Essays
Canberra, Schooled
It would seem then that, after fifty years or so, the so-called ‘Canberra School’ is still loosely ‘conservative’, though that single and somewhat pejorative adjective massively oversimplifies the variety to be found here. These new collections by Alan Gould, John Foulcher, Paul Cliff and Melinda Smith are all fine examples of the strength and diversity of poetry to be found in our capital city (and its regions) at the moment. The ‘Canberra School of Poetry’ may never have quite existed but clearly something substantial has.’
Grenville on the Frontier
The Secret River is best read in terms other than those Grenville has framed for it. The historical novel in the realist mode will never escape the sort of criticism pointed at Grenville: departing from the historical record and projecting the present onto the past. The needs of plot, drama, character and so on demand such departures; for if the historian is tied to the archive, the novelist is bound by the audience. The novelist’s distortions of the historical are necessary not just for artistic purposes, however, as fidelity to the historical record was never the exclusive goal in the first place. Rather than read The Secret River as ‘true history’ by cordoning off its departures from the historical record, we might instead think of it as a critical appropriation of frontier mythology.
Two Lives: Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing
If, for much of our lives, we regard our parents as indispensable to ourselves, defined and understood by their relationship to us – whether loving or fractious, distant or close – then this last work is Lessing’s gift to hers: a belated acknowledgement of Alfred and Emily as individuals, separate from her and from one another. She offers them a world without the war; without each other; perhaps most intriguingly, without their daughter – and by extension, without their author.’