Accessibility Tools

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

ABR Arts

Theatre

Gaslight 

Rodney Rigby for Newtheatricals in association with Queensland Theatre

Book of the Week

Ghosts of Paradise
Poetry

Ghosts of Paradise by Stephen Edgar

With a title like Ghosts of Paradise, it is no surprise that Stephen Edgar’s latest poetry collection is haunted by loss, mutability, and mortality – the great traditional themes of elegiac poetry. But Edgar’s poetry has long, if not always, been characteristically elegiac. In this new collection, Edgar’s first since winning the Prime Minister’s Award for poetry in 2021 (and his first for Pitt Street Poetry), the poems are haunted by the poet’s late parents, late fellow poets (especially W.B. Yeats, but also the Australian poet Robert Adamson, for whom there is an elegy), and ancient poetic forms, such as the sonnet. The collection also includes meditations on ageing, corpses, and photographs (including Roland Barthes’ ‘theory / That every photo is a memento mori’). An interest in the intertwining of memory, embodiment, and visual representation is powerfully realised in ‘Still Life’, in which the memory of a trip to Broken Hill is

Interview

Interview

Interview

From the Archive

December 2008–January 2009, no. 307

Making Women Count: A history of the women’s electoral lobby in Australia by Marian Sawer

Less revolutionary than Women’s Liberation, the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) has been challenging the Australian system from the inside for more than thirty years. Social scientist Marian Sawer details WEL’s foundation, achievements and legacy, while situating it within the global women’s movement. A profusion of facts, figures, photographs and quotations are available for those interested in digging up the roots of feminist history. On the other hand, those seeking vibrant depictions of Australia’s second-wave feminist pioneers and their achievements will come away disappointed. To be fair, WEL’s collectivist and pragmatic nature is not amenable to a focus on charismatic leaders or radical action; however, Sawer’s chosen format has jumbled together information, with little standing out from the throng.

From the Archive

March 2015, no. 369

Geoffrey Blainey reviews 'A Companion to the Australian Media' edited by Bridget Griffen-Foley

This impressive collection of knowledge ranges from the history of newspapers and the biographies of radio and television stars to the rise of media owners (the first of whom, Andrew Bent, arrived as a convict in 1812). It covers war reporting, food and sports coverage, children’s radio, blogging and podcasting, and even the life of the radio serial Blue Hills, which ran from 1949 to 1976.

From the Archive

June 2010, issue no. 322

The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles edited by Kenneth Womack

Winner of the Independent ‘Music Book of the Year’ for 2009,The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles is a collection of thirteen essays dedicated to arguably the most significant pop/rock group of the last century. It follows such recent tomes as Walter Everett’s two-volume The Beatles as Musicians (1999–2001), Devin McKinney’s Magic Circles (2003), the Beatles’ self-penned Anthology (2000), Kenneth Womack’s and Todd F. Davis’ Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four (2006) and Olivier Julien’s Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today(2009). One might, therefore, question whether yet another substantial volume can add anything of interest – in fact, some of the contributors to the Companion also appear in Julien’s book – but the Companion is a most worthwhile addition to ‘Beatleology’. All chapters have merits, but as the contributors come from a variety of disciplines, the overall tenor of the volume is uneven: some pieces (such as Bruce Spizer’s unreferenced ‘Apple Record’) are aimed at a general audience, while others (such as Walter Everett’s ‘Any Time at All: The Beatles’ Free-Phrase Rhythms’) are suited to musically literate readers. Inevitable overlap in information occurs at times.