Tag: Les Murray

Judgement Day

by Justin Clemens I’m not down on literary festivals, as some readers of my previous post seemed to think. On the contrary, I love them — although that doesn’t mean I don’t think their current excrescent phosphorescence has something suspicious about it. Love is a funny word, a complex feeling, and an intense, involved process, and I’ve never really understood why, when whatever love is is in question, anybody should stop questioning either the love or its nominal object. In fact, I’d suggest that love without self-questioning barely deserves the name of love at all. If sometimes you go too…

… read more

Maximum Heat

Judith Beveridge I’m writing this on the day when catastrophic fire conditions are expected and a maximum of 43 degrees in Sydney. I also have a fever, so it seems heat is absolutely inescapable today as it ravages over the landscape and pushes well above the normal level on my oral thermometer. The fires in Tasmania and Victoria are still burning as well. I feel a strong sense of nervousness about the day. At the moment there’s a small amount of cloud cover and the wind is just starting up. I can hear some insects outside doing their high-pitched, electronic…

… read more