Monday musings

Monday musings on Australian literature: Blake Poetry Prize

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Coincidentally, I reviewed a book of poetry by Paris Rosemont just as the longlist for the current Blake Poetry Prize was announced, and it includes a poem by her. The timing seemed right to give this prize some air. I have mentioned it before – but only in passing in my 2024 Poetry Month post in which I wrote about the Kings College Choir Cambridge Performing an Australian poem set to music. The poem was On finding Charlotte in the anthropological record by poet and visual artist, Judith Nangala Crispin, and it won the Blake Poetry Prize in 2020 (see the poet read it online here).

The Blake Prize is named for William Blake, who, England’s Blake Society writes, was “unusually … equally a writer and a visual artist”. Indeed the Society apparently laid a stone on his grave that reads ‘Poet Artist Prophet’. Now you may have noticed that I wrote “the Blake Prize”, because in Australia it was, initially, an art prize. Australia’s Blake Society and the prize were established in 1951, with the prize awarded annually until 2015. From 2016, it has been awarded biennially. Originally titled the Blake Prize for Religious Art, it is now, simply, the Blake Prize, with the criterion broadening out to, says Wikipedia, “art that explores spirituality”. You can read some of the complicated history of the prize – including controversies concerning the definition of “religious” – in the Wikipedia article.

Meanwhile, I’ll get to the Blake Poetry Prize. It is related to the above prize, and is now managed by the same organisation, the Liverpool Powerhouse, but in conjunction with WestWords. It is for “a new work of 100 lines or less, focused on non-sectarian spiritual and religious topics”, and is worth A$5,000. WestWords currently describes it as

an open poetry prize that challenges poets, both national and international, in conversations concerning faith, spirituality, religion and/or belief.

Further down the page, it reiterates that the prize is “strictly non-sectarian” and says that “all poems entered must have a recognisable religious or spiritual integrity and demonstrate high degrees of artistic and conceptual proficiency”.

AustLit summarises the prize’s short but chequered history:

The Blake Poetry Prize was established in 2008 by The Blake Society, in partnership with the NSW Writers’ Centre and sponsored by Leichhardt Council in NSW. From 2016 (after a loss in funding), Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (CPAC)* and Liverpool City Council took over funding and managing both the art prize and the poetry prize, with events moving to Casula. From 2017, management was intended to shift to Liverpool City Library, in conjunction with CPAC, but bookshop Westwords ultimately took the library’s role in the partnership.

WestWords, in its current iteration, is far, far more than a bookshop (as you can read here), but it must have started as a bookshop.

Like the art prize, the poetry prize is now presented biennially. And I am confused, because Wikipedia and AustLit say the Poetry Prize was established in 2008, and it has been biennial for a few years, yet this year’s longlist is labelled the 69th. It seems that the Poetry Prize numbering is aligned with the numbering of the Art Prize.

Blake Poetry Prize Winners (2008-2024)

The winners to date are:

  • 2008: Mark Tredinnick, “Have You Seen”
  • 2009: John Watson, “Four Ways to Approach the Numinous”
  • 2010: Tasha Sudan, “Rahula”
  • 2011: Robert Adamson, “Via Negativa, The Divine Dark”
  • 2012: Graham Kershaw, “Altar Rock”
  • 2013: Anthony Lawrence, “Appellations”
  • 2014: Dave Drayton, “Threnodials”
  • 2017: Julie Watts, “The Story of Julian who never knew that we loved him”
  • 2020: Judith Nangala Crispin, “On Finding Charlotte in the Anthropological Record”
  • 2022: Simone King, “Surfing Again”
  • 2024: Coco X. Huang, “Three Lessons”

69th Blake Poetry Prize Longlist (2026)

This year’s prize was judged by three poets – Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon, Kevin Brophy and last year’s winner, Coco X. Huang.

The longlist for this year’s prize was presented on the WestWords site in a seemingly random order – poetic licence, perhaps? But, it’s a long longlist so, because I am librarian-trained and like to make finding information easy, I have reorganised it into alphabetical order by poet’s last name (to the best of my knowledge). Apologies if I have upset any listing or naming conventions. I have not, however, changed the capitalisation of the titles (to suit my editorial convention) as poets can be particular about things like punctuation. Links on poets are to any posts I have tagged with the poet’s name, though the posts are not necessarily on their poetry!

  • Sela Ahosivi-Atiola, Mending Skies
  • Allison Browning, There’s No Such Thing as Astrology (Or: The last Trump/Odious Joy)
  • Gayelene Carbis, Divinations
  • Phillippa Cordwell, Father 
  • Gregory Day, The Church Was Strangely Empty But The Day Outside Was Full: his collection Southsightedness is on my TBR
  • Adrienne Eberhard, Ten Blessings of Upper Blessington 
  • Jo Gardiner, Giornata
  • Ross Gillett, Cave Faith
  • Ross Gillett, The Room and the River
  • Stephanie Green, Equilateral
  • Catherine Johnstone, THE DRAWING: a sestina
  • Cliff Kemmett, Ahead Of Us, Our Past Burns Still 
  • Cate Kennedy, Suddenly Getting Religion
  • Moira Kirkwood, Tiny home
  • Jeanine Leane, Gundyarri-galang bila-gu
  • Wes Lee, Prayer at the Cove 
  • Wes Lee, The broken smashed rubble of everything I owned
  • Gershon Maller, The Transcendentalist
  • Shey Marque, The Body as Tidal Scripture
  • Freshta Nawabi, Jigar in a Jar
  • Kerrie Nelson, Why would you drive on a day like this, unless for good reason
  • Jenny Pollak, A faint echo from the South
  • Omar Sakr, Ode to Prednisone
  • Kathryn Reese, Post Vespers 
  • Paris Rosemont, Verdigrisleeves
  • Josephine Shevchenko, Invisible but Potent
  • Laura Jan Shore, Sometimes A River Wave
  • Ella Skilbeck-Porter, Intonation
  • Terri Slanovits, Aftermath
  • David Terelinck, Watching the Storm from My Hospital Bed
  • Mark Tredinnick, Nothing Will Be Lost: won the inaugural Montreal International Poetry Prize in 2011, and a previous winner of this prize (among others)
  • Anders Villani, Under the Banner of Heaven
  • Chen Wang, The Woman Who Refused the Kingdom of Forgetting
  • Julie Watts, Ad honorem Patti Smith
  • Kimberly Williams, St. Mary and the Hula Dancer
  • Beth Yahp, Visitation/Turtle-Shaped

Some of these may be available online, but I decided I’d rather spend my time reading than check every one in the hope of finding a couple! Sorry!

