Blog

This year in film

1. The Kid With a Bike (Le Gamin au vélo)

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium-France-Italy

2011 may be the year that 3D came into its own with auteurs from Spielberg and Scorsese to Wenders and Herzog making admirable contributions to the medium. However, this year belongs to a modestly analogue film about an eleven-year-old boy abandoned by his father and taken in by a young woman. The filmmaking of The Kid With a Bike is unshowy yet wildly kinetic, driven by the camera’s need to follow a boy whose desperation sends him running with the velocity of a wild animal. With this astonishing film, the Dardennes remind us that cinema’s true greatness lies not in technological advancements but in ideas and stories. ... read more

Written by Brad Nguyen on 21-12-2011, No comments

Best non-fiction reads 2011

My pick of non-fiction books is, as you would expect, mostly a reflection of my own particular obsessions and interests. However, one of the pleasures of being a regular reviewer of non-fiction books is the discovery of gems you would not otherwise have stumbled across or even thought were your thing.

One such discovery was How to Cause a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behaviour by Laura Kipnis (Scribe). This book could have been a supremely trashy exercise in schadenfreude were it not for Kipnis’s witty razor-sharp analysis of the unconscious forces that drive those who scandalise and those who feed on these public fiascos. Taking her cue from Freud, Laura Kipnis tackles four case studies – the spurned female astronaut bent on revenge, the judge who created alter-egos to stalk a former lover, the false friend who snitched on Monica Lewinsky and the fibbing memoirist. As she follows the convolutions of these lurid plots, she lays bare the basic psychic ingredients of scandal: the impulse to self-sabotage, the capacity for self-delusion, the revenge imperative, the flimsiness of rationality and the collective hunger for a scapegoat. Her psychoanalytical approach, fascination with human foibles and feel for narrative make Kipnis akin to Janet Malcolm on overdrive. ... read more

Written by Fiona Capp on 16-12-2011, No comments

Top Ten Poetic Moments of 2011

The following is a list of my ten favourite moments in Australian poetry in the past year or so. I call it a list of moments because not all of these are poems; a few of them are discussions of poetry which I enjoyed for various reasons.

In a recent entry on my own blog entitled ‘Some Thoughts’ I made a few points about my sometimes awkward relationship with contemporary Australian poetry. I will refrain from quoting myself here but I will preface the following list by admitting that if permitted I would spend all my time reading books by my favourite poets and authors, almost all of whom are international and dead.

However, I will also admit that on occasion it proves a blessing to be forced to delve into contemporary Australian poetry and the following is a list of ten things that failed to make me wish I was born in another time and place: ... read more

Written by Tara Mokhtari on 14-12-2011, 3 user comments

A gobsmacker of a book

The Cook
Wayne Macauley
Text Publishing

The Cook is a gobsmacker of a book.

Written by the much-lauded Australian writer Wayne Macauley, The Cook’s themes of capitalism-gone-mad, excessive consumption, untrammelled growth and rampant exploitation of humans, animals and natural resources is timely.

Macauley explores a number of issues recently highlighted by the Occupy Movement, animal welfare groups and the GFC through his main protagonist Zac, one of a number of young offenders sent to Cook School to learn a trade and become decent, upstanding and productive citizens. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 14-12-2011, 7 user comments

AS Patric’s ‘The Rattler and Other Stories’

The Rattler and Other Stories
AS Patric
Spineless Wonders

Do you know the screensaver that comes standard with windows called Mystify? It looks like a kaleidoscope of string art, with lines from one shape flowing in and out of the preceding and following patterns; it can be quite mesmerising to watch. I got the same sense reading AS Patric’s The Rattler & other stories, each story is standalone brilliant, but together they flow and mystify the reader. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 13-12-2011, 8 user comments

