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Review – Stepping Over Seasons

'Stepping over seasons'Simply, Stepping Over Seasons is a fantastic collection of short poems that will appeal to both poetry lovers and readers who may have been burned by poetry in the past. Ashley Capes has captured themes such as love, loss, longing, suburban streetscapes, the plight of Outback Australia and the anguish of the writer’s life in poems that can be studied for their form or enjoyed for their content.

When you read Capes’ work, a distinctive style becomes quickly apparent; he has an ability to form a poem around a seemingly ordinary object. As Justin Lowe writes on the back cover, ‘You sense you could point to any object in a room and Capes would conjure the ghosts of a hundred pairs of hands’. Capes creates a vivid image of an object and the reader is treated to a reconsideration. This object could be small, like the wedding ring in 'other objects', or an entire house, as in 'shell', once filled with life and memories, the house is left empty: ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 12-05-2010, 10 user comments

DeLillo’s Point Omega

Don DeLilloDon DeLillo's novella Point Omega begins with an art installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 3 September, presumably in 1996. The narrator, about whom we learn very little as the story unfolds, is absorbed in the experience of watching 24 Hour Psycho, a work by Douglas Gordon in which the Alfred Hitchcock film is slowed down to run over a twenty-four hour period.

The less there was to see, the harder he looked, the more he saw. This was the point. To see what's here, finally to look and to know you're looking, to feel time passing, to be alive to what is happening in the smallest registers of motion.

... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 11-05-2010, 14 user comments

Authors on audio – Ian McEwan

Whatever the virus was that left me sprawled lifeless across the bed, I can thank it for putting me out of action for a week. It gave me the excuse to lie there listening to the four CDs of Ian McEwan reading his novella On Cheshil Beach.

I love audio books. They take the tension out of driving, creating an alternative universe while you are stuck in traffic on Punt Road. They feed the mind and heart while the body is busy fighting microbes and viruses. And what better than hearing the author himself read his work? Ian McEwan has a soft lilting Surrey accent that reveals the tender feelings of the author towards his characters, the young honeymooners Edward and Florence. It is set in 1962, a few years before my first marriage, but the coupling of two virgins is all too familiar. It’s marvellous to hear someone putting words to that fraught event. Writing about wordless events like sex is the hardest thing. Conveying a joyous union would be even harder. ... read more

Written by Carol Middleton on 10-05-2010, 6 user comments

Of books and reading and timey-wimey stuff – pt 2


Fiction begs the question of itself, as does reading. The recent debates about the future of reading and so on seem to have thrown us back to some zero-point where we could begin to consider what reading might be, and therefore who the reader is and what she might be doing when she reads. And of course, given their interdependence, the same thing might be wondered about the writer. All of a sudden we have to question where we are when we read and what we are doing when we write. What is obvious in these debates and forums on reading is how little we seem to have thought about what reading is. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 5-05-2010, 17 user comments

Spoken Word on the airwaves

This Thursday morning between 9 and 9.30, I’ll be interviewed by Peter Goodyear on 3CR’s Spoken Word program (855 AM). 3CR can also be streamed online.

Apart from reciting a selection of my prose and poetry, I’ll also be discussing my influences, the writing of my novel Misplaced and the Melbourne rock band, Trial Kennedy – helping me bring my story to life. This interview is my introduction to 3CR soundwaves, and I’ve been invited to be a monthly presenter on the Spoken Word program along with Peter Goodyear, Rhonda Jankovic and Santo Cazzati. My first show as interviewer, to air on Thursday 3 June, will feature Overland blogger, Tara Mokhtari who will be reciting her poetry and talking about her experiences as a teacher of creative writing. ... read more

Written by Koraly Dimitriadis on 4-05-2010, 6 user comments

Read, read, read

If you have never said ‘Excuse me’ to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time.
– Sherri Chasin Calvo

Are you regularly bashing your shins and talking to fire hydrants? I wish I was. Jacinda Woodhead’s recent Meanland post about not having enough time to read everything she aspires to struck a chord. For me, though, it relates most potently to novels. When I first got hooked on Estelle Tang’s blog, 3000 books, I experienced a moment of panic. She has estimated that with 60 reading years left (based on the average age of death) if she reads a book a week she’ll fit in 3000 books. Does 3000 sound like a lot to you? It doesn’t to me. And I don’t always find the time to read a novel a week on top of everything else I’m reading. Plus I’m more than a decade older, so my ‘quota’ is much lower. It made me think about how I need to choose judiciously, and somehow cram more in. ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 4-05-2010, 19 user comments

On Realism in Fantasy

The CompanyToday I finished reading KJ Parker's 2008 novel The Company. And, as usual when I finish one of her novels, I wondered why the hell I had.

It's not that they're bad novels (although I felt this one was somewhat inferior to her other books), it's that they are relentlessly depressing. I've never read novels that struck me as so utterly misanthropic, where you typically end up despising every character there is. The cynicism is breathtaking, and that's even before we get to the way that they're normally about wars in one way or another. ... read more

Written by Georgia Claire on 29-04-2010, 4 user comments

Penguin Plays Rough in the sitting room

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fiction writer in possession of a good tale must be in want of an audience. In the absence of a publishing contract or an appreciative family member/housemate, such an audience can be difficult to reach. Equally so, if Sydney's lovers of literature fancy a night out to indulge their passions, all too often an evening browsing the shelves of late-trading bookstore Better Read Than Dead is the only option on offer (perhaps with a few sips from one's hip flask if it's a Friday). But fear not courageous scribblers and fiction devourers alike, Penguin Plays Rough is at hand.

