Fiona Hile
Fiona Hile works as a casual university tutor on unceded Wurundjeri land. She has published two collections of poetry, Novelties and Subtraction.
When Napoleon called England a nation of shopkeepers he claimed to have meant it as a compliment. Its grand resources were not constituted by extensive territories, natural resources, or a burgeoning population, but in the accumulation and dissemination of wares. In Portable Property: Victorian Culture on the Move (2008), John Plotz remarks that certain objects 'come to seem dually endowed: they a ... (read more)
All writers need good bookshelves, but the poet, perhaps more than any other writer, is charged with the involuntary dispensation and relentless accumulation of reading material. This is partly due to the proclivities of the producers and partly due to the characteristics of the form itself. As the notable cultural critic Pierre Bourdieu remarked, poetry's effects derive from games of suspense and ... (read more)
Augie March’s Melbourne Recital Centre (MRC) show is a home-town Gatorade-and-oranges stop on their ‘lap of luxury’, a national tour that has taken in velvet-lined theatres in Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, and, as singer–songwriter Glenn Richards wryly put it during their set, Bendigo. The MRC was purportedly designed to resemble a piece of polystyrene packaging, the idea being that the epheme ... (read more)
We met at the end of the party when all the lights were fouled with drink and even the self-titled Ouzo Animal was yawning in protest at the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunken. I sipped soda water from a cracked glass, refrained from removing my jumper while a twelve-year old Bob Dylan with a voice like Hank Williams stood silently in the corner stirring vinyl motes with his ... (read more)