Peter Rose
In 2001 Peter Rose became the Editor of Australian Book Review. Previously he was a publisher at Oxford University Press. He has published several books of poetry, an award-winning family memoir, Rose Boys, and two novels, the most recent being Roddy Parr (Fourth Estate, 2010). His latest poetry collections are Rag (Gazebo Books, 2023) and Attention, Please! (Pitt Street Poetry, February 2025). His extensive criticism appears in a variety of publication, including ABR. Rose writes and performs short absurdist plays with The Highly Strung Players.
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Black milk of morning we drink you at nightwe drink you at noontime Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschlandwe drink you at dusktime we drink and drinkDeath is a gang-boss aus Deutschland his eye is bluehe hits you with leaden bullets his aim is true …
(from ‘Todesfuge’ by Paul Celan, translated by Jerome Rothenberg)
Not long before the 1845 première of Tannhäuser, Richard Wagner was h ... (read more)
Opera Australia’s Melbourne season began on 4 May with a revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s 1994 production of La Traviata, often seen here before. The season ends on 28 May, with eight more performances. It’s a short work, with four scenes each about thirty minutes long, ideal for those new to opera or keen for melodic relief from election discord.
The opera is based on the play La Dame aux cam ... (read more)
For any editor, one of the attractions and challenges of shaping a magazine is the unexpected submission that arrives at the eleventh hour. When the author happens to be someone of the stature of Raimond Gaita, one is indeed fortunate. This month, we are pleased to be able to bring you Professor Gaita’s incisive, yet anguished, contribution to the debate about reconciliation and genocidal impuls ... (read more)
All my life I’ve kept a daily journal. I’m not quite sure why I do it, but I can’t imagine not doing it – if that makes sense. Some writers’ diaries are highly literary, analytical, indeed philosophical. Mine is different – much more social – a kind of record of my work at ABR, my friendships, and the literary scene. In a way it’s a kind of group biography. Early on it was certainl ... (read more)
As recently as May, Frank Kermode, writing in the London Review of Books, had the temerity to say, ‘Some writers really are better than others’. This may come as a surprise to the odd professor of English, it seems. You will recall that Raimond Gaita, our La Trobe University Essayist in the previous issue, cited one vigilant professorial leveller who, having purportedly disposed of the illusio ... (read more)
Listen, Lesbia!Surely you can hear.Shake off that silly hangoverwhile I part the curtainsjust slightly.
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Welcome to our final issue for 2001! Our summer issue – arrestingly illustrated on the cover – is a double one, and longer than previous ones this year. Funds permitting, we hope to be able to publish more eighty-page issues in 2002, especially in the second half of the year, when so many Australian books, both general and scholarly, are published. This expansion allows us to add new features: ... (read more)
Day flicks its cards, laconic.Even in April, a flamboyance of colour:stray perfume for the pent. Burnt leavesdrift away one by one, like concert-goersafter interval. High and handsomeloom the houses, forlorn, dogless even.No one frolics on a lawn.Merriment is shadowplay, happenstance.Yet we build new ones, colonies of selves.Czars of concrete lay their riddling floorslistening to songs of the eigh ... (read more)