Category: Oz Lit

19thCLit, 21st Century Lit, 4 Quartets, Extra-Mural Teaching, Francis Webb, Grace IV: Contemplative Experience, Literature in Time and Space ENGL111, Literature: An Introduction, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, Poetry and Being, Poetry of Grace @ Aquinas, Poetry of Grace IV Contemplative Experience, SLA Conference, x Blogging

1000 Years of Poetry and the Contemplative Tradition

by michaelgriffith1 • October 8, 2022 • 0 Comments

England 2023: Overview Please join me on this pilgrimage which begins in July 2023. Find all the details at the following link: https://www.reho.com/bespoke-trips/1000-years-of-poetry-and-the-contemplative-tradition-england-2023/ The adventure begins in London on the site where Chaucer’s pilgrims set out in 1390. Next comes Canterbury, with its Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey, and its legacy of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket.…

19thCLit, 21st Century Lit, 4 Quartets, American Literature, Australian Literature, Exploring Literature (Clemente), Extra-Mural Teaching, Francis Webb, Literature in Time and Space ENGL111, Literature: An Introduction, Literature: An Introduction 2020, New York, Nineteenth, Nineteenth Century Literature Test, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, Poetry of Grace @ Aquinas, Poetry Workshops, Reading Australia, Research and Writing, Rilke, Shakespeare Plus, The Sacred in Literature and the Arts, Twentieth Century Literature ENGL202, Visionary Blake, Visionary Imagination, William Blake, Wisdom, x Blogging

Greetings and farewell from A/Prof Michael Griffith (Literature: Strathfield)

by michaelgriffith1 • June 30, 2022 • 0 Comments

I am retiring after 45 years at ACU. While it certainly sounds a long time, I remember vividly my first days on Castle Hill Campus in 1977 and then the flow of new literature students, through Castle Hill, then Mount Saint Mary and occasionally MacKillop. Every year a wonderful crop of new faces, new enthusiasms!…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, Reading Australia, x Blogging

Best Blogs out of Australian Literature (ENGL231) 2021

by michaelgriffith1 • November 8, 2021 • 0 Comments

Best Blogs ENGL231 Thank you Anaïs Woods for your beautiful summary of the relevance of the indigenous content of this unit and of the power of blogging as a way of creating community: https://anaiswoods.wordpress.com/summative-entry/ Thank you Emily for your understanding of the way that literature can provide a means of deepening our understanding of what…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Literature – Second Trawl through BLOGS 2021- Main topic – Students coping with Lockdown…

by michaelgriffith1 • October 3, 2021 • 0 Comments

image courtesy of Francis Saad’s blog (see below) Best blog on the impact of lockdown is Anaïs Woods’ reflections on the appearance of the cherry blossom in spring: https://anaiswoods.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/just-look-up-week-6-blog/ Zahra Salami’s take on the dramas she has had to face during lockdown. Thank you for your open and honest writing Zahra: Sarah Vella’s powerful description…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, Reading Australia, x Blogging

Blog Topics 3 for Australian Literature 2021

by michaelgriffith1 • September 20, 2021 • 0 Comments

We have traversed quite some terrain in the last weeks. Chose one of these topics for your blog this week: 1/ Capture the seasonal quality of the Australia bush (in Spring) in a short poem that utilizes some of the techniques of Charles Harpur’s “A Midsummer Noon in the Australian Forest”. Maybe begin your poem…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Second Blog 2 Topics for Australian Literature 2021 (Due Friday 3rd September)

by michaelgriffith1 • August 28, 2021 • 0 Comments

List of Topics for your second blog: Write a first person account of what it is like studying Australian literature during a global pandemic. Give details of how the pandemic has impacted your work (positively and negatively) and how it has impacted the people who you live with. You can of course fictionalise your characters…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Literature: First Crop of Outstanding Blogs Spring 2021

by michaelgriffith1 • August 26, 2021 • 0 Comments

Read Loulay’s amazing experience of visiting her grandfather in Lebanon and how this memory was triggered by Lisa Bellear’s “Urbanised Reebocks Loulay- https://loulayslovelyliterature.wordpress.com/2021/08/13/my-grandfathers-imprisonment-by-the-frenchlanguage/ Read Anaïs’ passionate response to the racism of the taxi drive in Lisa Bellear’s taxi poem Anaïs Woods: https://anaiswoods.wordpress.com/2021/08/13/facing-the-denial-and-acts-of-racism-taxi-by-lisa-bellear-week-3-blog/ Read Chloe’s powerful entry on Romaine’s Genocide poem with a real understanding of…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, Reading Australia

