Cirrus@Austlit

'In this week’s Podcast we’re delighted to present the five poems shortlisted in the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. This happily alliterative prize was created in 2005 and renamed in 2011, the year after the great poet’s death. Peter Rose introduces our far-flung quintet, who then introduce and read their poems. Further details and illuminating comments on the individual poems by the judges can be found here. We hope you enjoy these wonderful poems. It’s a great way to get to know them before the prize ceremony on Thursday, 19 January.' (Introduction)

'This week’s ABR Podcast is a special feature on the work and life of one of Australia’s finest poets, Peter Porter (1929-2010). Morag Fraser, currently at work on a biography of Porter, introduces the podcast, setting out the major currents of his life. From there, fifteen poets and critics read from the Porter oeuvre, in all its ‘variety and depth’, explains Fraser, and offer their own memories of the man. Listen to Gig Ryan, Sarah Holland-Batt, Martin Flanagan, John Kinsella, Judith Beveridge and more read from Porter’s making with words.'  (Introduction)

'This week we feature the 2013 winner of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world's leading prizes for a short story written in English. Michelle Michau-Crawford’s ‘Leaving Elvis’ is a story about regret and unlikely heroes, which has ‘echoes of the distinctive elements of Elizabeth Jolley’s own fiction’, according to the 2013 Jolley Prize judges. The 2023 Jolley Prize is currently open for entries. Listen to Michelle Michau-Crawford, a Western Australian writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, read 'Leaving Elvis'.' (Production summary) 

'The ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for short fiction, is now open and closes on April 24, with total prize money of $12,500. In this week’s ABR Podcast, we feature Maria Takolander’s story ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’, which won ABR’s short story competition in 2010, the year before it was renamed the Jolley Prize. It is one of the best-read features on ABR’s website, which hosts content going back to 1978. ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’ is an artful take on academic intrigue and absurdism. Maria Takolander’s story appeared in the December 2010–January 2011 issue of ABR. Listen to Maria Takolander reading her story thirteen years later.' (Production summary)

'Shirley Hazzard is widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest novelists, even though she published only four novels during her long lifetime. Now, Professor Brigitta Olubas from the University of New South Wales has written the first major literary biography of the writer in Shirley Hazzard: A writing life (Virago/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In this week’s ABR podcast, ABR Editor Peter Rose interviews Professor Olubas about her study of the ‘complex, alluring, peripatetic artist’. Listen to the interview here.' (Production summary)

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth reviews Alexis Wright’s new novel, Praiseworthy. Expectations are high: after all, Wright is the only author to have won both the Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize. Praiseworthy, Hughes-d’Aeth argues, is a book unlike any other. Grounded in an Indigenous cosmology, combining realism with absurdism, it takes aim at its ‘one true enemy’: assimilation.'

'This week on the ABR Podcast we revisit a shortlisted story from the 2016 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize: ‘Slut Trouble’ by Beejay Silcox. The provocatively titled story was republished in The Best Australian Stories 2017. Beejay is an ABR critic and the newly minted director of the Canberra Writers Festival. Listen to her read ‘Slut Trouble’, commended in the 2016 Jolley Prize.' 

'This week, on the ABR podcast, literary critic and editor Geordie Williamson reviews J.M. Coetzee’s new short story collection The Pole and Other Stories. At the age of eighty-three Coetzee has again proved himself a ‘true and loving creator’, argues Williamson, by denying his characters endings or wholeness – ‘the great lie of art’. Listen to Geordie Williamson with ‘Last things: J.M. Coetzee’s antipodal forces’, published in the July issue of ABR.' (Introduction)

'On this week’s ABR podcast, critic and essayist James Ley reflects on J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K, forty years after its publication. Coetzee’s fourth and Booker Prize-winning novel was his landmark work, explains Ley. This was despite it receiving criticism for supposedly eliding the political realities of Apartheid South Africa by being set in ‘the realm of allegory’. Listen to James Ley with ‘An obscure prodigy: J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K at forty’, published in the August issue of ABR.'

