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fifty-eight (the girl in this poem)

The girl in this poem does not love you She’s just a girl, after all one syllable, four letters barely a phoneme, she’s just a noun, common as a lettuce or a paperclip. The woman who wrote it on the other hand is a wreath of bones and blood wrapped round … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 11 Comments

fifty-six (buying beer for poets)

— In honour of World Poetry Day We are on the way to the meeting when one of the poets calls and asks us to pick up beer on the way. Although we are on the phone for a while (the fields of the Lockyer Valley flashing past us, fading … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 4 Comments

2015 James Tiptree, Jr Award

So, some amazingly wondrous news. I’ve been invited to join the jury for the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. I would like to ask you to help me and my fellow jurors find the BEST works for the award this year. You can do this by clicking on the link below … Continue reading

Author : nike

Review of Australian Fiction/The Nature of Things

Guess what! The latest issue of the Review of Australian Fiction features a brand new story by Jessica White, and another by me. Jessica is a country girl from New South Wales who, at just four years of age, lost most of her hearing due to meningitis. Being a determined little girl, she refused to … Continue reading

Filed under : Miscellaneous Ramblings
Author : nike

fifty-two (the craft of loneliness)

Some afternoons I would sit on the back deck and do nothing for so long that the light would fall out of the world. There is a moment, unfixable, between day and night, when you still believe you can see the wrens darting about. But then the light is truly gone, … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 2 Comments

Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet Eating her curds and whey; Along came a spider, Who sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffet away. The first printed version of ‘Little Miss Muffet’ appeared in a book of nursery rhymes published in 1805, though one old rumour has it that … Continue reading

Author : nike

The New Mother

This post is about the perils of being naughty, and of new mothers. And baking. It begins with a strange tale, drifts off into a discussion of sourdough starters (or ‘mothers’) and then documents our adventures with creating a new mother. Lucy Clifford and The New Mother Lucy Clifford (1846-1929) wrote … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 2 Comments

Melting Moments

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, … Continue reading

Filed under : Baking with Boo
Author : nike

On reading ‘All My Puny Sorrows’ by Miriam Toews

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 … Continue reading

Filed under : On Living , On Reading
Author : nike
Comments : 2 Comments

forty-nine (slumbrous)

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 … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 2 Comments
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