The shortlist will be announced on 2 April, and the winners on 1 May.

Have you read any of these poets, or do you follow and poetry prizes? I’d love to hear your thoughts …

* Now the Liverpool Powerhouse.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Melbourne, a City of Literature?

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A year ago I finally wrote a post on the UNESCO Cities of Literature, focusing on Melbourne’s designation as UNESCO’s second such city in 2008, and Hobart’s addition as Australia’s second city in 2023. The full list is available online at the Cities of Literature website.

As I wrote in that post, the criteria against which cities are assessed aren’t specifically listed, but the Cities of Literature website says that these Cities “share similar characteristics”, which presumably draw from the criteria. The characteristics are:

  • Quality, quantity and diversity of publishing in the city
  • Quality and quantity of educational programmes focusing on domestic or foreign literature at primary, secondary and tertiary levels
  • Literature, drama and/or poetry playing an important role in the city
  • Hosting literary events and festivals which promote domestic and foreign literature
  • Existence of libraries, bookstores and public or private cultural centres which preserve, promote and disseminate domestic and foreign literature
  • Involvement by the publishing sector in translating literary works from diverse national languages and foreign literature
  • Active involvement of traditional and new media in promoting literature and strengthening the market for literary products.

Again, in last year’s post, I shared that UNESCO has pages for some of the cities. Melbourne’s (Naarm) commences with:

Celebrated for its vibrant literary culture, Melbourne supports a diverse range of writers, a prosperous publishing industry, a successful culture of independent bookselling, a wide variety of literary organisations, a well-established culture of reading and is actively involved in many events and festivals.

In addition to this, Melbourne has its own City of Literature website, in which it describes what this means and what Melbourne does to support literature and reading.

Now here’s the thing, and why I am writing this post today, Melbourne’s credentials are currently being questioned by some of its own, for a couple of very good reasons. Last year, Melbourne University Press announced that it would cease publication of one of Australia’s longest-running literary magazines, Meanjin, at the end of 2025. Established in Brisbane in 1940, Meanjin had been published in Melbourne since 1945. This was devastating news to the literary community, because this magazine is one of our treasures, for both its history and what it still does. Fortunately, a last minute reprieve has seen Meanjin return to its originating state with the Queensland University of Technology acquiring it early this year. This is great for Meanjin, but it does nothing for the City of Literature.

And then, in January of this year, Writers Victoria (about which I have written before in my writers centre series) was told it would not receive the funding it had been receiving from the State Government (via Creative Victoria). It was given emergency funding to help it survive through to June 30, but no more after that. As Angela Glindemann wrote in The Conversation, the loss of this centre – if it cannot change the government’s mind or obtain other funding – “would make Victoria (whose capital, Melbourne, is a UNESCO City of Literature) the only mainland state without a state government-funded peak organisation for writers”. 

In the last three months, I have heard several literary commentators, besides The Conversation’s Glindemann, raise the issue of Melbourne’s City of Literature status in relation to these literary losses. The others include literary journalist Jason Steger (who was Literary Editor for Melbourne’s The Age newspaper), authors and podcasters Irma Gold and Karen Viggers (in Secrets from the Green Room, Season 7 Episode 79), and academic Patrick Stokes in ArtsHub.

Steger wrote earlier this month in his weekly emailed newsletter:

It’s dismally ironic that in Melbourne, Writers Victoria has been denied funding by the state government. Ironic because in 2008 Melbourne became only the second UNESCO City of Literature, but now could become the only state capital in Australia not to have an organisation that supports its writers.

[…]

Why are writers organisations important? Because they give crucial support to writers at all stages of their careers. They provide information, resources, workshops and plenty more. They also employ writers to conduct workshops and teach. In 2025 Writers Victoria employed 70 tutors, paying $50,000 in fees.

Irma Gold and Karen Viggers in their podcast speak from personal experience about the value of writers organisations to their careers, as does Toni Jordan in The Conversation’s article. These three writers (as did others I quoted in my Writers Victoria post) see writers centres as critical to supporting emerging writers and to the ongoing education of established writers. (Worryingly, The Conversation says that Writers Victoria is not the only one to confront threats to its existence in recent times.)

Stokes brings into his argument a recent controversy involving the State Library of Victoria and its direction, about which you can read at the ArtsHub link I’ve provided. Here I will simply share Stokes’ main point which is that

A library that is reduced to a museum has lost its inherent function. Likewise, the City of Literature designation shouldn’t turn a city into a sort of literary museum, a celebration of past glories now preserved under glass or atop marble plinths. It needs to reflect a commitment that’s as much forward-directed as backward. Cities of Literature ought to be as much about the books that are not yet written as the ones that already are.

I’m not sure that these actions would – or should – affect Melbourne’s City of Literature status, but they are a worry, on their own and as potentially indicative of a trend (particularly in Victoria right now) to cutting support for the arts. If you are a Victorian resident, you can sign a petition to the Victorian Parliament requesting it to “reverse the decision to cut state funding to Writers Victoria”. The petition is open until late April.

Thoughts?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Hazel Rowley Fellowship

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Book cover er

Back in 2013, I wrote about the Hazel Rowley Literary Fund which was set up in 2011 by Rowley’s sister and friends, in association with Writers Victoria. Hazel Rowley was, as many of you will know, one of Australia’s most respected biographers. Her subjects were diverse, and not exclusively Australian. Indeed, most were not Australian, as besides the Australian writer Christine Stead who spent much of her writing life overseas, she wrote on the African American writer Richard Wright, the French writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the American power couple, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (my review). Unfortunately, Rowley, born in 1951, died too young – of a cerebral haemorrhage in New York in 2011.

