We caught up with Valerie to ask a few questions about Passion Play<\/em><\/a>, which is a verse novel based around the Oberammergau Passion Play<\/a>, performed every ten years in a tradition dating back to the 17th century.<\/p>\n Yes, three times, in 1990, 2000, 2010 \u2013 but I first discovered Oberammergau when driving through southern Germany in 1973 (a non-Passion Play year) and became fascinated by the place and the ten-yearly event.<\/p>\n How did you develop the structure and characters for your verse novel Passion Play<\/i>?<\/strong><\/p>\n I’ve always wanted to do a modern parallel to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales<\/i>, so this four day bus trip and its group of varied characters travelling \u00a0to the Passion Play provided me with the perfect structure for such a creation. Except that these people do not copy Chaucer’s and tell stories to entertain each other; instead they reveal their own lives in monologues or discussions that are often painfully honest. As for the characters? Most of them are today’s equivalents of the Chaucerian group – even to Chaucer’s Cook becoming a modern TV cooking contest winner …<\/p>\n What is you favourite line or two of verse in the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n This is so hard \u2013 it’s difficult to extract lines from a novel, which is basically a narrative. Perhaps the journalist, as she returns and sits in Changi airport, waiting her last stage flight home :<\/p>\n How that word sums it up. Around me all the buzz of airport lounge. If you weren\u2019t a poet, what do you think your occupation would be?<\/strong><\/p>\n I’d\u00a0be properly retired, sitting in the sun, reading a crime novel \u00a0\u2026 \u00a0instead of feeling compelled to write!<\/p>\n What are your favourite Wakefield Press titles, aside from your own, and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n A long way back favourite, Peter Goldsworthy’s Bleak Rooms<\/i><\/a>, for its brilliant vignettes of life in a short story collection, and his amazing understanding of people. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another day, another profile of one of Wakefield Press’s amazing authors! Valerie Volk is a former secondary teacher, tertiary lecturer, and\u00a0director of an international education program. She has won\u00a0awards for poetry and short fiction and has published widely in\u00a0journals, anthologies … Continue reading ![\"Passion](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/files\/newsletters\/PassionPlay.jpg?resize=264%2C410\")
Have you ever attended the Passion Play at Oberammergau?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nI am in transit.<\/p>\n
\nThe crowds of travellers,
\narrivals weary as they trudge
\nto baggage claims,
\nthen out into the humid dark
\nof Singapore, its tropic night,
\nits frangipani air.<\/p>\n
\nLolo Houbein’s One Magic Square<\/i><\/a>, for its vision of sustainable life, which almost sent me out to plant my own small plot of ground.
\nJohn Neylon’s Robert Hannaford<\/i><\/a>, for the insight it gave into this great South Australian artist, and the wonderful reproductions of his work \u2013 I’ll never be able to afford an original, but I can enjoy them in the book.
\nJude Aquilina’s poetry, especially in the witty and sardonic WomanSpeak<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n