Antipodes articles from December 2004

Antipodes archives from December 2004

Remembering Thea Astley (1925-2004).(Obituary)
December 1, 2004... WHEN THEA ASTLEY AND HER HUSBAND, JACK Gregson, lived in the rainforest above Cairns, Anita and I had dinner with them one evening. I had met Thea earlier in Biloxi, Mississippi, at a South Central MLA Conference, but it was Anita's first...

An interview with Robert Anderson, Gheebelum Ngugi.(Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Board)(Reconciliation Queensland)(Interview)
December 1, 2004... Dr. Robert Anderson, Gheebelum Ngugi, former Chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Board, Ngugi Elder, founding member of Reconciliation Queensland, and Order of Australia recipient, was born in East Brisbane in...

Scrap book.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Scrap Book My brother's maverick days began In bracken. He'd walk towards the pond With a wand of willow in his hand, Knocking the head off every tight-sprung frond. Resourceful. He'd strip leaves off the bough ...

A letter from Baghdad to Melbourne, 1 June 2004.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... A letter from Baghdad to Melbourne, 1 June 2004 I have three sketchpads left and two black lead pencils. At first I drew streetcorner and rooftop snipers, their gunfire startling donkeys, goats, old men in cafes ...

A pint-sized Cliff Hardy: Dorothy Porter and the niche marketing of Australia.
December 1, 2004... FOR THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF HER WRITING LIFE, Dorothy Porter was an obscure Australian poet, trying to make a living from an unprofitable vocation. Then, in 1994, with the publication of The Monkey's Mask, her lesbian detective thriller in...

Tales of two cities: fictions by Lau Siew Mei and Susan Johnson.(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2004... To be permanently in exile is to be permanently in disguise: it is an extreme form of self-protection. --Mary Gordon THIS ARTICLE CONSIDERS DEPICTIONS OF SEXUAL, social and governmental power in two cities in two recent Australian...

An interview with Alexis Wright.(Interview)
December 1, 2004... Born on November 25th 1950, Alexis Wright is a Waanyi woman from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria and currently lives in Alice Springs. Her first novel, Plains of Promise, was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize,...

Say it begins with S.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Say it Begins with S Sock or shoe or silly or shush? Favourite S's were sarsaparilla, sherbet, summer, saveloys and shillings. But S also hissed school, Swan Ink, science, strap. Even Saturday unsizzled in a Church...

A list of things to do this winter.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... A List of Things To Do This Winter Take your father's farm-worn hand as your own; choose symbolic uses for the fine array of fingers; curl tarsal and metatarsal about a newborn's shell-like fist; read the palm with its...

Slick.(Fiction)(Short Story)
December 1, 2004... WHEN I FIRST SAW IT, I THOUGHT SOMETHING HAD DIED. And in my waterhole. At least, my favorite waterhole, the best one on the place, and the place has been ours since granddad's time. Then I thought, pollution. Those Neanderthal...

Nose Bleed (for Kate).(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Nose Bleed (for Kate) I'm reminded of the time before you were born, when you were strangely anaemic, trying on skin. You've come to show us the lasting tyranny of your veins, as delicate as christ, toilet...

Journo.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Journo My book of knowing people is black, handwritten and stained with my thumb. It's not for friends, it's for contacts. They in turn file my name in their own worn book: I'm a useful fellow for...

Petrol.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Petrol Straight roads, built for driving fast. You get out of winter in a day. These paddocks so like thoughts you travel past, strung out beside your asphalt purpose. You get out of winter in a day. Cattle...

An interview with Annamarie Jagose.(Interview)
December 1, 2004... Annamarie Jagose was born in Ashburton, New Zealand, in 1965. Her book Slow Water won the 2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Award and was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award. Jagose has published two previous novels, In Translation...

The Imageless World, Michael Brennan: a traveling review.
December 1, 2004... ANY FIRST BOOK POSITIONS ITSELF IN A LINEAGE OF writing. Since Modernism, the lineage isn't always literature as such, and the sources of heritage vary. I'm not suggesting this position is particularly stable, though perhaps it would tend to...

The Barrier Highway.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... The Barrier Highway No traffic, but be quick on the wheel dodging the living and dead roos--a flat charnel where eagles and hawks grow fat. Beside the few curves, a cross or two and faded plastic flowers. ...

The silvered mirror.(Short Story)
December 1, 2004... As he drove in to the town he thought that this might finally be the place. It was small, sleepy, unglamorous, but not sorry for itself. There were two reasonably well-kept hotels, a restaurant that looked promising, a hardware and general...

Geologist or Geisha? Disorienting body and landscape in Japanese Story.(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2004... THE OPENING CREDITS OF JAPANESE STORY (2003) are set against an enigmatic deep ochre landscape, somewhere in the vast mining areas of the Western Australian Pilbara desert. The sequence is seemingly filmed from high above, the height and...

Passion by proxy: Henry Handel Richardson's Sapphic investment in her early fiction.
December 1, 2004... SPECULATION HAS LONG ABOUNDED ABOUT HENRY Handel Richardson s relationship to her main protagonists and about her sexual inclination. It began with the temptation of early reviewers to identify the author of Maurice Guest with its doomed...

Gift.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Gift My children have given him back to me, a restoration copy of a photograph. On his graduation day my father at forty three wore a child's soft face. I match his greying sideburns with my own...

Cross-cut: the forest.
December 1, 2004... The Divine Comedy--Inferno Dante Alighieri (trans Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) Inferno: Canto I Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had...

Finland.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Finland I could stay here all day inside my house Or go to Finland. "There is a hotel in the north" A friend told me, "that's made of ice." "You're never cold at night "Because they heap thick reindeer skins...