The aim of the fund was “to commemorate Hazel’s life and her writing legacy through activities that support biography and writing in general”. Its main vehicle was the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship which provided money to support a writer researching a biography, or some aspect of cultural or social history compatible with Rowley’s interests. It was offered annually, with the initial award of $10,000 gradually increased to the $20,000 this year’s winner received.

Now, those of you with eagle eyes may have noticed that I wrote “was”. As Wikipedia reports, which I confirmed on the official website, the Fellowship ends with this year’s award. The website summarises its achievements in this paragraph:

The Fellowship has been running for the past 14 years since Hazel died in March 2011. It was created to honour Hazel as a skilled biographer and to encourage others to write with the same care and enthusiasm in this time-consuming and exacting genre. Based on Hazel’s own experience we recognised the need to support a work in progress by providing money for research and travel. Over the past 14 years the Fellowship has supported more than 20 writers to progress and finish their projects.

They do not say why it is ending, but presumably the money has run out. Bequests, even well managed ones, do not last forever. I am guessing, but perhaps it was a case of either offering decent prize money – as in a useful amount – until it runs out, or award small amounts that risk not being enough to make a real difference to the winning project.

So now, the final award … $20,000 is going to Jennifer Martin for her proposed biography of Austrian-born Eva Sommer. She was the inaugural Walkley award winner in 1956 when she was a cadet on the Sydney Sun. She died in 2019 at the age of 84. The fellowship also gave $10,000 to each of three commended writers: Monique Rooney, Theodore Ell and Ashleigh Wilson, who are writing on Ruth Park, Les Murray and Barry Humphries respectively. All good subjects, but I’d love to see Ruth Park done.

You can see the complete list of awards made, including which ones have – to date – resulted in publication, as well as the shortlisted authors and their projects, at the above-listed Wikipedia page.

Maxine Beneba Clarke, The hate race

Of the 15 winners to date (including this year’s which, by definition, is presumably still in project stage), 9 have been published, and I have reviewed one of them, Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The hate race. I’d like to read several others, but if I had to choose one, it would be Mandy Sayer’s on Australia’s movie-making sisters, The McDonagh Sisters.

However, there are some on the shortlist that I would also love to see come to fruition, including those on Louisa Lawson (Michelle Scott Tucker), David Malouf (Patrick Allington), Gerald Murnane (Shannon Burns) and Amy Witting (Sylvia Martin). Hmm … given Sylvia Martin was later shortlisted for a different subject, which has now been published – Double act: Eirene Mort and Nora Kate Weston – I fear for my Amy Witting wish.

This brings me to the fact that, of course, several on the shortlist have been published, including those on Shirley Hazzard (Brigitta Olubas, on my TBR), Elizabeth Harrower (Helen Trinca, my review), Elizabeth Harrower (Susan Wyndham, on my TBR).

What these lists show is that biography is alive in Australia. How well it is, is another question. Writing a biography is no simple task. It can take years (and years) of research during which authors receive no money – unless they win or obtain fellowships like this one. It’s a shame it has ended, for whatever reason, but we should be grateful for the 15 years of support it did give.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on biographies. Do you like them? Do you have favourites? What do – or don’t you – like in them?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Turning 50 in 2026

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No, not me, much as I wish it were! I’m talking books. Today being the day after International Women’s Day, I thought to feature women in this week’s Monday Musings. But how? Then I remembered that somewhere last year I’d seen a list of books turning 50, so decided to take inspiration from that and share books by Aussie women which are turning 50 this year, meaning they were published in 1976.

Researching this wasn’t easy. Wikipedia’s 1976 in Australian literature was inadequate, but I have beefed it up somewhat now. It had only one novel by an Australian woman under “Books” and one entry under “Short Stories”. So, I searched Wikipedia for authors I knew of the time and found more titles. I also used Hooton and Heseltine’s Annals of Australian literature (though that was tedious because many of the authors are listed under last name only. Is Bennett female or male, for example? Female I discovered. In she went into Wikipedia’s 1976 page too, but she doesn’t have her own page despite her body of work.)

By the time I finished I had added four novels by Australian women, two short story entries, three poets, another dramatist, and three children’s works. I could have added a few more but time and, to some degree, the work’s significance (or “notability” in Wikipedia’s world), resulted in my stopping where I did. My point in sharing this is not to beat my own drum but to say that it is really important, when we can, to improve Wikipedia’s listings in less populated areas, such as entries for women and other minorities. For all its faults, Wikipedia is a triumph, but it is up to all of us who have the time and skills to keep it that way. End of lesson …

Books turning 50 in 2026

During my research into writers who, I knew, were writing around this time, I checked, for example. Thea Astley. She published 15 novels between 1958 and 1999, but only 2 in the 1970s, neither in 1976. Jessica Anderson published three novels in the 1970s but not in 1976. The same went for Barbara Hanrahan. Now, the lists …

Links on names are to my posts on those authors. I have made some random notes against some of the listings,

