A. Frances Johnson
A. Frances Johnson’s most recent poetry collection is Save As (2022).
In E.L. Doctorow’s The Waterworks (his 1994 novel of post-civil war America), the narrator McIlvaine addresses the reader: ‘We did not conduct ourselves as if we were preparatory to your time. There is nothing quaint or colourful about us.’ Doctorow reminds the reader that our sense of modernity is an illusion. As Delia Falconer has eloquently noted apropos Doctorow’s novel, the contempora ... (read more)
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Popular Western culture remains fascinated with the figure of the artist. This fascination is perhaps a more interesting object of study than the many depictions arising from it. The figure of the artist has been represented as predominantly masculine, replete with tics of grandiosity, addiction, and suffering. Cheesy and/or technically inadequate depictions of artistic process often attend. Artis ... (read more)
Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917), otherwise known as ‘The Proff’, was only a sometime plein-airiste at the Box Hill artists’ camp. He never made it out to Eaglemont and Heidelberg, as curator and historian Anne Gray has shown, debunking mythic accretions of place around the venerated so-called Heidelberg School.[1] Boxhill/Lilydale, laid down in 1882, was McCubbin’s trainline of choice. He ... (read more)
I have frequented too often the gift shops of Australian Impressionism. Back in 1985, I mooned over David Davies’ Templestowe twilight scene before purchasing the corresponding tea towel (for my mum), Fire’s On placemats with matching coasters (for my dad), and lost child mugs (for my siblings, only one of whom took offence).
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Postwar memorial gardens can be found the world over. Gardens scholar Paul Gough has noted how planted memory is an essential aspect of future remembering; gardens create inclusive spaces that rely on participation and careful nurturing to ensure that memory stays ‘alert, relevant and passed on from generation to generation’. The dedicated memory garden at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance i ... (read more)
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come ...
Song of Solomon, Verse 11-12
Tow
Lo, the cell phone sleeps in its cell.The raven deactivates the horizon.There is water for everyone,but not the kind you can drink.The interdiction crews bring slabsof plastic bottles and one-syllable wordsdeployed with bibl ... (read more)
Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were brought to Melbourne in 1839 by the protector of Aborigines, George Robinson, to 'civilise' the Victorian Aborigines. In late 1841, the two men and three women stole two guns and waged a six-week guerilla-style campaign in the Dandenongs and on the Mornington Peninsula, burning stations and killing two sealers. They were charged with murder and tried in Mel ... (read more)
You can't see water beyond the highway hoardings, but you are told Jesus walked on it. This is your best clue. Dinner settings, security doors, Viagra and tractor parts flash past like signed miracles.
But you feel something pull, not daintily at your sleeve, but with tidal will,a blood rush of stark equations of space and gravity you cannot hope to solve.
When you get there, sea fills out the w ... (read more)