reeling and writhing

Good Old Boys - David Malouf and team save the Mitchell Reading Room

As reported here and there. Evelyn Juers, one half of Giramondo Publishing and independent scholar and author, has been keeping me posted on this absorbing struggle. 
Having had struggles of my own at granular level here, patiently bashing out a community based program for my son with financial and moral support only, (heck, we take what we can and run with it, don't we?) I neglected to send out her media statement a while back.

She did faithfully send through links on the battle, which I tweeted, including one to a petition which eventually gathered almost 10,000 signatures.

And two some days ago, the exciting news appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald that the wishes of Australian scholars would be respected and their space inside this iconic study room extended and soundproofed, without diminution of the visual and practical support they usually enjoy there.

Service enhancements and improvements to the Mitchell Reading Room include a glass wall, extended study space for scholars and the maintenance of access to special collections, though the future of specialist librarians in these areas remains uncertain. Books previously removed (and even a card catalogue) will be returned to the reading room. 

Glass walls. Serious Strong stuff. Sending a powerful message to beancounters in beautiful libraries everywhere - Scholars Matter.

(Cross-blogged from Mulberry Road.)

a pile of stuff #34

A seed library, in Ohio. (No returns, obviously.) Via the Melville House blog.

Also from Melville House, here is a fine slide show of some old New York bookshops. The first Scribner's was astonishing, was it not?

This compelling eulogy by Joanna Murray-Smith for her mother Nita was published on the Overland website in early July.

At Cordite, Geoff Page reviews Chris Wallace-Crabbe's New and Selected Poems.

Expanding the canon after death doesn't just happen in writing. Scholars and performers have revived some sonatas Beethoven wrote when he was 12, and 20, and added them to the 'iconic' 32. What this achieves, I do not like to guess. 

a pile of stuff #33

City Lights Books has been around for 60 years. Party On!!

Jeannette Winterson will get a shot at a cover version of The Winter's Tale. And Anne Tyler will follow up with her rendition of The Taming Of The Shrew.

I’m not the sort of person who wishes things had stayed as they were. I like Tumblr and Twitter, etc., etc., and I’m interested to see what comes next. But I do feel a little wistful from time to time for the newness of the experience of typing some stream-of-consciousness thing like this — which is not at all what I was expecting to write when I opened up WordPress — and setting it loose into the world.

-Maud Newton, on what happens after blogging.

At Cordite, Jacinta Le Plastrier rereads Ariel. 
Here, Ron Silliman links to a few recordings of Sylvia reading from it.

And it's GOODBYE GOOGLE READER. I am writing this links post with the help of the nifty Newsblur, which allows me to save stories in the reader. Pretty damn fine feature. I decided it was nice enough to pay a little money to use Newsblur properly, and so far they are managing just fine with all the refugees from Google.

a pile of stuff #32

So, in case you didn't know:

Virago says you can read the first chapter of Claire Messud's newie on their blog.

On Killings, there's a podcast featuring Jennifer Mills and Sean Williams discussing their recent involvement in The Subjects, a project which required them to put their sleep on the line for a week for the glory and the honour of art and science.

I thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful essay by Julian Davies, 'Out Of Town', which I discovered on the Meanjin website recently. (I don't know which issue of Meanjin it has been published in, however.)

"Who are your guys?" The marvellous Jessamyn West shares some radical librarian resources.

Michelle Cahill was at the Sydney Writers' Festival and provides a roundup of poetry events there, as well as coverage of the launch of the Contemporary Asian Australian Poets anthology:

I hope the book is aberrant and oscillatory in its editorial strategies, tracing intersections and overlaps of the inter-text, a writing that is situated within structures; a writing which refuses to be freaked out by instability.

