It is commonplace, amongst poets and readers of poetry today, to lament the decline in the appreciation of verse in contemporary society. Past eras are recalled—or imagined—when poems were learnt by heart; when poetry-reciting was a feature of popular culture, and it was taken for granted that the well-educated and well-read man or woman would, […]

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Condensing Jane Pride and Prejudice Poor Elizabeth Bennet, a honey Who is pretty and witty and sunny,     Really fancies rich Darcy     Who acts pretty arsy. She wins him and marries the money.   Persuasion Her father’s a terrible prick And her sisters both make you quite sick.      How we […]

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Of Maples and … 1 Monks Japanese maples, moved by awful sympathy for Tibetan monks, are immolating themselves beside the Buddhist temples.   2 Mothers As if they, too, were beseeching the Bosatsu to save their children, the maples adorn the worn Jizo stones with blood-red bibs.   3 Marxists Mao’s cadres wore red stars […]

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An Interesting Cover There were two wrought-iron chairs in the park— more or less in the middle of the park. I sat down on one, pretending to be absorbed in the book I held in my hands. I was only looking at the pages.   I was only looking at the pages, but when a […]

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Avernus From hell there is no exit, no through road, but there’s a sign to warn you it is near. Eternal fire is the central fact of life on earth. It burns beneath our feet as secret, silent and unseen as gravity.   Eruptions happen, of evil and depravity so fierce the morally frigid feel […]

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Two Notes   A late spring brings the male koel, his two-note courting call shy there in the shrubbery but advertising all   the splendour of his sturdy genes, the blue sheen in his feathers, to any female flitting by should they get together.   Eudynamys orientalis is still his Latin name. Rainbird, stormbird, madness […]

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Drought Travelling west the land burns but the sky withholds its cure.   Slouched in his ute a farmer watches stock grazing roadsides, wonders how long he can cling to land tortured by extremes, when he’ll be forced to sell the genetic line, fine-tuned for fertility, once fleshed for profit.   How long? The question […]

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Ascent There is a stew, a simple meaty stew in the oven and the smell of it slowly makes itself at home. It drapes itself around the curtains, winds around the jar of wooden spoons, whispers to the piled dishes in the sink. The two dogs lie paralysed with desire for the goodness of it, […]

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It would be impossible in a short article to do justice to “the frightening fecundity” (in the words of Kingsley Amis) of Anthony Burgess, or John Burgess Wilson, to give him the name he was born with. So it seems to me better to come in at an angle, as it were, and look at […]

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Be of the Right in Australia's literary milieu and editors won't even respond to your submissions. Publishing subsidies prove unobtainable, there are no invitations to writers' festivals and curators of anthologies spurn your work. It is that political

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