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In the last few weeks, we have been drowned, smothered or mired in words that have striven for solemnity. Such occasions as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the various Grand Finals are held to transcend the everyday and so to demand elegiac or epic words. It is easy to laugh at the manifest failures to reach those heights, whether by Poets Laureate who should have known better, or by excitable journalists. There is, however, something endearingly human in the attempt.
July marked the tenth anniversary since offshore refugee processing was introduced in Australia, a step that marked a change in Australian policy from an uneasy balance between respect for people in need and the pressure to deter further arrivals. The principle of deterrence is deeply corrupting because it is based on the conviction that it is acceptable to punish one group of people in order to deter others.
Joel Birnie’s short and admirable book provokes reflection both on what should have mattered in the relationships between colonial invaders and Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century and on what matters in the relationships that constitute Australia today.
The Queen’s life of overt public religion — which led her to become perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest Christian evangelist — was grounded in her conviction in the Gospels’ truth. And she interpreted Jesus’ story generously and ecumenically, broadening her role from the narrow Anglican identity of Supreme Governor of the Church of England to become an advocate by example for faiths of every kind.
The Way had been a community of homeless people, built around difficult but wonderful characters. It taught me more than I can easily say. It was a world where things were not always as they seemed and people did not fit into little boxes. We had many challenging days and relationships with our guys were seldom easy, but there was an energy that found light in unexpected places.
Australian cultural icon and erstwhile publisher Hilary McPhee calls Telltale ‘a rare thing, an ingenious memoir,’ and she is right. It is interesting and reassuring to note that books about reading and recollections of reading habits seem to be proliferating. Perhaps such writing is a defence measure against worrying developments like universities in England, for example, axing their English Literature courses.
With many types of fathering in a wide range of ethnic, cultural, and social situations by separated dads, stepdads, gay dads, uncles, and grandpas, as we celebrate today’s dads, it’s good to think about fatherhood and parenting myths and how they stack up in an ever-changing world.
I was reading / When you left. The news came / Thirteen hours late. So where were you / In that little space of time? Were you breathing softly / In my consciousness? / Should I keep you alive / In morning walks and birdsong, / The smell of braised pork, / And my every achievement?
While the Jobs Summit does not signal the end of neoliberalism, it does signal a political willingness by the Albanese government to begin an inclusive, deliberative process for healing some of the wounds that have been inflicted on ordinary people through the accumulation of superprofits on the one hand and cuts to real wages and the dismantling of social infrastructure on the other.
In most circles poetry doesn’t matter. It doesn’t put bread on the table, nor raise people to revolt nor even make news unless a grizzled footballer is outed for secretly writing poems. Even in churches poems and hymns are altered to improve their orthodoxy in matters of faith, gender, race or modernity, but rarely their poetic quality.
We need to be able to do more than simply give notional assent to the Uluru Statement. We need to be able to contribute to the hard thinking and difficult discussions to be had if the overwhelming majority of our fellow Australians are to be convinced of the need for a Voice in the Constitution.
Headlines in print (newspapers and magazines) have some heavy lifting to do. They need to convey the essence of the story in as few words as possible, be enticing and hopefully be funny, clever or both. In traditional news terms, you should know what the story says from the heading, intro and first paragraph. However, the funny thing about being funny (especially with word play) is you’re assuming your audience knows the same things you do.
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