Finally, Josephine Rowe's blog posts at SWF were magical, were they not? Here is The White Rabbit, and  here is a post she wrote as a pantoum.

you are invited: Lisa Gorton, Hotel Hyperion (Giramondo: 2013)

Giramondo Publishing warmly invites you         
to the launch of Hotel Hyperion
the new collection by Lisa Gorton

to be launched by Kate Middleton
on Thursday 9th May
6:00 for 6.30 pm
East Elevation
351 (the red door) Lygon St
Brunswick
rsvp@giramondopublishing.com

(From the media release):

By turns intimate and grand in scale, Gorton’s new collection of poems features snow domes, storm glasses, museum display cases, an ancestral home and the air-locked rooms of a mythical space hotel: all images which contains worlds within worlds, rooms which open onto other rooms.

Hotel Hyperion is a baroque collection, playing with notions of inward and outward space, constructing its intricate perspectives with a restrained delicacy.

The title sequence is set in the future, in a space hotel where a collector gathers artefacts for a museum recording the history of space settlement. It also recalls Keats’ great poem, ‘The Fall of Hyperion’.

Lisa Gorton’s first collection Press Release won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry; she is the author of Cloudland, a novel for children, and an editor, essayist and reviewer.

Inaugural Stella Prize: speeches and reports

The Wheeler Centre's daily posting provided terrific coverage of the recent awarding of the inaugural Stella Prize to Carrie Tiffany, for Mateship With Birds. 

So far this is the best summary given anywhere of Helen Garner's "unexpected...generous and insightful" speech:

....instead of celebrating the concept of prizes, she talked about the ‘terrible anxieties’ they provoke in the potential contenders and their ‘bizarre effect … on people’s idea of their own worth’.

She also spoke of ‘the undeniable fact that every girl who writes needs a bucket of cash to be thrown over her at least once in a lifetime so she can soldier on, and even to make her feel for a while that it’s been worth the torture’.

Garner said she would steer clear of explicitly defending the existence of a prize for women’s writing. But she did talk about the need for its existence, referencing a former writer-husband who told her ‘women can’t be artists’ and gender issues to do with cover design.

‘How wonderful it would be if one day, such a prize no longer had any use. If doctors and lawyers no longer said to me, 'Nice to meet you Helen, my wife’s read all your books.’ If designers no longer reflexively put a vase of flowers on the front of a woman’s book, even a book that is about hypodermics and vomiting and rage.'

‘We know in our hearts that women can write, can be artists,’ she said. ‘But we’re so easily disheartened and sabotaged, even by ourselves.’

The Stella Prize website has posted remarks by Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of the judging panel, on the winning book:

If you go to Carrie Tiffany’s website and click on ‘Gallery’, it will take you to some images of small, delicate, mysterious sculptures made of plants, creatures and written words. Follow the link from there to ‘Soil Box’ and you can see the most complex and detailed of these sculptures, and read her detailed description of how this artwork was put together. In this account, she writes, ‘Art starts with noticing.’

Her second novel, Mateship with Birds, is a triumph of noticing and, having noticed, of carefully, meticulously assembling the things that have been noticed into a novel that shows, on almost every page, not just an eye for detail, but also a conviction that every detail is in some way connected and that the connections have meaning. Mateship with Birds seems like a natural extension of Tiffany’s sculptures: her skills in the meticulous piecing-together of fragments are apparent in this novel, where she uses several different kinds of text – letters, diaries, homework, nature notes – to weave a single strong narrative showing the interconnectedness of all things, and supported by a broad and generous world view.

Mateship with Birds is a deceptively gentle-looking novel whose calm surface belies its many sharp and frank observations about the world.

Read more, and then please read both of Tiffany's novels: they are both inviting, fascinating works which approach rural life with attention and intensity. The whole Stella longlist is well worth your consideration and invites us all to read more Australian women's writing. I've already earmarked/purchased Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel and Courtney Collins' The Burial, but there is plenty of fine reading to be had from that list.

100% Books By Canberra Artists is now open

An exciting exhibition showcasing artist's books across the field: from fine press to street press, made by 20 Canberra artists who don't think of themselves as 'book artists'. Opening at 6pm on Thursday 11 April at the Watson Arts Centre (with guest speaker Peter Haynes), the show runs until 28 April, 


...Canberra has a long and prolific history of artistic book production, encouraged and inspired by our rich array of cultural and creative institutions. There is a vibrant community of artists here who use the book form to explore and extend their broader practice, whether it be printmaking, sculpture or any other medium.

