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Photo: Alicia Canter
September 2019. The Pimm's is getting pricey. This piece asks what festivals (Edinburgh, Adelaide) are really about. Cultural samplers, propaganda, networking, corporate smooches?
What if the Festival is for the few? What if it’s now part of some leftover cultural cringe where locals, assuming anything familiar is shit, save all their money for a sneak peek at Kosky’s latest? What if the AF actually detracts from our understanding of ourselves, our aspirations, our dreams, our imaginings? What if all the government money thrown at the top end might be better used at the low-to-middle creative end?
What if the Festival is for the few? What if it’s now part of some leftover cultural cringe where locals, assuming anything familiar is shit, save all their money for a sneak peek at Kosky’s latest? What if the AF actually detracts from our understanding of ourselves, our aspirations, our dreams, our imaginings? What if all the government money thrown at the top end might be better used at the low-to-middle creative end?
July 2019. I chatted to Samela Harris about her father, Max, the Ern Malley years, the obscenity trial, and what all of this might have meant about Australia's literary coming-of-age. Published in The Advertiser.
So let’s start at 3 am on a cold Adelaide morning in 1944. Max Harris is asleep, his phone rings, he reaches over and Colin Simpson, a journalist from Sydney’s The Sun, says, “Max Harris?” Harris stirs, mumbles a few words, and Simpson says, “Turns out there was no Ern Malley.”
“Sorry?”
“The poems. No such person. They were written by a couple of poets called McAuley and Stewart.”
Harris sits up, demands an explanation, and there follows the rest of his life, in a sense.
So let’s start at 3 am on a cold Adelaide morning in 1944. Max Harris is asleep, his phone rings, he reaches over and Colin Simpson, a journalist from Sydney’s The Sun, says, “Max Harris?” Harris stirs, mumbles a few words, and Simpson says, “Turns out there was no Ern Malley.”
“Sorry?”
“The poems. No such person. They were written by a couple of poets called McAuley and Stewart.”
Harris sits up, demands an explanation, and there follows the rest of his life, in a sense.
July 2019. The very excellent Burning House Press have published one of my short, short stories: 'From where the birch takes the sun'. It's set in a small German town in early 1945, and introduces 12 year old Peter Maier.
Peter Maier wears his best Sunday clothes. His mother laid them out for him, and his father watched as he got dressed, saying, ‘It needn’t be such a drama.’ But, by definition, it does, and will be, and this is why he’s so anxious.
Peter Maier wears his best Sunday clothes. His mother laid them out for him, and his father watched as he got dressed, saying, ‘It needn’t be such a drama.’ But, by definition, it does, and will be, and this is why he’s so anxious.
July 2019. My take on Surveillance Capitalism, why we need to get angrier about lost privacy, and the problem I have with my Glaswegian genes. In Indaily. Also in Indaily, a column about anger, and the art of ranting.
As a purveyor, a refiner, a diviner of words, I fear for the future. Mostly, a world in which citizens are so paralysed by fear – so busy trying to pay taxes to subsidise the technocracy, so distracted by the promises of technology, so angry they spend their days seeking others to blame for their despondency – that they don’t see the big picture: a world in which, removed from the communities, the values, the relationships that used to nourish us, we succumb to the future through a mixture of apathy, tiredness and ignorance.
As a purveyor, a refiner, a diviner of words, I fear for the future. Mostly, a world in which citizens are so paralysed by fear – so busy trying to pay taxes to subsidise the technocracy, so distracted by the promises of technology, so angry they spend their days seeking others to blame for their despondency – that they don’t see the big picture: a world in which, removed from the communities, the values, the relationships that used to nourish us, we succumb to the future through a mixture of apathy, tiredness and ignorance.
June 2019. In my final piece for the Adelaide Review, I look at at the Ern Malley hoax, and obscenity trial, 75 years on. Read it here.
June 2019. New story ('The Holotype') in Island 157 (out June 3). To whet your appetite, here's another story I wrote for Island (151): 'Box of Bones'
March 2019. This Excellent Machine is now out. It's about growing up Hillcrest, and all that involves.
