March 2025. I spoke with the talented Walter Marsh at Adelaide Writers' Week about my 2024 novel Shining Like the Sun. Here it is on Spotify if you have an hour spare!
February 2025. Another piece in The Australian about why people don't read (or write) the 'big books' anymore.
And talking about the journey. Perhaps part of the problem is that we’ve lost interest in the journey on which writers can take us over our lives. From comics, to pre-franchised, pre-teen Tolkien, the discovery of Holden Caulfield, the oh-so-clever twenty-something Infinite Jest, then to something serious, Bolano, perhaps, and on and on it goes, the road less travelled that’s no longer travelled at all.
And talking about the journey. Perhaps part of the problem is that we’ve lost interest in the journey on which writers can take us over our lives. From comics, to pre-franchised, pre-teen Tolkien, the discovery of Holden Caulfield, the oh-so-clever twenty-something Infinite Jest, then to something serious, Bolano, perhaps, and on and on it goes, the road less travelled that’s no longer travelled at all.
January 2025. Lockheed is a story about a cleaning woman who has been living in Elvis Presley's scrapped 1962 Lockheed 1329 Jetstar in a New Mexico boneyard since the seventies. Published by Sarasota's Magazine 1.
January 2025. Travel magazine Sojournal have published my take on Himmler's fist concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, a short train trip out of Berlin.
The smell of something dead, the wet ground, the bulbs, the pea and ham soup from the SS barracks across the road, the sound of singing, an accordion, dogs barking, although it was just silence.
The smell of something dead, the wet ground, the bulbs, the pea and ham soup from the SS barracks across the road, the sound of singing, an accordion, dogs barking, although it was just silence.
November 2024. This piece in The Australian is my take on French parachutist Franz Reichelt, the art of washing elephants, and why writing fiction isn't good for your health (or mind).
So now all of these people have set their sights on washing elephants, but instead of saying forget the elephants, we say, Here, come and study elephant washing in more detail and you’ll have a better chance of getting a (the) job. We put an enormous amount of effort into learning the art of elephant washing (study tours, residencies and so on) but the job never comes up because the elephant dies and we’re all sad and some wannabe elephant washers even kill themselves.
So now all of these people have set their sights on washing elephants, but instead of saying forget the elephants, we say, Here, come and study elephant washing in more detail and you’ll have a better chance of getting a (the) job. We put an enormous amount of effort into learning the art of elephant washing (study tours, residencies and so on) but the job never comes up because the elephant dies and we’re all sad and some wannabe elephant washers even kill themselves.
Garry Shead The Ern Malley Suite
October 2024. Here's another Ern Malley chat I had with Mair Bosworth on BBC Radio 4's Poetry Detective.
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
the black swan of trespass on alien waters.
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
the black swan of trespass on alien waters.
January 2024. I wrote this essay in the Glasgow Review of Books about the German (early) modernist playwright Georg Buchner, and especially his play-in-fragments, Woyzeck. I also talked about a few similar writers (ranging all the way to the twentieth century).
... a series of fragments as powerful today as they were 190 years ago. The sharp, frenetic dialogue reflecting Woyzeck’s psychosis; the excision of everything unnecessary; the contrast of dialogue and folksong; the unheard voices, all leading to the inevitable.
... a series of fragments as powerful today as they were 190 years ago. The sharp, frenetic dialogue reflecting Woyzeck’s psychosis; the excision of everything unnecessary; the contrast of dialogue and folksong; the unheard voices, all leading to the inevitable.