Contact the Watson Arts Centre for details of events related to the exhibition (a zine fair and children's day have been planned): wcac@canberrapotters.com.au /02 6241 1670.

The Watson Arts Centre is on Aspinall Street, Watson ACT and is open 10am to 4pm, Thursdays to Sundays.

Works by GW Bot, Patsy Payne, Tanya Myshkin, Franki Sparke,  Dianne Fogwell, Nicci Haynes, Jan Hogan, Antonia Aitken, Bernie Slater, Ingeborg Hansen, Shellaine Godbold, UK Frederick, Genevieve Swifte, Maryann Mussared, Murray Kirkland, Kirsten Farrell, Hannah Hoyne, Nick Stranks, Iona Walsh. The exhibition has been curated by Caren Florance.

a pile of stuff #32 (including launches I missed, books you can buy)

Ron Hogan, a stalwart of the US book blogging scene, has launched a video recommendations site called The Handsell, which will match different authors and publishers with readers every month. Via Melville House.

Luke Beesley launched Brett Dionysius' new collection, Bowra, on Friday 12 April at The Alderman in Brunswick East. Purchase this new  Whitmore Press publication here.

Once more, my daughter treads the Comedy Festival boards, this time with her snappy little Fringe show, Olympik Phever.

By a stroke of luck, it's at the Forum, which warranted some family shots of the massive poster outside. 

If you want to know what she is doing in this picture, you'd better catch the show before it finishes this week. 

Melbourne writer, editor and reviewer Jo Case was interviewed on Life Matters at the ABC last week, so listen here to her talk about her memoir on parenting her child with Asperger's. Boomer and Me is life-writing I have been very eager to read, particularly as some of it took shape on a blog I used to read a lot, not so long ago. Here's the first chapter, courtesy of the publishers. Congratulations Jo!

As well as being a well-known published writer, Jane Gleeson-White is such a fine blogger! one of the few soloists out there now writing longer posts for us, and I am saving up these beautiful posts on a lecture recently given by Margaret Wertheim for later. I think you would love them too.

 

 

a pile of stuff #31

It's up! as many already know, the inaugural Stella Prize longlist is out. Read all about the nominated books and their authors in more detail at the Stella Prize website.

A "digital version of passing notes in class" called Snapchat has been profiled in the New York Times. It allows messages and photos to be sent which self-destruct not long after they are opened. Via Bob Stein on if:book. 

At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lili Loofbourow has mounted a case for Tolkien's Gollum having been lifted from Thelma, a novel by best-selling British female writer, Marie Corelli:

Given how extensive the parallels are between Sigurd and Gollum, it’s hard to understand how they could have gone unnoticed until now. Much as I’d like to claim credit for being an exquisitely sensitive reader, it’s almost impossible to encounter Sigurd without seeing Gollum. And yet no one, to my knowledge, has made the connection before. How is this possible, given that Corelli, Haggard, and Tolkien were all bestsellers?

Jessie Borelle reviews 99%, a five-minute podcast that punches above its weight, at the KYD blog.

Alison Flood got 99 comments on the splitting of infinitives at the Guardian blog recently. I haven't scanned them all to see if anyone else remembers Billy Liar's dictum on the matter though.

Finally, there is a very fine launch going on at Bennett's Lane, one of my favourite places, on Thursday 28th. Ilura Press is launching issue 11 of Etchings, evocatively titled Three Chords and The Truth and you are all invited for music, nibbles and readings. Go, then catch Cloud Atlas later in the evening.

what I will be reading on Australian writing in 2013: the Sydney Review of Books and The Writer's Room Interviews

Last weekend was a great one for reading about Australian writing, with the launch of two new e-publications.

The University of Western Sydney is supporting the brand spanking new Sydney Review of Books, which launched with several articles on Friday. There will be fresh reading every week for the next two months of this pilot project headed up by critic and editor James Ley, so get along there.