Clem Whelan's got a problem: trapped in the suburbs in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 he has to decide what to do with his life. Matriculation? He's more than able, but not remotely interested. Become a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Peter encourages him, but maybe it's just another dead end? To make sense of the world, Clem uses his telescope to spy on his neighbours. From his wall, John Lennon gives him advice; his sister (busy with her Feres Trabilsie hairdressing apprenticeship) tells him he's a pervert; his best friend, Curtis, gets hooked on sex and Dante and, as the year progresses and the essays go unwritten, he starts to understand the excellence of it all.
Here is a generous review from Lisa Hill at ANZ LitLovers
Marcel (Proust), Milan (Kundera) and Me (me), in the The Age/Sydney Morning Herald
'Chariot Culture' feature in The Australian
Read an extract here in InDaily
Another extract from The Adelaide Review.
Review from the excellent Helen Eddy at ReadPlus
A published work-in-progress (2018) from Westerly
Review in The Australian
Review in Westerly
ABC Perth (Barry Nicholls)
Clem Whelan's got a problem: trapped in the suburbs in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 he has to decide what to do with his life. Matriculation? He's more than able, but not remotely interested. Become a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Peter encourages him, but maybe it's just another dead end? To make sense of the world, Clem uses his telescope to spy on his neighbours. From his wall, John Lennon gives him advice; his sister (busy with her Feres Trabilsie hairdressing apprenticeship) tells him he's a pervert; his best friend, Curtis, gets hooked on sex and Dante and, as the year progresses and the essays go unwritten, he starts to understand the excellence of it all.
Here is a generous review from Lisa Hill at ANZ LitLovers
Marcel (Proust), Milan (Kundera) and Me (me), in the The Age/Sydney Morning Herald
'Chariot Culture' feature in The Australian
Read an extract here in InDaily
Another extract from The Adelaide Review.
Review from the excellent Helen Eddy at ReadPlus
A published work-in-progress (2018) from Westerly
Review in The Australian
Review in Westerly
ABC Perth (Barry Nicholls)
February 2019. Another Adelaide Review piece I wrote about the death of the social contract. Or, in other words, how much your government doesn't really love you.
The late cultural theorist, Mark Fisher, described a corporate-political lovefest that aims to “keep us in a state of panicked anxiety … and radical competitive individualism so that we can’t act together and gain a collective agency”. Instead, functioning individually, wired into a world where technology will save us, connect us to a community of the like-minded, encourage our creativity and sense of self-worth. But what we’re really left with is a semi-medicated existence where, all of a sudden, and for no reason, we feel like crying.
The late cultural theorist, Mark Fisher, described a corporate-political lovefest that aims to “keep us in a state of panicked anxiety … and radical competitive individualism so that we can’t act together and gain a collective agency”. Instead, functioning individually, wired into a world where technology will save us, connect us to a community of the like-minded, encourage our creativity and sense of self-worth. But what we’re really left with is a semi-medicated existence where, all of a sudden, and for no reason, we feel like crying.
January 2019. Here are four short features I wrote about a few of my favourite books. All were published in Indaily.
1. Under the Volcano
2. Wise Blood
3. Blutsbruder
4. Pedro Paramo
1. Under the Volcano
2. Wise Blood
3. Blutsbruder
4. Pedro Paramo
Winter, Jamestown, SA (Stephen Orr)
2018. A chat with Philip Adams on Late Night Live about The Fierce Country.
The door opens and two men, one wearing a balaclava and holding a rifle, the other a floppy hat and dark glasses, enter the room. One says, “School’s over for today, kids.” Christine thinks it’s some sort of joke, someone’s dad or brother trying to scare them, but soon realises, from the look on her teacher’s face, that this is the real thing.
The door opens and two men, one wearing a balaclava and holding a rifle, the other a floppy hat and dark glasses, enter the room. One says, “School’s over for today, kids.” Christine thinks it’s some sort of joke, someone’s dad or brother trying to scare them, but soon realises, from the look on her teacher’s face, that this is the real thing.
