Author to launch book at bellachara

AUTHOR Barbara Blackman, who helped to found a series of women"s literary lunches in Berry in the early 1990s, will be honoured by such a lunch this week.

Ms Blackman will launch her new book, Portrait of a Friendship, at Bellachara in Gerringong on Friday.

The book collects together the correspondence between Ms Blackman and poet Judith Wright over half a century.

Ms Blackman first met Judith when the poet came to talk at a meeting of Brisbane avant-garde literary group Barjai, of which Ms Blackman was a member in her final school years.

"I liked her poems very much, they were very moving and straight from the heart. And as people we just clicked," Ms Blackman said of this first meeting.

A friendship formed between the two very different women and was sustained through moves interstate and overseas, death and marriage break-ups.

"We wrote in the times we were not together," Ms Blackman said. This included while she lived in Melbourne as well as in London and Paris in the 1960s and 1970s with then husband artist Charles Blackman.

Ms Blackman also lived for a time in the Illawarra, and Judith eventually moved to Braidwood, in the south-east of NSW.

A year after Judith"s death, in 2000, Ms Blackman moved to Canberra.

"I said to Bryony [Cosgrove, the book"s editor] after Judith"s death that she left a pile of letters from me and I"ve got a pile of letters from her, do you want to make a book," Ms Blackman said.

She said Judith had always said they should keep the letters to "go over in the winters of our days".

There are gaps in the book"s timeline where the two women lived close enough to be able to talk regularly or when letters had been lost, but otherwise the book gives an intimate record of Australian literary and artistic life and, as the title says, a portrait of a strong friendship.

"The idea was to show how two women with very different personalities and different ways of life held a very strong friendship," Ms Blackman said.

For bookings for the lunch, contact The Terrace Bookshop on 4232 3155.