Fiction

THE MIDNIGHT WATCH by David Dyer

Item: THE MIDNIGHT WATCH
Author: Felicity Plunkett

by Felicity Plunkett •

May 2016, no. 381

Hamish Hamilton $32.99 pb, 318 pp, 9781926428727

Fiction

THE MIDNIGHT WATCH by David Dyer

by Felicity Plunkett •

May 2016, no. 381

Two headlines, a day apart, evoke the confusion surrounding the fate of the Titanic in April 1912. New York's Evening Sun reported, 'ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION'. Twenty-four hours later, The Boston Daily Globe added: 'TITANIC SINKS, 1500 DIE.' From there, the sinking of the 'unsinkable' Titanic has been the subject of conflicting accounts. Books, films, and nightmares, survivors' stories, songs, and poems, conspiracy theory fuelled by inconsistencies and by weird and cryptic evidence and the rumblings of rumour are all part of an indefatigable industry.

Felicity Plunkett

Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Her first collection of poetry Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009) won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. She has a chapbook Seastrands (2011) in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series. Felicity was Poetry Editor for University of Queensland Press and edited Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and her reviews and essays have been widely published in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books etc. Her essay ‘Sound Bridge’, a portrait of Indigenous Australian musician Dr G. Yunupingu, was first published in Australian Book Review and anthologised in Best Australian Essays 2015 (Black Inc, ed. Geordie Williamson).