Cirrus@Austlit

'In One Punch Barry Dickins reflects on the many types of violence that can now affect everyday life. In his heartfelt exploration of the subject, Barry talks to many of the people whom this violence impacts, including the parents of children who have been killed, professionals in the justice system, and children who live in communities where violence is rife. He looks at how the world has changed in his lifetime and discusses where we are going as a society.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Over the years it has occurred to me to illustrate my books and newspaper columns and for fifty years I have decorated verse or prose or plays with embroideries to try to brighten up the appearance of the ghostly white paper pages, and it has been a real pleasure indeed to offend or amuse readers, who possibly didn’t expect defamation as a drawing and assumed libel had only to do with words.' (Introduction)

'Having no say is common politically but to not be able to say a word of sense or even nonsense at a young person’s funeral due to present not future shock is the story of my short one woman monologue called Speechless'.

Source: La Mama program.

'From acclaimed playwright and writer Barry Dickins, Last Words is the story of Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia. Fifty years after his death, questions remain unanswered. Ryan had been found guilty of murdering prison officer George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison with fellow inmate Peter Walker. But did he really fire the bullet that killed Hodson?

'On 3 February 1967, despite public outrage and vocal protests from wide-ranging community groups, Ryan became the last person to be legally executed in Australia.

'It was the first time in 20 years that the death penalty had been enforced by the state. Many thought that Ryan's execution was Victorian Premier Henry Bolte's attempt to bolster his chances of winning the upcoming Victorian election, during which he ran a campaign promoting his law-and-order agenda.

'Last Words is as much about the hanged man as much as it is about the trauma of his family, and the political opportunism behind the decision to proceed with the hanging. In Dickins' lyrical prose he takes readers into the last weeks of Ryan's life and brings to life this infamous man whose personal story has gone undocumented until now. ' (Publication summary)

'It was nearing Christmas and I had a dream. What if the baby Jesus arrived in Australia in a distant corner of the Outback? Would wise men still travel to welcome him?' (Publication summary)

'In the course of one life lived beyond belief although couched in the ordinary there once existed a gentleman named Ernid Ernst. Possessing an extraordinary name he looked for extraordinary work but after emigrating with his humorless parents from Prague forty years or so ago all he could find as a job was a common shift-working engagement in Sydney at Burp Lemonade Works who were determined to conquer Coke as the universe’s preferred fizzy drink.

'He commenced operations as a lowly vat watcher where his duties consisted mainly of observing it fizz.

'He rose rapidly through the ranks and made it to the esteemed position of Logo. Without his really knowing he became the very drink he manufactured and his new life was hedonistic and ravishing and his fame bought him a wild ride he was incapable of paying for without a soul he could call his own.

'He also became delusional after falling from lofty heights into the very vats he inspected with a great eye for chemical variations. His tumbling down into a particularly large lemonade vat sent him insane in next to no time and thenceforward he thought he was really someone else entirely such as Lee Harvey Oswald the lone assassin of President John Kennedy, and he thus endeavored to simultaneously promote his company’s famous drink and put up with the added psychological pressure of believing he slew JFK in 1963.

'The entire area surrounding his silent and humble parent’s home was razed to the ground by sniggering local councils and by virtue of a government decree the new way to live in Sydney was in a hole.

'The living in a hole wasn’t as horrid as it might seem but there was simply not a single thing anyone could possibly do about it.

'The Mouthless Murderer is fantasy and real simultaneously exactly as it is in Australia as we go to press. We are dying of leadership and the poor suffer in ways tragic and unfunny unless you have the heart to laugh out loud at them, as the rich find easy.

'February the 3rd, 1967. A man waits alone in a prison cell in Pentridge Prison in Coburg, Victoria. Very soon, he will either be pardoned for a crime he insists he never committed, or executed for it. As the clock ticks and voices outside scream his name for pardon or life imprisonment rather than death by hanging, he suffers to see whether he shall be spared or etched into the history books as one of the darkest moments in criminal history.

'Returning to the subject of his award-winning play Remembering Ronald Ryan, Barry Dickins crafts a haunting monologue, a portrait of a man on the edge of oblivion, pulled between accepting his fate and holding onto hope. ' (Publication summary)

'Two extremely solitary women, powered by mist and rude thought, appear to be performers in a farce straight from The West End…or Geelong.

'Rose Viper hates her daughter Cynthia, who reciprocates. Each minute is divided into real life pathos and all too-real potential tragedy. They refuse help but welcome torture.' (Source: La Mama website)