Thu - August 14, 2008
Sayonara
Penny and I are off to Japan in the morning and
we're not taking the computer, so you won't be hearing from me here until our
return on 10 September.
We've bought Yen, which involved going back to the bank the next day when they realised they'd given me Taiwanese currency instead of Japanese. We've said goodbye to the young, which involved finding out that one of them has his image on Google Maps street view of his workplace. We have our passports at the ready, which invoved a degree of panic until one of them turned up at the bottom of its owner's bag. The taxi has been called for 6 in the morning. A Spanish-speaking family of three is here and sound asleep, and the child of the family thinks Nessie is 'awesome', and will look after her for half our time away. The rest is in the hands of family and fate.
I'll see how I go at getting access to the Internet, and will try to leave some news of out adventures in comments to this post.
Selamat tinggal (I don't know how to say that in any other language).
We've bought Yen, which involved going back to the bank the next day when they realised they'd given me Taiwanese currency instead of Japanese. We've said goodbye to the young, which involved finding out that one of them has his image on Google Maps street view of his workplace. We have our passports at the ready, which invoved a degree of panic until one of them turned up at the bottom of its owner's bag. The taxi has been called for 6 in the morning. A Spanish-speaking family of three is here and sound asleep, and the child of the family thinks Nessie is 'awesome', and will look after her for half our time away. The rest is in the hands of family and fate.
I'll see how I go at getting access to the Internet, and will try to leave some news of out adventures in comments to this post.
Selamat tinggal (I don't know how to say that in any other language).
Posted at 10:21 PM |
Bookblog #31: Past-work-related
Shane McCauley,
The
butterfly man (Fremantle Arts Centre
Press 1991)
Stephen Whiteside, Early Poems and Songs (including "Omeo") (S Whiteside 2008)
I had credit to spend at Sappho's bookshop, and this book leapt to my
attention. It cost more than my $8 note, but I recognised Shane McCauley's name
from the ancient days when I was editor of
The School
Magazine. (Note: I'm not the editor any more.
I refer you to the magazine's helpful tips for manuscript submission.) There's one
beautiful poem in particular, 'Clouds', illustrated by Tohby Riddle (in
Orbit,
November 2003) with a small figure of a child, in the centre of a page filled
with dark grass, looking straight up at the viewer, who is positioned as one of
the eponymous clouds. I'd never read any of his poems for grown-ups (I hate that
word, but
adult
has been co-opted), and here was a chance. The poems really are for grown-ups:
to enjoy them, you need to be either alarmingly well-read or unintimidated by
encountering someone who is much better read than you. I'm in the latter
category. The range of reference is huge: from an aged Samurai arranging flowers
to an Islamic executioner, from Ancient Greece and Rome to Chuang-tzu, from
Western Australian landmarks to scientific and mythopoeic cosmology. And I
trusted
his references: when he attributed thoughts to La Perouse in the long 'La
Perouse to Eleanore', I believed he had immersed himself in La Perouse's writing
enough to have got it right. I intend reading this
again.
During my time at The School
Magazine, we published Stephen Whiteside's
poems regularly. And that's probably the only thing his poetry has in common
with Shane McCauley's. This is his second self-published book, and probably
because its back cover includes a quote from this blog, he kindly sent me a copy. Most of the
pieces date from the early 1980s when Stephen did a lot of performing (Aha!
Another similarity: according to the flap of
The Butterfly
Man, Shane McCauley was a founding member of a
performance poetry group on Perth. However, I doubt if he ever put on a funny
hat as Stephen did.) These aren't poems intended primarily for children, and if
I've read any of them before it was to reject them (sorry!). They are mostly
good rollicking fun with some history, some genial satire, a little
bush-philosphising and a touch of melancholy. Many of them latter-day bush
ballads, and as an added grace there's a short, often affectionately deprecatory
introduction to each one. You can buy a copy from www.bookstore.bookpod.com.au or, I assume, at
Stephen's readings. (One last note: I suppose I should be glad of it, but I find
myself lamenting that in the featured poem about the horribly cold town Omeo, he
did not stoop to 'Omeo, Omeo, wherefore art thou, Omeo?')
