I just got an email from the delightful Nataša, to let me know that one of my short stories is part of a small collection that have been translated into Serbian! You can access it online at Polja, where my story appears under the author name ‘Nik Berk’, along with other Australian writers such as…
Author: nike sulway
I’m nothing and the words are everything
I adore the Paris Review’s ‘Art of Fiction’ interviews. Long, rambling, instructional, irrelevant, earnest and tragic, befuddling and enlightening. They bring out the best and the worst in their subjects, allowing them the luxury of their own words about their own writing. In the Winter 2010 Issue of Paris Review, there’s an interview with one…
Fire Diary
Last night, I had the pleasure of launching Mark Tredinnick’s book of poetry, Fire Diary, at Avid Reader in West End. It was a beautiful, early summer evening. As usual, Avid Reader was the perfect venue: a real bookshop, filled to bursting with books of all kinds, from poetry to philosophy, architecture, art, politics, biography…
Martini Hour
I’ve been quiet of late, mostly because I’ve been working fairly steadily to get a draft done. Trying to stay ‘in’ the novel by touching base with it every day as I work through the first draft (not the zero draft). I’ve needed to do this for a lot of reasons, but one is that…
Translating Rilke: The (First) Duino Elegy
Lots of people speak about the difficulty of translating the first line of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, perhaps because it’s so well known (Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel/Ordnungen?). It’s a little like the opening line of Don Quixote, which can be used as a litmus test for any new translation of…
Cut,paste, paint …
The children are home for the school holidays, which means less writing time, and more play time. It’s been raining, so we decided to do some collage and painting activities…
Rain-beaten flowers and Rough Drafts
From the morning’s pages, unedited: The driveway is littered with blossoms knocked out of the canopy by the rain. The trees make a different sound in the rain, not rattling their limbs and leaves, but shirring, whispering like wet silk skirts. I knock on the door and hear her call out from the studio. She…
On Reviewing
In this month’s ALR Geordie Williamson and John Dale have their say about the current state of Australian literary criticism, partly as a contribution to the ongoing dialogue generated by Gideon Haigh’s piece ‘Feeding the Hand That Bites‘, and partly as an apperitif in preparation for a panel discussion at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre. Towards the…
Literary Quality Assurance Scheme
Here’s a little snippet from Richard Glover’s column in the weekend paper, which made me smile: Bring back the typewriter It was difficult to write a long novel using a typewriter. You’d have to pound away in a fog of Tipp-Ex and carbon fumes. Occasionally people like Dylan Thomas would write something really good and…
Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlists)
For the past several years, I have had the honour of being one of the judges of Emerging Author Category of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. Judging this award is always exciting and challenging, calling on each of us to reconsider – each year – what it is the award should be looking for in…