writer | editor | artist
This is the first in a series of regular posts I’m planning under the ‘Baking with Boo’ category. Each weekend I’ll post a little something about our adventures in the kitchen. With piccies and recipes. We started our little baking on Sunday ritual after getting hooked on the Great British Bake-Off, which — here in Aus…
SPOILER ALERT: This long ramble about Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows includes a discussion of the book’s ending. You can safely read right up till the ‘spoiler alert’ graphic. Also, the book (and my ramblings about reading it) includes discussions of suicide. Just sayin’. 🙂 I belong to a book club. Have I told…
It was 1955, and she was twenty-three, living in Sydney and selling dresses in a department store. She had realised that she didn’t have the money to finish her medical training, and, after a year working in various hospitals, that she didn’t want to be a nurse. Nevertheless, she was bored with selling dresses; she…
Ten generations ago the queen entered the earth. And each generation has had its drummer. Wee Whittler is ours. Small and dark and sombre, she sits cross-legged on top of the mound, at dawn and at dusk, and patters and pounds the world into waking. Into sleep. When I was a child I would go with the…
Kay was one of those they’d Banished. Like prisoners in the old days, or the mad or the homeless, the Banished were as good as dead. In the eyes of the law, anyhow. They had no right to roof or food or love, no right to speak (in public or in private places), no right to…
She never calls you back: Think back – or go through your email and the call history on your mobile. Is it always you initiating contact? Is that contact sometimes (perhaps even mostly) met with a resounding silence, or a request that you go away and leave her alone? You’re blocked! Has she blocked you on all her social media, so you’re…
No 200 words today! That’s because, instead, I’ve written a guest post/piece of short memoir about my time aboard the SS Ming Hua, as a guest post on Rebecca Jessen’s blog. To read about the pleasures of cruising the Pacific aboard this wonder of the 1980s, take a trip back in time to Ming Hua memories…
Today’s guest post brought to you by the beautiful, and talented, Rebecca Jessen. As some of you know, Bec is very dear to me, so I won’t rave on about her talents as a writer, at the risk of appearing prejudiced. BUT, she’s an impressively alert, attentive and tender writer. After you’ve read this small…
— for B– It’s true what they say; that you’re too young for me. And so I’ve decided to stop here, at the age I am, and wait for you. Later tonight, while you’re sleeping, I will walk into the forest near our home, and find a shaded grove with a tree whose topmost branches…
Today’s guest post is brought to you by a young performance poet I first met at a strange little poetry gig at Rick’s Garage in Palmwoods. Indie Adams blew the rest of the poets off the stage with her combination of strength and vulnerability. This short piece was inspired by the lovely artwork by the Polish…