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Mix Equal Parts Dr Johnson and Ambrose Bierce
Add a little sulphur, and you get something like the following pastiche of The Devil’s Dictionary. Enjoy as you will . . . from Arena Magazine for September. Devil’s Dictionary Supplement
And a Good Time Was Had by All
Many thanks to Maria Dahvana Headley, the Melbourne Writers Festival and the fabulous audience (and my friends and family among them!) for helping to make our discussion of her novel, The Mere Wife, such a joy. photos by Bec DiNapoli
Eal is læne
Or, in modern English (sort of), ‘All things must pass’. The old site of Flinders Books, where once I passed myself off as a bookseller, has reverted to form (after a fashion) from a Bon Bon Bakers to a Book … Continue reading
The Melbourne Writers Festival Update
The session I’ve been asked to participate in, which centres on Maria Dahvana Headley’s modern adaptation of Beowulf, a novel titled The Mere Wife, will be taking place in a different venue than first publicised. Here’s the program entry: Maria Dahvana Headley: … Continue reading
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