I was asked to provide a three minutely eulogy for my father at the church service for his funeral: Gerald, my father, was born in North Sydney in 1936, into a period of human history on the verge of amazing expansion. He attended Saint Aloysius Primary School in Milson’s Point and then went to Saint …
I recently made an English translation of the poem On A Headland In Chile, written in 1956 by Chinese poet, Ai Qing (1910-1996). Previously, I had seen fragments of the poem rendered into English, but never the full work. The poem is a reflection on Ai Qing’s visit to Pablo Neruda’s seaside home in Isla …
I am endlessly fascinated by the genre of found poems. I first learned about them while studying my masters in creative arts at university and have since then developed an eye for the found poem, a series of prose words I pluck from a text and render as a poem. They are fun to discover …
Grace Karsken’s People of the River is an account of the early years of the colony of Sydney’s farming communities along the Nepean-Hawksbury River (Dyarubbin). There’s a Latin saying, the wise man discerns things which the ass confuses*, and I have to admit that after reading this book we Australians have been a bunch of …
Over Chinese New Year this year, I received as a gift a copy of a book called Our Colourful World. It’s a collection of 54 short stories by mainland Chinese writer, Ling Dingnian. On the cover of the book, he, or perhaps his publisher, describes his writings as mini-novels. That really doesn’t translate well into …
National news this week has prompted me to upload this blog as a service to the community. As usual, it also offers some insight into my previous writing/publishing efforts related to the subject. I refer to a beneficial health practice sometimes called the Waters of Life, and also know as Urine Therapy (UT), ie the …
I have just returned from China with a carving of a mountain scene on a two kilo piece of Australian nephrite jade, a mountain scene based on a poem written during the Tang Dynasty. Having been interested in jade for about thirty years I am in awe of how each piece of jade has its …
After reading Against the Day, I can reaffirm Thomas Pynchon as a writer on the leading edge, one with enormous creative muscle and a masterly control of the English language, one who can delight and entertain us with a universe of crazy details in so many different fields of human endeavour, but particularly in science, …
Thrillers are about characters who are in ‘terrible trouble,’ writes Dean Koontz. Peter Gray does appear to have cracked the thriller formula with Rough Cut, for on the very first page his character is indeed in ‘terrible trouble’. We are immediately drawn into the story of how Charlie Robertson came to be in that trouble …
John McPhee is one those writers with whom I feel I am never wasting a moment when I read him. Time spent with him is always a good investment. I first heard his name when I was sitting in a dining room on a cruise ship somewhere on our way to Alaska from San Francisco. …