Good to see that the world's attention (of a sort) is being directed at the mining company South32's government-backed hyper-destruction of the northern jarrah forests in the south of Western Australia. That it comes via a Hollywood actor is neither here nor there, the facts are the facts and if Leonardo Di Caprio brings attention to this horrific reality, then that's a good use of 'influence'.  So much use of influence is dubious and ultimately self-serving (usually a form of vanity, profiteering and/or ideological control), but a world in denial about habitat destruction will not hear u ..read more

This is the second experimental poem-film of the new series. It is concerned with the ongoing threat to Julimar Forest by Chalice Mining. It draws colonial imagery (the horror Round House prison in Fremantle, the Western Australian Parliament House with mining economy skyscrapers peeking over the top, and Royal King's Park Tennis Club) into the ambit of the forest and also Ramsar protected wetlands on Wadandi country near Busselton (very close to where my Irish colonial forebears arrived in the mid-nineteenth century after escaping British colonialism!) to emphasise the invasive destruction of ..read more

Over the last eighteen months I have been steadily accumulating 'footage' for a series of new experimental poem-films. This is the first and was filmed in at various locations in Germany Ireland, Switzerland and Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. 'Origins of Colonialism #' is a demi-silent film (here)... there is sound, and the jackhammering is omnipresent, a motif of terror, but a conceptual silence also underpins the whole: the silence of a world still largely and materially in denial of collapsing eco-systems, and also the silence around confronting the causes of ongoing colonialism (one of ..read more

And where have all the anti-nuclear peace protesters gone? Apexing   As the propaganda unfurls to make a complaisant audience even more pliable, we hear of the unsighted sonar world of insight into the call of whales, the sea creature speech that is a privilege to eavesdrop on, to warm the soul the deeper and colder it gets. ‘Brothers and sisters’ in the new regime, precise as torpedoes, concise as thirty-second showers, intimate as cramped living conditions in which ‘sex’ is off the menu (‘steak and lobster’ is on). The massaging of reception as the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine ..read more

By Tracy In the last few days I've revived my till-now inactive Youtube channel now going by the title of Language Learning Life.  It will feature discussions of language learning (French, German, Italian, Irish/Gaelic and more), reviews of resources for learning particular languages, and posts about translation. Language studies and literature being on a continuum, there will also be literary items arising from our daily lives — past & future events, short readings including poetry from John Kinsella and Tim Kinsella as well as myself. It's likely I'll upload quite regularly so do ..read more

By Tracy Ryan Back in late 2023, I posted about my first historical novel (my sixth novel, but first in that genre), The Queen's Apprenticeship, being published with Transit Lounge. It intertwines the third-person narrative of a real-life figure, Marguerite de Navarre, with that of a completely imagined character from a very different background whose first-person tale Marguerite is reading, embedding one story within the other... In late 2024, the Spanish edition of that novel appeared with Ediciones Maeva, for any of you who read Spanish — or know somebody who does, and who might like histor ..read more

Graphology Superscription 142: genocide phase 2 Gaza   The thin stretch of land Gazan Palestinians have called home is more than a ‘sea view’.   But complicated by rubble and the odour of death, the US will help decorate the guilty reminders.   And though it might be deft to say Trump’s declarations are a real estate developer’s   sense of land-usage, of the profit that will come from a glossy future,   it’s actually far more devious than going eighteen holes (ready-formed by shell-   craters). In the sweeping aside of logger- head turtles and jackals, in ensuring ..read more

As someone who campaigns against all violence and for those suffering in Gaza (and other zones of violence), I am appalled by the attacks on synagogues in Australia. Deeply, deeply appalled. Some of you might have read my On the Outskirts collection with poems such as 'Denkmal' which try to challenge antisemitism across history. The conflating of 'Jew' with the Israeli military/govt is fundamentally wrong (it is supported by WASP America etc, what’s more) and is a typical and toxic bigotry come of an unwillingness to analyse closely. Anyway, this is not my point. My point is that as someone wh ..read more

 Memoir               in memory of Brenda Walker   (i)     Out walking the relative cool   of the morning and discussing   day’s unfolding with the magpie tiding,   the loss of a friend emanates   from the bush of Kaarta Koomba   and follows the river up over The Scarp,   traces river, brook, and dry ‘winter creek’   to inflect so many conversations   on writing, on how to make a way   through memoir and remember   all we have passed, all we will sens ..read more

Graphology Superscription 117: administrations Without viewing the visuals, you’ll  likely know  what killing  looks like. And you’ll know that Biden’s call for Ukraine to ‘revise’ its recruitment age  from twenty-five to eighteen is an ‘anthem for doomed youth’ played out by proxy. An act of creative  thinking. And you’ll reason that increased weapons-flow is the twist in a presidential  pardon that serves next generations. You are forgiven... and you... and you. Thanks very much (from afar) for your sacrifice. Processing, you’ll second-guess that a new admi ..read more