Australian Literature
Antipodes: The North American journal of Australian literature, Vol. 19, No. 2 by Nicholas Birns
The Collected Verse Of Mary Gilmore: Volume 1 1887–1929 edited by Jennifer Strauss
Ever Yours, C.H. Spence: Catherine Helen Spence’s an autobiography (1825–1910), diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894–1910) edited by Susan Magarey
Moving house recently reacquainted me with my books as I handled each one, packing and unpacking, dismantling the shelves from under them, banging the shelves together in the new place and lining up the books in a jumbled vestige of the old order. Books carried round for half a lifetime, books read more than once, books that will never be read, gifts, enthusiasms, bearers of memory and desire. Arranging books is something we all must do, culling and keeping in mysterious ways that reflect ourselves and our circumstances.
... (read more)The Past Completes Me: Selected poems 1973–2003 by Alan Gould
Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs by Gerald Murnane & Literati by James Phelan
Visiting Shirley Hazzard in Italy is like entering a Hazzard novel. She lives in an apartment within the grounds of a splendid villa at Posillipo. The rooms are cool against the summer sun, and when you step onto her terrace the vista and the light are dazzling. Scarlet bougainvillea falls in twisted festoons. From the terrace, she surveys the breathtaking scope of the Bay of Naples. To the left, the shadowy silhouette of Vesuvius. The long cluttered arch of the Neapolitan littoral holds the blue bay in its stretch. The Sorrentine peninsula seals off the southern edge, and out on the fringe, a blue punctuation, the island of Capri, where Hazzard also maintains a house.
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