Hidden Author
ARDUOUS PATH
Dear Editor,
Susan Sheridan's review of Marianne Van Velzen's retelling of the extraordinary life of Ernestine Hill, Call of the Outback (April 2016), while very positive overall, drew attention to the absence of any substantial quotes from Hill and the book's failure to reproduce any of Hill's vast archive of wonderful photographs. Sadly, and unknown to your reviewer, this was a si ... (read more)
Richard Flanagan (photograph by Ulf Andersen)
Richard Flanagan is an award-winning Australian writer, whose novels have been published in forty-two countries, and have garnered numerous honours, most notably the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Gould's Book of Fish (2001) and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. As a journalist, he has written for various Aust ... (read more)
In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Alexis Lateef reads 'Girl in Fremantle Bookshop'. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces Alexis who then reads and discusses her poem.
Girl in Fremantle Bookshop
You squirrel away musty editions of Virginia Woolfbut living in Fremantle, with its failing shopsand unstable rents, was going to hurt –surviving on Vegemite is not sustainable. ... (read more)
In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Graham Akhurst reads 'The Kadaitcha Sung'. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces Graham who then reads and discusses his poem.
The Kadaitcha Sung
A black featherwhisperednascent
swoonsburiedunder moonlit gleameddark skin
clandestineit waitsKadaitcha
a reminderin haunted spaceof darkness under light
Graham Akhurst
Graha ... (read more)
William Shakespeare - 23 April
April 23 – as if you didn't know already – marks the four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, greatest of poets and playwrights. It was also his birthday, of course. We note this anniversary with a review of the current Bell Shakespeare production of Romeo and Juliet, by Andrew Fuhrmann. The season continues at Arts Centre Melbourne until ... (read more)
Aidan Coleman is a poet, critic and speechwriter. He has published two collections of poetry: Avenues & Runways and Asymmetry, shortlisted for awards including the NSW Premier's Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. Aidan has received numerous grants and residencies, most recently at the Heinrich Böll Cottage (Ir ... (read more)
Porter Prize winner
Amanda Joy, from Western Australia, was named overall winner of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize at a Boyd ceremony on 9 March. Her poem is entitled 'Tailings'. All five shortlisted poets introduced and read their poems – two of them disembodiedly (Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet from the United States, Dan Disney from Korea). Amanda Joy received $5,000 and a print by Arthur Boyd; the ... (read more)
TROVE CURTAILED
Dear Editor,
As President of the Australian Historical Association, on 2 March I sent the following letter to the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP, Prime Minister of Australia, (and copied it to the Hon. Bill Shorten MP, Leader of the Opposition; Senator the Hon. Mitch Fifield, Minister for the Arts; and the Hon. Mark Dreyfus QC, MP, Shadow Minister for the Arts):
Dear Mr Turnbull,
A ... (read more)
Florence Foster Jenkins
Why is bad singing so funny? Why do missed high notes induce such hilarity? Is it all vaudeville or a case of Schadenfreude? Curiously, we have two new films about the egregious soprano par excellence, Florence Foster Jenkins (whose awful recordings are legendary and who died soon after giving a disastrous recital in Carnegie Hall in 1944). The first – Marguerite, direct ... (read more)