Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

ABR Arts

Book of the Week

Highway 13
Fiction

Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane

Jorge Luis Borges thought the appearance of a major new author or creative work should prompt a realignment of literature’s family tree. Fresh genealogies of influence suddenly manifested, while old antecedents could find themselves pruned to a nub. Borges knew that actions in the present can remake our sense of past and future both.

Interview

Calibre Essays

From the Archive

March 2006, no. 279

2006 Peter Porter Poetry Prize Shortlist | ‘Mallee’ by Lisa Gorton

I. Claim

Wild birds rise before us, making the noise of a multitude clapping hands.
The men fire, fire again and still they rise, they rise clear out of range and
where they were they leave such wakes of light, they are tearing the blue-black
shadows out of the river; their wing tumult is shadows escaping air. Act
flung back to motives, they arc away from us and scatter till I am fierce
for what I cannot remember and still they rise, the vault is dark with their applause.

From the Archive

August 2006, no. 283

‘The art of communication’ by Stephanie Owen Reeder

Like all books, picture books are a vehicle of communication, narrative, information and emotions. Because of the adaptability of the picture-book genre, which communicates using both verbal and visual language systems, it is sometimes possible for authors and illustrators to challenge the underlying precepts of the role of language in the communication process.

From the Archive

February 2011, no. 328

The Penguin Book of the Ocean by James Bradley

Imagine a bookshop or library whose contents were shelved in a cross-generic way to include a section for Anthologies: this surely would be the largest division, encompassing all of the subsections of literature, science, music, philosophy ... The anthology (‘gathering of flowers’), with its impeccable classical pedigree, is the most comprehensive kind of book, catering in the contemporary reading economy to every conceivable market, from astral travelling, through gay fiction, ghost stories, long/short/tall stories, poetry of all persuasions, to travel in Turkey and Great Zoos of the World. There is a burgeoning publishers’ trade for the literary anthology – a ‘safe’ book, the serious reader’s stocking-filler, something with at least a few contributions calculated to entertain or edify.