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The quality of Niall’s writing is evident in An Accidental Career, though easily unnoticed. It lies in the clarity of her thought, her exact choice of words, the alternation of anecdote and reflection and the self-effacement that creates a direct link between the reader and the work itself. Her writing has the rare gift of simplicity. The precision of the title is characteristic of the book as a whole.
We recently celebrated World Poetry Day, which gives poets, both public and private, a day in the sun. It also renews old conversations about why poetry might be important and whether all poems should rhyme.
Brenda Niall's biographies characteristically begin with simple and enigmatic stories, whose significance becomes clearer as the book develops. This exploration of her grandmother's life takes its point of departure in two of her possessions. The first is a wooden box made for Aggie Maguire by her brother as they sailed to Australia.
When Polish Jews were herded into the closed Warsaw Ghetto, Chaim Kaplan kept a diary to ensure that 'in our scroll of agony, not one small detail can be omitted'. This kind of remembering is both deeply personal and profoundly public, and invites us to celebrate human freedom. The remembering involved in the collection of information by the United States and Great Britain is of a quite different character.
The energy of Alex Miller's novel Landscape of Farewell comes from the paradox that is often manifest when people of very different cultures come together and words fail them. Out of their silence can come words more profound than the individuals could have spoken alone.
Andrew Hamilton critiques Robert Manne’s Quarterly Essay, Sending them Home: Refugees and the new politics of indifference.
A new Australian film examines the powerful role of poetry in times of oppression.
Kirsty Sangster recalls a Holocaust survivor.