Hidden Author
Which critics most impress you?
From many possibilities in Australia and elsewhere, I choose James Wood. Given enviable space in The New Yorker and the London Review of Books, Wood doesn’t waste it. His shrewd, elegant reviews show a critic at ease with diverse talents, He knows where his writers are coming from and where they’re going. Calm, scholarly, but passionate when passion is called f ... (read more)
Which poets have most influenced you?
You learn very different things from different poets, from formal aspects, some of them minute, to whole revelations about what a poem might be. This is always developing, and influences tend to come in waves or moments, with anthologies and magazines, subcultures and discoveries. But there are a lot of poets you keep going back to. You can learn from the ast ... (read more)
Gail Jones
Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) is the tale of a poor man (Antonio) and his son (Bruno) living in postwar Rome. Antonio, searching for his stolen bicycle, moves in restless anxiety around city locations. Scenes recall de Chirico, Antonioni, and Pavese, but at its centre are the desperate, irresistible faces of the father and son. Men with movie posters ride bicycles holding ... (read more)
A Barkindji man, born by the Darling River in Bourke, far north-west New South Wales, Paul is an emerging writer and poet, who works at the University of Canberra, teaching creative writing. Paul holds a PhD in cultural theory and creative writing. Dancing Home, his first novel, won the national 2016 David Unaipon Award for a previously unpublished Indigenous writer and was published by University ... (read more)
Blimey, Blamey
Dear Editor,John Arnold’s review of The People’s Force: A history of Victoria Police by Robert Haldane (ABR, May 2018) is an admirable appraisal of the work, which covers a colourful and important contribution to the state’s history. Arnold is, however, wrong to suggest that Christine Nixon was the most high-profile Commissioner to be appointed. That accolade surely belongs t ... (read more)
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Ronan Farrow at MWF
Ronan Farrow (photograph by Heidi Gutman/MSNBC)Ronan Farrow will be a guest at this year’s Melbourne Writers’ Festival (24 August–2 September). T ... (read more)
Which poets have most influenced you?
I work for an outfit called Narrative Verse in English, our company founder being a man called Geoff, Geoff Chaucer. After him it’s up for grabs, though given what I write, Pope, Byron, Browning. Clough, Meredith, Frost, and Kenneth Koch rate very highly. I’d like to have been influenced by Auden, but alas I wasn’t. Outside of English … Juvenal and Pe ... (read more)
Ben Walter’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in Australian journals, including Meanjin, Island, Southerly, and The Lifted Brow. His début novel manuscript was the winner of the people’s choice category in the 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes. He won the 2016 John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award, and was runner-up in Overland’s VU Short Story Prize. His latest book ... (read more)
Christiane Conésa-Bostock was born in Lyon, France and has lived in Hobart since the 1970s. Christiane, along with The Grove Road Poets (Karen Knight, Liz Mc Quilkin, Liz Winfield, and Megan Schaffner), won First Prize in the Fellowship of Australian Writers competition in 2010 with their book Of Things being Various which was published in 2011.Christiane’s solo poetry collection De passage de ... (read more)