Martin Edmond Martin Edmond i(A47800 works by)
Born: Established: 1952 Ohakune, Wanganui, North Island,
c
New Zealand,
c
Pacific Region,
;
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 1981
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 The Direction of Indirection Martin Edmond , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2021;

— Review of Becoming a Bird : Untold Stories About Art Stephanie Radok , 2021 single work autobiography prose
1 1 y separately published work icon Isinglass Martin Edmond , Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2019 15423537 2019 single work novel

'He did this amazing wall painting, this mural…It was a city, a Paul Klee or a Max Ernst city, a city of the mind perhaps, or of antiquity. A dream city. It was a wonderful thing. It took a few days and nights to do, beautiful days and nights. All the other men who lived in the donga watched it come clear. They loved it. And then other men in the camp heard about it too and came to look.

'An unknown man comes ashore at a remote beach on the New South Wales coast. He is taken into detention and sent, ultimately, to Darwin. His captors call him Thursday after the day upon which he was found. Thursday doesn’t speak, but instead paints an enigmatic mural on the wall of his donga in the detention centre. It is a city, a dream city, and when he finishes he says a single word: Isinglass.

'This latest offering from author Martin Edmond is a beautifully written portrayal of the shameful practices of the Australian gulag archipelago, and a compelling story of a man adrift in an unkind world.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Edgar Allan Borges i "It was some kind of convention but I cannot now recall what it was about. All I remember is the venue,", Martin Edmond , 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 November no. 51 2018;
1 The Cashier and the Assistant Bookkeeper i "On the first pages of the Margaret Jull Costa translation of Fernando Pessoa’s (or Bernardo Soares’)", Martin Edmond , 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 November no. 51 2018;
1 Ghost Walking the Tamar Martin Edmond , Maggie Hall , 2017 single work prose
— Appears in: Communion Literary Magazine , June no. 7 2017;
1 Le Bateau Ivre i "The boat they gave me was a small wooden shell, a coracle, without a sail or oars", Martin Edmond , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 February no. 40 2016;
1 Fantasia of an Afternoon i "At 6.39 pm on the afternoon of 23 February, 2014, the lemony yellow light of the setting sun", Martin Edmond , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 February no. 40 2016;
1 Melesigenes to Palamedes i "I was born by the river, the old man said and then he paused.", Martin Edmond , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 February no. 40 2016;
1 Martin Edmond Martin Edmond , 2016 extract biography (The Supply Party : Ludwig Becker on the Burke and Wills Expedition)
— Appears in: A Single Tree : Voices from the Bush 2016; (p. 107-110)
1 Unhatched Eggs Martin Edmond , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , July 2015;

— Review of Sidney Nolan : A Life Nancy Underhill , 2015 single work biography
1 The Man Who Knew Too Much Martin Edmond , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2015;

— Review of Bill : The Life of William Dobell Scott Bevan , 2014 single work biography
1 HQ i "The girls in Duty Free, smiling vacantly before the perfume counters, wear tight black sheath dresses and", Martin Edmond , 2014 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 May no. 33 2014;
1 Wiradguri Country i "Our room at The Manor was vast and shadowy, dimly lit by three large apricot-coloured globes that you", Martin Edmond , 2014 single work poetry
— Appears in: Otoliths , 1 May no. 33 2014;
1 On Tasman Shores - Guy & Joe Lynch in Australasia On Tasman Shores - Guy and Joe Lynch in Australasia Martin Edmond , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 5 2014;

'The Tasman Sea, precisely defined by oceanographers, remains inchoate as a cultural area. It has, as it were, drifted in and out of consciousness over the two and a half centuries of European presence here; and remains an almost unknown quantity to prehistory. Its peak contact period was probably the sixty odd years between the discovery of gold in Victoria and the outbreak of the Great War; when the West Coasts of both New Zealand’s main islands, and the South East Coast of Australia, were twin shores of a land that shared an economy, a politics, a literature and a popular culture: much of which is reflected in the pages of The Bulletin from 1880s until 1914. There was, too, a kind of hangover of the pre-war era and of the ANZAC experience into the 1920s; but after that the notional country sank again beneath the waves.

'This paper attempts recovery of fragments of that lost zone from a prospective standpoint: beginning the restoration of a Weltanschauung which, while often occluded, has never really gone away. It will be undertaken by focussing upon the story of the Melbourne born Lynch brothers and their cohort: Guy and Joe Lynch, George Finey, Cecil ‘Unk’ White and Noel Cook, all of whom migrated from Auckland to Sydney after World War One and worked in the 1920s as artists, caricaturists and cartoonists on various newspapers and magazines. Joe was sculpted twice in stone by elder brother Guy; as a soldier standing on a plinth in the war memorial at Devonport, Auckland; and, controversially, as a faun in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. Joe Lynch fell, or jumped, from a ferry one night and drowned in Sydney harbour; and thereby became the inspiration for Kenneth Slessor’s great elegy, Five Bells.' (Publication abstract)

1 8 y separately published work icon Battarbee and Namatjira Martin Edmond , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2014 7950029 2014 single work biography

Battarbee and Namatjira is the double biography of artists Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira, one white Australian from Warrnambool in Victoria, the other Aboriginal, of the Arrernte people, from the Hermannsburg Mission west of Alice Springs. From their first encounters in the early 1930s, when Battarbee introduced Namatjira to the techniques of watercolour painting, through the period of Namatjira’s extraordinary popularity as a painter, to his tragic death in 1959, their close relationship was to have a decisive impact on Australian art. This double biography makes extensive use of Battarbee’s diaries for the first time, to throw new light on Namatjira’s life, and to bring Battarbee, who has been largely ignored by biographers, back into focus. Moving between the artists and their backgrounds, Edmond portrays the personal and social difficulties the two men faced, while at the same time illuminating large cultural themes – the traditions and legacies of the Arrernte, the influence of the Lutheran church, the development of anthropology and the evolution of Australian art. [From the publisher's website]

1 Declivities and Eminences Martin Edmond , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2014;

— Review of Acute Misfortune : The Life and Death of Adam Cullen Erik Jensen , 2014 single work biography
1 Cemetery Road Martin Edmond , 2014 single work prose
— Appears in: Communion Literary Magazine , June no. 1 2014;
1 Martin Edmond Reviews Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey Martin Edmond , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , May no. 15 2014;

— Review of Moving Among Strangers : Randolph Stow and My Family Gabrielle Carey , 2013 single work biography
1 The Village Martin Edmond , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 2 2013;
'This essay explores some of the lesser-known points of connection between the art worlds of Australia and New Zealand from the early to the mid-twentieth century.' (Author's abstract)
1 1 y separately published work icon Eternities Martin Edmond , Rockhampton : Otoliths , 2013 6031350 2013 selected work prose

'In ‘Eternities’, Martin Edmond chronicles lost and discarded things, people, places—the paradox is, the romantic desire for the ideal can be realized in dreaming. Meticulous research underpins the resurgence, via mechanisms of memory, portents-reading and hallucination, of the uncanny, seeping out of the detritus of past time. The intertexual transcends the dull mechanics of postmodern technique, emerging epically as the Koran, the Tora, Aztec lore and Old Testament parable populated with hitherto uncelebrated gypsies, thieves, dream-chasing hippies and murderers. ‘Eternities’ rolls with humanity, a secularized laughter and magic, as powerful as re-incarnation and pagan idol worship; such profound depth to the most innocuous recollections; revealing a Sydney crueler, kinder, more exotic and more magical than it ever was before: ‘It is as the book says—the redeemed world will be the same but not as this is. It’s theology without god....' (Publication summary)

X