eulogy: gerald william mcgowan 1936-2021

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 …

found poems a

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 …

review: people of the river by grace karskens

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 …

review: against the day by thomas pynchon

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, …

review: rough cut by peter gray

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 …