First postings include critical essays and reviews by Kate Middleton, Evelyn Juers, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Peter Pierce, Mo Yan and Nicholas Jose, as well as a call to arms for a watch on criticism by Ben Etherington.

Charlotte Wood, author and essayist, has begun a series of interviews available by subscription, The Writer's Room Interviews. You can sign up for them here, at an annual cost of $27.50 for six issues. The first interview was with Tasmanian writer and Patrick White prizewinner Amanda Lohrey, and I found it completely absorbing, probably because I love her work.

There were two things from the interview, among many, that struck me.

Firstly, I liked what Lohrey had to say about how taste affects the reading of fiction:

CW: A painter friend of mine says people think they don’t know what good art is, but that in every show he’s ever had, the best pictures sell first. You don’t understand it,but you know it.

AL: You do know it. It’s instinctive. But at the same time I think that’s more true of the visual arts than of literature. For it’s also true with fiction that there is no single standard of excellence. A book is a meeting of subjectivities and the subjectivity of one writer will speak to one reader but not to another. There are some writers who don’t speak to me at all but I can see why they speak to other readers, can see that they are in the same zone in terms of their preoccupations, and their conditioning, what’s important to them. It’s just not important to me and I’m not interested. So I don’t mean to say — I’m not trying to posit an idea of excellence that everybody responds to. I think literature is very much a one-to one conversation, which is why I cannot argue with someone who says The Alchemist is their favourite book when they’ve obviously got a lot out of it.

Secondly, Lohrey made some useful remarks about what she called 'inventive' realism:

I’ve always been interested in exploratory and inventive modes of realism, not for their own sake but because each new project demands its own aesthetic. I could get very technical on the subject but this is probably not the time or place. I would say, however, that one of the important functions of university writing courses is to encourage students to interrogate taken-for-granted modes of representation. If you decide to write in a conventional way, at least know why you’ve made that decision. Traditionally, film-makers have been much more concerned with issues of representation and more innovative. And to be fair, the camera gives them more scope, but that doesn’t mean that we as writers shouldn’t think about it. You don’t have to be obviously ‘experimental’, you don’t have to write like Gertrude Stein or James Joyce — small unorthodox manoeuvres can have potent effects.

Small and unorthodox. I like the sound of that.

I've been so busy reading these two publications that I did not have time to blog about them at the time. Which speaks for itself. Go, enjoy, be enlightened or enraged, as you will.

subjected to sleep deprivation: artists in residence at ANAT

To mark its 25th anniversary, the Australian Network for Art and Technology is presenting an intriguing residency, The Subjects, at a sleep research institute:

Acclaimed author, Sean Williams, will be joined by artists Thom Buchanan and Fee Plumley and writer Jennifer Mills for a week-long residency at the Appleton Institute, Central Queensland University’s Adelaide-based sleep research centre.

Isolated from contact with the outside world, The Subjects will experience severely disrupted sleep patterns, loss of subjective control and constant surveillance. Each day – or is it night? – they will produce creative accounts of their experience. These will be posted to the project blog, enabling those of us on the outside to respond directly with comments and questions.

As the residency progresses we expect The Subjects’ to become increasingly stressed by their privations. Will they go mad – quietly or otherwise? Will they lose their creative mojo? Will they find new ways of expressing themselves, personally and creatively? You be the judge.

The Subjects and The Scientist (that's Professor Drew Dawson) will also be participating in a special panel discussion for Adelaide Writers’ Week.

All four participants have started posting, and I'm looking forward to reading about their time at Appleton.

a pile of stuff #30

Oh dear, busy 2013. Busy, busy. Children boating and flying past fires and floods, as they do. (Yes, mine. It astounds me.)

But I did find these fine things recently:

According to Maud, this lady is the Flannery O'Connor of the internet age. 

Everyone needs to know how to do this. Yes, you! From Pat Grant.

Patti Smith sings William Blake. From Jacket2.

Via things magazine: what happens when you photograph a car on fire, asks J.M. Colberg?

