Latest Articles
The Arabs lost in1948 and have since used a motley collection of Circassian, Turkish, Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabs, renamed Palestinians in 1967, to ceaselessly prosecute the original war of rejection
Sep 11 2024
8 mins
It's hard to believe the attention paid to Raygun's Paris absurdities, but there may be deeper lessons in that writhing and posing
Sep 10 2024
10 mins
From a perspective of some eighty years it is possible to misunderstand or underestimate the intensity of the fears—but also the hopes and aspirations—of the British people as they faced up to another colossal existential challenge, less than a full generation after what, it was now suddenly clear, had only been the first world war
Sep 10 2024
11 mins
Paul Williamson: On a Branch
On a Branch
A finely tiger coloured sporran of bees
with over a thousand animal souls
a swarm in the surge of spring
hangs on a small gum tree in the reserve.
Workers fly off and back drowsy with gorged honey
that scents the air for twenty metres around.
Within, the old queen waits on news of her next home.
Her former hive is close in the giant eucalypt
with the glinting stream of wings and the daughter queen.
I cared for hives as a teenager,
a rural cotton-clad rent collector with gauze mask
bearing an iron hive tool and distracting smoke.
Under one hive a copperhead, cousin of the cobra, briefly kept warm.
Bee stings were less painful than falls and scrapes in paddocks
or punishments for young misdemeanors.
I hot knifed full combs and spun out sweetness
while bees worked for the common good.
Paul Williamson
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
