Barbara Blackman – February 28 2016

Barbara is an author, music lover, essayist and philanthropist. At 15, she had a poem published and became the youngest member of Brisbane’s literary circle, ‘Barjai’ (which included Judith Wright and Thea Astley). Together with her first husband, painter Charles Blackman, she was at the epicentre of Australian modernism in Melbourne, associating with Arthur Boyd, Fred Williams, Joy Hester and others, and in the ‘60s the Blackmans were part of the Australian push active in London. Barbara’s twin sister, Coralie, died at two weeks old (written about movingly in Travelling Solo On A Bicycle Built For Two), her father died before she was four, and around this time her eyes too were “diagnosed sometime to die”. She was declared legally blind by the age of 22. Barbara has worked as a magazine columnist, a radio-producer for Radio for the Print-Handicapped, and interviewer for the National Library’s oral history program. She published her biography Glass after Glass in 1997 and her latest book, published in 2016, is All My Januaries, a retrospective collection of essays. She has also published a book of verse, Dogs and Doggerel, with illustrations by Cheryl Westenburg. Barbara lived with her second husband, French philosopher Marcel Veldhoven, in a mud-brick house on Berry Mountain, NSW, where poets, philosophers, artists and musicians were always made welcome. Made an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her support for the arts, Barbara is still active in this field, giving the 2011 inaugural lecture in her name at the International Music Festival in Canberra where she currently lives.

 Certain Chairs – with illustrations by Charles Blackman
University of Queensland Press 1998; ISBN 9780670880133
First published in 1968, this memoir is an appealing collaboration in prose and art, throwing light on the Blackmans’ extraordinary life together. Unusual in approach and highly imaginative, it tells of Barbara’s marriage to painter Charles Blackman, the many places they lived, the friends, the frustrations, the ups and downs, and demands and delights of children. Virtually blind for much of her life, Barbara is sensitive to the significance of inanimate objects, to the shivering oppressions of atmosphere, and quickly responsive to the tone of people and their conversations.

Portrait of a Friendship
Miegunyah Press, 2007; ISBN 9780522853551
Love, marriage, births, deaths, poetry, art, politics, gardens, pets, philosophy: all these and more are issues discussed in the letters between Barbara and Judith Wright – poet and writer of short stories, children’s fiction, literary criticism and family memoirs; dedicated environmentalist and champion of Aboriginal rights. These letters represent a fascinating and very personal record of Australian literary and artistic life. Above all, they nurtured a friendship for over 50 years and paint a profoundly moving and inspiring portrait of friendship.