The act of photographing, the gesture, has become part of our interaction with the world. You photograph just like you look. You know that you can never look at all of those photographs again (in all likelihood you never will - who has the time?), but it’s not about the photographs - it’s about the photographing. The act of photography might have turned into the equivalent of whistling a song, something you do, something that might or might not have beauty, a communicative act just as much as an affirmative act: I was there, and me being there means I had to photograph it.

And from Jessamyn West, a link to a NYT discussion, "Do We Still Need Libraries?"

(Crossposted at Mulberry Road.)

 

a night of poetry for Barry Jones at fortyfivedownstairs

On February 12, fortyfivedownstairs is holding a poetry reading in honour of former MP Barry Jones' 80th birthday:

Barry Jones is one of the more remarkable politicians to have sat in the House of Representatives in Canberra, a much loved and respected figure on both sides of politics.

As a tribute for his 80^th birthday late last year, the Chair of fortyfivedownstairs, Julian Burnside, has curated a night of some of Barry’s favourite poetry and music.

Readers include Race Matthews, Gareth Evans, Peter Craven, Marieke Hardy, Dr. Joan Grant, Max Gillies and John Stanton.

The Flinders Quartet will also perform on this memorable evening.

Get your tickets here.

 

 

too many lists = a pile of stuff #29

Top 10 non-fic and fiction picks of 2012 - from Longreads. Enjoy.

Probably everyone on Twitter knew this but me - you will soon be able to download all your tweets. (At present it is invite only). Via ReadWrite (they dropped the "Web" a while ago.)

Find yourself some books that deserved a wider audience, according to people in British publishing, in this article from The Guardian on publishing in 2012.

The boat installation, A Room For London, wraps up with this podcast from Colm Toibin, which includes a reading of his story about the old age of Joseph Conrad's character Marlow.

Finally, some Tumblr treasure from Maud Newton - a list of favourite New Yorker articles from the archive.

Christmas pile #28

I know, I know. It's only the third of December.

Traditionally (a tradition of 24 years standing this year), we have four birthdays in January. So I am preparing about ten days earlier than everyone else. (Who else saw that hilarious Kikki K insert in The Age on Saturday? that calendar had NO TIME FOR SHOPPING in it. Just 'list' seguing effortlessly into 'wrapping'.)

Some of these are quite old. So forgive me if you have seen them already.

If you are feeling the pull to slow down over this busy time of year, the ABC has been running a program introducing meditation over the past six weeks. I heard about it through the Melbourne Meditation Centre, but it may well have been bruited elsewhere. Here's the toolkit. (You can easily trawl down the page to week 1 and begin at the beginning.)

I was interested to see this app, Flipboard, mentioned on the Killings blog by publishing researcher Caroline Hamilton, as I follow one of its developers on Twitter. And it looks to be a very pretty way of aggregating all your stuff on your iPad, too. 

Caroline also mentions a 2010 article by Craig Mod that I really thought I'd read already. As it's not in my bookmarks, then I guess I will have to read it now, but it sure looks familiar...Books In The Age Of The iPad.

 It's probably a bit late for Australians to order these and have them by Christmas, but this gorgeous Swiss toymaker's website is fun to look at, and I dare you not to order something one day. Via Things magazine. (Being the non-starting quilter I am, I have this on the wishlist.)

Something else I still haven't read - Terry Eagleton's review of a new bio of Derrida, from The Guardian.

Robert Crum, a couple of weeks back, had things to say about book marketing, coming up as a result with a list of lit-labels of his own which included the rather clumsy 'lit-lit':

The development of the literary marketplace in the past 30-something years has been echoed by a new, and acute, sensitivity to the place of genre within the trade. In a market-savvy creative economy, you could say that genre has become everything. I have been able to identify 15 contemporary shades of "literature".

I'll leave it to you to decide if his colours of writing are to your taste. Happy Christmas - if Typepad is listening, I want a better clipping tool, please. Like the one I have already on this blog, where, regrettably, you will be more likely to find me in the lazy, hazy days of summer. Thanks for reading the very intermittent postings here this year.

Christmas pile #28

I know, I know. It's only the third of December.

