Author Archives: Bob
A Few More Poems for Arena Magazine
A trio of shorts in Arena Magazine Arena-Poems-June-2018
The Melbourne Writers Festival: Update
Here’s a schedule-update for the panel-discussion of the new Beowulf-inspired novel by Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife, on which I will be a contributor. It will happen in ACMI Cinema 1 at Federation Square, Sunday 26 August at 10 am.
The MLS Refectory: One-Off Cancellation
The upcoming session for Wednesday 6 June has been cancelled, because I have an out-of-town teaching commitment. Apologies for any disappointment or inconvenience, but we’ll be back to our usual weekly schedule from Wednesday 13 June, at our usual time … Continue reading
Got a Gig of Sorts
Big thanks to Felix Nobis and Marieke Hardy for inviting me to take part in a discussion of the forthcoming novel, The Mere Wife, by Maria Dahvana Headley at the Melbourne Writers Festival in August. The story re-imagines Beowulf in the setting … Continue reading
Better Late Than Never
Here’s a PDF of my write-up of my keynote address for the conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association last year, which just got published in the Association’s annual journal. I tried to have some fun . . . Patchy … Continue reading
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Ovid played naughty kid brother to his contemporary, Virgil, whose Aeneid became the normative (and soberly revered) foundational text for imperial Rome. Ovid’s Metamorphoses plays a much different game, resisting the unified effect of the Homeric model to produce a patchwork … Continue reading
One of My 2018 Projects
As I’ve previously posted, I’m curtailing my teaching commitments in 2018 to take a writing sabbatical. One of the big projects is a novel I’ve been trying to write for decades, that’s begun happening again with a curious twist of … Continue reading
A Recent Piece
A poem I’ve recently written that alludes to an iconic suspension bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island in New York City, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a major fixture of my early life and travels. Fyi, the town on Long Island … Continue reading
The MLS Refectory: The Poems of Richard Wrigley
Those of you who’ve been regular attenders of our Refectory sessions will know Richard Wrigley, a Melbourne poet who’s himself been a regular contributor to our conversations. After the publication of his recent book of poems, Honeycomb and Diamonds, I … Continue reading
Too Good to Pass By
Best cartoon I’ve come across in ages. For all the Dickinson fans out there . . .