AustLit
Latest Issues
Includes
-
2y The Peter Porter Poetry Prize : Shortlisted Poets Read Their Poems The ABR Podcast : Episode 2 Peter Rose (presenter), 2020 18599117 2020 single work podcast The shortlisted poets for the 2020 Peter Porter Poetry Prize – Lachlan Brown, Claire G. Coleman, Ross Gillett, A. Frances Johnson, and Julie Manning – read their shortlisted poems. 2020
-
3y Helen Garner's Diaries The ABR Podcast : Episode 3 Peter Rose (presenter), 2020 18599240 2020 single work podcast review
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary'ABR Editor Peter Rose reviews Yellow Notebook, the first volume of the diaries by Helen Garner, a most anticipated book. [Peter] delves into Garner's own private musings, the diaries she kept during the pivotal years of her writing life.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
2020 -
5y 'Season of Reckoning' : An Essay Tom Griffiths (presenter), 2020 18720229 2020 single work podcast 'After this calamitous summer, this 'season of reckoning' as he puts it, celebrated historian Tom Griffiths reflects on names given to bushfires – all those Black Sundays and Mondays, etc. – and wonders if they truly capture what is new about this savage summer.' (Publication summary) 2020
-
6y Salt Blood 2020 11348050 2017 single work podcast 'It is quiet and cool and dark blue. At this depth the pressure on my body is double what it is at the surface: my heartbeat has slowed, blood has started to withdraw from my extremities and move into the space my compressed lungs have created. I am ten metres underwater on a breath-hold dive, suspended at the point of neutral buoyancy where the weight of the water above cancels my body’s natural flotation. I turn head down, straighten my body, kick gently, and begin to fall with the unimpeded gravitational pull to the heart of the Earth.' (Introduction) 2020
-
6y West Arnhem Land Martin Thomas (presenter), 2020 23439118 2020 single work podcast 'Etched in Bone, the acclaimed documentary by Martin Thomas on the repatriation of Indigenous remains, is premiering in the US in March. The documentary stems from Thomas's essay ‘"Because it’s your country": Bringing Back the Bones to West Arnhem Land', which won the 2013 ABR Calibre Essay Prize. In this bonus episode of The ABR Podcast, we look back on Thomas's reading of his remarkable essay.' (Production summary) 2020
-
7y Nah Doongh's Song 2020 17067125 2019 single work biography 'Nah Doongh was among the first generation of Aboriginal children who grew up in a conquered land. She was born around 1800 in the Country near present-day Kingswood, just south-east of Moorroo Morack, Penrith, and she lived until the late 1890s. Her life spanned the first century of colonisation, from the invasion of her Country to the years approaching Federation. She was a contemporary of the famous Hawkesbury River matriarch and landowner Maria Lock and of the astonishing Lake Macquarie religious seer and teacher Biraban.' (Introduction) 2020
-
8y Poetry for Troubled Times 2020 20181122 2020 anthology poetry podcast 'At this ominous time, as we all hunker down, hoping for a cure, perhaps only poetry offers true insight and consolation, if we lean on it, as we’ve always done in past crises. In this episode, 18 fine poets and close associates of ABR – such as J.M. Coetzee, Robyn Archer, and Sarah Holland-Batt – read some favourite poems, works that seem to resonate in these anxious times.' (Introduction) 2020
-
9y At Her Majesty's Pleasure : Sir John Kerr and the Royal Dismissal Secrets' by Jenny Hocking 2020 20181079 2020 single work podcast criticism
'In 1975 the governor general, John Kerr, removed a democratically elected Labor government, amid great intrigue and subterfuge. The dismissal of the Whitlam government remains one of the blights on our democracy – perhaps the most controversial event in Australian political history. And yet the full record of what happened in the weeks and months leading up to the dismissal is still unavailable to Australian citizens because of the intransigence of Queen Elizabeth and the expensive lengths to which the National Archives of Australia have gone to suppress access to John Kerr’s correspondence with Buckingham Palace.' (Introduction)
2020 -
10y 'News Deserts : A Worrying Portent for Our Democracy' Johanna Leggatt (presenter), 2020 23439440 2020 single work podcast
'The imminent closure of Australian Associated Press, or AAP, has sounded alarm bells for many citizens and journalists already worried about the lack of media diversity in Australia. AAP has long played a fundamental role in investigative journalism, which we need more than ever in an age of government intrusion, evasion, and over-reach. Johanna Leggatt, a journalist who has worked for Fairfax, News Corp, and AAP, writes about this troubling threat to journalism.' (Production summary)
2020 -
11y Truganini : Journey through the Apocalypse by Cassandra Pybus 2020 19052493 2020 single work review
— Review of Truganini : Journey through the Apocalypse 2020 single work biography'Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse follows the life of the strong Nuenonne woman who lived through the dramatic upheavals of invasion and dispossession and became known around the world as the so-called ‘last Tasmanian’. But the figure at the heart of this book is George Augustus Robinson, the self-styled missionary and chronicler who was charged with ‘conciliating’ with the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples. It is primarily through his journals that historians are able to glimpse and piece together the world fractured by European arrival.' (Introduction)
2020 -
12y Surviving the Pandemic : Robyn Archer on Living in the Time of Covid-19 Peter Rose (presenter), 2020 20181015 2020 single work podcast essay
'Peter Rose – before introducing this week’s ABR Podcast guest – updates readers on ABR’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Australia Council’s inexplicable decision not to fund ABR in 2021–24.
