February 2012
1 post
A Handful of Sand
Of all the moving, difficult, wonderful, shame-inducing pieces in the new all-aboriginal issue of Southerly, Merrill Bray’s piece “Gloria Agnala” just blew me clear away. Set in Alice Springs it follows the final days of an Auntie, Gloria, also now a famous painter. With deft touches (she writes with a blade, not a bat) Gloria’s life is drawn small and straight but in every...
January 2012
1 post
5 tags
From Oz to Ondaatje
This is my belated “favourite books I read in 2011” post. Along with Coetzee’s Summertime and Malouf’s Ransom these two books I read in December were among the best from my reading pile last year.
In Scenes from Village Life Israeli writer Amos Oz does disquiet better than just about anyone. Disquiet is not bleak, and it is not nihilistic. It’s awfully life-affirming...
December 2011
1 post
November 2011
4 posts
Rage On!
I am nearing completion of reading aloud, in its entirety, @smitchellbooks new translation of the Iliad. It’s taken two months.
Why, you may rightly ask, would I do such a thing?
The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly so given its oral origins, is that I have a very attentive audience—my son, who is seven years old. He happens to have Asperger’s syndrome, which means, when he likes something, his...
They say that Texas is the Queensland of America
Autralianists are everywhere. Even Fort Worth, Texas. Which is why I’ve been invited to read from Verandah People: stories to students studying Ozlit there. Must say, having loved reading (and writing) in Maryland last year, I’m looking forward to going further south. (And, thanks to ECW Press, VP is now available as an e-book.)
Here is the public event. Wednesday, November 30 @...
Author Petting Zoo
I was asked for a short piece on “the author attending a book club”, how it goes, why I rather like them, etc., that was, today, posted on the Indigo blog.
October 2011
3 posts
e-books: the new undead
There are many endings when writing a novel. First, there is the ending of the book that you plan for and write towards. Then the there is the ending that happens when you get there and realize it isn’t quite the right place to end it. So a new search begins for the right ending. Because, for all you know, you’ve already passed by the ending, and it’s chapter shuffling that needs to...
6 tags
On Enjoying a Whole Issue of Poetry
With an illustration of an un-struck match on its front cover, this issue of Poetry is, for me, (potentially) the one hottest in while. I say for me because who knows what opens a person to poems, or essays about poems, and when or why. I sometimes think that when I am drawn in to writing—poems or otherwise—it has more to do with my state of mind than anything else. Because, are there not always...
Angry Crochet
Me: What are you doing over there? Wendy: I’m crocheting an angry bird for Ivy. Don’t ask.
September 2011
4 posts
Bennett reads from Civil and Civic @ Trent U,...
I’ll be reading from my book of poems, Civil and Civic, at the “Writers’ Reading Series” at Trent University, Traill College, 7pm, Thursday September 22, 2011.
All welcome. More info here: http://trentu.ca/english/events_writersreading.php
3 tags
"Caught Outside": a Canadian-Australian essay in...
Today I received an invitation to attend and read at the launch party for the new issue of Southerly, in which I have a personal essay. Sadly, it’s in Sydney and I’m not. So, others will drink the wine and hob nob and the only thing of me that will be in the room will be about 5,000 of my words. Here’s to hoping they stay put and in the order in which I arranged them.
The...
A Trip to Town
I believe this was exactly what Mr. Moore had in mind. It was taken last week after we visited the AGO’s NY Abstract Expressionist exhibit (Pricelessly, Tom dismissed Rothko very loudly; overwhelmed, Ivy simply refused to walk). Then we inched through Chinatown looking for that place Wendy had been before and liked, found it, whereupon we tore into a whole steamed crab (Tom’s...
2 tags
On Occasional Essays, by Zadie Smith
I wouldn’t have put a penny on my liking Zadie Smith’s writing (simple career envy). Likely why I’ve never read her. But my mate J.C. Sutcliffe tucked Smith’s Occasional Essays under my arm the other day. And wasn’t I thoroughly, and unexpectedly, charmed. The one that interwove a discussion of British comedy with her father’s death was among the best personal...