As successive small Australian poetry publishers has there ever been any other kind? go out of business, new ones spring up to replace them. Four new volumes of Australian verse testify that such optimism, so often and ultimately dashed, can and does produce works of lasting worth
Donât look back: the year the world was finally wowed by our culture
Weâre sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
Dismiss
Donât look back: the year the world was finally wowed by our culture
As The Sydney Morning Herald celebrates its 190th birthday, three leading Australian writers consider the stepping stones to the development of Sydneyâs artistic culture.
April 23, 2021 â 4.00pm
Save
Normal text size
Advertisement
Everything changed in the 1970s. Until then, for almost three-quarters of the 20th century, London was still our cultural âhomeâ and Australian artists as varied as singer Nellie Melba, dancer Robert Helpmann, pianist Eileen Joyce, and actors Judith Anderson and Peter Finch debuted on its iconic stages in order to make names for themselves. Painters like Sidney Nolan, and playwrights Alan Seymour and Ray Lawler also joined this cultural caravan but apart from our most famous diva, Joan Sutherland
Poems from the enduring sonnet to the lyrical and the contemporary
By Geoff Page
Normal text size
Quemar Press, $20
The sonnet, in one language or another, has been around for some 800 years and is still in a strange kind of health, as manifest in this collection of ‘‘sonnet-like creatures’’ by Canberra poet S.K. Kelen.
A caricature of S.K. Kelen and his Love s Philosophy.
Credit:Phil Day
In the past 50 years or so there has been a particular enthusiasm for what might be called ‘‘blank verse sonnets’’ (vide Robert Lowell in the US or John Tranter in Australia). These benefit from the ‘‘shadow’’ of the old form while refusing to be bound by its complexities other than its length and an often loose iambic pentameter. S.K. Kelen, who mainly abjures rhyme and employs lines of very different lengths, is clearly in this tradition.
Normal text size
Very large text size
What a year. Who would have thought this time last year that 2020 would bring a pandemic? And what did it mean for books? Well, publishing schedules went a bit haywire as titles were postponed, trumpeted or slipped under the radar. It was possibly the worst time to be a debut author, with launches taking on a new identity.
Writers festivals and bookshop events were cancelled or migrated online. But didn t we readers respond well? We took to virtual events in our homes with alacrity, while festival directors swiftly and imaginatively adapted their offerings in a new world.