Cirrus@Austlit

'It was at one of the smaller towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway, one of the two-minute stops that are so easy to miss altogether between Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, that the government inspectors boarded our train. My husband Timothy and I were alerted to their presence when the stewardess who had taken our tickets came to our cabin shortly after 9 p.m. and told us that "inspectors of the regime" were aboard, and could we please lock our door and not open it for any reason until she came to fetch us. We did as she said, and also closed the window curtains. It was not necessary to turn out the lights, for we had not figured out how to turn them on or indeed whether they were working or broken. The last thing Timothy said before we lapsed into silence was, "This supports my bribe theory."' (Publication summary)

'Bruce Chatwin's Songlines (1988) has become famous for the way in which Chatwin was able to communicate to a popular audience the richness of the Aboriginal song cycles or Dreaming tracks that criss-cross vast regions of Central Australia. Chatwin had read T.G.H. Strehlow's Songs of Central Australia (1971), greatly admiring the idiosyncratic nature of Strehlow's work. It was Strehlow's depth of scholarship combined with his comparison of Aranda song with other literary traditions across the globe that attracted Chatwin - and which also incensed the anthropological community.' (Publication abstract)

'Still alive when Les Murray was a young poet, Kenneth Slessor called him to a meeting, and passed on the torch. As far as I know, Murray has never recorded this moment in print, but I once heard him refer to it. He was rightly proud, because Slessor, in those days, was the Australian poet who filled our sky. Today Murray fills the sky not just in his homeland but in all the world. His achievement has been magisterial, and needs no further proving. If he adds more poems now, it can only be because he loves what he does.' (Publication abstract)