Traditionally (a tradition of 24 years standing this year), we have four birthdays in January. So I am preparing about ten days earlier than everyone else. (Who else saw that hilarious Kikki K insert in The Age on Saturday? that calendar had NO TIME FOR SHOPPING in it. Just 'list' seguing effortlessly into 'wrapping'.)

Some of these are quite old. So forgive me if you have seen them already.

If you are feeling the pull to slow down over this busy time of year, the ABC has been running a program introducing meditation over the past six weeks. I heard about it through the Melbourne Meditation Centre, but it may well have been bruited elsewhere. Here's the toolkit. (You can easily trawl down the page to week 1 and begin at the beginning.)

I was interested to see this app, Flipboard, mentioned on the Killings blog by publishing researcher Caroline Hamilton, as I follow one of its developers on Twitter. And it looks to be a very pretty way of aggregating all your stuff on your iPad, too. 

Caroline also mentions a 2010 article by Craig Mod that I really thought I'd read already. As it's not in my bookmarks, then I guess I will have to read it now, but it sure looks familiar...Books In The Age Of The iPad.

 It's probably a bit late for Australians to order these and have them by Christmas, but this gorgeous Swiss toymaker's website is fun to look at, and I dare you not to order something one day. Via Things magazine. (Being the non-starting quilter I am, I have this on the wishlist.)

Something else I still haven't read - Terry Eagleton's review of a new bio of Derrida, from The Guardian.

Robert Crum, a couple of weeks back, had things to say about book marketing, coming up as a result with a list of lit-labels of his own which included the rather clumsy 'lit-lit':

The development of the literary marketplace in the past 30-something years has been echoed by a new, and acute, sensitivity to the place of genre within the trade. In a market-savvy creative economy, you could say that genre has become everything. I have been able to identify 15 contemporary shades of "literature".

I'll leave it to you to decide if his colours of writing are to your taste. Happy Christmas - if Typepad is listening, I want a better clipping tool, please. Like the one I have already on this blog, where, regrettably, you will be more likely to find me in the lazy, hazy days of summer. Thanks for reading the very intermittent postings here this year.

Happy Christmas: we finish 2012 with an introduction to some important legislation #NDIS

From ndis.gov.au, 29 November:

Today the Prime Minister introduced legislation for the National Disability Insurance Scheme into the Commonwealth Parliament. You can watch her speech online here, just as people with disability, their families and carers and NDIS campaigners from around the country did this morning, from the public gallery of the House of Representatives.

The legislation sets out the framework for a national scheme – a framework that will initially operate in five launch sites from mid-next year.

The legislation has been referred to a Senate Committee for their consideration. During their inquiry, the Senate Committee will hear evidence from people with disability, their families and carers about the Bill, which means everyone will have another opportunity to consider the details, and to input into the drafting and design of this important legislation.

Following conversation with people with disability, their families and carers, with service providers and advocates through the Senate Committee, and ongoing work with the states and territories, the Parliament will vote on the Bill next year.

You can also read the Bill and provide feedback through our online forum Your Say.

I have been hearing from various professionals all year about younger families who are at breaking point, and it breaks my heart - I was raising my children at a time when there still wasn't enough support, but there was less, shall we say blockage? in the system. We need this so badly, and we need it now.

If you haven't yet joined the campaign to support this important reform, you can still sign up at everyaustraliancounts.com.au, and share the details of the campaign with your friends. The money for this insurance scheme is still not guaranteed, and we need Australians to stay tuned and make sure we build this right. Congratulations to the Gillard government for getting it this far - now we all need to pull together to get the job done well. 

for a shining moment, this blog is provisionally sublime

 

At Gallerysmith, in North Melbourne, Dena Kahan is exhibiting, with an opening tomorrow night (October 12) from 6-8 pm. 

Paintings are already on display, however, and will be so till November 3rd (CORRECTION - not the 1oth as I mistakenly posted earlier on).

The show carries the evocative title, The Provisional Sublime.

Larger images can also be viewed here.

