January 2012
4 posts
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On Writing Letters
When I was starting out as a writer, my mother took me to talk with a journalist-friend-of-the-family: this visit had a practical purpose, as we wanted to find out if there was any chance of my fulfilling my “work experience” week at the newspaper she worked for. More importantly, though, it was a chance for me to talk more generally with someone who made their living from words. I think I...
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“The poem is an effort to express a knowledge imperfectly felt, to articulate...”
– Richard Wilbur
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“I could have called it Violence!”: A conversation...
Though I have admired Maria Takolander’s poetry for a number of years now, I only got in touch with her a couple of months ago when I decided I’d like to write about her poem “Geography Lessons” in my Poems Revisited series. When this email exchange took place I was soon to travel to Melbourne, so I asked Maria if I might be able to interview her as well. Over a brisk weekend visiting my parents...
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On Slow Time
Joel McCrea as film director John Lloyd Sullivan watches a film in jail in Sullivan’s Travels
This past week I went to the cinema to see the new Alexander Payne film The Descendants on its opening day. I could easily write a review of this film—and perhaps, another time, I will—but what struck me was my experience of slow time in the watching of this movie. When I say “slow time” I don’t...
