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Keywords: Undertow

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Little Red Wagon

    • Robert DiNapoli
    • 14 February 2023
    2 Comments

    But my red carriage rolls its trundling way /  beneath the glare of that auroral show, its flakes of rust conceding time’s betray, / the toll imposed on Adam’s clay in slow / extraction of deep veins of anthracite.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wipeout

    • Les Wicks
    • 22 November 2021

    The largest wave is friendship. / Heard stories about seamlessness / that sleepy beast of an upsurge that carries you in / until your fin cuts a channel in the sand. / There are dumpers that leave you gasping. / Will & persistence, how a cold current / can race to your head.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In memory of Leo

    • Diane Fahey
    • 24 March 2015
    8 Comments

    'If I'm deported back to Sri Lanka, torture is certain because I'm a Tamil.' On the day I hear of Leo's death I pass a tall maple, its star-like leaves, blood-red and flame-red, irradiated. The Australian government refused the visas applied for by Leo's family so that they might attend his funeral. As three Tamil men at a microphone sing a long hymn in Tamil the Basilica fills with an undertow of sound.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Writing a poem is hard work

    • Various
    • 05 August 2014
    3 Comments

    It never looks like hard work. I’ve just rolled my sleeves up while I stare at an old shoe in the corner of the room for hours. I’ve sweated a day in my life as I skewer a stare right through the Friday morning waitress – the brick wall behind her.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The original orphan

    • Tony Kelly
    • 29 July 2014
    2 Comments

    Poor old fellow, angular, pinched awkward man, taut and pink-faced ... Everyone hesitates to take him in, wincing at his eagerness, and protecting conversation from his fantastic interruptions ... recently he discovered the name of his mother, long dead, and found some brothers ... Now a gush of communication after the long legal amnesia, he reports a big barbecue to celebrate the discovery of belonging after all.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we're mean to Julia

    • Moira Rayner
    • 20 July 2011
    38 Comments

    Those who rise by media approval, will fall by it. Once, talkback radio hosts and reporters drummed up Gillard as tomorrow's PM and the day's bright star in the political firmament. Today she's 'JuLiar', the 'witch', a fallen princess. What went wrong?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wren-Hardy stoush exposes sectarian bigotry

    • Juliette Peers
    • 06 August 2010
    6 Comments

    The Power Without Glory trial ought to be read as a high-profile and long lasting punishment meted out to traitors to a so-called Australian normality. Frank Hardy's acquittal and the campaign to defend his novel partly belong to mid 20th century Australia's strong anti-Catholic undertow.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Foodies savour the smell of rich people

    • Georgina Laidlaw
    • 16 February 2010
    1 Comment

    Despite damnation, bombs and climate change, the truffle continues to prove that peasants can eat like kings — just not in Australia where, priced at up to $3500 a kilo, it has been typecast as an indulgence of the wealthy.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Inventing terror

    • Brendan Ryan
    • 07 October 2008

    newspaper sub-headings — 'war on terror' .. each page apportioning blame .. every fridge doing its bit .. modest ceremonies for the men who jumped .. to enlist, to escape

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Attentive to rumours of healing

    • Lorraine McGuigan
    • 26 February 2008

    Her skin bears witness to his absence ... The rooms, ambivalent about space, contract/expand at will. Day by day she is shrinking.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Slogging through mud

    • Jan Owen
    • 22 August 2007

    Taking the long route home to night / through number and colour and form; / ghosting, becoming, the silence, / we shatter and drink the light.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Novels' modern characters draw empathy

    • Tony Smith
    • 27 February 2007

    World literature is much richer for the input of Italian Andrea Camilleri, Australian Peter Corris and Scot Ian Rankin.  They have mastered the art of presenting modern characters in contemporary situations.

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