Kim Westwood and the implacable Other

A review of The Courier’s New Bicycle

Kim Westwood’s passion for the repressed, both animal and human, provides her second novel, The Courier’s New Bicycle, with its raison d’étre and much of its energy. She champions the ‘other’ – those groups who have historically been voiceless or politically powerless. Her characters, both human and animal (especially a very cute, fluorescent purple cat, Nitro) each stand as testament to the value of the ‘different’ – and in the world ruled by the fundamentalist Nation First party (no great leap to see a blend of One Nation and Australia First in that name), that means just about everybody who’s not heterosexual and religious. ... read more

Written by Peter Hickman on 12-12-2011, No comments

Award Winning Australian Writing 2011

Award Winning Australian Writing 2011
Adolfo Aranjuez (ed)
Melbourne Books

I still remember when I won my first literary competition. It was 1998 and I was a second-year creative writing student. My tutor that year had urged us to start sending our work out, had counselled us that we would likely fail more than we would succeed but if we really wanted to be writers we must persist. I remember him holding up a sheaf of papers, a catalogue of his rejections, and feeling heartened. I don’t recall how many competitions I entered before I won my first, but I don’t think it was many. What I do recall is the thrill of that win. The validation I felt. Somebody thought my words mattered. To confirm this there was an award ceremony, a trophy, a modest cheque, publication in an anthology, and an article in the local paper. It was all rather dizzying. I didn’t realise at the time that most competitions offer little reward. A certificate to be filed away and a few hundred dollars to be banked, but rarely publication. Which is why this anthology is such a gem. ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 8-12-2011, 7 user comments

Review: ‘The Unforgiving Rope’

The Unforgiving Rope: Murder and Hanging on Australia’s Western Frontier
Simon Adams
UWAP

Have you got one of those relatives, the kind who insists that the answer to all the world’s problems is to bring back hanging? You know who I mean. They usually live in a fantasy land called the Good Old Days. Yes? Well, I have just the Christmas present for them.

Simon Adams’ study of hanging in WA from 1844 until 1909 does not come to any shocking conclusions. From the first establishment of the Swan River Colony, Indigenous people and ethnic minorities felt the noose tighten more often than white, Anglo settlers. The book walks through and around the stories of executed Aborigines – who could still be hanged publicly long after the spectacle had been abolished for any other criminal – convicts and Irish Catholics, Chinese, Japanese, Afghans and bad mothers. It is not a simple catalogue of the dead. Adams zooms in and out to give us the wider cultural, legal and historical picture in addition to the specifics of each chosen case. Technological advances in the execution process and changing views on the public display of the execution are discussed. He has also travelled to the crime scenes and pored over the archives. ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 6-12-2011, 3 user comments

‘That’s what I love about the short form’

Irma GoldAuthor of several children’s books and currently at work on a debut novel, the stories of writer and editor Irma Gold have been published in such notables as Meanjin, Island and Going Down Swinging and she is, of course, a blogger here at Overland. Her debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward is the final piece to the most excellent puzzle that is the Long Story Shorts series published by Affirm Press. Today, Gold chats with us about her process and what she’s up to now. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 29-11-2011, 4 user comments

Owen Richardson: What you miss if you don’t subscribe to Overland

Owen RichardsonWhat would I have missed out on if I hadn’t subscribed to Overland this time last year? Fiction from Jacinda Woodhead (204), for one thing, a story that is politically engaged as well as formally inventive and satisfying, or the splendid young writers issue (201) with Rebecca Giggs, Sam Twyford-Moore, Cassie Wood and Frank Bryce. I wouldn't wanted not to have read the debate between Mark Diesendorf and Andrew Bartlett on population control (203), or one of Guy Rundle’s indispensable commentaries on WikiLeaks (202) or John Martinkus on what happened to him in Iraq, and more pertinently what happened to him once he was back in Australia (204); or Rjurik Davidson’s piece on sci-fi and politics (202), Alison Croggon on how she has a herb garden in her bookshelf (204), and Jennifer Mills’s knockout ‘How to write about Aboriginal Australia’ (204) (‘When describing an Aboriginal man, always refer to his scars.’) And among the poetry, there has been terrific work from some of the brightest young poets, such as Luke Beesley (204) Judy Durrant (204, 203), Corey Wakeling and Thomas Denton (both 203). (Okay, so some of the people I’ve mentioned here are friends – but a Subscriberthon is a friendly kind of affair.) ... read more

