Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
I love reading about the lives of the poets. The ones for whom nothing good ever happened. The ones who were sure that if they did not write, they would surely disappear. The ones who tried to make the invisible visible, and failed; who carried news to this world from another one, as if it were bottles of wine and loaves of bread.
Take almost any street, in any modern city, and we are there. We are the substrata of society, ever-present, the unseen lining, the padding in the crowd. We carry our backgrounds closer than our wallets, effortlessly. Yet they inform our every step.
Robert Harris' The Gang of One ranges through Harris' five published books and a number of uncollected poems. Early work grows from his occasionally lonely, knockabout life and reveals not only a talent for catching the essence of fleeting memories and perceptions but also a mordant touch that gives edge to memory.
He proceeded to move in with silence. His eyelash touched her cheek first, then his lips. Only one with an expert heart could get it this right, she thought to herself, as he kissed the right, then left cheek, pressing his fig-lips precisely in the right place.
I asked Les then what he anticipated at the end of what was for him a very earthed life. Les was phlegmatic — he imagined a reunion with his parents (his mother died when he was 12) but was content to 'wait and see ... we are on certain post-mortem promises after all'.
The sound of the didgeridoo would be heard throughout the land. On each street corners buskers would mark out their patch, playing violins, oud, piano accordion, berimbau, nyatiti, cello, mouth organ, zither, anklung or daduk singing the love songs and epic poems from the many civilisations that have enriched Australia.
If, when called upon at eighty years of age, I cannot prepare a sandwich, make a mess of my words, I fear that the thought may occur: I have my Seniors Card but I have no legacy, and I have no Torah, I have no Bible, and I have no Koran.
I am holy, no, to discriminate? But by doing so, I self-incriminate. I doubt the loud denouncing will dissipate before the promised election falls.
These days, the military tattoo is just too sad for words, the soldier-children twirling, dancing, fluting, prancing, singing, some with rightful Maori marks, or cheekbones high as Indian hills, thin teenage girls in kilts and fancy Argyle socks ... What have they to do with war or death? Yet men strap bombs on ten-year-olds.
For days I passed the black screen, berating and blaming the mass-entertaining hooked on a loop, counting down to more incoming footage ... What if we are not seeking ruin but searching the ruins for a hand, battered and bruised, broad-backed, mud-slicked, bent but unbroken, reaching out of the mire to catch a pale light ...
We the remnants, largely spent, professors, teachers, beloved practitioners, scientists, world leaders, pioneers, a menagerie of specialists, some honoured citizens, the sick, the grey, the bent, the pill dependent, divorcees, the widowed, the saints, the sinners, bound and equal, together, all as one, gathered again, searching out new pastures, denying mankind's stark mortality.
I once read The Female Eunuch, the only bloke taking a course on feminism, admired Greer's chutzpah, knew she lived in England where I came to dwell on the edge of belonging. I mourn unplanned lives, mine, others', back stories, each of us carrying private clouds of sadness. What happened next, that distant dawn?
25-36 out of 200 results.