Poetry in English has lost one of its paragons, Australian literature one of its finest ambassadors, and Australian Book Review a beloved friend with the death in London of Peter Porter, aged eighty-one. He died on 23 April – Shakespeare’s birthday – by which time our May issue had already gone to print.

‘Urgent things to say’ in the Calibre Prize

The competition was keen, the field unprecedentedly large (almost 200 entries), but after main readings and much discussion Kevin Brophy’s and Jane Goodall’s essays struck the judges of this year’s Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay (Gay Bilson, Peter Rose and Rebecca Starford) as being in a class of their own. It was impossible to split them. Both writers share the third Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, and each will receive $5000.

That’s all they have in common, though. It would be difficult to find two more dissimilar essays, a measure of Calibre’s versatility and the diversity of the writers who are drawn to it. Jane Goodall’s theme, like her succinct title (‘Footprints’), has a kind of suaveness and urgency as she explores ideas about ecology and personal responsibility with reference to Kate Grenville, Mrs Aeneas Gunn, Nevil Shute and a sublime short story by Leo Tolstoy.

Kevin Brophy’s fruity title (‘“What’re yer lookin’ at yer fuckin’ dog?”: Violence and Fear in Žižek’s Post-political Neighbourhood’) introduces an amazing tale of domestic mayhem and incivility in present-day inner Melbourne. Kevin Brophy’s tormentors may have been the neighbours from hell, but what a tale it is. To make sense of this five-year drama, Kevin Brophy draws on the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and his theory that violence – ubiquitous violence, as he sees it – is the very basis of late capitalist ‘post-political’ life.

T/here

By Judith Bishop

This is not a place for candles, or the scent of red cedar
gathered on a hill to burn, or native plum, lit at night
to hold the urgent dead at bay: you won’t wake to hear
the click of brumbies’ hooves on a road that flows
to where the humans are, or blink to see the mob
jittering in the dawn air:
                                this is not a house
of language, in the first sense of the word, the one
in which it made the world, this is not a place of origin,
ground, or single source: this is not a road for drinking
in the middle of the night: you won’t see
the ink of fire moving night and day across

We welcome entries in the third ABR Poetry Prize. In its short life, this competition has become one of the most prominent of its kind in the country. Poets have until December 15 to enter the prize, which is worth $2000. Up to six poems will be shortlisted in the March 2007 issue; the winner will be announced one month later. Full details appear on page 42. The entry form is also available on our website, or on request. The previous winners were Stephen Edgar and Judith Bishop. Advances was pleased to see that Judith Beveridge has included Edgar’s prize-winning poem ‘The Man on the Moon’ in The Best Australian Poetry 2006 (UQP) — one of eight poems in the anthology that were first published in ABR.

I stare from my study window into trees.
Considering all things, I watch the first snow spill
White seeds across the rubble where the barn
Towered over us with its cracked spire
For almost half a century until
Some feckless pot-head changed
The whole thing into fire.

The tough and rumble of the schoolyard
is always welcome relief from a room
papered with whispers, where every night

he must taste the salted honey of his pain
or else listen to the chorus of lies
that they hiss at one another in the dark.

Max remembers the first time they made love
when she arrived travel-dusty & sweaty
after complications
getting from Basrah to Baghdad. Much afterwards
while they were lying together very close
she’d told him of a pet she’d had, when small:
had given it its scientific name – Macropanesthia rhinoceros.

I. Claim

Wild birds rise before us, making the noise of a multitude clapping hands.
The men fire, fire again and still they rise, they rise clear out of range and
where they were they leave such wakes of light, they are tearing the blue-black
shadows out of the river; their wing tumult is shadows escaping air. Act
flung back to motives, they arc away from us and scatter till I am fierce
for what I cannot remember and still they rise, the vault is dark with their applause.