'Then Robyn Archer – renowned performer and ABR Laureate – currently hunkering down in Melbourne, reflects on how people are surviving and what Australia might look like when it emerges from this crisis.' (Introduction)
2020 -
13y The Golden Age of Television? 2020 20180959 2020 single work podcast essay
'During the Covid-19 crisis, many of us are surfeiting on television drama from Netflix, Stan, and the rest of them. Back in 2015, we published James McNamara's Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship essay 'The Golden Age of Television?', which considers the ascendancy of television drama and its cultural significance. Listen to James reading his essay, which appears in ABR's film and television issue in April 2015.' (Introduction)
2020 -
14y More Poetry for Troubled Times 2020 20180919 2020 anthology poetry podcast
'All literature, but poetry in particular for some of us, becomes more important during the pandemic. Last month, we invited a group of poets and critics to read favourite poems of theirs, from any country or century. We know how much you enjoyed it; the response has been fantastic. So we've invited fifteen more poets and poetry lovers to read a poem that resonates for them and that might speak to others as we hunker down and live more privately. All the readers, poets, and titles of poems are listed on our website.
'Featuring Kate Middleton, Jaya Savige, Anthony Lawrence, Claire G. Coleman, Warwick Hadfield, Sarah Day, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Kevin Brophy, Andrea Goldsmith, Michael Farrell, Geoffrey Lehmann, Maria Takolander, Ali Alizadeh, and Thom Sullivan. ' (Introduction)
2020 -
16y On the Characterisation of Male Poets’ Mothers i "Charles Baudelaire’s mother—", 2020 19188531 2020 single work poetry 2020
-
17y Coronaspeak : Tracking Language in a Pandemic 2020 19498856 2020 single work essay
'The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, and little else has featured in the media for weeks. Unsurprisingly, this has led those of us who work with words to track the language of the pandemic (coronaspeak) closely. Here at the Australian National Dictionary Centre (temporarily WFH, of course), we have been compiling a database of the words emerging from the pandemic; from anti-lockdown protest to zumping (being dumped via Zoom), the Covid-19 isolation lockdown has generated its own vocabulary.' (Introduction)
2020 -
18y Gwen Harwood : A Centenary Birthday Tribute 2020 20180828 2020 anthology podcast podcast 'Gwen Harwood, who died in 1995, was born on 8 June 1920, in Brisbane, of course, which she loved dearly. Harwood seems increasingly to have been one of the finest poets Australia has ever produced. She was much loved; anyone who knew her relished her wit, her directness, her inextinguishable spirit. To mark the centenary of her birth, ABR asked a number of her colleagues and admirers to record some of her poems. Happily, there are hundreds of them to explore.' (Podcast introduction) 2020
-
19y Reading the Mess Backwards 2020 19498808 2020 single work essay
'When I’m ten or so, my brother appears shirtless at the dinner table. Ever the eager disciple, I follow his example without a second thought. It is a sweltering January day, and our bodies are salt-crusted from the beach. Clothing seems cruel in these conditions.' (Introduction)
2020 -
20y Contested Breath : The Ethics of Assembly in an Age of Absurdity 2020 19498535 2020 single work essay
'There’s a script for everything. Someone, voice wavering, says, ‘She’s dead’, and you say, ‘What?’ They say it again, and you say, ‘Oh, my god.’ You ask the usual questions, and then hang up and everything is incredibly quiet. You tell your boyfriend, and you both walk around the house trying to pack useful things: a sleeve of Valium, warm socks. You call your brother in London. He texts to say it’s five am there, can it wait? You call back. Before he even answers the phone, he knows.' (Introduction)
