Our small wonder prose poem/micro fiction competition kicked off on October 16 and so we thought it timely to reflect on the fine tradition of prose poetry in Australia. This week on The Column, Ali Jane Smith reviews The Indigo Book of Australian Prose Poems, Edited by Michael Byrne (Ginninderra Press, 2011). Opening an anthology … Read More
THE COLUMN
Recycling Tales: unearthing treasures in the short stories of Angela Carter and Margo Lanagan
This week, guest blogger, Karina Brabham dives into the work of two short fiction greats, Britain’s late Angela Carter and Australia’s Margo Lanagan, to find out how they each take something old and turn it into something shiny and new. Writers are recyclers at heart. Not necessarily in an environmental sense, but rather that we … Read More
First sentences
Listening to Stanley Fish talk about the sentence on The Book Show got us thinking here at The Column about exemplary first sentences from Australian short stories. Here’s what Fish had to say about the opening sentence. ‘It is a promissory note. It telegraphs everything that’s going to follow … It has an angle of … Read More
Guest blogger Ryan O’Neill
Marcus Clarke’s Offspring In his 1958 essay, “The Prodigal Son” Patrick White railed against Australian fiction as being “the dreary, dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism.” While it is true that realism has long been dominant in Australian writing, and the Australian short story, there is a long tradition of experimental stories in Australia, as far … Read More