Suburbia

Amanda Lohrey : The Conversion

No, no, don’t run away. Not that kind of conversion. It’s the conversion that Australians love and it’s about real estate. All over the country people are adding huge black edifices on to the backs of weatherboard houses. Extra floors are going up, bathrooms are being squeezed in- to every available space. I have seen houses advertised offering four bedrooms and six bathrooms. And that’s not to mention the underground garages, the swimming pools, the battery chargers for electric cars, the home offices. For those who can afford it, it is an obsession.

Charlotte Wood : Stone Yard Devotional

Stone Yard Devotional is the second book on the list for my self-appointed task of reading about women who step out of the mainstream of everyday life and choose to live simply and as self-sufficiently as possible.

obsequious

I was walking through the streets of Maldon, a small country town, at a folk festival. A group of Morris Dancers with jingling bells, another group of guitarists lustiiy singing Click go the Shears, but who was this man seated on a stool with a very old style typewriter on a small table in front of him?

Of course I asked, and found he was the Psychic Poet. For a small sum and a word of one’s own choosing he would craft a poem in ten minutes. How could I resist?

obsequious was my word (a young friend had said to me earlier in the week that he thought it was a rather good word) I then had to give a definition. I said,’ Excessively polite, fawning even.’

This is what he came up with. I thought it was rather good.

obsequious

too many words

salted with politeness

rushing in with tongues wagging

& hands full of words too

expressions

in action

tailoring in full colour

with the breeze of over acting

in total control

of their friendliness

enough of them

cruising into our vein

of the night

we just want quiet time

together

gordon donaldson maldon 5th november 2023

insta:psychic poet

Hoddle St fusion

Jane Hirshfield : Pebbles

At a time when Australia is about to vote on a referendum for indigenous people (about 950,000 people in a population of 26 million) to have a Voice to Parliament, and when the No campaign has no logical case except political cussedness, these words from Jane Hirshfield, the first composed by her, the second her translation of Issa , seem appropriate.

Global Warming

When his ship first came to Australia,
Cook wrote, the natives
continued fishing, without looking up.
Unable, it seems, to fear what was too large to be comprehended.

 

On a branch / floating downriver / a cricket, singing

Kobayashi Issa (Translated by Jane Hirshfield

Image James Wainscoat Unsplash

martin flanagan : the empty honour board: a school memoir

This book is about describing my schooldays and their impact on my adult life.

When he was ten years old, in 1966, Martin Flanagan was sent to a Catholic boy’s boarding school in Tasmania. Of the twelve priests on the staff, three have since gone to prison for sexual crimes committed against boys in their care. In this book, which is also a memoir of his childhood and family life, Flanagan takes a balanced and compassionate look at life in a boy’s boarding school.

Heather Rose : nothing bad ever happens here

Believing and belonging occupy a great deal of human life. What to believe? How to belong? All of it is a mystery that we fill with stories.

Heather Rose’s memoir nothing bad ever happens here is her attempt to tease out the stories that make sense of her life. A Tasmanian, and author of seven books, but best known for her prize-winning novel about  Marina Abramovic, The Museum of Modern Love, she has also run a successful advertising agency and raised three children while writing her books. Hers is a life of hard work and a relentless search for meaning and spirit.

Helen Garner : The Children’s Bach

Well, which is it? In 1986 Don Anderson (Australian academic and critic) wrote, ‘There are four perfect short novels in the English language. They are Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Garner’s The Children’s Bach.’

Murray Bail : He.