The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past Stephen Gray Allen & Unwin For much of John Howard’s reign as Prime Minister debate on Australian history took a polarised view: the Black Armband History versus the White Revisionist’s History. The culmination of which was John Howard’s refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generation. With Kevin Rudd’s […]

Well, it’s official: the (printed) book is dead, long live the (e)book. Or so many political and cultural elites would like us to believe. On the very day of my writing this blog, for example, we were subjected to federal Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry’s apocalyptic diagnosis that Australian booksellers will be annihilated within […]

Toomelah 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 […]

With the launch of my second poetry chapbook, Love and Fuck Poems, approaching, I thought it timely to write a post to hopefully generate some discussion about poetry and pornography, and the fine line between the two – or can they be the same thing? It’s a question that’s been dancing in my mind the […]

Last month, Overland invited Elena Jeffreys, of Scarlet Alliance, to participate in a debate in our print journal that proposed that the Left should support stricter regulation of the sex industry. Unfortunately, for various reasons, the debate didn’t come to fruition. However, Elena gave us permission to publish her initial argument here on the blog. […]

Cave 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 […]

I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. When explaining why BDS advocates were banned from presenting at Limmud Oz, the Executive explained that ‘the BDS campaign is an attack on Israel’s basic legitimacy and harms […]

Surviving Life Director: Jan Švankmajer ★★★ Czech director Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life is a whole movie in the style of Terry Gilliam’s animations. Or, more accurately, Gilliam’s animations are in the style of Švankmajer, who was a major influence on the Monty Python member. In an amusing introduction Švankmajer explains the film is a ‘psychoanalytic […]

A Shrine To Lata Mangeshkar Puncher and Wattman, 2007 (Shortlisted for both the 2009 NSW Premiers Prize and Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize) Water Roars, Illusions Burn Vagabond Press, 2002 Territorial AnT Studios, 1996 Green, Poems 1971-78 Sea Cruise Books, 1978 It is with great sadness that we commemorate the death of Kerry Leves, poet, reviewer, […]

For the ten minutes before my children sleep the internet has not impacted upon my reading habits in the slightest. Tonight’s book is a treasure. Behind its thick crème cover, its pages, also crème, are stiff and square with sixties-vintage pictures. Chapter One, Down the Rabbit-Hole, begins on page eleven. ‘Why not page one?’ a […]

Emerging writer and self-confessed clever pumpkin Susan Bennett knows how to stir the pot, blogging her mix of politics and food at Fudging the menu. Co author of The Cook’s Toolkit by Clever Pumpkin, Susan is currently working on the intriguingly titled Trial of the Romance Novelist and her novel, Grace, the premise for which […]

Larissa Behrendt is a writer, barrister and law professor, and celebrated Australian personality, passionate about the rights of Indigenous Australians and the development of Australian culture. In 2009, she was the NAIDOC Indigenous Person of the Year and in 2011 voted NSW Australian of the Year. Talented across several genres, Behrendt’s bibliography includes many articles […]

Armadillo Director: Janus Metz ★★★★ Janus Metz’s Armadillo takes its name from a forward operating base in Helmand province. The documentary focuses on a platoon of Danish soldiers and their deployment from February to August 2009. The impression given of the Afghanistan War during their tour is a war by inches. The Taliban are less […]

As extreme weather becomes the norm Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, believes that to fight climate change we need to recover the values of indigenous people. Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright says something similar in her essay ‘Deep Weather’ in the latest issue of Meanjin. Noting the devastation of the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the […]

When the CPSU took 12 government agencies to Fair Work Australia (FWA) a couple of weeks ago in a dispute over negotiating enterprise agreement, it barely rated a mention in the press. And, if the comments in the Sydney Morning Herald’s online edition are anything to go by (‘The Australian Public Service might go on […]

As we mentioned last week, the hunt for a Meanland blogger resulted in not one, not two, but four Meanland bloggers! Here is the first of the winning Meanland essays, which we’ll be publishing here and on Spike over the next week. Regular Meanland postings will resume at the end of June. Digital writing, which […]