By the time we got to Kythera, spring had busted all over the place,
although the jonquils I had been hoping for had already been and gone. But
poppies lined the roads, and giant headed dandelions which counted time in
centuries rather than hours. Blooms I would later identify as narcissus, irises,
anemones, crocuses, hyacinths and violets, rolled down the mountains, filled
the spaces between the olive trees, invaded the orchards and made the gullies
bloom. They lay over the countryside like antique embroideries, and large, delicate
heads of Queen Ann’s lace, resembled freshly laundered white tablecloths, crocheted
by old ladies for their granddaughters’ glory boxes, which had been spread out
over the grass to dry.
I laughed with relief.
It had been my idea, about 9 months earlier,
to suggest to my friend, Sue Woolfe, that Kythera would be a suitable place to
run a writers’ retreat, like the ones she had done in Tuscany, India and Havana
for Sydney University, but never before with me. I had participated in one of
her day-long courses, and knew the quality of her teaching, but a fortnight in
a little known island in the Mediterranean was another proposition. However, looking
back, ,I don’t think I had fully appreciated at the time the personal risk I
was taking. Kythera is my refuge; the place I go to just to be, and here I was
proposing it as business venture, and an uncertain one at that. What if we
didn’t get enough participants; what if the weather let us down; what if the
course didn’t gel with the environment (unlikely), what if Kythera wasn’t
particularly inspiring, what if, what if, what if….
Well we had enough participants, all of them
ex-student’s of Sue’s, who wanted more of her teaching. We arrived on the kind
of spring day that seeps through the pores of your skin, so that you can feel
the perfume in the air before you smell it. And Kythera was putting on a show.
Hence my laughter.
A week later, nine people from different
backgrounds, ranging in age from 21 to 82, joined us on our first writers’
retreat on Kythera. They were all from Australia, from as far afield as Darwin,
Perth and country Victoria, as well as Sydney. They came to an island they had
never heard of because they had done courses with Sue before, and knew what to
expect. But we were untried, my island
and I, and since my job was all about the logistics, there was still room for
disaster.
So thank heavens for Telis Prineas, the owner
of the Anatoli Hotel, where we had made our original bookings. Despite the fact that we had already visited
the island the year before and had settled on what we considered would be
suitable accommodation, at the last minute, and for various reasons, the
negotiations fell apart; an amazing stroke of luck, if we but knew it at the
time. So I was left with phoning hotels that I had never seen, looking for one
that might serve our purposes. It so happened that when I rang the Anatoli, I
went straight through to voicemail, so dispirited and disappointed, I hung up
without leaving a message. But Telis, who by the way resembles a kind-hearted
ogre, saw my call and rang back. When I tell the tale now, I picture Telis reaching
out halfway across the world from his beautiful hotel in Agia Pelagia, to pick
us up and bring us safely home. But knowing that our participants would be
exacting in their standards, I sent some local friends to spend the night there,
before we committed ourselves. They had report on everything from housekeeping
standards, to the number of power points in the rooms.
Anyway, Telis, who was at the airport to meet
us, had another surprise in store. As well as his hotel, he manages a block of
holiday apartments called the Pantonia. They are high up, at the back of Agia
Pelagia. All of the apartments face the view, which comprises of Cape Maleas
and the mainland, and the same stretch of sea where, impossibly, the sun both
rises and sets. That the view was virtually the same for most of the
apartments, was important to Sue.
Kythera is a small island just off the tip of
the southern Peloponnese. On a clear day, you can see the profile of the island
Antikythera (of the Mechanism fame), and snow-topped peaks of Crete beyond it -
but only on a clear day. At other times the horizon can look empty and you get
the sense of total isolation. It’s one
of the deceptions Kythera practices, one of its little tricks on your
perceptions.
This island has had a fractious relationship
with its people, and there have been times when it has been abandoned. But it
does have a Minoan history, is mentioned in the Iliad, was contested by Athens
and Sparta, ruled by the Venetians and was a favourite hunting ground for the
pirate Barbarossa. It has been imagined by Watteau and Botticelli; serenaded by
Couperin in Le Carillon de Cythere, and referenced by Charles Baudelaire,
Anthony Powell, Margaret Drabble, Theo Angelopoulos and Killing Joke. And it
was once roamed by Pygmy elephants.
It has been described as the easternmost and
most hidden island of the Eptanisa. And this is appropriate, because Kythera
does have its secretive side. Much is hidden inside its many caves, and under
the soil of curiously shaped hills and rises, and by its deceptively clear,
ocean laundered light. Just watch how the limestone cliffs change, second by
second, as the sun passes over them.
I felt that Kythera and I had much to share,
with Sue Woolfe’s students. But one never knows.
They all arrived by air, most of them on the
same flight and we were there to greet them at the airport and to take them
back to their individual apartments. There they found a small gift from Sue and
I; a briki, a packet of Greek coffee and some sugar, a plate of sweets, and a
bunch local wildflowers, that we had gathered that morning with a pair of nail
scissors. After their long and tiring journey the students had arrived to
space, light, air, privacy and view. All the apartments had their own kitchen,
and Mr. Capsanis’ labyrinthine general store, much bigger inside than its entry
implies, stocked everything from mosquito coils, to bottles of halfway decent
wine.
