Tag: David Brooks

John Watson: “David Brooks in Slovenia”

Southerly78.1

Words || John Watson  ‘Swimming when the bell strikes five’: The bell shakes drops into the sea, The fifth finds me, as ever, there. Swallows like jets on swooping raids Sky-larking in the pulsing air “Make my head their conning tower.’ Then wasps in summer heat drop in To sip sweet wine lees from the glass ‘And dip their feet in cooling waves.’ Dusk comes at last. The swallows nest. The wasps have gone. The night still warm ‘I write until the bell strikes ten.’ He swan-dives round and through the page; Wasp-like he harvests subtle lees. He writes and writes…

… read more

Geoff Page: Letter to David Brooks

Southerly78.2

Dear David As someone who grew up on a cattle station and still (very occasionally) eats red meat, I’ve been reading your article, ‘The Fallacies”, in the latest Southerly with considerable interest. I agree that the“fallacies” you identify there can actually be quite useful, both as cautions and enablers. I’ve also had similar reservations to yours about the reception of, and enthusiasm for, many postmodern ideas. In numerous ways these ideas have been liberating (in dissuading us, for instance, from pointlessly pursuing Absolute Truth and other chimeras) but they can also be disabling when taken too seriously and institutionalised. Certainly…

… read more

Podcast: David Brooks reads poems from ‘Open House’

Southerly78.1, Podcast

 Podcast duration: 16 mins  This issue of Southerly pays tribute to David Brooks, who is retiring as editor after two decades’ stewardship. It includes poetry, fiction, essays and memoir that interweave readings of David’s work with accounts of the various literary communities that David has worked in over four decades from Canberra to North America, Perth, Slovenia, Sydney and now, Katoomba. Together, these pieces create a world of a very specific kind, one populated by words and word people and the currents between them in specific times and places. They also enable us to draw out recurrent themes and practices. The…

… read more

Followed by Patrick Modiano’s Dog: What I’ve Been Reading, Last Part

SoutherlyBlog

by Luke Beesley Having just finished Cesar Aira’s Shantytown, which in the end was probably my least favourite Aira, I’ve just begun Beauty is a Wound by Indonesian Eka Kurniawan, mostly because of how much I enjoyed the tinge of the absurd in these two sentences, on the second page, which follow other sentences about a character, Dewi Ayu, who has just risen from the grave: “A woman tossed her baby into the bushes and its father hushed a banana stalk. Two men plunged into a ditch, others fell unconscious at the side of the road, and still others took…

… read more

Call for Submissions: Disabilities issue

SoutherlyNews1 Comment on Call for Submissions: Disabilities issue

For its second number in 2016, Southerly will be producing an issue, co-edited by David Brooks and Andy Jackson, on Writing and Disability, and we are seeking contributions in all our usual fields – poetry, short fiction, essay, review, memoir, etc. Both physical and psychological disability will be considered – visible and invisible – and disability will be interpreted widely within these areas. The co-editors do not wish to limit contributions in any way. They do note, however, that the area of writing and disability is significantly under-theorised, especially in the Australian context, and hope that this publication might make…

… read more

A Photograph

SoutherlyBlog1 Comment on A Photograph

By David Brooks In my previous piece I wrote of the selection of photographs for a small exhibition. The photographs were not my own, but at one point there was some consideration of adding to it some photographs that were. When I wrote about the selected photographs I endeavoured to balance the impression created by one of them – of six ducklings in a pond – with a story of the tragedy that had taken five of their siblings a few days before the photograph was taken. It was a small point of scruple, perhaps, hardy a matter of the…

… read more

Wild Ducklings

SoutherlyBlog1 Comment on Wild Ducklings

by David Brooks At the Animal Liberation NSW ‘Animals and Art’ fund-raising event I wrote of in my second blog my wife Teja Pribac exhibited some of her photographs, each of which was available for purchase through silent auction. The most popular was of six ducklings in a pond, a striking, Monet-like image of intersecting ripples of green pond-water and the lightness of first feathers, the sharpness and already-fine features of beak and face. Several viewers spoke of their love for ducklings, and not surprisingly that photograph (not the one I reproduce here, but very like it) was almost the…

… read more

Swallows (The Narrow Road through the Deep North)

SoutherlyBlog2 Comments on 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…

… read more

How to Ride a Horse

SoutherlyBlog3 Comments on 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…

… read more

Cicada Season

SoutherlyBlog4 Comments on Cicada Season

by David Brooks Early October and it’s uncommonly warm. September’s average maximum was six degrees higher than the long-term average and this month seems as if it will be no different. Last summer was longer and warmer than any I can remember here in the mountains, and it seems as if this one will be a repeat. In the chemist’s, the greengrocer’s, the hardware store, the bank, and when now and again you stop to talk with some friend or acquaintance in the street, everyone agrees that the climate is changing. It seems incredible that so many politicians are still…

… read more

October monthly blogger – David Brooks!

SoutherlyBlog

Many thanks to Rebecca Giggs, for her excellent, thought-provoking posts. This month, our blogger will be David Brooks, one of our managing editors and editor of our upcoming Liar/Lyre issue, writing on animals, ethics, and literature. His bio is below: David Brooks has published several collections of poetry, short fiction and essays, and four novels, the most recent of which is The Conversation (UQP 2012). His work has been highly acclaimed, widely translated and anthologised, and short-listed for the Miles Franklin, NSW Premier’s, Adelaide Festival, Banjo and many other awards. In 2011 he published The Sons of Clovis: Ern Malley,…

… read more

Southerly at the Sydney Writers’ Festival!

SoutherlyNews

As well as being an editor of Southerly, David Brooks is a novelist, poet, and academic. You can see him speak at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, which is held from May 18th to 26th. Make sure you check out ‘Poetry in the Caves‘, as he hosts a poetry reading in Jenolan Caves. David will also be speaking on the following panels, The Ivanhoe Hotel: Australian Creativity with Stephen Gale Philosophy and Writing with Scarlett Thomas, Damon Young and Joe Gelonesi What the Classics Teach Us with Robert Greene, Richard Gill and Alastair Blanshard You can also see Toby Fitch, our Poetry Reviews Editor,…

… read more