Latest Articles
A Sydney-based academic and columnist for the Nine rags sets out to explain the US to Australians. It's not a pretty picture
Sep 20 2024
8 mins
The philospher began with the conviction 'the only human activity that seems to have any importance' is the great cosmic 'why?'
Sep 20 2024
24 mins
In the Senate, a very queer notion of free speech
Sep 20 2024
2 mins
Leon Trainor: Winter Burning
Winter Burning
It’s the wrong phase of the moon but
they’ve told us rain is on the way
so we’d better get the fires lit
before it comes. We don’t need much
(pure gum turpentine and a match),
once started they will burn all day.
Dead trees, dragged in from the paddocks,
gathered branches pruned from pear
and orange trees release their scents.
Flames shoot twenty feet in the air.
She stands, lightly holding a rake,
so intense. Neither of us takes
our eyes from the fire. She replies
without turning and I don’t hear,
all our discourse drowns in a rage
of syllables of flying sparks.
Leon Trainor
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