We exploited the shoulder season in order to
get the better prices and to enjoy the island in its unspoiled, tourist-free
state. This worked to our advantage in other, unexpected ways too. Springtime
brought changeable weather, challenging the notion of continuously sunny
Mediterranean days, but offering moody drives through shifting mist and patchy
clouds dotting blue skies. The word cerulean suggests itself here. The smell of wood smoke was still in the air,
vying with the perfume of orange blossoms. And a talkative frog, which inhabited
a small dam, made such a racket one morning that we thought we were approaching
a crowd.
The winter hibernation was over, and Easter
had just passed, and the locals, not yet jaded by the hard summer months, were
pleased to see us. Agia Pelagia’s
stretch of cafes and coffee shops and bars, all of which opened directly onto
the beach, quickly cottoned on to our presence and subtly competed for our
custom. Dessert and a glass of Tsiporo were on the house (although my own
venture into introducing the group to this harsh and fiery drink received the
reception it deserved – wouldn’t use it for liniment, they said.) We were an
augury for a good summer.
With Telis’ help, I had organized a welcome
cocktail party to meet the locals and a rest day, which happened to fall on May
Day, intervened and then we had the first of our three bus excursions to see
the island, and to give our students further time to recover from their long
journey, since many had come directly to Kythera. To ensure that they would be
fresh for Sue’s meticulous teaching, we took them on one further excursion,
which included the centuries-old Sunday markets at Potamos.
The course took place over fifteen days, of
which eight mornings were spent in formal classes, with afternoons and evenings
free. Some participants used that time to work on their stories, others though,
hired cars and got around the island on their own, soaking in the light that
never lets you down, finding the stories hidden in the landscape, and letting
the island inspire them. As Peter said,
‘It was magical’.
By the time the first
classes began on day three, the group was sufficiently rested and had already
seen much of the island. But their real purpose for being there was to learn
some researched techniques for creative thinking, which would help them rediscover
and draw on their on own creativity. The success of the course was dependent on
this happening for each student and I needed Kythera to play its part.
The
Pantonia, which was our exclusive domain, soon became enveloped by an air of
storytelling, as the group incorporated Sue’s creativity techniques into their
own practice, and saw with delight, their writing develop and grow. It was
palpable. Even outside the teaching hours, in fact especially outside teaching
hours, Sue was always available to talk, walk, eat and drink writing with the
students. It was a constant conversation. The techniques that Sue teaches are known to
enhance creativity by almost 30%. Certainly all the participants found them effective,
comments like “I never knew I was creative!” were typical. And as the success
grew, so too did the enthusiasm. As
Lorraine said, “The process we have embraced here is fantastic.” Nobody left
Kythera without having produced something substantial - something delightfully
unexpected.
The course took place over fifteen days, of
which eight mornings were spent in formal classes, with afternoons and evenings
free. Some participants used this time to work on their stories, others though,
hired cars and got around the island on their own, soaking in the light that
never lets you down, finding the stories hidden in the landscape, and letting
the island inspire them. As Peter said,
‘It was magical’.
My role extended itself
beyond being the liaison with the group and the locals. One morning Sue came to
me with a request. The group would be down at the beach, doing an exercise in
description of the sea and the sand. Wouldn’t it be good to insert some action?
So presently a mysterious woman appeared, dressed in flowing clothes and holding
a parasol in one hand, to obscure her
face, and holding her shoes in the other. She picked her way along the
shoreline (a little unevenly it has to be said, some of those pebbles can
hurt), looking for the perfect stone to pin a message under, which she picked
up and furtively placed in the forked branches of a tree. Everyone incorporated
her into their story, some with more sympathy than others.
The final two nights of the course took place
at the Neos Kosmos restaurant in Agia Pelagia, which at that time of the year,
only opened for lunch. As a special favour to us though, Dimitris and Anna
provided two evening meals, and by so doing, became very much a part of the
course. These were the nights of the readings; the time when our students were
finally allowed to share their work with each other, something that had been
embargoed throughout the course. These evenings, accompanied by the sound of
the waves breaking on the shore across the road, and by good food and drink,
featured our student’s superlative writing. Since their return, at least two of
our students have won prizes in national competitions.
As our other Peter, who had studied with Sue
before and knew what to anticipate, said ‘I was expecting a lot, and I got far
more than I expected’.
So did the island live up to its promise?
Well, at a reunion dinner at my place, we wondered if it would be a good idea
to spread our wings a bit and run the course someplace else. The response was
unanimous – only in Kythera.
Further information about the course can be
found in:
Kiriaki Orfanos
Dr. Sue Woolfe is the author of four novels including the critically
acclaimed Leaning Towards Infinity ,
which won the Christina Stead Award. She is a scriptwriter, editor and
documentary filmmaker. She is also a much-admired teacher of creative writing.
Kiriaki Orfanos is a Sydney-based writer and teacher.
