Department of English
Multimedia
To download the mp3s simply right click on the link and save the file to your computer or portable mp3 player. Alternatively you can click on the link and the file will play in your default music player.
Title:Collected Poems of Francis Webb
Author: edited by Dr Toby Davidson, Department of EnglishAbbas El-Zein: Interpreting Oneself: On Memoirs, Essays and Travel Writing
Gina Mercer "Intimate In-Fluences: A Poet with a Few Questions about Voice"
As a roving poet, audiences often ask me questions revealing a deep concern about how writers 'find' voice. These can seem naive questions in the wake of postmodernist theories but they recur, which suggests they cannot be dismissed with a simple wave of the theoretically sophisticated hand. In this paper Gina Mercer will tease out these questions and what might be going on behind them. She will particularly consider how a writer might think about them in the light of Seamus Heaney's exhortation to poets to give the reader 'aural gooseflesh' with every poem or utterance. Gina is a widely published poet and novelist, and is editor of the literary journal Island magazine. Her books include Parachute Silk, The Ocean in the Kitchen, Handfeeding the Crocodile, Seasoned with Honey, Night Breathing, Janet Frame - Subversive Fictions, and (co-editor) Postgraduate Research Supervision - Transforming (R)Elations.Professor John Stephens Once upon a time...
How To Talk to Girls At Parties
Andrew O'Hagan
Direct from London to Australia as the department's Writer in Residence, before his appearances at the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival, Andrew O'Hagan inspired an audience of over 100 here at Macquarie on 21st May 2007. Speaking as both a novelist and non-fiction writer O'Hagan discussed the relationship between writing and editing, read a scurrilous dialogue between young Mark and the priest David from Be Near Me, and from his London Review of Books essay, 'Disgrace Under Pressure' on Tony Blair and what's inside European lads' magazines.Mermaid of Cockatoo
During the early years of European habitation Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour was a grim place of incarceration and punishment - for convicts, for orphaned and wayward girls, for homeless and orphaned boys. Marina is 14 years old and dreams of escape from the island prison. She's a keen and sensitive observer of the privations and sorrows which surround her but has a rich inner life in which freedom is just out of reach, just over the waters. Perhaps the mermaids of her imagination will help her reach the further shore. Ella Cook is Marina. With music arranged and composed by Coralie Joyce. Sound engineers - Steven Tilley and Michelle Goldsworthy. Produced and directed by Jane Ulman. Written by Jane Messer Originally Broadcast on Airplay, ABC Radio National, Sunday 18 February and Friday 23 Febrary 2007, and first published in Best Stories Under the Sun 2 - Traveller's Tales, 2005.Writing Verbatim Theatre
As part of her residency here, playwright Alana Valentine talked in our English Research Seminar series about how she goes about writing verbatim theatre, including talking to Rabbitohs fans and opponents for her play Run Rabbit Run and working with indigenous women for Parramatta Girls. Hear about current debates and questions that surround contemporary Australian theatre writing.The Ballad of Desmond Kale
novel won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award, and here Roger talks frankly to a Macquarie audience about the real and imaginary characters that compelled the writing of the novel, and the surprising alchemy possible with Australian wool.