Tag: writing

Hipoetical Context

29 January 201423 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog1 Comment

by Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau Reading and analysing (and perhaps even enjoying poetry) are complicated by competing perspectives, both current and historical, on what actually constitutes ‘poetic language’. A major player in the formation of such perspectives are the questions of if, how and why a written art-form which is subject to all the normal limitations of language can present thoughts, events, feelings, concepts or combinations of these in a manner which transcends language’s significatory limitations to create a poetic text-object which is more than the sum of its linguistic parts. Does poetry create or only represent its subject matter, and…

Croajingalong Walkaround (An Australia Day reflection of sorts)

27 January 201423 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog1 Comment

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…

The writer’s li[f]e

20 January 201423 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog3 Comments

by Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau This post, and the next two or three, will be written enroute. You’ll note I haven’t specified a destination. This is a holiday; a pack the tray, jump in the ute and drive off holiday. Heading South. Being away from home and office and institution brings both blessings and curses in terms of blog-writing. There is the joy of seeing, smelling, tasting the new as kilometres unfurl beneath us and sensory experiences spark new thoughts and new connections to (or at least positions in relation to) the Australian landscape, both physical and social. On the other…

Re/solved?

16 January 201423 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog3 Comments

By Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau It was inevitable, I suppose, that the first Southerly blog post of 2014 should involve the dreaded topic of the New Year’s Resolution (and in line with most people’s resolutions, mine is being put into practice now, after I’ve, erm, had a chance to get a feel for the upcoming year). Resolutions often involve quantitative changes that we hope will lead to qualitatively attractive outcomes. Cutting down on cigarettes involves subtracting a concrete number of gaspers from the currently consumed amount, but the benefits – the increased volume of oxygen in the breath, the return to…

In 2014 Writing Will Change the World

31 December 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog3 Comments

by Kathryn Heyman “It is not enough to possess a virtue as if it is an art; it should be practised.” Marcus Tullius Cicero. For the last few weeks, I have been writing about the classical virtues and what they mean for writing and reading. Now, at year’s end, I want to reflect for a moment on creative practice, its pleasures and its purpose. Early in her writing life, Elizabeth Jolley wrote a letter to a friend speaking of how disheartening it was, knowing that her work was irrelevant, being certain that no-one cared what she wrote. So – given the effort and anxiety…

Living up to Something

23 December 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog1 Comment

by Kathryn Heyman In our culture, vice is sexier than virtue. The Seven Deadly Sins are the fun guys. Greed, lust, gluttony; who wouldn’t want to be at that party? Virtues, not so much. We somehow think of virtue as the quiet cousin, the one lurking in the corner of the party, tutting away at everything. What if, though, the holy virtues are the set of conditions which can help us really enjoy the party? Let me be clear here: when I say ‘holy’ I mean creative. For me, the nature of creativity is the nature of the divine. In…

Why Write?

13 December 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog1 Comment

by Kathryn Heyman When asked that question, Isaac Asimov famously replied with: “For the same reason I breathe.” I love the implication of necessity his response evokes: I write because I will not survive if I don’t. I write because it is my life source. Recently, I did a SCUBA diving course. To my surprise, on my first dive, I panicked, unable to comprehend how I could breathe under water. My instructor touched his chest in a signal: just breathe. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t understand how breath worked, how I could get it to my lungs. I was pretty…

Practical Wisdom

6 December 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog1 Comment

By Kathryn Heyman At almost every party, there is someone who wants to be a writer. When they retire, they are going to write novels. Everyone has a book in them. It’s just a matter of persistence. You’ve got to ignore the haters. Look at Lord of the Flies – endlessly rejected and now, ha! Who has the last laugh, huh? Writers spend a lot of time at parties cornered by these people. Writers who also teach tend to be the ones smiling and saying, yes, that’s right, you should try, certainly, persistence is key, everyone can do it. But…

Revelation Hunger (After Charles Baxter)

21 September 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog3 Comments

by Rebecca Giggs How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, … the hives, which were people. —Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927). The cloche comes off. The veil drops. A dawning recognition. Bingo. In our age of multi-track information — when official narratives are profligately revised, and zealous fact-checkers snowball inexhaustible detail online — is it any wonder this device, the literary ‘revelation,’ has…

Driving yourself out of your mind; walking yourself out of your head

16 August 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog6 Comments

By Mark Tredinnick When Tessa rang me to ask me to blog this month, I was wrangling my dog into the back of a (two-door) car. And then I was starting the car and backing it and turning it onto a public road in the State of New South Wales. We talked, Tessa and I, fairly fast, and hands free (earpiece in, I promise), as I drove to school to pick up the children, running, as ever, just a little bit late. And now I’m writing this—my first blog—in a cab. Last night we launched Australian Love Poems 2013 at…

On not being born to write

2 June 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog5 Comments

by Maria Takolander Despite a lifetime of being exposed to American culture, the US remains resiliently strange to me. There are its female child beauty pageants and self-heroising gun culture, its confessional TV and fenceless houses, its rhetoric of moral superiority and the unambiguous immorality of many of its actions. Perhaps my response is related to my Finnish background. The US is, in some ways, the antithesis of introspective, socially responsible Finland—although Finland certainly possesses its own quantum of strangeness. However, being descended from Finns is hardly necessary to an appreciation of the bizarre spectacle of itself that the US…

Writing isn’t like breathing. Writing is grace.

28 February 201323 February 2015 SoutherlyBlog

Kate Holden, My fourth post – I had intended to write twice as many, in an inspired burst of blogging hyperactivity, but after peaking early in the early 2000s with a regular blog (back in the frowsty old dear days when people said, ‘A what?’) I have never again recovered the focus and the steam and the dedication, and alas, this month of February hecticness and an especial dose of personal frenetics too fell victim to lack of puff and excess of distraction. So, many thanks to Southerly and its people for inviting me to burble away here, and thanks…

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