Novels

  • Nancy Cato and Vivienne Rae Ellis, Queen Trucanini: historical fiction, which was of course Cato’s metier. I haven’t read it, but we have moved on in knowledge and thinking so it has very likely been superseded. I haven’t included nonfiction works here, but will mention Cato’s Mister Maloga: Daniel Matthews and his mission, Murray River, 1864–1902, also published in 1976. The mission failed, for various reasons, and I don’t know Cato’s take, but reviewer Leonard Ward praises its detail, and says that “As an historical document Mister Maloga earns a place on the bookshelves of those who have at heart the welfare of the Aboriginal people”. Potentially paternalistic, but Cato did support FN rights in her day.
  • Helen Hodgman, Blue skies: apparently this novel was translated into German in 2012. I’ve read and enjoyed Tasmanian-born Hodgman, but not this one. (Lisa’s review)
  • Gwen Kelly, Middle-aged maidens: a new author for me but worth checking out. This, her third novel, was, said the Sydney Morning Herald, “a perceptive portrait of three headmistresses and the staff of an independent girls’ school” and “was considered somewhat controversial in Armidale” where Kelly was living. Her Wikipedia page shares some of the reactions to it, including that it offered a “fierce appraisal of small-town shortcomings … [an] acerbic depiction of a private school for girls in Armidale.” Another was that “the headmistresses’ characters are sketched with sharp and brilliant lines … Gwen Kelly draws from us that complexity of response which is normal in life, rare in literature”, while a third wrote “spiteful, malicious, cunning, intensely readable … Delicious, Ms Kelly … you know your Australia and you’ve a lovely way with words”. Intriguing, eh?
  • Betty Roland, Beyond Capricorn: I have Betty Roland’s memoir, Caviar for breakfast on my TBR, but still haven’t got to it. For those who don’t know her, she had a relationship with Marxist scholar and activist Guido Baracchi, a founder of the Australian Communist Party. They went to the USSR, and while there, according to Wikipedia, she worked on the Moscow Daily News, shared a room with Katharine Susannah Prichard, and smuggled literature into Nazi Germany. Caviar For Breakfast (1979), the first volume of her autobiography, covers this period.
  • Christina Stead, Miss Herbert (The suburban wife): Stead needs no introduction (Bill’s review).

Short stories

  • Carmel Bird, Dimitra: Bird’s first published book, by Orbit (from her website), but it seems to have almost completely disappeared from view (at least in terms of internet searches)
  • Glenda Adams, Lies and stories: a story by Adams was in the first book my reading group did – an anthology. It wasn’t this story, but so much did we enjoy the one we read, that we went on to read a novel.
  • Shirley Hazzard, “A long story short”: published in The New Yorker 26 July 1976 (excerpt from The transit of Venus)
  • Elizabeth Jolley, Five acre virgin and other stories: for many years this collection was my go-to recommendation for people wanting to try Jolley. It captures so much of her preoccupations, style, and thoughts about writing (including reusing your own material).

Poetry

  • Stefanie Bennett, The medium and Tongues and pinnacles: prolific and still around but does not have her own page in Wikipedia.
  • Joanne Burns, Adrenaline flicknife: Burns won the ACT Poetry Prize Judith Wright award, and was shortlisted for and/or won awards in the NSW’s Kenneth Slessor Prize, but not for this collection.
  • Anne Elder, Crazy woman and other poems: Anne Elder’s name is commemorated in the Anne Elder Award for Poetry.
  • Judith Wright, Fourth Quarter: Like Stead, Judith Wright needs no introduction – to Australian readers at least.

Drama

This is not my area of interest and not only are plays best seen, but I think they have an even shorter shelf life. However, a few playwrights were published in 1976, including Dorothy Hewett, who also wrote poetry and novels.

Children’s literature

I won’t list the books here, but most of the authors are well-known to older Australian readers: Hesba Brinsmead, Elyne Mitchell (of The Silver Brumby fame), Ruth Park, Anne Parry (the least known of this group), Joan Phipson, and Eleanor Spence.

Do you have any 50-year-old books in your list of favourites? Several of these authors are important to (and not forgotten by) me, but the book from this year that is the important one is Jolley’s.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 17, Beatrice Grimshaw

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Of all the writers I’ve researched for the AWW project, Beatrice Grimshaw is among the most documented, with articles in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) and Wikipedia, among others. And yet, she is little known today. This post, like most of my recent Forgotten Writers posts, draws on the one I posted on AWW. However, I have abbreviated that post somewhat here to add more commentary.

If you are interested, check out the story I shared on AWW, a romance titled “Shadow of the palm”. It provides a good sense of what she wrote – and why it might have value today, despite its problematic language. It tells of local traditions and lustful dissolute men, of missionaries and young people in love. It is a predictable story typical of its time, but is enlivened by knowledge of a place that was exotic to its readers. It also conveys some of the cultural conflict and exploitation that came with colonialism.

Beatrice Grimshaw

Beatrice Grimshaw, 1907 (Public Domain)

Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw (1870-1953) is described by Wikipedia as “an Irish writer and traveller”, while the ADB does not give a nationality. However, both state that she was born on 3 February 1870 at Cloona, Antrim, in Ireland, and died on 30 June 1953 at Kelso near Bathurst in New South Wales. She is buried in Bathurst cemetery.

Grimshaw, the fourth of six children, was never going to be the little wife and mother. Wikipedia says that she “defied her parents’ expectations to marry or become a teacher, instead working for various shipping companies” while ADB says that, although she went to university, “she did not take a degree and never married but saw herself as a liberated ‘New Woman'”. There is much detail about her life at these two sources so I’ll just share the salient points here. She loved the outdoors, and began her writing career when she became a sports journalist for Irish Cyclist magazine in 1891. Besides working as an editor, she wrote “a range of content including poems, dialogues, short stories, and two serialised novels under a pen name”. Her first novel, Broken away, was published in 1897.

“a fearless character” (HJB)

The early details aren’t fully clear, but from some time after 1891, she worked for various shipping companies in the Canary Islands, the USA and England. Things become clear by 1903 when we know she left for the Pacific to report on the region for the Daily Graphic. She also accepted government and other commissions to write tourist publicity for various Pacific islands and NZ.

In 1907, she returned to Papua, intending to stay for two or three months, having been being commissioned by the London Times and the Sydney Morning Herald as a travel writer, but ended up living there for most of the next twenty-seven years. She wrote, joined expeditions up rivers and into the jungles, managed a plantation (1917-22), and established a short-lived tobacco plantation with her brother (1934). She played a key role in the development of tourism in the South Pacific.

