Woohoo! Approval has just come through for a course I’ll be teaching at USQ in semester one next year. The course is called CWR2001 Fairytales and Other Forms. According to the newly-approved synopsis (not yet available on the uni website, but soon, I promise!): Through close study of a range … Continue reading
I am interested in usable truths. I am interested in food I can eat, water I can drink, and stories I can tell. I am interested in doorways and roads: leading in, leading out. I am interested in stones, particularly the stones that mark the path we must walk tonight. My mother … Continue reading
After lunch, we wander along the foreshore of the lake. There’s a raised wooden path, shaded and cool. As we walk, she tells we how the lake formed. ‘Where the lake is now,’ she says, ‘used to a great valley full of trees. The local people used to come here … Continue reading
Just outside the door to my office is the photocopier. Things have been like this since the refurbishment, and I don’t see them changing any time soon. At first, this was good: convenient. I can hear my printing running off, and if I need to photocopy something for a student visiting … Continue reading
She had, for some time, been considering the poem he wrote for her. This poem in which she did not recognise herself. It was true that she had worn black for many years; that she lived in mourning for some part of herself she could not name.In her own dreams, … Continue reading
Today – oh joy of joys! – a guest post from the inestimable Jane Bryony Rawson. Jane is the author of A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (published by Transit Lounge), which has most recently been shortlisted for the Most Underrrated Book Award 2014. Writing in The … Continue reading
I want to offer you forgiveness. I want to offer to myself, as a gift, my forgiveness of you.
On the afternoon of February second, you brought snowdrops into the house. Armfuls of them, their heads shyly drooping. Every empty jar in the house was filled with them. Then you set freshly-blessed candles on the tables and windowsills alongside the flowers. The scent of flowers and beeswax warmed the house.’They must burn all night,’ you … Continue reading
When the job was done, Jared went down to the river and took off his shirt to wash it. Then he walked home, toiling up the long rise to our place. It was late afternoon, and the light had that drowned golden tone it gets at times. The road cut … Continue reading
Recently, a fellow writer who has often received feedback telling them they need to proofread their work more carefully asked me for some advice on proofreading. Here’s what I came up with in terms of advice on how to approach proofreading your own work, with a little help from your friends. What is … Continue reading