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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…

Hard not to agree with Jacqueline Maley the PC man-hater, although I can think of 20 Australian male novelists off the top of my head. Even so, by and large, the feminisation of lit is complete. Like the final stage of entropy. As for the Charmaine Clift nostalgia exercise, most of her novels were so-so…

There is something delicious here which would make a fab short story. The Minister for Homelessness evicts her tenants then jacked up the rent. A classic example of evil in the late capitalism period. “Britain’s minister for homelessness has been forced to resign over reports she evicted tenants from a property she owned and then…

This was written by Jo Bartosch and appeared in Spiked in the UK recently. Surely there’s a cavalcade of right-on woke, PC red guards who can excrete a novel on the rights of men to have babies. Monty Python in The Life of Brian entertained such as in idea. See link below: “Australian trans activist…

Adelaide’s media wants to blame Beijing, Canberra, sex offenders, hoon drivers, the poor, the GST, etc, for the devastating algae blooms across 100s of kilometres of South Australian coast line. Adelaide is the Flint, Michigan of Australia – but we’ll all go together when we go. We’ve ‘seen’ this before in the lead up to…

This story was in The Guardian (Australia) recently, written by Martin Ingle. Some years ago I made the same observation for a newspaper in Adelaide. There’s no forward drive, no optimism in film and writing. Same old depressing, naval-gazing stuff. “There has been much talk about our hunger for a “return to optimism”. Our world…