Due to recurring malaria fever, she moved to Kelso in 1936 to live with her brothers. She didn’t retire, however. She continued to write books, and undertake other work, including, according to Broken Hill’s Barrier Daily Truth (12 Feb 1943) “liaison work for the Americans in Australia … She said that Australia offers unlimited opportunities for expansion, opportunities which the American people will be quick to utilise”.

Grimshaw was a prolific and best-selling writer, with over 35 novels to her name. She drew from her experiences in the South Seas, and wrote in the popular genres of the time – romantic adventure, crime fiction and some supernatural or ghost stories. The Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser (3 July 1940) reported that many of her novels and short stories had been “translated into German, French, Danish and Swedish” and that her books were “known throughout England, America and Australia”. She also wrote numerous articles and short stories for papers and journals. Her 1922 novel, Conn of the Coral Seas, was made into a film, The Adorable Outcast, in 1928.

She was quite the celebrity, for her adventurous life as well as for her writing. After all, as The Australian Women’s Weekly (Feb 1935) pointed out, she had lived amongst “headhunters”, no less! Her writing was frequently praised for its realism, with a reviewer in Adelaide’s The Register writing (9 Sept 1922) identifying “two outstanding features of her writing” as:

her understanding of human nature, and her power of description. There is no need to illustrate her books. Her own words conjure up pictures as accurate as they are enchanting …

Some though were more measured, like the writer in The Queenslander (4 Mar 1922) who admired her storytelling but was “forced to wonder if the beautiful islands hold nothing but hatred and dark intrigue”. That though, was surely her genre more than the truth speaking!

Nonetheless, for modern readers her writing is problematic. We can’t, as Byrne writes, overlook “her paternalistic and occasionally racist attitudes” in her fiction and her journalistic writing. Take her reference to Japanese divers as “little yellow men” (The Australian Women’s Weekly 1940) or this much earlier one on Papuans:

The native is willing to work—unlike the Pacific Islander—and a good fellow when well treated. His interests are being thoughtfully cared for, and he is governed with honesty and justice. (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1907)

And yet, if you read this SMH article, you will gain an impression of the liveliness of her observations, which brings me to why she is worth reading. Her writing is a valuable historical source. She wrote a lot, in depth, and with excellent powers of observation about the Pacific, and in doing so conveys information about the life of European settlers, along with the values, beliefs, and attitudes they had. It has to be gold for anyone researching that time and place.

AustLit notes that she was, in her day, “sometimes favourably compared with Joseph Conrad, Bret Harte and Robert Louis Stevenson”, but that she is out of print today. More interestingly, the Oxford Companion shares that researcher Susan Gardner concluded that she “was made up of contradictions” including that “between her explicit anti-feminism and her feminist career”. A most fascinating, forgotten woman.

Sources

HJB, “At home with Beatrice Grimshaw, Novelist”, Sydney Mail (9 December 1931)  [Accessed: 10 February 2026]
Angela Bryne, “Beatrice Grimshaw: The Belfast explorer treated as a male chief on Samoa“, The Irish Times (5 March 2019) [Accessed: 2 March 2026]
Beatrice Grimshaw, AustLit (Accessed: 8 February 2026]
Beatrice Grimshaw, Wikipedia [Accessed: 7 February 2026]
Hugh Laracy, ‘Grimshaw, Beatrice Ethel (1870–1953)‘, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University, 1983 [Accessed: 7 February 2026]
William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews, The Oxford companion to Australian literature. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2nd, edition, 1994

All other sources are linked in the article.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Walter Scott Prize

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Some of you will have come across the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction already. Brona (This Reading Life) recently posted on it, and I have mentioned it in passing a few times on this blog. Wikipedia provides good overview, as does the Prize’s own website, so I am sharing information from both these sites.

Waverley book cover

It is a British literary award that was founded in 2010 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch whose ancestry includes Sir Walter Scott. He is generally accepted to be, as Wikipedia puts it, “the originator of historical fiction” with his 1814 novel Waverley (see my post on Volume 1). Its prize money of £30,000 makes it one of the UK’s largest literary awards. Eligible books must be first published in the UK, Ireland or Commonwealth and must, of course, be historical fiction, which, says Wikipedia, they define as fiction in which “the main events take place more than 60 years ago, i.e. outside of any mature personal experience of the author”. As the Prize website explains, the 60 years comes from Waverley’s subtitle, Or, sixty years since.

You will now, I’m sure, have gleaned its relevance for Monday Musings, which is that because Australia is of the Commonwealth, books by Australian authors are eligible. Over the years of the prize, Australian novels have been long- and shortlisted. So, I thought to share them here – to give them another airing, and to identify their main subject matter. Have any topics been more popular than others, I wondered? Let’s see …

Walter Scott Prize Australian shortlistees (2010-2025)

While the prize was first awarded in 2010, an Australian book was not shortlisted until 2013. Perhaps some were longlisted before that (and since), but I can’t see longlists on the Prize’s website, and it would take some gleaning to track them down.

  • 2013: Thomas Keneally, The daughters of Mars: World War 1, and Australian nurses (Kimbofo’s review, with links to other bloggers)
  • 2016: Lucy Treloar, Salt Creek: mid-19th century South Australia, farming struggles and First Nations tensions (Brona’s review)
  • 2017: Hannah Kent, The good people: early 19th century Ireland, and “changelings”
  • 2019: Peter Carey, A long way from home: 1950s Australia seen through the lens of the Redex Car Trials (Kimbofo’s review, on my TBR)
  • 2021: Kate Grenville, A room made of leaves: early 19th century Australia (the Sydney settlement) imagined through the eyes of Elizabeth Macarthur (Brona’s review)
  • 2021: Pip Williams, The dictionary of lost words: early 20th century England, imagining a woman’s contribution to the OED (Brona’s review)
  • 2021: Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate: World War 2 (1941), and a German medical unit at the Tolstoy Estate: (my review)
  • 2023: Fiona McFarlane, The sun walks down: late 19th century South Australia, lost child story involving many people, including famers, cameleers and First Nations trackers (Brona’s review)

So far, an Australian hasn’t won, but my, what a showing we had in 2021! As for setting, there’s little concentration – in this tiny sample – on any one time or place. South Australia appears twice, and four of the eight are set in the 19th century. Given none of the authors are First Nations, a couple of the stories include First Nations people, but their history is not the focus. Three of the stories – by Kent, Williams and Conte – are not set in Australia. If there is any one idea coming through, it is that of restoring the role of women in historical events or, simply, in life. This is not surprising given that one of the values of historical fiction, according to American historian Steven Mintz*, is that it

can offer a more inclusive portrait of the past, recover and develop stories that have been lost or forgotten and foreground figures and dissenting and radical perspectives that were relegated to history’s sidelines.

