which are set in the suburbs, are about people we could never have guessed were so loveable. The following essay is a reflection on the motif of El Niño in my fiction. He first appeared in the title story of The Woodpecker Toy Fact. EL NINO OF FICTION AND FACT One of the characteristics of memory is that it invites images from the apparently vanished past to come forward in the mind’s eye, and to linger there as if into a room of present time. A potent image from my childhood is that of the silver decoration on a very small horn box. The box was about two inches square, and shaped like a book. Pressed into the silver on the cover of the book was the image of the Infant Jesus dressed in the glamorous robes of a medieval king. And inside the book was a tiny horn rosary. Loved, lost, gone, but, thanks to memory, not forgotten, not ever forgotten. And the memory is freighted with many sharp and nostalgic details too. My mother bought the box for me at a little old shop like something out of a storybook, situated near the gates of the City Park in Launceston. The air there smelt of gas because the park was near the gasworks in Cimitière Street . We knew the street name meant ‘cemetery’ in French, but my father said it was named after a Monsieur Cimitière – is that a likely story? I don’t know, but in any case the smell of gas seemed even then to carry its own dark suggestion of death and decay. There were swans in the park, and a huge dolls’ house where rabbits lived. Also a conservatory, and a real cannon on the grass from some old war. We often went there for picnics, sitting on the cannon in the sun, marvelling at the dewy luminescence of the bleeding heart begonias in the steamy green light of the conservatory. And in the low burrow of a shop where a woman sold Spanish soap and powder and perfume, and black lace mantillas, my mother bought me the rosary of the Infant Jesus of Prague. I knew the book and the beads were fashioned from the horns of animals, probably cows, but I used to like to imagine they were really maybe amber, and even now when I begin to wander in memory’s echoing rooms, I have to make an effort not to transform the humble horn into glorious amber where whole miniature bees might perhaps be trapped in a miracle. The power and mystery and sophistication of the astonishing, regal, festive Infant Jesus in his fancy clothes set him apart from the naked pink Holy Child of the Nativity, and he haunted my imagination. He first appeared in my fiction in a short story published in 1987, and has hovered here and there in my work since then. Recently that story was re-published in a new anthology of Australian short stories, and I saw a certain neatness and coincidence in the fact that my next novel, to be published early in 2004, brings him to the fore, not so much in his Czech manifestation, as in his Spanish and South American. He wears the hat of a pilgrim, decorated with cockle shells. On his staff he has tied a gourd for his water. His feet are shod in rough sandals, and his pink dress is more like a caftan than a kingly religious vestment. But it’s the same little fellow, beaming somewhat fatuously. He appears in the novel in this Spanish and South American incarnation. El Niño. The story reveals in fact at least three facets of the term ‘El Niño’. One is a very strange man who, early in the narrative, drugs his extended family in a hall and sets fire to the building, killing everyone. One is the Baby Jesus, and one is the category of weather events called ‘El Niño’ which so dramatically affect climate around the globe. In Australia the severe drought of very recent times is the result of the activity of El Niño. In primitive terms it can seem as if the planet is suffering from the upheaval of the raging temper tantrum of a wild and tempestuous child-god. In more rational but no less alarming terms is is a weather event characterised by a wide-scale weakening of the trade winds, and a warming of the surface layers in the eastern and central equatorial areas of the Pacific. Either way, it demands attention and respect and action. I always think ‘Pacific’ is such a nice name for an ocean. The weather events have gained their name because long ago, fishermen in Peru and Ecuador observed that their catches went down dramatically during the time of the warm ocean currents around Christmas. The anniversary of the birth of the Christ Child gave the fishermen time off to mend their boats and their nets. Although the events are irregular, they occur on average, every three to four years, when the warm currents last from December to May. They last too long, and they are accompanied by flooding rains. Towards the end of the twentieth century, observably beginning in 1982, the events, with their storms and droughts and floods and wild crazed bushfires have severely and drastically affected agriculture, and therefore life in general. I realise this part is not really news to anybody, and I have described it in the simplest possible way. My novel where El Niño appears as a character is largely set at Cape Grim which is located at the far north-west wild tip of Tasmania . The air right there is strangely pure, as the roaring forties have blown it (if I can describe things in that way) all the way from Africa without interference. And at Cape Grim there is a lonely and remote weather station which monitors – well, the weather really – and which collects vital data on the temper of the air and wind and rain. But I wish to move on to talk about a sweet coincidence that came about when I began to research El Niño weather patterns in the course of writing the novel. One of the characters who has been present in one form or another in my fiction since 1985 is a man called Carrillo. Imagine my pleasure when I discovered, in 1998, that the Peruvian naval captain who is credited with first naming it, in public and then in print (in 1892) was named Camilo Carrillo. Clearly an ancestor. I had always known that Carrillo was an unusual name for a character in north-west Tasmania , and at last here was his Peruvian family to explain everything. Moments such as this happen when you write fiction. They are part of the fun of it, really. At a Geography Society meeting in 1892 in Lima , Camilo Carrillo said: ‘Peruvian sailors from the port of Paita in northern Peru, who frequently navigate along the coast in small crafts, either to the north or to the south of Paita, named this current El Niño, without doubt because it is most noticeable and felt after Christmas.’ Well, my Camilo Carrillo’s aunt, as it happens, is shipwrecked in Bass Strait and she founds the Van Diemens Land branch of the family. Could it be that she was the great-grandmother of the woman in that weird little shop near the City Park , selling her mantillas and perfumes and El Niño rosaries in boxes made from the horns of animals? I daresay she was. Another likely story. Of such elements as all these is fiction fashioned, blown into shape by the winds of fact, memory, history, science and coincidence – and some other things I have yet to name.
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