Stephen Whiteside, Early Poems and Songs (including "Omeo") (S Whiteside 2008)
I had credit to spend at Sappho's bookshop, and this book leapt to my
attention. It cost more than my $8 note, but I recognised Shane McCauley's name
from the ancient days when I was editor of
The School
Magazine. (Note: I'm not the editor any more.
I refer you to the magazine's helpful tips for manuscript submission.) There's one
beautiful poem in particular, 'Clouds', illustrated by Tohby Riddle (in
Orbit,
November 2003) with a small figure of a child, in the centre of a page filled
with dark grass, looking straight up at the viewer, who is positioned as one of
the eponymous clouds. I'd never read any of his poems for grown-ups (I hate that
word, but
adult
has been co-opted), and here was a chance. The poems really are for grown-ups:
to enjoy them, you need to be either alarmingly well-read or unintimidated by
encountering someone who is much better read than you. I'm in the latter
category. The range of reference is huge: from an aged Samurai arranging flowers
to an Islamic executioner, from Ancient Greece and Rome to Chuang-tzu, from
Western Australian landmarks to scientific and mythopoeic cosmology. And I
trusted
his references: when he attributed thoughts to La Perouse in the long 'La
Perouse to Eleanore', I believed he had immersed himself in La Perouse's writing
enough to have got it right. I intend reading this
again.
During my time at The School
Magazine, we published Stephen Whiteside's
poems regularly. And that's probably the only thing his poetry has in common
with Shane McCauley's. This is his second self-published book, and probably
because its back cover includes a quote from this blog, he kindly sent me a copy. Most of the
pieces date from the early 1980s when Stephen did a lot of performing (Aha!
Another similarity: according to the flap of
The Butterfly
Man, Shane McCauley was a founding member of a
performance poetry group on Perth. However, I doubt if he ever put on a funny
hat as Stephen did.) These aren't poems intended primarily for children, and if
I've read any of them before it was to reject them (sorry!). They are mostly
good rollicking fun with some history, some genial satire, a little
bush-philosphising and a touch of melancholy. Many of them latter-day bush
ballads, and as an added grace there's a short, often affectionately deprecatory
introduction to each one. You can buy a copy from www.bookstore.bookpod.com.au or, I assume, at
Stephen's readings. (One last note: I suppose I should be glad of it, but I find
myself lamenting that in the featured poem about the horribly cold town Omeo, he
did not stoop to 'Omeo, Omeo, wherefore art thou, Omeo?') Posted at 04:27 PM |
Wed - August 13, 2008
Bookblog #30: Work-related
Leslie Thomas,
The Virgin
Soldiers (1966; Isis Large Print
1998, which is the only edition the library
had)
I'm reading the Virgin Soldiers trilogy as background for an editing job. I
nearly gave up the first book at this sentence on page
11:
It wasn't the sexism and implied racism, the awkward phrasing, the vulgarity, or the leaden attempt at humour. It was the misuse of enervating that almost sapped me of the will to go on. But go on I did, and the book's not half bad. The dedication gives a clue abut how it is to be read: 'Dedicated to my wife Maureen with the assurance that hardly any of this happened to me'. So by implication at least some of it did happen to him, and there's a teasing suggestion that more of the book than he wants his wife to know is based on direct personal experience. Its characters are a group of British National Servicemen stationed in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency. There's not much of a plot, but as a fictionalised memoir, or a detailed treatment for a film, it conveys graphically the long stretches of boredom and short bursts of terror of being young, conscripted into the army and a very long way from home. And in spite of the enervating hope of arse-pinching in the paragraph quoted above and the offhand objectification of women throughout, when the sex scenes do arrive (as arrive they must), they are, well the word that comes to mind is sweet. When the main character, Briggs, admits to the prostitute Lucy that the sexual encounter they are embarking on will be his first, she is delighted to be dealing with a virgin soldier and treats him kindly, taking things very slowly. She shows him 'the big secret', and whispers, 'How the virgin like?' The chapter, and the description of the encounter ends:
A lot of the humour stays flat on the page, as in the episode where a number of the conscripts volunteer to be circumcised in the mistaken belief that the operation will get them ten days' extra leave, and it's not The Red Badge of Courage, but the harsh realities of the young soldiers' life are served up to the reader, made palatable by a comic mix of camaraderie, eccentricity and mild bawdry, but still starkly recognisable.