And we all know that women, just one among many groups of disempowered people, were/still are ignored by “history”. This recovery of lost stories – this deeper and wider exploration of history, and all its byways, that the proverbial victors ignored – is why I have come to enjoy historical fiction, a genre I wasn’t much interested in for a long time.

The 2026 longlist has been announced, and it features another Australian work, Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie (my review). It is a good and significant read, and it would be excellent to see it become the first First Nations Australian shortlistee.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on historical fiction and/or this particular prize, or for you to just name a favourite historical novel. Over to you …

* An aside: I didn’t know who Steven Mintz was, but he has a Wikipedia page. I also found this intriguing commentary on his departure from Inside Higher Ed (which is where I found the statement above). He sounds like a thoughtful, decent guy, but he is in his 70s, so I don’t blame him for wanting to move into a quieter life.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Trove treasures (16), Garrulity and Gracelessness in AusLit

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(Courtesy OCAL, via clker.com)

Another post in my Monday Musings subseries called Trove Treasures, in which I share stories or comments, serious or funny, that I come across during my Trove travels. 

Today’s story popped up during my research for a post on Beatrice Grimshaw for the Australian Women Writers blog. It stunned me, and I had to share it. It is, ostensibly, a review in the Sydney Morning Herald (25 July 1953) of a new-to-me Ruth Park novel, A power of roses. The review is titled, pointedly, “A power of women”, and the author, S.J.B., does not mean this as a compliment.

It opens with:

THE visitor from abroad venturing into these barbarian lands for the first time might be pardoned for concluding that women have an almost unbreakable grip on fiction in Australia.

“These barbarian lands”? And visitors need to be “pardoned” for thinking women have the upper hand in Australian fiction? Oh, the horror.

S.J.B. then says that “this domination” had “become increasingly evident” in recent months, with novels, “varying in quality from the excellent to the ordinary”, appearing in rapid succession from “Eleanor Dark, Kylie Tennant, Ruth Park, Dymphna Cusack, Elyne Mitchell, Dorothy Lucie Sanders, Helen Heney, Marjorie Robertson and Maysie Greig”.

He continues:

This flourishing femininity is not exactly new. For the past half century or so, our literature has been notable (if that is the right term) for its women contributors.

If “notable” is the right word to describe women’s strong role in Australian literature? He lists these “women contributors” as “Mrs. Campbell Praed, Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, G. B. Lancaster, Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, Beatrice Grimshaw, Ernestine Hill, Mary Grant Bruce, Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Marjorie Barnard, Flora Eldershaw, Katharine S. Prichard, Mary Mitchell, Eve Langley”. He is right, women had played a major role in Australian literature in the first half of the century, as this impressive list – representing a significant legacy – shows. Many of these writers are still read, and respected, today.

But, this long introduction to his review gets worse, because he then suggests that these writers “may go some way towards explaining why our fiction is somewhat distinguished for its garrulity, its repetitiveness, its attention to inessentials, its false humour, and its gracelessness” [my emph]. What? Who was saying all this!

However, he admits that this long list of women writers

does not explain why our male writers make such a poor showing. Can it be that Australian men are so occupied with keeping wolves from the door that only their little women [my emph] have time to write?

Perhaps breadwinning plays some role, he says, but he thinks something more is going on:

We note, for example, that in so far as Australian men are active in writing, they tend to concern themselves with social documentation – they record and interpret rather than invent.

The reason? Perhaps the fact is that Australian men lack an ability to sustain imaginative flights and the resolute patience necessary for putting a novel together. Whatever the solution, our male novelists are grievously outnumbered.

And whatever the reason, it’s interesting that it was around this time that things started to change, for the men. Patrick White’s much admired fourth novel, The tree of man, was published in 1955, and during the 1950s other “serious” male writers appeared like Martin Boyd, Randolph Stow and others.

But, back to S.J.B. … Having made these points, he finally gets to his review of A power of roses, to which he gives three small paragraphs. The novel is, he says, “in the tradition of squalor, sentiment and grotesquerie that Miss Park has made distinctively her own”, and then quotes Odysseus’ complaint about hearing the same story twice. He concludes:

Book reviewers are expected to be more tolerant. But even the most generous reviewer cannot help feeling that Miss Park’s grime, bug-infested rooms’ and poverty-stricken ratbags have lost much of their novelty as subjects for fiction. We have had it all before-and better – in The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange.

At least he does think those two books written by a woman are good.

I have quoted heavily from the article because, while paraphrasing would have conveyed the meaning, the actual words have a “power” I had to share. As for who S.J.B. is I have not been able to ascertain. AustLit lists S.J.B. as an author of some newspaper articles, but all it can tell me is “gender unknown”. “S.J.B.” does not appear in its list of pseudonyms, which rather confirms that they don’t know who this person is, despite the fact that S.J.B. wrote several articles around this time.

Comments?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Precarity and Late Capitalism

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Over the years I have written posts about and reviews of books with strong socioeconomic underpinnings. In the nineteenth century these novels tended to be described as Social Novels (and I am have just an English one for reading group, review coming) or were seen under the banner of the Realist movement. In the early to mid twentieth century, books dealing with these concerns were seen as part of the Social Realism movement. I’m playing a bit loose here, because I don’t intend to get into the weeds about definitions. I simply want to note that these novels, to quote Wikipedia’s article on Social Realism, aim to explore the “socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions”. I have written at least two Monday Musings about writing in this area, one on Factory Novels and one on Realism and Modernism, but the issues have popped up frequently in individual reviews too.

