Forgotten but not forgotten

Forgotten_Corners_Pete_Hay_CoverI’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 …”

Talking Tasmanian Literature in the Faroe Islands

This is the paper I gave at The Tower at the End of the World Conference in Torshavn, Faroe Islands, in May 2017. It was exceedingly well received, though very many people couldn’t calibrate their aural senses to my north west coast twang! Among a conference full of exotic people, I was by far the most exotic – almost a Thylacine. Continue reading “Talking Tasmanian Literature in the Faroe Islands”

‘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’”

White Words

A poem by Pete Hay.

Published in ‘Silently On The Tide’ (2005)

…could feel the weakness of… big/local govt… what sort of culture…
will not be available… best sort of market we can… people have a global…

This is an age of data and dead hills.
This is a time of envenomed meal for the mouth.

.             In the newsroom they are all a-lather: Continue reading “White Words”