Accessibility Tools
Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.
Subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, Google, or Spotify, or search for ‘The ABR Podcast’ on your favourite podcast app.
Episode #194
On this week’s ABR Podcast, Nick Hordern tells the story of Mitty Lee-Brown, the Australian artist who went into self-imposed exile in 1968 to Ceylon, which in 1972 became Sri Lanka. Nick Hordern is a former diplomat and journalist, and the author of several books, including World War Noir: Sydney’s Unpatriotic War. Listen to Nick Hordern’s ‘Mitty Lee-Brown: artist in exile: From a boarding house in Woollahra to Sri Lanka’, published in the July issue of ABR.
The answer could only be yes. Or,
(as James would have it) it was a question,
the way she turned back to him
seemed to say, that deserved
Imagine the moment of hesitation:
the catch in his voice,
knowing
he could not turn back: after years
up and down the river, a request
... (read more)Come – no grazed knee, no tears, no –
no fear of darkness in the singing wood.
Hear the threnody written on the wind:
a lament not for lostness, no, but for the slow
path homewards, the pebbles which guide us:
... (read more)Seven dresses. Of satin, for example, and
crêpe de Chine, tulle, shot-silk, that sort of thing.
Beading and ivory buttons. One with a rip in it.
(The tailor, in interview, remembers the incident –
a sleeve torn on the workfloor; as there were no needles
left to mend it this passes without comment.)
Made before birth for the seven balls
which would have been held in her honour
by the seven suitors, princes from provinces nearby.
Gored by the briars, providence was not on their side.
... (read more)So, little Ashenputtel & her groom
sit up in their palace,
growing fat
and ruling badly. Not exactly
role models for a new generation.
I mean, sure –
she had it rough
(her father made us realise early
how useful it would be to keep her
down)
– but that’s no reason
to push her weight around now.
She hasn’t, it seems, thought it out
very carefully.
So, little Ashenputtel & her groom
sit up in their palace,
growing fat
and ruling badly. Not exactly
role models for a new generation.
I mean, sure –
she had it rough
(her father made us realise early
how useful it would be to keep her
down)