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Poetry Prize – Helen Bell Poetry Bequest Award 2013
The Department of English at the University of Sydney is pleased to announce that the first biennial award under the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest will be made in 2013. Under the terms of Helen...
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On realism, Walter Benjamin and cricket commentary
Lisa Gorton Lately, driving here and there, I have been listening to cricket on the radio. In truth, I take no interest in the game; but talk has its genres, too, and I have been amusing myself by...
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Shakespeare’s sonnets: stones and weeds
Lisa Gorton This week, I’ve been rereading Shakespeare’s sonnets. I’m thinking ahead to ABR’s sonnet-o-thon at Boyd on Wednesday 28 November. (Yes, a promo! But the event is free:...
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Authority and Flood
Lisa Gorton From time to time, these days, I wonder why I have spent so much of my life reading – what I have gained by that, and what I have lost. When I was seven years old, I was reading in the...
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Beginnings and endings
Judith Beveridge As it’s the beginning of the new year and the ending of the old year, I have been prompted to think about the beginnings and endings of poems. I always find beginning and ending a poem...
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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...
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“Poetry, I too dislike it”
Judith Beveridge While I have been convalescing from a flu virus, I’ve spent the last week reading. I finished Louise Glűck’s “Poems 1962-2012” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2012) – a most...
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The Power and the Passion
Judith Beveridge I’ve always been drawn to this statement by the Irish poet Michael Longley: “The poet makes the most complex and concentrated response that can be made with words to the total...
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To The Invisible
Peter Minter 1. Gimen no soko no byōki no kao, Yokohama 1986 Gimen no soko no byōki no kao: Sick Face of the Earth Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886-1942) In the earth I see my face, a lonely sick person’s face....
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To The Invisible
Peter Minter 2. Hiroshige’s Journey, Yokohama 1986 Hiroshige’s Journey Yamashita Park, Yokohama, Winter 1986. an old man who walked past here cloaked against the blue sky and wind now seems a mile...
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To The Invisible
Peter Minter 3. Cranes, Hiroshima 1986 Cranes Hiroshima, 1986. When the rice farmer trances over the fields his paper room is waiting. Even the blades of grass beside the road are the colour...
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To The Invisible
Peter Minter 4. Leave-taking, Sydney 1987 The garden blooms no more, my egotist. Day’s butterflies have fled to other flowers, And now the only visitors will be The butterflies of night. Apollinaire...
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The Eternal Work-in-Progress
by John Kinsella, Writing Morpheus in my late teens went hand-in-hand with a fascination on my part for long, cumulative works of poetry. In Morpheus, through the character of Thomas, I was...
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I’ll tell you a story
by John Kinsella I possess two items from my childhood. Both are books. Somehow I have held on to these through the upheavals of my life, including having twice sold vast collections of books to...
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Uses of Knowledge/Data/Detail in Writing and Reading
by John Kinsella I’ve always loved ‘data’, though I am sceptical of how it is sourced and utilised. This re-engineered novel I’ve been talking about over recent weeks, Morpheus, is a book stuffed with...
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August monthly blogger – Mark Tredinnick!
A huge thanks to Fiona Wright for her excellent and insightful posts. This month, our guest blogger is Mark Tredinnick. His bio is below: Mark Tredinnick is a celebrated poet, nature writer, essayist,...
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Driving yourself out of your mind; walking yourself out of your head
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...
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Speaking of love
by Mark Tredinnick It’s true I don’t wake in my own bed as often as I might; I have been elsewhere, this past fortnight, as much as I’ve been here. But every morning at seven, since August began, a...
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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...
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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...
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