2020 -
21y Ambassadors from Another Time 2020 11968814 2017 single work essay
'First, I need to visit Dean Nicolle’s eucalypt arboretum. Four hundred rows of trees, four specimens of each species of Eucalyptus, Corymbia, and Angophora (the eucalypts) nestled together, sharing pollen and landscape, dropping limbs in the grass. Each group of trees is a result of the previous year’s fieldwork. The year 2000 was big: Nicolle this keeper of the keys to the eucalypts spent six months in Western Australia collecting seed.' (Introduction)
2020 -
22y The Point-Blank Murder 2020 17266941 2019 single work short story 2020
-
23y Unsolicited Smut : A Nation of Prudes and Wowsers James Ley Reviews 'The Trials of Portnoy' by Patrick Mullins 2020 19498503 2020 single work review
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism 'Okay, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this country. For a start, we have this profoundly stupid and deeply irritating myth that we’re all irreverent freedom-loving larrikins and easygoing egalitarians, when it is painfully obvious that we have long been a nation of prudes and wowsers, that our collective psyche has been warped by what Patrick Mullins describes, with his characteristic lucidity, as ‘a fear of contaminating international influences’, and that we are not just an insular, conservative, and deeply conformist society, but for some unaccountable reason we take pride in our ignorance and parochialism. And let’s not neglect the fact that we are cringingly deferential and enamoured of hierarchy...' (Introduction) 2020 -
25y The Porter Prize : Listen to All the Past Winners 2020 20180560 2020 anthology podcast poetry Listen to all previous winning poems of the Porter Prize from 2005. 2020
-
28y Declan Fry on 'Fire Front : First Nations Poetry and Power Today 2020 20180677 2020 single work podcast
Declan Fry discusses Fire Front before reading his review of the book.
2020 -
29y River Story 2020 19767068 2020 single work short story 2020
-
31y Poets Abroad - Victoria 2020 20180607 2020 anthology poetry In this episode poets record a poem of theirs that is set outside their home state. 2020
-
32y The Dolorimeter 2020 20051711 2020 single work essay
'Sometime late morning it begins, a root of something that only as it grows do you recognise as pain. You have had coffee, as you do every morning, and now you feel the kind of heaviness that sends you to lie down. At home, the friend who is staying with you, whom you half invited and who may have misinterpreted your keenness for company, notes your early return and approves of your plan to retreat. For both of you it has been a year frantic with change and learning and emotion, and even if it is likely indulgent – so what, you’ve earned the right to call a morning off the books and instead take a heat pack and wish it were night all over again. She even microwaves the heat pack for you. You take it to bed where you think you will read or watch television or luxuriate in some way.' (Introduction)
2020 -
34y Egg Timer 2020 19767026 2020 single work short story 2020
-
37y Johanna Leggatt on Twitter's Threat to Writers and Journalists 2020 23439571 2020 single work podcast
'In today's episode, Johanna Leggatt speaks to ABR Editor Peter Rose about growing disquiet about ‘cancel culture’, censorious voices on social media, and Twitter's threat to writers and journalists. Beginning with the recent case of Rachel Baxendale, a journalist at The Australian, who was subjected to much invective because of her persistent questions about the quarantine fiasco in Victoria, Leggatt laments the ‘routine trashing of reputations on Twitter’ and wonders why Twitter has ‘devolved into a channel for our most juvenile emotions’. This interview is based on her recent article, 'The Problem of Belonging'.'
