David Malouf
David Malouf is the internationally acclaimed author of novels including Ransom (2009), The Great World (1990) (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' prize and the Prix Femina Etranger), Remembering Babylon (1993) (winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), An Imaginary Life (1978), Conversations at Curlow Creek (1996), Dream Stuff (2000), Every Move You Make (2006) and his autobiographical classic 12 Edmondstone Street (1985). His The Complete Stories, published in 2008, won the Australia-Asia Literary Award of the same year. His most recent books are A First Place (2014) and The Writing Life (2014). He was born in 1934 and was brought up in Brisbane. David Malouf is the ABR Laureate.
Twenty-five or thirty years ago, when it was still fashionable to speak of the Great Australian Emptiness, we took this image of the geographical dead heart of Australia as implying a cultural emptiness as well, a suggestion that too little had happened or been made here to give the mind, the civilised mind, anything to hang on to, identify with or make its own.
Well, the idea of geographical emp ... (read more)
Four in the morning. Stumbling backto bed, the softnessof my pillow in the spreadof my fingers assumesagain, after so long, the still longed forround of your head.
How does it feel,out there in that undiscoveredcountry from whose bourne et cetera,to be recalled, drawn backto your name on my lips again,the warmth of the flesh?
I recall the promisewe made and broke. Now,on a grace noteof unbodied ... (read more)
Writing to Geoffrey Dutton in 1969, Patrick White confesses: ‘All my life I have been rather bored, and I suppose in desperation I have been inclined to weave these fantasies in which I become more “involved”. Ignoble, au fond, but there have been a few results.’
He is speaking, in that typically wry last phrase, of the books. My guess is that one of the great frustrations of the last six ... (read more)
I was woken at some hourof darkness before dawn by a scent so heavyon my senses, on the room, that I was convinced
a burglar had broken inand was loiteringupstairs or in the hallway, or having caught
my step on the stairs above him was lying lowin the laundry, or sittingupright and unbreathing
in one of the Windsor chairs, unaware it washis scent that betrayed him.I checked the door to the balc ... (read more)
Sweet nothings in our ear cherub pumpkin dearest chuckbut to the heart which is the better listener the passwordto a tongue that only two in their comings and goings have access to
A blessed mouthful
Drawn from a stream that is forev ... (read more)
after Horace, Odes I, v
What slim-hipped beachboy drippingwith musk is riding younow on a bed of rosesin your snug den, Pyrra? Is it
for him you have braidedthose honey-gold locksin a knot so neat, sohomely? One day
soon, black moods, blacklooks, he'll be cursingyou and the ficklegods who have dropped him,
but for now he'shooked, you're his, all thisis for him:calm seas, endless horizo ... (read more)
A soft October morning,adagio sostenuto. Some partof me is still delayed
in sleep. It is one withnight, with daylightstars, moths that fumble
at a window pane, bewilderedthat this tract of sky,like no other, will not yield.
The coffee cup, double espresso,is deeper than it looks.Each sip I take
a dark reaffirmation.A practicerun for the big sleep.
David Malouf ... (read more)
Today in Sunday weather grevillia leavesin turmoil, no evident breeze. A sugar hit. A honey-eater, upside down at tilt and tumble.
The body also in Sunday mode. The mindidling on automatic with no needto be occupied or coloured, having come at last
to the end of a long apprenticeship in learning to leavewell alone. No empire to account to. Noaccount-books to square. The anxiety of nothing
in ha ... (read more)