UPDATE: Having seen this last night, I resolve to return. It is a stunning exhibition. The subjects of these oils are from the Glass Flowers Collection at the Harvard Museum of Modern History.

Kahan's interest in the Glass Flowers collection , however, is optical rather than botanical, and reflects a longstanding fascination with the qualities and nature of glass. Glass was used to create these models so that they might be exactly reproduced and perfectly fixed in time and place. Yet, in these paintings, the order and perfection of the display is subverted: ambiguities of space and reflection undermine the clear containment and neat taxonomy of the museum case. (Gallerysmith notes).

The exhibition was also reviewed in the gallery roundup in last Saturday's Age:

DENA KAHAN: THE PROVISIONAL SUBLIME
THEY are life-like, life-size and always in bloom. Made by father-and-son German artisans from 1887 to 1936, the glass flowers (more than 3000 in total) are one of the biggest attractions of the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Step in Dena Kahan, whose paintings have long dwelled on the assemblage of glass in museums and the way the medium reflects and refracts. Kahan takes the Harvard models with their accurate anatomical sections and faithful flower parts and plays up their optical tricks. For a start, she makes them much bigger, which also serves to emphasise their transparency and how — for all their scientific truth — they reflect and dissolve into all that is around them. Then Kahan also plays up the museum context — with vast but hazy interior spaces — so that you will never be fooled that these shimmering, gauzy exotic plants might actually be growing.

Gallerysmith is at 170-174 Abbotsford St., North Melbourne, and open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-5pm.

Eleanor Hogan's book on Alice Springs launched this Monday

Note also that Eleanor Hogan's Alice Springs, the latest in a series of books on Australian cities published by NewSouth Publishing, will be launched at Readings in Carlton on Monday night.

Eleanor kept the popular blog The View From Elsewhere during her time in Alice and has drawn on her experiences there in writing this account. She also wrote for Sarsaparilla, a space some of you might remember.

Hogan’s uncompromising narrative is based on her experience living in Alice Springs between 2005 and 2010 to work as a policy officer in Aboriginal services. Looming large is a disparate population. Some residents are non-Indigenous expats from capital cities who have relocated to ‘make a difference’ as part of the town’s welfare economy. Others are the Aboriginal recipients of this welfare, many of whom Hogan shows to be living in serious disadvantage born from dispossession, and made even more difficult by seemingly unending cycles of alcohol, violence, poverty, bureaucracy and exploitation.

These depictions are not based on idle impressions, but are supported by a public servant’s eye for statistics and policy documents and a journalist’s skill in interviewing prominent community members. Lives led in this place of extremes are difficult, but are cross-cut with the pleasures of community that exist in regional centres, and the importance of sport, art, friendship, family and culture.

A tough portrait of life in a beautiful but harsh landscape of contradictions, Alice Springs is as much a series of general questions about living ethically as it is Hogan’s memoir of being an outsider looking in.

Alison Huber, Readings.

Here's a review at The Australian, and an extract from the book at Inside Story.

 

Sugar, sugar - Olympik Phever shaking it for another week at the Fringe

If you want to find out what THAT's all about - well, in other words, Madeleine Tucker's show Olympik Phever has been extended for a week at Son Of Loft, Lithuanian Club, North Melbourne (just around the corner from the North Melbourne Town Hall).

The show features sports of sorts, songs, videos, and yet another ridiculous costume, to which my pimping today carries a clue. To tell you any more would be a total spoiler. But I cannot get the accompanying song out of my head today, mainly because I've been singing it to my nieces while their mum and dad went along to chuckle.

Well done, team (Maddy, Danny, Rena, Sarah). Go you good things.

Tickets available here.  And yes, still a cosy venue.

go down and swing at the Toff

Melbourne Writers Festival would not be complete without a lavish and swinging event from prominent multimedia journal GoingDownSwinging, a Melbourne institution of over thirty years' standing of avant-gardedness:

TICKETS HERE - $25  gets you in, gets you a copy of the journal.

