No Bombshell: Failing to Call Out Fox
Frighten and titillate. Frighten and titillate. Those are the orientating words a new employee, Kayla Pospisil played by Margot Robbie, gets from a more experienced reporter at Fox News about what constitutes a Fox story in the film Bombshell. Kayla, an ‘evangelical millennial’, seems to understand Fox’s notion of ‘fair and balanced.’ The news reportage is fair, the opinion shows balance the ‘liberal bias’ of American media. Megyn Kelly, a one-time Fox News anchor and one of the main characters in Bombshell, wrote in her book Settle for More, that she too was asked about whether she understood what ‘fair […]
Writers’ Residencies: Pros and Cons
Eight lucky Australian writers have recently been awarded overseas residencies by the Australia Council. But are writing residencies all they’re cracked up to be? According to industry magazine?Books+Publishing, Lisa Gorton, Robert Lukins, Fiona McGregor and Sandra Thibodeaux will each undertake a three-month residency at the?BR Whiting Studio in Rome. Each writer also receives a $10,000 grant. Yassmin Abdel-Magied was awarded a six-month residency at the?Keesing Studio in Paris, along with a $20,000 grant (which, very predictably, caused the Murdoch media to have an attack of the vapours). Eloise Grills and Kate Cole-Adams were awarded three-month residencies at the Keesing Studio, […]
The Slow Light Of Truth
In quick succession, three events clearly illuminate the shape of the world we live in. Quick flashes of lightning, each successively brighter, blinding: What does the thunder say? First, on the weekend the radical-alarmist news blog ZeroHedge received a permanent ban on its Twitter account. Why? Because they’d singled out, named and ‘doxed’ a Chinese researcher as the source of the novel coronavirus presently arcing toward global pandemic status, implying that this virus had a human, engineered, origin. Second, the IPSOS poll of Australian voters released on Monday 3 February revealed that among the ‘rusted on’ supporters of the Liberal-National […]
What I’m Reading
When certain genres and forms of books (in my case, trade fiction and non-fiction) comprise your work, it feels natural to look elsewhere for personal reading. I feel I constantly look elsewhere. I am a greedy reader: I want to know everything, but am often too impatient to really get into the bones of a subject. I cannot easily answer the question ‘What do you enjoy reading’, as my response is fluid and changes depending on when and in what context I’m asked. I completed my MFA in poetry in September 2019, amid a chaotic year that was also filled […]
Essays
Walking and Being
For some time, I’d been thinking of writing about Westgate Park, an inconspicuous piece of ground beneath the shadows of the Westgate Bridge at the mouth of the Birrarung (Yarra) River in Melbourne.
Fiction
Kattadiya
Frances thought her bladder would burst; walking the extra two hundred yards to the outdoor lavatory was out of the question. The zinnia patch adjacent to the patio would have to suffice. It was nearly 9 pm, no-one would see.
Memoir
Birds and Knives
I am not allowed a knife, but the National Treasure’s son is. He has a red-handled Swiss Army one that incorporates a can opener, a bottle opener, two saw blades and a detachable pair of tweezers. He shows it to me in his back yard, levering the primary blade out of the handle with his thumbnail. ‘I killed a bird with it last week,’ he tells me.
Poetry
Burning
So, shiftless summer’s advance stills everything.
It’s the new normal. The effect of the heat the wind twists through
is like Link Wray’s slow drag of chords with his right
right across ‘Rumble’, only played through an amplified hairdryer.
