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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

May 1987, no. 90

Gallipoli: One Long Grave by Kit Denton

In a response to Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli published in Quadrant in 1982, Gerard Henderson observed that ‘recounting the story of the Anzacs has become something of a growth industry’. Five years on, the Gallipoli industry shows no sign of a downturn. The salvaging and publication of war diaries, letters and manuscripts that had long mouldered in museums, libraries and attics, the spate of ‘epic’ teledramas and ersatz war fiction (like Jack Bennett’s spin-off from the aforesaid movie), new historical studies and the resurrection of old ones such as C. E. W. Bean’s Official History and, at the other end of the scale, John Laffin’s Digger: The story of the Australian soldier (its subtitle magically changed to ‘The legend of the Australian soldier’), all attest to the enduring appeal of Australia’s military exploits to writers and filmmakers and to the subject’s ability to tap a popular audience.

From the Archive

December 2015, no. 377

Open Page with Don Watson

Though I doubt a critic ever improved a writer's work, a good one makes a difference to a culture. They are rare and valuable. Bad critics are worse than bad writers, but I know from trying years ago that they have an equally good excuse. It is for this reason that I have avoided answering the question.

From the Archive

April 2004, no. 260

The Philosopher’s Doll by Amanda Lohrey

When the Australian government urged older workers to delay retirement, some observers saw this as ‘wedge’ politics. One ageing media personality joked about younger women refusing to have babies sufficient to care for him in his dotage. For electors, the falling birth rate may be a controversial economic issue, but for some couples, and especially women, decisions about procreation are not theoretical exercises but painful personal dilemmas.