Blog

The story below chronicles the final chapter of reading in Australia. Depressing but it has been on the cards for 20 years. This edited story is from Greg Callaghan, Sydney Morning Herald (5 July, 2025). “We’re living through the greatest information revolution in human history, yet we’re daily drowning in a deluge of online misinformation…

This is from Chris Harrison the content director at the Sydney Morning Herald. Some major problems with AI coupled with the squalid cesspool of social media. Back when I was a journalism student and mobile phones were the size of a house brick, I attended the press conference of a technology symposium in Sydney. The…

Some very different poems. The first is a song which has all the elements of first class poetry: style, strong imagery and a broken heart flagging suicide. I’ve included the song in the link below. Bye Bye Pride Grant McLennan (The Go-Betweens) A white moon appearsLike a hole in the sky,The mangroves go quiet.In la…

Failing and Flying Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like…

Until Christmas, I’m posting some of my all-time favourite poems. The Song of Mehitabel this is the song of mehitabel of mehitabel the alley cat as i wrote you before boss mehitabel is a believer in the Pythagorean theory of the transmigration of the soul and she claims that formerly her spirit was incarnated in…

I will publish more poems by Cavafy and Lowell later as they are poignant and masterful. Waiting for the Barbarians What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming…

Barefoot Loving me with my shoes offmeans loving my long brown legs,sweet dears, as good as spoons;and my feet, those two childrenlet out to play naked. Intricate nubs,my toes. No longer bound.And what’s more, see toenails andall ten stages, root by root. All spirited and wild, this littlepiggy went to market and this little piggystayed….

Until Christmas I’ll post some of my favourite poems, which in one way or another, had an influence on me. Delirium in Vera Cruz Where has the tenderness gone, he asked the mirrorOf the Biltmore Hotel, cuarto 216. Alas,Can its reflection lean against the glassToo, wondering where I have gone, into what horror?Is that it…

After 85 years of publication, Meanjin, Australia’s second-oldest literary journal, and one of its most culturally elite publications, is closing. In its day it published Helen Garner, David Malouf, Judith Wright, Patrick White and need I say more. If you are in America and reading this, imagine the most staid, boring and elitist literary publication…

Bourgeois writers are pulling out of the Bendigo Writers Festival in protest over restrictions on their freedom of speech over the war in Gaza. Event participants were given a code of conduct that said they must “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful”. I would have added ‘boring’. In what…