2020 -
39y Tony Hughes-d'Aeth on Australia's Literary Regionalism Tony Hughes-d'Aeth (presenter), 2020 23439628 2020 single work podcast
'Is it possible to parse Australian writers by states and territories? In today's episode, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth – Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia – speculates about new ways of contemplating Australian writers through the lens of regionalism. As he writes in his upcoming essay 'Thinking in a regional accent: New ways of contemplating Australian writers': 'Yes, we are divided into states and territories, but are these anything other than lines on a map, drawn with a ruler and a set square, and the occasional river? The contrast between the political map of Australia and the now iconic AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia graphically exposes the poverty of the Australian regional imagination and the essential irreality of our territorial demarcations. More particularly, for someone like me, is it right to conceive of Australia in terms of literary regions?'' (Production summary)
2020 -
40y Hessom Razavi on Statelessness and Australia’s Detention Centres Hessom Razavi (presenter), 2020 23439684 2020 single work podcast
.In today's episode, Hessom Razavi – the ABR Behrouz Boochani Fellow – speaks to Peter Rose about his essay 'Failures of imagination: From Tehran’s prisons to Australia’s immigration detention centres', which appears in the November issue. Hessom's essay offers a powerful reflection on the experiences that led to his family fleeing Iran to escape political persecution. Navigating the 1979 Islamic Revolution, political rebellion, and tragic family disappearances, Razavi examines the similarities between Australia’s immigration detention centres and the political prison he visited as a boy – and contemplates how easily the detainees’ fate might have been his own.. (Production summary)
-
41y Joshua Black on Susan Ryan, a Pioneering Politician Joshua Black (presenter), 2020 23439740 2020 single work podcast
'In today's episode, Joshua Black reads his tribute to former Labor senator Susan Ryan, featured in our November issue. Ryan was a historic figure in Australian politics: she was the first woman from the ALP to serve in cabinet, and cemented her legacy with the Sex Discrimination Act (1984) – which prohibited sexual discrimination in the workplace. Here, Black recounts his interview with the pioneering politician only weeks before her death on 27 September 2020.' (Production summary)
2020 -
42y Kate Crowcroft on Kylie Maslen's 'Show Me Where It Hurts' Kate Crowcroft (presenter), 2020 23439796 2020 single work podcast
'Kylie Maslen's début essay collection, Show Me Where It Hurts, is an intimate exploration of living with chronic illness. Maslen describes her own experiences with the invisible illness she has lived with for the last twenty years, delving into its daily reality while incorporating music, literature, television, film, online culture, and more. Kate Crowcroft, who reviews the book in ABR's November issue, describes it as 'essential reading for those of us with the privilege of having a body that behaves itself'.' (Production summary)
2020 -
43y In Conversation with Nicole Abadee about Sofie Laguna's 'Infinite Splendours' Amy Baillieu (presenter), 2020 23439852 2020 single work podcast
'In today's episode, Amy Baillieu speaks to Nicole Abadee about Sofie Laguna's latest novel, Infinite Splendours. In her November issue review, Abadee reflects that Laguna 'does not shy away from confronting subject matter' and notes that Infinite Splendours represents 'new territory' for Laguna as it follows protagonist Lawrence from childhood into adulthood. Baillieu and Abadee also discuss Abadee's own podcast Books Books Books.' (Production summary)
2020 -
44y Blankety-blank : Amanda Laugesen on Swearing and the Art of the Euphemism Amanda Laugesen (presenter), 2020 23439954 2020 single work podcast
'Amanda Laugesen, historian and lexicographer, is director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the ANU. In her latest book, the evocatively titled Rooted, Amanda considers the bountiful history of bad language in Australia. Her column in the December issue of ABR is devoted to the quaint old euphemism. Amanda talks about the inventive ways in which writers and editors have tried to placate the censor while also celebrating profanity. ' (Production summary)
2020 -
45y Books of the Year Peter Rose (presenter), 2020 23440064 2020 single work podcast
'In today's episode, Peter Rose talks to writers Beejay Silcox and Billy Griffiths about what they’ve been reading during this tumultuous year. They also speculate about some highlights of 2021. For those looking for a more extensive listing of this year's finest works, our Books of the Year features more than 30 different ABR critics nominating their favourite releases.' (Production summary)
2020 -
47y A Tussle with the Past : Jon Piccini on Two New Books Interrogating the Palace Letters Jon Piccini (presenter), 2020 23440109 2020 single work podcast 2020