The home letterbox: glimpses into the suburban.
December 1, 2004... AS A SMALL CHILD 1 ONCE RAN AWAY FROM MY HOME at 152 Bateman Road, Mount Pleasant, Perth. It seemed like a long way, and it seemed like forever, but I actually only got as far as the front letterbox and was there for no more than fifteen...

Grass.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Grass One of those nights when everything is freshly watered, full of incipient green and walking her round the garden he recalls a particular dog they'd loved and put down much too late. Shoot me darling she'd...

Patrick White and Theodora Goodman in New Mexico.
December 1, 2004... IN JUNE 1939, SHORTLY BEFORE THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD War II, Patrick White was in New Mexico for several weeks (Marr 185). Nine years later, in his third novel, The Aunt's Story (1948), he told the story of a spinster, Theodora Goodman, who is...

Division.(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Division On the evening of the hearing she began again by teaching me to chop an onion, her fingers strangely bare of rings and colored at the swell and buckle of each joint. Unhurried hands, they lifted like...

Tree hugs.
December 1, 2004... IN JUNE 2003, I WAS APPROACHED BY VIRGINIA YOUNG, NATIONAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER FOR THE Wilderness Society, to work on an art piece that would involve members of the community and help raise awareness of the plight of the Styx Forest. Many...

Brindabella: literary news from around Australia.
December 1, 2004... LEADING UP TO THE FEDERAL ELECTION IN OCTOBER, bright blue stickers with a flag-waving figure that resembled Mr. Sheen appeared like magic on cars across Australia. "Not Happy John," the stickers said. Not happy what? "Not happy John," as in...

Confessions of the Tyrant's Ghostwriter.(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Confessions of the Tyrant's Ghostwriter Thomas Keneally. The Tyrant's Novel. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2004. 235pp. A$25.00. ISBN 0-385-51146-9 Thomas Keneally, Booker Prize winner for Schindler's Ark in 1982 and author of more than...

Australian gothic.(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Australian gothic Andrew McGahan. The White Earth. Crow's Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004. 376 pages, n.p. ISBN 1-74114-147-8 In his latest fictive offering, Andrew McGahan entwines political, historical, and familial themes into an...

Murnane Makes it Plain: The Truth is Out There.(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Murnane Makes it Plain: The Truth is Out There Gerald Murnane. The Plains. Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Press, 2003. 114pp. US $14. ISBN 1-930974-28-0 Dr. Jean-Francois Vernay, Toulouse-Le Mirail University Two decades or so after...

"By the Waters of Babylon": A Political Fairytale of Two Cities.(The Last Love Story: A Fairytale of the Day After Tomorrow)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... "By the Waters of Babylon": A Political Fairytale of Two Cities Rodney Hall. The Last Love Story: A Fairytale of the Day After Tomorrow. Sydney: Picador, 2004. 256 p. 22 A$. ISBN 0-330-36489-8 Rodney Hall's new novel works like an...

First novel deftly investigates obsession.(Geography)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... First novel deftly investigates obsession Sophie Cunningham. Geography. Melbourne: Text, 2004. 243 pp. A$25.00. ISBN 192088503X Her name is Catherine and she has obsessions--traveling and pop culture, but mostly a nearly decade-long...

Only disconnect: existential mystery loses its memory and its way.(Toccata and Rain)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Only disconnect: existential mystery loses its memory and its way Philip Salom. Toccata & Rain. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004. 302pp. A$24.95. ISBN 1-92073-149-0 Memory, as Luis Bunuel wrote in My Last Sigh, "is what...

Isolation, Madness and Burdensome Prose.(Place of the Paintings)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Isolation, Madness and Burdensome Prose Graham Henderson. Place of the Paintings. Melbourne: Black Pepper, 2004. 161 pp. n.p. ISBN 1-876044-41-1 Graham Henderson's Place of the Paintings is an engaging collection of short stories...

Academic Afterlives.(After Life: A Divine Comedy)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Academic Afterlives Donald Denoon. After Life: A Divine Comedy. Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004. 254 pp. A$24.00. ISBN 1-74076-059-X Donald Denoon's AfterLife: A Divine Comedy naturally invites comparison with Dante's Divina Commedia....

A Wandering Imagination, Freeze-framed.(Nomadic)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... A Wandering Imagination, Freeze-framed Judy Johnson. Nomadic. Melbourne: Black Pepper, 2004. 111 pp. ISBN 1 876044 43 8 From the title, one expects Judy Johnson's second collection of poetry to reflect ontravels, or metaphorical life...

Five ways of seeing with Eberhard.(Agamemnon's Poppies)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Five ways of seeing with Eberhard Adrienne Eberhard. Agamemnon's Poppies. Melbourne: Black Pepper, 2003. 99pp. n.p. ISBN 1-876044-40-3 Tasmanian Adrienne Eberhard presents us with a coming to terms with visual memory and its...

Dramatic Emergence.(Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Dramatic Emergence Maryrose Casey. Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre. St. Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2004. 372pp. ISBN 0-7022-3432-X In Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre, Maryrose Casey has accessed all...

Should we care about "Old New Zealand"?(Writers In Residence: A Journey with Pioneer New Zealand Writers)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Should we care about "Old New Zealand"? Jenny Robin Jones, Writers In Residence: A Journey with Pioneer New Zealand Writers. Auckland: Auckland UP, 328pp. with illustrations, NZ$44.99, ISBN 1-86940-302-9 Jenny Robin Jones's new book...

Bibliography of Australian Literature and Criticism Published in North America, 2003.(Bibliography)
December 1, 2004... The annual Antipodes bibliography attempts to provide a thorough listing of resources either published or distributed in North America during 2003 that focus on Australian literature or Australian authors. Since the bibliography concentrates...