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Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.
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Episode #197
Beginning this week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors will read their story – also published in the August issue of ABR. The overall winner of the Jolley Prize will be announced at an event at Gleebooks in Sydney on August 15. Proceeding in alphabetical order, Episode One features Kerry Greer’s ‘First Snow’.
Isi Unikowski reads his poems ‘Grammar Lesson’, ‘You never said it’s a race, dad!’, and ‘Still Life’ for ABR's ACT States of Poetry anthology.
In the warm dusk, pink and purple arcs
appear above the old town’s lanes
as jugglers toss their clubs outside
a gallery’s bright, acrylic interior.
Petunias lean from baskets like cheerful spectators
carriage horses wait in plumed rows
for tourists from the ship that dominates the wharfs
below. A couple and their son pause
with ...
Oh, but it’s a race all right, trust me, kid, that
hill he almost managed to beat you to the
top of (‘Rubbish!’) challenged him more than you, de-
spite all the picnic
stuff he made you carry in your Batman rucksack.
It’s a race to find all the spare parts, becoming
antiques, puzzling kids in the bike sh ...
As if all the world’s ravel, its bright course
of device were to stream through a pinhole in the side
of a box and emerge into a corridor of Delft tiles
on which tiny figures from childhood or a dream semaphore
at my self-portrait, ghostly pentimento in its dun
vestments, and the servant drying linen in the dunes;
the images unclear, inverted ...
Can we not take all these prizes as given?
The awards, fellowships and accolades
that greeted an awaited first book, the driven
milestones of a talent in spades?
Must everyone describe the same lookouts
from Parnassus’ slopes, Calliope’s redoubts?
When all are gods, let the lame smith stand forth:
just for once, couldn’t th ...
Isi Unikowski’s poetry has been widely published in Australia and overseas. He was shortlisted for the inaugural University of Canberra ...
... (read more)