Tag: australian poetry

Revelators, Visionaries, Poets and Fools: the palimpsest of Sydney’s western suburbia

by Luke Carman The suggestion that Australia’s literary ‘centre’ appears to be shifting – or leaning, at the least – towards Sydney’s ‘suburban frontier’ is becoming commonplace. Perhaps the first (certainly the most emphatic) recognition of this decentring to find its way into print was provided by Sam Twyford-Moore, director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, who stated in an interview last year that ‘Western Sydney is the capital of Australian literature… if not already, then certainly it’s the future’. As someone with a sensitive ear for the minor tremors of our most aspirant and incubational writers, Twyford-Moore can reasonably be…

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Obscurity in Poetry — A Spectrum

by Geoff Page (Developed from a short talk given in Bondi on November 7, 2014 at the salon of Luke Fischer and Dalia Nassar) Firstly, we need to remember a successful poem is both an act of communication and a work of art. There is a tension between the point I first heard from John Tranter (“If I wanted to tell you something I’d have sent you a telegram”) and the fact that almost all poems (even the most obscure) are an attempt, in one way or another, to address a putative reader or listener. There exists in current Australian…

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The Reef is Not a Poem

by Nicolette Stasko When I began to think about a topic for my first post I realised that I had an opportunity to write about something I am passionate about but don’t usually get to address: conservation and the environment as represented by the natural phenomenon of the Great Barrier Reef. Readers who are familiar with my poetry or my book Oyster: from Montparnasse to Greenwell Point, would not find my interest surprising. For me, like many poets (including Judith Wright, whose work is also a main focus of this piece), the land and especially the sea is a ‘manifestation…

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Fireworks Below the River

by Anthony Lawrence Swamp Riddles: Robert Adamson In 1978, my mother met me at the door and handed me a note, saying “This is what you have to do if you’re serious and want to be a real poet.” She had written a list that included: – read everything you can get your hands on – go to second hand bookshops and start a poetry collection – write every day – say no to your friends more often I assumed that while I’d been at work, she’d had a major epiphany about poetry, and was now passing on this crucial…

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Subject/ed?

by Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau Perhaps the biggest reason for not knowing if we’re there yet, as discussed in the previous post, is that nobody is quite sure where there actually is. The development of literary modes / –isms / genres / forms tends, on the whole, to be reactive rather than proactive. That is to say, the writer does often work from the starting point of wanting to bring a unique method of expression into the public discourse, but this particularity is generally based on a movement away from a form of expression thought to have lost its currency. There…

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Are we there yet?

by Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau About six weeks ago, I was tagged in a Facebook post by Australian author Shady Cosgrove asking various folk for ‘recommendations for essays that dissect what, exactly, constitutes Australian literature’. She was asking fellow academics and writers, yet other than some suggestions about what we don’t think Australian literature is, or should be, or what it used to be, the response, on the whole, was a fairly solid ‘dunno’.* As a sometime reviewer of Australian short stories, more so than novels, I could name a handful of stylistic devices that seem to crop up in volumes…

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Croajingalong Walkaround (An Australia Day reflection of sorts)

by Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau The most anticipated highlight of this trip for me was a chance to revisit the small town of Mallacoota just past the NSW/Victoria border, and Croajingalong National Park. I hadn’t been back since my daughter, the half-a-teenager flopped over a table in Braidwood two posts ago was about eight months old. Mallacoota is an inlet town with creeks and lakes curving and pooling out into the ocean. Everything is pretty low key; the river aspect means it’s remained more of a small fishing town than a beachfront high-rise development. The prevalence of brown and orange in…

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On Remembering Things

by Walter Mason Year by year I become more conscious that I commit less and less to memory. I was in that final generation that made one last half-hearted effort to commit some poetry to memory. The only things that remain with me now are ‘My Country’, half of ‘The Man from Ironbark’ and the first three verses of ‘Advance Australia Fair’. Which, I think, pretty much puts me in the top 10% of the Australian population when it comes to memorised poetry, though I rarely find myself in a situation that demands I draw upon these poetic reserves. My…

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Swallows (The Narrow Road through the Deep North)

by David Brooks I have just searched the Oxford English Dictionary – not the on-line version, but the two (huge) volume, ‘compact’ version I bought myself on special offer when I was a graduate student, beloved books now battered and torn from their bindings – for the word souciant and find that it is not there, nor (now that I have checked) in the on-line version. The reason I’ve looked is that, reading about cicadas the other day, I came across mention of them as a symbol of insouciance, of care-less-ness, of living for the day. It suddenly occurred to…

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How to Ride a Horse

by David Brooks October 4th was World Animal Day and I was privileged to be asked to read in Sydney at an Animals and Art fundraising event for Animal Liberation NSW, to an audience which included some of the people I most admire. Of course, declaring myself a member and dedicated supporter of Animal Liberation would have one marked out in some countries – the United States and Austria, to name but two – as a potential terrorist, it being seen as a serious offence in most parts of the world to impede or draw attention in any way to…

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A Wrap: “as if we were just out of reach of ourselves”

by Mark Tredinnick 1. Just as I was posting this, the news came through. And it changes everything. Just another death. But what a death! What a life ended. Half the words in the world seem suddenly to have gone. I can’t write a word on poetry without lighting a candle first and walking some kind of a vigil into the midnight. Seamus Heaney, who can never possibly die, has died. His leaving leaves us poorer, rich though his life was in beauty and wisdom, grace and humour, kindness and accomplishment. What will we do without him? Remember him. Read…

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Three Days in Late August: some thoughts about bluewrens and everyday immanence

by Mark Tredinnick Sunday. The bluewren is back. 6:27 this morning, she woke me, her knocking as deft as needlepoint. Wake, she spelled. And I did (if not for long). The birds have this way with me of telling me they’re here and who they are, before they’re here, before they are. She woke me (the pocket beloved) from a dream of Montreal (hello, Asa); she woke Lucy (my young girl) from a dream—a dream as intricate and endless as a life—of Peter Rabbit, Timmy Tiptoes, the whole Potter crew, bouncing on the bed. The rabbits Mrs. McGregor had put…

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