PPR is run by Pip Smith and Amelia Schmidt and takes place on the third Monday evening of each month at Ms Smith's abode in

Written by Claire Zorn on 29-04-2010, 2 user comments

The love that dare not speak its name: we need to talk about editing

I used to work for an order more clandestine than the Knights Templar, more invisible than the Invisible Woman, more prone to secrecy than Jason Bourne. We did our work in secret, erasing our identities before and after every job, writing confidential reports and often never meeting the human they concerned. I’m sure there are other professions that still operate with the secrecy and guardedness of a medieval guild. But I’m beginning to think the secrecy that surrounds my old profession is doing the sort of damage that’s done to anyone forced into secrecy. I’m thinking paranoia, depression. That profession is book editing.

Book editors regularly open themselves to an other, go deeply into that other’s innermost being (their text), and work to transform that text (and be themselves transformed) without touching it. And then they must let go of it all and be forever silent. I think all this secret intimacy is doing editors’ heads in. Writers are renowned for their paranoia, their swings between omnipotence and impotence, their depression and insecurity. But in my experience, editors suffer just as much if not more from these debilitating states – mostly without the upswing of omnipotence. Why? Possibly because they’re treated mostly like shit. Poorly paid and never acknowledged, always blamed when things go wrong. ... read more

Written by Jane Gleeson-White on 28-04-2010, 40 user comments

Of books and reading and timey-wimey stuff – pt 1

The interesting thing about a novel is, that like the Tardis, it’s much bigger on the inside than on the outside. Books look linear, and we are often tricked, as readers and writers, into making them linear. Novels muck about with time, and time is never as straightforward as it appears. Curre

Written by Stephen Wright on 28-04-2010, 20 user comments

Review – Kill Your Darlings |
Issue One

Kill Your DarlingsKill Your Darlings has a lot to live up to. In its inaugural issue its editor, Affirm Press’ Rebecca Starford, says the journal’s mission is to ‘reinvigorate and re-energise’ Australia’s literary scene. She quotes editor Rob Spillman as saying that most journals are ‘good for you, but they taste awful’. KYD intends to redress this – to shake up the medium and ‘publish literature that bites back’. A big, bold statement.

Written by Irma Gold on 19-04-2010, 2 user comments

Jesus vs Christ

It is said that popular culture is becoming increasingly infantilising. JK Rowling made it acceptable for adults to sit on the train reading a book about magical boarding schools, infused with the nostalgia of books from our own childhoods (Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising), but the process was already well underway when Hedwig and Hagrid were first put to paper. As the average age of the cinema-goer decreases, so the market-enslaved Hollywood studios grind the common denominator of characters, themes and jokes lower with each summer season. Films for the very young are the exception, since filmmakers must cater to both their ostensible audience and the parents who accompany them. I remember the songs in their soundtracks from my own youth, and the cultural references and allusions are often, sadly, more diverse and engaging than in films supposedly for grown-ups. ... read more

Written by Joshua Mostafa on 31-03-2010, 1 user comment

Finally – Gil Scott Heron is on Parole

'Gil Scott Heron is on Parole'Less than a fortnight ago in a small bookshop in Carlton, a small tidal wave crashed into the face of the current Australian literary landscape when Maxine Beneba Clarke’s first major poetry collection, Gil Scott Heron is on Parole, was launched. I don’t usually drag myself out of hiding for a book launch these days – they all seem repetitive, monotonous, same old, just like Australian literature.

What a refreshing change it was to attend this launch. ... read more

Written by Koraly Dimitriadis on 28-02-2010, 5 user comments

tooting of horns…

Readings have announced their Books of the Year and, in their collective wisdom, they've selected Killing: Misadventures in Violence as one the best non-fiction titles of 2009. WELL I NEVER DID ETC.

That's right, as well as editing Overland, Jeff somehow finds the time to dash off award-winning books, get nominated for the Melbourne Prize for Literature, write for Crikey, the Age and New Matilda, co-present a radio show [Aural Text with alicia sometimes Wed 12-2 RRR 102.7FM], and generally gad about town speaking in public about all manner of political and literary affairs.

So, if you needed another reason to subscribe, maybe that's it. The guy at the helm knows his shiznit.

... read more

Written by Karen Pickering on 2-12-2009, 4 user comments

Stuff I’ve been reading this week

We don't have quite the room in our print magazine for reviews that we'd like, and I am rather lacklustre when it comes to regular blogging...so I'm going to try and write a weekly post about the books I am getting into. Needless to say these aren't reviews proper, just the scattered associations of an idle reader. Jeff got me thinking with his post about Australian landscape in literature and music. I can't be near a surf beach in Sydney without thinking of Puberty Blues, and can't lie on the concrete in a glaring summer day without thinking of Garner's Monkey Grip. But both of these are essentially forms of nostalgia for the never-experienced for me, published so many years ago, typifying aspects of the end of the seventies and eighties. These days I wouldn't be surprised in Tsiolkas has got Preston/

Written by Kalinda Ashton on 26-06-2009, No comments