Issue #33 features a full-colour collaboration between Cate Kennedy and artist Simon McEwan, a stunning commissioned essay from straight-talking theorist Briohny Doyle, and a radical new design from Santangelo and Hall. It will take you from Thailand to rundown apartments in Minneapolis to the depths of the ocean to a run-in with Czech border guards. Andre Dao contemplates Catholicism and mourning, Paul Adkin looks at 9/11 translated by Edgar Allan Poe, and Michael Trudeau leaves you speechless with his take on aimless masculinity.

 

Highlights of the accompanying CD include Tom Waits' iconic theme from The Wire, covered by Darwin soul stars Sietta; alongside hip-hop artist Mantra and a spellbinding performance from Felix Nobis; as well as new work from Joe Dolce, PiO, Emilie Zoey Baker, and The Bedroom Philosopher.

 

Issue #33 will be launched on the closing night of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The launch will showcase some of Melbourne’s best spoken-word artists; introducing brand new performances from the acclaimed Cate Kennedy, blues-soaked Benezra and Frente singer Angie Hart, who responds to a special performance from spoken-word legend Adam Gibson.

 

and you thought the Olympics were over! NAAAAAH

Hey there, hoopla, daughter's circus is in town again. It's that fringey time of year...

I have enjoyed all of Maddy's posters so far, but I really love the retro look of this one, designed by Rena Littleson.

Facebook has the details.

Fringe has the tickets.

Be there quickly, as the venue is cosy 

Olympik Phever is performed by Madeleine Tucker, and was developed by Madeleine Tucker and Danny Cisco: 

It's the middle of the Olympics and bespangled entertainer Madeleine Tucker has been given her big chance to shine, filling in as the presenter for a late night Olympics TV special. With interviews, live ads and musical numbers, she’s set to cram in as much high-quality entertainment as she can!

Not one for sports fans, this colourfully kitsch extravaganza will pay surreal homage to the faded world of variety television, with catchy songs and segments galore!


TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW now NOWW noooowww
 

If you can't make it to the show, you might like to take in some of Maddy's videos at her blog. (Look for Rodney The Goblin.) 

a pile of stuff #27

Is Maud the only book blogger on Pinterest? she certainly has one of the most attractive "Books I'm Reading" pages.

There is a very fine Victorian Premier's Awards website up at the Wheeler Centre with a terrific collection of reviews on each shortlisted title in all categories. Go, be informed, and vote in the People's Choice awards. 

At The Millions, Sonya Chung interviews James Salter.

From ReadWriteWeb, a video of fifthgraders in 1995 who made some interesting predictions about the future of the Web.

Pleasing to see that the first of Australian Book Review's Fireside Chats, on Jonson, Donne and Shakespeare, is booked out. So be sure to get in early for the second (scroll down at that link), on September 12: Peter Rose and Michael Farrell will read from their new collections, and hopefully chew some fat regarding Peter Porter.

 

how did your country really go at the games, then?

I am following a new blog which carries some pretty impressive infographics (that is, posters designed to communicate a lot of information visually. As you all knew). 
Here then, if it pastes into Typepad in a satisfactory manner, is a fine example which shows what one can do with pictures when one doesn't accept that the number of medals is what really counts. The poster was created by Paulo Estriga.

 

This infographic was originally published at CargoCollective.com – via Cool Infographics.

a pile of stuff #27

Some not so fresh stuff. Slow blogging is slow, as we might say on Twitter.

Putting Shakespeare's First Folio on line during the Olympics means you have to "Sprint For Shakespeare". Via Corsair Books on Twitter.

A very attractive way to document train readings, and also to present potential readers with the library's holdings. Via Karen Andrews (@Miscmum) on Twitter.

When I find a typo in a piece of work that''s already sent out...

Introducing Spineless Wonders Audio, along with a bunch of links to other Australian fiction recorded online. 

Cabaret writer-performer Michael Dalley's new show, Mademoiselle, will finish at fortyfivedownstairs on the 19th of August, so be quick.

If you haven't seen my tweet already, here is Bill Murray doing more stunts for Poetry House. Here he reads Wallace Stevens, with some reverence. Rather delightful.