'This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors will read their story. The overall winner of the Jolley Prize will be announced at an online ceremony on August 17. Proceeding in alphabetical order, Episode One features Winter Bel’s ‘Black Wax’, published in the August issue of ABR.' (Introduction)

'This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors will read their story. The overall winner of the Jolley Prize will be announced at an online ceremony on August 17. Proceeding in alphabetical order, Episode Two features ‘The Mannequin’ by Rowan Heath, published in the August issue of ABR.' (Introduction)

'There is every reason for wanting to get to the bottom of Rupert Murdoch. It is arguable that he has done more than any modern individual to shape public life, policy, and conversation in those parts of the Anglosphere where his media interests either dominate or hold serious sway. His influence is richly textured, transformative. Beyond bringing a populist insouciance to his host of print and television properties, he is also unafraid of using his reach as a political weapon, a tactic used with such vehement ubiquity that governments pre-emptively buckle to what they suppose is the Murdoch line. Debate is thus distorted and circumscribed. Public anxiety is co-opted as a cynically exploited tool of sales and marketing.' (Introduction)

'This week on the ABR Podcast we celebrate twenty years of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize with readings from six winners. We invited these poets to reflect on the prize and their winning poems. Hear fresh readings from Judith Beveridge, A. Frances Johnson, Damen O’Brien, Sara M. Saleh, Alex Skovron and Judith Bishop. The 2024 Porter Prize, worth a total of $10,000, closes on October 9.' (Introduction)

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Sarah Ogilvie explores the mystery behind the Oxford English Dictionary’s (1928) Australian lexicon. Ogilvie, a former Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, tells us about the Melbourne Dictionary People, a group of nineteenth and early-twentieth century Melburnians who contributed Australianisms for the OED project. Listen to Sarah Ogilvie’s ‘The Melbourne Dictionary People: Active service to the mother tongue’, published in the September issue of ABR.' (Production summary)

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Desmond Manderson takes us back sixty years to the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition drafted by Yolngu leader Yunupingu. The Yirrkala petition called for constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights and can be seen as an antecedent to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Desmond Manderson is Director of the Centre for Law, Arts and Humanities at the Australian National University. Here he is with ‘Yunupingu’s song: Constitutions as acts of vision, not of division’, published in the September issue of ABR.' (Production summary)

'This week, on the ABR podcast, we feature a special conversation between author and journalist David Marr, historian Mark McKenna and ABR’s Georgina Arnott, recorded in the middle of September 2023, one month out from the Voice referendum. The subject was David Marr’s new book, Killing for Country: A family story, which takes the reader to early nineteenth-century New South Wales and follows the bloodshed of invasion as it tracks north.' (Publication abstract)

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Catriona Menzies-Pike reviews Richard Flanagan’s new hybrid work Question 7. Menzies-Pike argues that Flanagan’s ‘sweeping engagement with history ultimately brings the author back to himself’ in ways that limit understanding of the present tense. Catriona Menzies-Pike is a literary critic and former editor of the Sydney Review of Books. Listen to ‘The Measure of things: Flanagan’s looping book of questions’, published in the November issue of ABR.' (Production summary)

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Marilyn Lake reviews My Grandfather’s Clock: Four centuries of a British-Australian family by historian Graeme Davison. Lake argues that Davison has produced an ‘uncommonly good family history’, in part because of the broader history he tells. Marilyn Lake is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in History at the University of Melbourne. Listen to Marilyn Lake’s ‘The ancestors: An uncommonly good family history’, published in the November issue of ABR.' (Production summary)

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Jelena Dinić pays tribute to Charles Simic, the Yugoslavian-born American poet, essayist, and translator, who died earlier this year. After her own poetry received an award in 2020, Jelena Dinić initiated a correspondence with Simic in Serbian, two writers ‘born in a country that doesn’t exist anymore’. Jelena Dinić’s writing in Serbian and English has been published in several literary journals and anthologies. Listen to ‘”Come closer and listen”: A tribute to Charles Simic (1938–2023)’, published in the November issue of ABR.' (Publication summary)