When the day is done and the ball has spun in the umpire’s pocket away, and all remains in the groundsman’s pains for the rest of the time and a day. There’ll be one mad dog and his master, pushing for four with the spin, on a dusty pitch with two pounds six of willow … Continue reading When an old cricketer leaves the crease,
Australian literary critic and cultural studies writer Peter Craven has been described as both a “literary hack” and “one of the most prolific, erudite and opinionated voices in Australian literary circles”. In 2004 he was awarded the Pascall Prize for Australian Critic of the Year. whatever subject he applies his keyboard to, be it for iconic poets … Continue reading The year that changed literature
The best thing one can say about 2021 is that it is not 2020. i guess we’ll all be glad when twenty one is done. There were no bushfires to entertain us like last year, but the pandemic hung like a dark cloud over our everyday lives. In this, the second year of the pandemic, economies continue to … Continue reading That was that was year that was – It’s like déjà vu all over again
In September 2021, our beautiful, talented, wise friend and soul sister Krishna Sundari departed our world. I am remembering how we first met once upon a lifetime ago. She was Kathy Kellock in those days, and later reverted to her birth name, Kathy D’Amico – she was of American Italian heritage and the music was … Continue reading For Krishna Sundari -friends always and forever
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying- leave, run away from me now i don’t know what i’ve become but i know that anywhere is safer than here Somali poet Warsan Shire, Home Outside my regular, earthy existence here on our acreage in the midst an Australian forest, where … Continue reading Exit West – a hejira of hope
Never in modern times – since the Second World War – have there been so many refugees. There are over sixty nine million people around the world on the move today – people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and are fleeing from persecution or conflict. Forty million people have been internally displaced within … Continue reading Ghayath al Madhoun – the agony of an exiled poet
The National Museum in Damascus is a magical place. It’s most amazing exhibits are its smallest, the tiny alphabet of the bronze age city of Ugarit from the 4th Century BC, said to be the world’s first alphabet, and its largest, the interior of second century synagogue from the Greco-Roman city of Dar Europa on … Continue reading The tears of Zenobia – will Palmyra rise again?
There was a checkpoint Charlie He didn’t crack a smile But it’s no laughing party When you’ve been on the murder mile Only takes one itchy trigger One more widow, one less white nigger Oliver’s army is here to stay Oliver’s army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here … Continue reading Free Derry and the battle of the Bogside
Out came the thick thick blood, out came the thin Out came the bonny heart’s blood till there was none within She threw him in the old draw well fifty fathoms deep Little Sir Hugh On a visit to Lincoln Cathedral a few years back, we chanced upon a small memorial in the South Choir … Continue reading Little Sir Hugh and Old England’s Jewish Question
The highway is alive tonight Where it’s headed everybody knows I’m sitting down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad Bruce Springsteen In the last of our posts commemorating 1968, we pay tribute to author and Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck who died fifty years ago this month. Back in the … Continue reading The last rains came gently – Steinbeck’s dustbowl ballad
In That Howling Infinite 