I'm reading the Virgin Soldiers trilogy as background for an editing job. I
nearly gave up the first book at this sentence on page
11:At Panglin the soldiers had the pale, yellow tan of steamy Singapore Island and days spent in offices where the secure, screaming boredom of hours clicking and clerking under a hot iron roof, with Wednesday afternoons off, was rarely broken by anything more enervating than the hope of pinching the arse of one of the Chinese civilian girl clerks in the mid-morning ritual queue for the tea-wagon.
It wasn't the sexism and implied racism, the awkward phrasing, the vulgarity, or the leaden attempt at humour. It was the misuse of enervating that almost sapped me of the will to go on. But go on I did, and the book's not half bad. The dedication gives a clue abut how it is to be read: 'Dedicated to my wife Maureen with the assurance that hardly any of this happened to me'. So by implication at least some of it did happen to him, and there's a teasing suggestion that more of the book than he wants his wife to know is based on direct personal experience. Its characters are a group of British National Servicemen stationed in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency. There's not much of a plot, but as a fictionalised memoir, or a detailed treatment for a film, it conveys graphically the long stretches of boredom and short bursts of terror of being young, conscripted into the army and a very long way from home. And in spite of the enervating hope of arse-pinching in the paragraph quoted above and the offhand objectification of women throughout, when the sex scenes do arrive (as arrive they must), they are, well the word that comes to mind is sweet. When the main character, Briggs, admits to the prostitute Lucy that the sexual encounter they are embarking on will be his first, she is delighted to be dealing with a virgin soldier and treats him kindly, taking things very slowly. She shows him 'the big secret', and whispers, 'How the virgin like?' The chapter, and the description of the encounter ends:
'Oh, it's lovely, Lucy,' he shivered. 'It's lovely, really it is.'
A lot of the humour stays flat on the page, as in the episode where a number of the conscripts volunteer to be circumcised in the mistaken belief that the operation will get them ten days' extra leave, and it's not The Red Badge of Courage, but the harsh realities of the young soldiers' life are served up to the reader, made palatable by a comic mix of camaraderie, eccentricity and mild bawdry, but still starkly recognisable.
Posted at 06:52 PM |
Mon - August 11, 2008
Avuncularity
Today I bought my first copy ever of
The
Griffith Review. Maybe I'll read it.
But I consider my 20 bucks minus five cents well spent just for 'Busted', the
short story starting on page 102, by one Edwina Shaw. Go out. Buy the magazine.
Read the story. It's got drugs, police corruption, religion, flamboyant Brisbane
homosexuals circa 1984. It's got beautifully turned phrases and an ending O
Henry might have been quietly pleased with. It's a taster for
Thrill
Seekers, the collection of Edwina's stories to
be published by an English publisher in November.
Posted at 05:40 PM |
About this Blog
This started out as a patchy journal about family life with my mother-in-law, Mollie, who has Alzheimers and was then living with us. Mollie has moved, first into a "low-care facility" then, in July 2004, into a nursing home. As these and other events have overtaken us, the blog has moved on ...
A note on comments: You can read comments on the same page as the entry rather than in a pop-up window, by clicking on the category button ("Mollie" etc) at the end of the entry and then on the "Read more" button.
A note on comments: You can read comments on the same page as the entry rather than in a pop-up window, by clicking on the category button ("Mollie" etc) at the end of the entry and then on the "Read more" button.
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Published On: Aug 14, 2008 10:22 PM
Published On: Aug 14, 2008 10:22 PM