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    China Mieville and the future of Melbourne

    The various Overland events at the Melbourne Writers' Festival are now listed here. You'll note that Overland 196 features a special supplement (made possible by the City of Melbourne) with SF writers imagining different futures for the city. We're very pleased that joining the panel will be the utterly awesome British writer China Mieville. You can read an interview Rjurik did with China here. Oh, and you can also hear me babbling away about Killing on the RN Book Show here.

    Click to read full article
    Posted by Jeff on 02-07-2009
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    pullback

    what makes the green grass grow

    'Soldiers, what makes the green grass grow?'
    'Blood, blood, blood, Drill Sergeant!'
    - popular US Army training chant before deployment to Iraq

    cut grass, cut the

    sentiment. but bug-eyed faces poke
    glaring from between upended earth

    dolls left buried by the kids that used to
    live here but have since left buried

    as some television ad for trouble elsewhere
    poor kids hummed in a bloodless bubble

    the boy who bucketed the dust before the café
    is a facebust off an IED and

    Click to read full article
    Posted by Jennifer Mills on 01-07-2009
    2 user comments



    other people die, too

    You might have heard that Michael Jackson died recently. No, really -- he did. I was of the generation that had Thriller shoved down our throats, and that's spoiled any appreciation I might have had of Jackson's talents. People say that Off the Wall is a good record and maybe that's so. As for his personal life, well, David Walsh of the WSWS wrote a quite sympathetic obituary that's worth reading.

    Anyway, the coverage in recent days got me thinking about musicians whose deaths really did affect me. Our reaction to pop music is very personal, perhaps more so than other arts. It's difficult to think about a song or a band without remembering the first time you heard them, and thus a whole raft of other associations. Quite possibly, the list below will leave everyone else cold. Well, so be it.

    Click to read full article
    Posted by Jeff on 30-06-2009
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    Time to study Australia's role in the tragedy of Iraq

    From Crikey today:

    Our arrival into the military airport in Baghdad was like something from the ‘Charlie Don't Surf’ scene in the movie Apocalypse Now -- US air force jets taking off and landing, Iraqi forces with a heavy presence, US helicopters flying low and loudly across the skies, and the four Australian light-armoured vehicles waiting in the distance.

    That’s the Australian -- "the only media outlet invited" -- reporting on Julia Gillard in Iraq, visiting the 90 Australian soldiers still there.

    Click to read full article
    Posted by Jeff on 29-06-2009
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    little michael (a poem)

    dear michael / would you believe it
    congress stood for you today
    & not just the coloured section
    the whole goddamn fucking chamber
    you might have guessed by now
    mike / that jesse jackson made them
    bt i swear / for real / we heard
    no whisper of objection
    oh michael / wz the least
    we all could do / sixty seconds
    quiet / for lifetimes
    of what we did to you / oh
    little michael / who brought
    salvation back / little michael
    witnessing the streets / jehovah
    come in a five inch afro
    & size ten bell-bottom jeans

    all shook our heads & stood
    for you / little michael
    silent / not knowing
    wz the worst that we could do
    cz all yr life folk stood around
    & watched / here comes little michael
    everybody shhh check out
    what he can do

    oh michael / would you believe it
    today congress stood for you
    same old little michael / nobody
    spoke / we found gabriel in
    that voice of yours / & looked past
    the empty eyes / childhood
    locked up / behind a thug on
    a tour bus / nobody spoke up
    & little michael / a tired
    twelve-year-old / sold
    platinum / how 'bout that
    everybody wz sayin
    little michael / y' know
    small black boy with the
    hair / cute smile / sings
    that song ABC & somethin else
    'bout salvation

    oh / little michael
    congress stood for you today
    & not just the coloured section
    the whole goddamn fucking chamber

    (c) Maxine Clarke 2009.


    Posted by Maxine on 27-06-2009
    3 user comments



    overland underground

    hawthorn

    Under Hawthorn with @Sophiec and Doug.


    Posted by Jeff on 27-06-2009
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    Stuff I've been reading this week

    We don't have quite the room in our print magazine for reviews that we'd like, and I am rather lacklustre when it comes to regular blogging...so I'm going to try and write a weekly post about the books I am getting into. Needless to say these aren't reviews proper, just the scattered associations of an idle reader. Jeff got me thinking with his post about Australian landscape in literature and music. I can't be near a surf beach in Sydney without thinking of Puberty Blues, and can't lie on the concrete in a glaring summer day without thinking of Garner's Monkey Grip. But both of these are essentially forms of nostalgia for the never-experienced for me, published so many years ago, typifying aspects of the end of the seventies and eighties. These days I wouldn't be surprised in Tsiolkas has got Preston/Click to read full article

    Posted by Kalinda on 26-06-2009
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