William Yeoman
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A tale of two literary festivals
Recently I had the good fortune to be involved in two very different writers' festivals on consecutive weekends and on opposite sides of the country. One - the Melbourne Writers' Festival - is large and city-based; the other - the Geraldton Big Sky...
Mon, October 10, 2011, 12:47 pm WST -
The digital wasteland
The fallacies underlying WA Primary Principals Association president Stephen Breen's comments in yesterday's West (Old ways are being written off) regarding the de-emphasising of handwriting skills in schools and its being seen by some as "a sad...
Tue, June 28, 2011, 12:22 pm WST -
Patrick White, Vladimir Horowitz and Lisztomania
Among the books, journals and scraps of paper which together articulate the surface of my bedside table like a Grinling Gibbons gone wrong sits a multi-coloured monolith: the 70-CD Complete Original Jacket Collection of recordings by that great conjurer...
Tue, April 26, 2011, 12:17 pm WST -
The word in the street
Finally, thanks to British linguist David Crystal, there's such a thing as internet linguistics. An important milestone, as it recognises in the virtual world a genuinely new language with its own morphology and graphology, its own syntax and semantics,...
Thu, April 7, 2011, 12:13 pm WST -
Art by the book
As is usual with the annual Year 12 Perspectives show at the Art Gallery of WA, a selection of Japanese calligraphic wall scrolls are featured as part of the International Foundation for Arts and Culture's Cultural Exchange Program between WA and...
Tue, March 15, 2011, 11:55 am WST -
Nothing if not critical
In his recent Guardian piece Everyone's a critic now, Neale Gabler explores the impact of the internet on what has always been anuneasy relationship between low- and highbrow cultures, their purveyors andtheir critics. Critics (and their critics)...
Mon, February 7, 2011, 3:05 pm WST -
Bobby calves and beyond animal rights
Imagine a scenario in which vast numbers of females are kept in an almost continuous state of pregnancy so their milk can be harvested for consumption by a supposedly superior race of beings. The mothers' offspring are taken from them shortly after...
Mon, January 31, 2011, 1:41 pm WST -
Yoga class with Becky Sharp
"You'll go in and say goodbye to Miss Pinkerton, Becky," said Miss Jemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who was coming downstairs with her own bandbox. "I suppose I must," said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the...
Wed, January 26, 2011, 12:44 pm WST -
A Hamlet for our time?
These days it seems you can't make a Hamlet without breaking with tradition.In his book Shakespeare's Freedom, Stephen Greenblatt writes, "Shakespeare as a writer is the embodiment of human freedom. He seems to have been able to fashion language to...
Thu, January 20, 2011, 12:00 pm WST -
Alice's adventures through the plasma screen
One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it - it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well,...
Thu, January 13, 2011, 9:29 am WST -
A Costa Rican Flambe
[Enter four Costa Rican gang members, who hunt sharks for their fins] Josimar: My Alejandro, what we here tonight? Alejandro: A gringo chef hath sought to stem our harvest,And through such agencies as doth befitA foul-mouthed butcher of the smaller...
Tue, January 4, 2011, 2:29 pm WST -
Coming full Circe
As rosy-fingered Dawn revealed the world afresh, Ulysses awoke from his slumber and immediately checked his HTC Wildfire for the latest news on the scandal that had been unfolding over the last few days. With sorrow he recalled that, having for so long...
Tue, December 28, 2010, 10:54 am WST -
Text and Textuality
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good well, you know, must be in want of a wife.However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed...
Mon, December 20, 2010, 12:36 pm WST -
Ian McEwan at the opera
Opera has on the whole been known for its wonderful music and silly plots. It's more in the realm of song that one has always been able to find the perfect marriage of text and music: think of Monteverdi's settings of Tasso, Schumann's of Heine,...
Tue, December 14, 2010, 12:55 pm WST -
A flaneur in Sydney town
The other week I found myself in Sydney again. As luck would have it, the weather was dreadful. So the first thing I did after arriving at the hotel was to turn up my collar and proceed down rain-slicked George Street, marvelling at the painted faces of...
Tue, December 7, 2010, 12:50 pm WST -
Guggenheim a go-go
This weekend I finally got around to viewing the excellent exhibition Peggy Guggenheim: a collection in Venice, currently showing at the Art Gallery of WA.Drawn from Guggenheim's Venice collection, which is housed in the palazzo Ca' Venier dei Leoni,...
Mon, November 22, 2010, 3:19 pm WST -
Book club blues
I hope you're sitting down. Though I guess if you're reading this, you probably are. If not, do it. Sit. Because what I'm about to tell you is so incredible, so shocking and so disturbing that you're likely to need smelling salts and a vigorously waved...
Tue, November 2, 2010, 7:42 am WST -
The lost lost book of the Odyssey
I'd just finished reading Zachary Mason's wonderful Lost Books of the Odyssey (Jonathan Cape), which contains 44 lyrical, oneiric retellings of passages from Homer's Odyssey, when I recalled that I no longer had a copy of Italo Calvino's Invisible...
Tue, October 26, 2010, 11:13 am WST -
Cooking the books: the novel as recipe
In Wild Garlic, Gooseberries...and Me, Irish chef Denis Cotter writes: "A healthy culture needs a healthy food culture, one that is built on trust and making the connections and relationships that shape a community....
Wed, October 20, 2010, 12:19 pm WST -
Lee Mild's Jack Preacher is back in The Damascene Moment
Five minutes to eleven in the morning. Exactly thirty-five minutes before Songs of Praise starts on the television.Jack Preacher had to think fast. Make the tea. Cut the lamington berry roll. Fluff the cushions.A knock at the door.Sweet Jesus.Eleven am....
Wed, October 13, 2010, 11:01 am WST
Our choice
Opinion
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Gary Adshead
May 24, 11:57 amA question of trust and clarityConstruction company boss Gerry Hanssen was quick to shoot the messenger when a report appeared on the front page of The West Australian yesterday ab...
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Andrew Probyn
May 25, 12:31 pmThomson inquiry in contemptDown in the bowels of Parliament there are remnant reminders of how seriously it takes punishment. In the southern end of the basement there were onc...
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Ben O'Shea
May 24, 12:32 pmSpam filterFrom: William DouglasSent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 7:35 PMTo: Ben O’SheaSubject: Attention: Ben O’Shea, Please contact meAttention: Ben O’Shea,I’m Mr ...
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