In recent years, new terms have entered the popular sociopolitical lexicon, and these include “precarity” and “late capitalism”. Precarity, with its focus on the lack of job security and all the social and psychological ills that flow from this, may be a relatively new term in sociopolitical discussion, but its broader meaning encompassing the idea of living precarious lives, has underpinned most nineteenth and early twentieth century “Social” and “Realist” novels.

Similarly, Late Capitalism is a complex “term” with a history going back many decades, but is popping up increasingly frequently across all types of writing. Wikipedia covers it in detail, but I’m using one definition from PhD student David Espinoza at the University of Sydney (2022). If you are interested, you can read more at both sites. Basically, Espinoza says that the term wasn’t taken up widely until Belgian Marxist economist Ernest Mandel’s treatise on the topic was published in English in 1975. Espinoza says that

Mandel used the idea to describe the economic expansion after the second world war … a time characterised by the emergence of multinational companies, a growth in the global circulation of capital and an increase in corporate profits and the wealth of certain individuals, chiefly in the West.

For Mandel, “late capitalism” is not so much a change in what capitalism is as “expansion and acceleration in production and exchange”. He says that “one of the main features of late capitalism is the increasing amounts of capital investments into non-traditional productive areas, such as the expansion of credit”. Espinoza says late capitalism is behind the increasing number of financial or economic crises we have had since the 1970s.

There is more, but this is the essence. It’s a bit loosey-goosey I know, but I’m not an expert in economics. However, I hope this is accurate enough and makes enough sense for our needs.

Now, last week’s Monday Musings was inspired by critic/artistic director/literary judge Beejay Silcox’s article in The Guardian on new Australian releases. As I wrote in that post, Silcox grouped the releases under headings. One was “Eco-lit flourishes”, which I discussed last week because it’s an area that interests me. Another area of interest also caught my eye, the one she called “The cost of living”. It inspired this post. Don’t worry, I am not going to go through her whole article in this way. That would be too cheeky for words!

Precarity and Late Capitalism in Australian fiction

I don’t want to repeat the books I included in those previous Monday Musings, but I will name a handful of other Australian novels (and short satires) that I’ve read that encompass these issues (though probably the most searing fictional critique I’ve read recently is Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road):

  • Donna M. Cameron, The rewilding (my review): capitalism and its impact on climate
  • Julie Koh, Portable curiosities (my review): satirical short stories which skewer multiple aspects of capitalist culture, including housing and banking
  • Paddy O’Reilly, Other houses (my review): social mobility and the desire to provide better opportunities for children
  • Heather Rose, Bruny (my review): satire, on globalised capital, and the conspiracies and political corruption that ensue

These books show there are many ways in which contemporary authors approach this topic, from a more traditional working-class novel (like Paddy O’Reilly’s) through to thrillers and eco-literature, and that satire is still alive as a means to expose the extremes. I would also argue that many of the recent novels by First Nations Australian writers, like Melissa Lucashenko, encompass responses to the depredations of late capitalism.

Now to Beejay Silcox’s list of what is coming in 2026. She introduced this section with the statement that “From the housing crisis to the care sandwich: an emerging and caustic theme in Ozlit (and beyond) is late capitalism and financial precarity”. As with my Eco-literature post, I will dot point the books she lists, in alphabetical order by author, for simplicity’s sake, but will include any description she provided:

  • Alan Fyfe, The cross thieves: “set in a riverside squat”, Transit Lounge, March, on my TBR
  • George Kemp, Soft serve: “traps his cast in a regional McDonald’s as a bushfire closes in”, UQP, February, on my TBR
  • Jordan Prosser, Blue giant: “sends a hungover millennial to Mars”, UQP, August
  • Ellena Savage, The ruiners: “follows an anarchist waiter from inner-city Melbourne to a decrepit Greek Island”, Summit, April
  • Fiona Wright, Kill your Boomers: “captures the mood”! Harumph, says this Boomer, watching her back (though, having children, I do understand), Ultimo, March

For the record, Silcox also names a couple of nonfiction titles on the theme: Lucinda Holdforth’s Going on and on: Why longevity threatens the future (Summit, April), and Matt Lloyd-Cape’s Our place: How to fix the housing crisis and build a better Australia (Black Inc, September).

Can you recommend any standout books you’ve read about contemporary precarity and late capitalism? Doesn’t have to be Australian. I’d love to hear.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Invasion Day/Australia Day (2026)

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It’s Monday, and I did have a post planned, until I remembered that this Monday has a very particular date, 26th January. So, I decided to postpone that post in order to make a brief statement about this date which, for many decades, has been designated Australia Day. And we have a public holiday in its honour. The problem is that this day – 26th January – commemorates the 1788 landing at Sydney Cove of Arthur Phillip and his First Fleet and the raising of the flag of Great Britain to establish a penal colony in Britain’s name. In so doing, Britain effectively invaded Australia. (On what legal basis this happened, there is discussion, but the legalities are a distraction from the fact that the British occupied land, that was already occupied, as their own.)

Although Australia Day has been a much loved day, not all Australians have been oblivious to its origins and implications. Wikipedia’s article on the Day provides a brief history of some of this recognition. For example, in 1888, before the first centennial anniversary of the First Fleet’s arrival, Henry Parkes, New South Wales’s premier at the time, was asked about including Aboriginal people in the celebrations. He apparently replied: “And remind them that we have robbed them?” (from Calla Wahlquist and Paul Karp in The Guardian, 2018)

Wikipedia also summarises the history of First Nations people’s response to the Day, including their identifying the 150th anniversary celebrations in 1938 as an Aboriginal Day of Mourning. By the nation’s Bicentennial in 1988, they were framing the day as Invasion Day. Since then, this idea has increasingly taken hold among not only First Nations but many other Australians. With the rise of social media, hashtags like “invasionday and “changethedate have appeared and have also gained traction. Momentum is building.

