The hall
is stubborn in stubble,
vertical-board peeling white
to sere grey.
Tag: history
Listen out – I’ll be on RN! And did you notice this is a new site?
Last week I read a poem for RN (Radio National), a pre-recording to be broadcast in the Friday 8-9am timeslot. I read the second section of ‘Regret’, the less abstract part of the larger poem, that which considers the poignant interaction between an anonymous male Aboriginal and the equally anonymous French sailor, Piron. (Well, Piron was ‘equally anonymous’ at the time I wrote the poem, though I’ve been told that subsequent scholarship has supplied much biographical data.) It was a portentous engagement, and I’ve always preferred this section of ‘Regret’ to the more abstract first part of the poem. ‘Regret’ is to be found in the third group of poems in Physick, ‘Metaphysics’. What I can’t tell you, however, is on which upcoming Friday the poem will go to air. Sorry. But tune in. Continue reading “Listen out – I’ll be on RN! And did you notice this is a new site?”
Forgotten but not forgotten
I’ve neglected you, dear friends, for an unpardonably long time. There’s a reason, though. I’ve been preparing a book of essays for publication and it’s primed and ready to go. The marvelous Ralph Wessman of Walleah Press has put it together, and as usual, he has done a brilliant job. Matt Newton, who features in my pages more than once, took the cover photo – that’s me in the window of the late and sorely missed ‘Joe’ (Jeff) King’s shanty at King’s Run on the Arthur Rive coast. Forgotten Corners is the main title of the collection, and its sub-title is Essays in Search of an Island’s Soul, which is more than a tad saccharine, but certainly conveys the sense of the book.
This is my first book-length publication since Physick: Catharsis and the Natural Things, and I want it to have just as much impact. It’s 17 years’ worth of published essays Continue reading “Forgotten but not forgotten”
A few things have happened …
… since I last posted. There have been two more performances of Indignados!, one in the inner-Hobart Latin American cafe, Yambu, and the other in the very beautiful Eaglehawk Neck Community Hall. Each was a triumph, and in both cases we had a full house. As I’m about to go to Greece for a month Continue reading “A few things have happened …”
A History of the Midlands Tree Committee
What would a geographer-turned-poet do when he’s not writing poetry? Well, in this case, he has turned his hand to local history. With my good friend, Tom Dunbabin, I have just had published, a sumptuously presented book, A History of the Midlands Tree Committee, 1983-2014. Continue reading “A History of the Midlands Tree Committee”
‘Balding Nevis’
This is my favourite paper, and exists in article and essay versions. The one posted here was published in Geographical Research in 2008. It clearly refutes the notion that the sawmilling and specialty timbers communities are 100% supportive of exploitative industrial logging, and offers is a dramatic corrective to accepted wisdoms in my island’s ongoing hemorrhaging over the fate of the forests. Continue reading “‘Balding Nevis’”
When a Poet Rips Himself to Shreds
My collaboration with my artist friend Tony Thorne, that culminated in Last Days of the Mill (a finalist in the 2013 Tasmanian Book Prize), left me with profound ethical misgivings on one particular score. In this 2017 paper, I face that demon down. Continue reading “When a Poet Rips Himself to Shreds”
Pioneer Cemetery, Zeehan
Posterity, in this town, was of no account.
You’d not have thought to die here –
the idea was to salt it away and leave,
to be remembered, in God’s good time,
elsewhere. Continue reading “Pioneer Cemetery, Zeehan”
Caucasian Haiku
Published in ‘Silently on the Tide’ (2005)
In any village
Massacres in muddy fields.
Sorrow-ridden lands.
Tanks roll here, roll there.
Geopolitical tides.
Gentleness of boys. Continue reading “Caucasian Haiku”