Written by Owen Richardson on 8-11-2011, 3 user comments

Review: My Dog Gave Me the Clap

My dog gave me the clap

My Dog Gave Me the Clap
Adam Morris
Fremantle Press

Personally I feel sorry for the dog. Maybe dogs don’t care about these things but if someone gave me the clap, I reckon they’d be mortified if I wrote a book about it. Thankfully, Adam Morris deals with Feathers the dog and his main character Saul’s ‘green wang’ problem early on in this hilarious book. Feathers exits stage left at the end of chapter one and the reader can breathe, smile with relief and move on to Saul’s philosophising about how easy it would be to get laid if he were gay, his negative thoughts about his negative thoughts diary and a series of rather nasty ‘incidents’ involving Akubra hats, shotguns, Russian dancing and a chookhouse. ... read more

Written by Sarah Drummond on 26-10-2011, No comments

Rebellion in poetry

ghazal games

Ghazal Games
Roger Sedarat
Ohio University Press

Experimenting with traditional poetic form is not a new concept. John Keats wrote his poem ‘On the Sonnet’ warning of the dangers of constraining the ‘muse’ to strict form. Imagist poets like Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell adapted the haiku form to English-language verse. Where there are rules, there are rebels.

But the act of experimenting with form is arguably less about rebellion and more about determining what said form is really capable of achieving by exaggerating its conventions. In hindsight it can be said that most poetry is to some degree a reaction against the poetry that came before it, but that the act of ‘reacting against’ is in itself a kind of homage. Poetry that deliberately sets out to experiment with form is the most transparent kind of poetic homage, validating the traditional form for its potential relevance to contemporary culture. ... read more

Written by Tara Mokhtari on 25-08-2011, 3 user comments

Sophie Cunningham’s ‘Melbourne’

MelbourneMelbourne writer, editor and publisher, Sophie Cunningham, is the author of several novels: Geography and Bird, and currently working on a third. Editor and publisher of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, she has worked for such notables as McPhee Gribble, Penguin and Allen & Unwin as well as taking the helm as editor of Meanjin (2008-2010). She writes on such diverse topics as travel, cultural analysis, Buddhism and television (not to mention literature) but her latest adventure is Melbourne, commissioned by Newsouth as part of a series on Australia's capital cities. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 18-08-2011, No comments

At the Sydney Film Festival: Toomelah

toomelahToomelah
Director: Ivan Sen
★★★

Ivan Sen’s debut feature film was 2002’s Beneath Clouds: a road movie about two Indigenous Australian teenagers trying to escape the depressing realities of their lives by fleeing to Sydney. It’s a solid film and I was thoroughly looking forward to Sen’s third feature, Toomelah. Especially as it was the only Australian feature I chose to see at the festival. Not for lack of choice and possible quality mind you; Scarlet Road, which I wanted to see, was sold out and I knew Sleeping Beauty would be in theatres soon. ... read more

Written by Peter Francis on 28-06-2011, 2 user comments

At the Sydney Film Festival: Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Cave of Forgotten DreamsCave of Forgotten Dreams
Dir: Werner Herzog
★★★★

In 1994 three French speleologists discovered a cave hidden behind an old rockslide in southern France. Inside they found a particularly beautiful cave with rock paintings eventually dated to 32 000 years before the present. They are the oldest known cave paintings, preserved so well because of the rockslide protecting what was once an open cave from the elements, animals and humans. It is called Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave after one of its discoverers, Jean-Marie Chauvet, and a natural rock arch nearby. ... read more

Written by Peter Francis on 24-06-2011, No comments