From drone show, Brisbane Festival 2024

So, where do I stand? I love Australia, and am very glad to be Australian. I would, therefore, like to celebrate our nation in some way on some day BUT I do not think January the 26th is the day to do it. Consequently, I am with the #changethedate proponents. And, I believe it will come. The voices are rising, and increasingly more Australians are feeling uncomfortable about celebrating a day that feels dishonest and that disrespects and brings pain to the country’s first peoples. We can find another date – that is not hard. We just have to do it.

POSTSCRIPT (28/1/2026): I fear I spoke too soon re change coming. According to a report in The Conversation, there has been little change in numbers supporting a date change. In 2021, around 38% of Australians agreed Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26, while just over 60% disagreed. By late 2025, those figures were around the same, with 37% opposing the date and 62% supporting its retention. But, the worrying thing is that, also according to the report, there has been an increase in the strength of opposition to changing the date. That is a worry for those of us who believe change is a necessary part of the reconciliation journey.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Eco-literature, Redux

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Nearly five years ago, I wrote a Monday Musings on a branch of writing dubbed “eco-literature”. Since then I have reviewed a few works that I have tagged “eco-literature“, including, just yesterday, Jessica White’s collection of essays, Silence is my habitat: Ecobiographical essays. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago, critic/artistic director/literary judge Beejay Silcox sent me a link to her article in The Guardian on new Australian releases. In it, she grouped the releases under headings, one of which was “Eco-lit flourishes”. So, I thought, why not do a little update …

In that first Musings, I started with definitions, including one from Wikipedia, but it was limited to “ecofiction” (as were a few other sources I cited). Five years on, Wikipedia still doesn’t have an article on “eco-literature”. This is a bit surprising, as I do think it is a much broader church, as does The Wire’s Rajesh Subramanian, whom I quoted in that previous post. He asked in 2017 whether “Eco-Literature” could be “the Next Major Literary Wave”, and defined it as encompassing

the whole gamut of literary works, including fiction, poetry and criticism, which lay stress on ecological issues. Cli-fi (climate fiction), which deals with climate change and global warming, is logically a sub-set of eco-literature.

Five years on, I think we could say it is an established field in contemporary literature – and that it does compass all those forms Subramanian lists, and more (like essays, for example).

Indeed, I’d argue that it is so established that there are bona-fide sub-categories, if not sub-sub categories (such as cli-fi or climate fiction being a sub-category of eco-fiction which itself would be a sub-category of eco-literature).

Eco-literature in Australia

So, if I look at the Australian works I have categorised as eco-literature over the last five years, they include a work of literary fiction, Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost (my review), two works in the crime genre, Donna Cameron’s Rewilding (my review) and Shelley Burr’s Vanish (my review), and Jessica White’s book of essays. Other books which I haven’t tagged, but should have, include First Nations books, because the land, and our use and (mostly rapacious) treatment of it, is never far from the story being told, whether it be fiction, like Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie (my review) or nonfiction, like Debra Dank’s We come with this place (my review).

This is a tiny and narrow selection of what is being written, but it provides some sense of the variety out there, as does Beejay Silcox’s list of what is coming in 2026. She opens this section of her article with “It is a dark irony that our most alive fiction is anchored to extinction: the wilder our grief and awe, the wilder our storytelling”. I will dot point the books she lists, for simplicity’s sake, but will include any description she provided:

  • Romy Ash, Mantle: one of the three “apocalyptic eco-fables”, Silcox identifies, this one about “a virulent rash”, Ultimo, April
  • Johanna Bell’s The Department of the Vanishing: documentary poetry/archival image/verse, “the literary equivalent of a murder board”, Transit Lounge, March, on my TBR
  • Tim and Emma Flannery’s A brief history of climate folly: nonfiction, “stranger than fiction. It collects real-world tales of humanity’s attempts to control the weather – like Hitler’s plan to drain the Mediterranean”, Text, August
  • Keely Jobe’s The endling: the second of the three “apocalyptic eco-fables”, this one about “immaculate conception in a feminist utopia”, Scribe, March
  • John Morrissey, Bird deity: the third of the three “apocalyptic eco-fables”, this one about “the wakeful ruins of an alien civilisation”, Text, February, on my TBR
  • Adam Ouston‘s Mine: novel, which “follows a climate activist trapped at the bottom of an abandoned goldmine and is told in a single, wheeling 278-page sentence”, Transit Lounge, August

Silcox also named other authors bringing out “eco-inflected fiction” this year. I have added the titles, where I know them: Eva Hornung’s The minstrels, Katherine Johnson, Inga Simpson, Maria Takolander and Sarah Walker.

Book cover of Jane Harper's The Dry

The thing about eco-literature, perhaps more than most other forms or genres, is that its very nature implies a desire to effect change. Regarding this, I found an article written in 2023* which surveyed readers of eco-crime fiction. Their starting point was “whether narratives can persuade readers to reflect on and perhaps reconsider their own moral beliefs”, and their reader-response research focused on investigating “how Australian readers respond to works of Australian eco-crime fiction that portray non-humans and global ecological issues such as climate change in a local Australian context”. They concluded:

One potentially restrictive element of eco-crime fiction in terms of its potential to engage readers with pro-environmental understandings is the dark and confronting atmosphere of most of these texts. Crime fiction by nature is grim. Add to this an emphasis on catastrophic ecological crises and the connections between such crises and violent crime, and there is a strong possibility that such texts may not do much to convince people that positive change is possible. It is significant that this hopelessness may actually be a deterrent for some readers to engage with climate action in the real world.

Oh dear! And, presumably dystopian eco-fiction would generate a similar response? But maybe not all types of eco-literature?

So, over to you. Do you read “eco-literature”? And if so, what sort do you read and does it encourage you to take action?

* Rachel Fetherston, Emily Potter, Kelly Miller, Devin Bowles, “Seeking greener pages: An analysis of reader response to Australian eco-crime fiction” in Australian Humanities Review, Iss. 71, (May 2023): 1-21.