Welcome to Blogging in Australian Literature 2021 (Unit ENGL231 at ACU)

by michaelgriffith1 • August 9, 2021 • 0 Comments

Hi All, Chose any of the topics listed below, or create a topic of your own – as long as it is in some way connected to the themes of our unit so far. Remember you are permitted to include personal reflections alongside your literary reflections or creations. But you must try to write as…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, Reading Australia, x Blogging

Cream of the Crop for Australian Literature 2019!

by michaelgriffith1 • November 18, 2019 • 0 Comments

Thank you all for some fabulous blogging this semester. It has been a real feast to trawl through your many rich and creative insights into the literature of Australia. So many of you were able to express yourselves freely and openly, giving voice to what concerned you the most and finding ways of expressing your…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Francis Webb and David Malouf

by michaelgriffith1 • October 20, 2019 • 0 Comments

This week we are exploring the work of two writers who in their own ways are committed to the sacred dimension of life and who are also environmentalists. Please look through the following slides to get an idea of the ground that will be covered in lectures and tutorials this week. FrancisWebb & Malouf 2019…

American Literature, Australian Literature, Oz Lit, Visionary Blake, Visionary Imagination, William Blake, x Blogging

Sacred Silence in Literature and the Arts

by michaelgriffith1 • October 1, 2019 • 2 Comments

ACU students are welcome to attend this event for free on presentation of their student ID on the day. Come and be enlightened as never before and enjoy the company and the good food. You can find the full program details right here: Sacred Literature Conference Program Final

Australian Literature, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Literature- Art Gallery Visit 2019

by michaelgriffith1 • August 27, 2019 • 0 Comments

What a great turn-out for this visit! Thank you all for your keen participation. We covered a wealth of material in the allocated hour from early 19th Century through to contemporary and Indigenous Art. Hoping that this will provide lots of useful insight for your blogs and your quiz! I have attached the audio talk…

Australian Literature, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Later Colonial Australian Literature – around the 1890s!

by michaelgriffith1 • August 18, 2019 • 0 Comments

Tom Roberts Bailed Up: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/833/ Hi All, Building on last week’s excursion into the literature of the first half of the 19th Century in Australia, here is a quick survey of some of the material I will be exploring with you this week: Colonial Literature 1890s 2019 This is the period when the Australian idiom in both…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Early Colonial Australian Literature (2019)

by michaelgriffith1 • August 9, 2019 • 1 Comment

Hi All, this week we begin our exploration of Nineteenth Century Literature in Colonial Australia. It begins with the voices of convicts, aboriginals, the first “native” born colonial poets (such as Charles Harpur and Henry Kendall) and some of the first women writers in the colony: Louisa Anne Meredith and Catherine Helen Spence. Browse through…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Writing By and About Indigenous Australians.

by michaelgriffith1 • August 1, 2019 • 0 Comments

Hi All, this is the territory we will be travelling through next week. Please look through this file but be sure also to bring “The Mountain’s Own Meaning” with you next week to tutorials too…. The Mountain Has its Own Meaning INDIGENOUS WRITERS WEEK 2 Judith Wright’s Two Dreamtimes: N Two Dreamtimes 1Two Dreamtimes 2Two…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Literature Mid-Winter Spring 2019- Week 1: The Mountain has its own Meaning.

by michaelgriffith1 • July 29, 2019 • 0 Comments

In Australian Literature today we explored the themes that arise from the line from Judith Wright’s poem “Rockface” in which she declares “the remnant of a mountain has its own meaning”. This image from Russel Drysdale’s Desert Landscape captures similar resonances to Judith Wright’s poem: https://m.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/OA15.1959/ Drysdale, like Judith Wright seems to honour the dignity of…

American Literature, Australian Literature, Bush Walking, Oz Lit, Visionary Imagination, William Blake, x Blogging

A Pome- from a recently discovered Manuscript of a play by W. Shakespeare

by michaelgriffith1 • July 28, 2019 • 5 Comments

Spring is come The grass is riz Oi wonder where the flowers iz But Shakespeare was wrong this time: the flowers are blooming, exploding around Sydney now in the dead of winter!!. This is the amazing aspect of living on the 33rd parallel: the seasons cannot make up their minds: is it winter? is it…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Literature Blogs 2018

by michaelgriffith1 • November 4, 2018 • 0 Comments

There have been some wonderful blogs by students studying Australian Literature at ACU this semester. We began the unit with Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance and then travelled through a number of Indigenous authors before beginning the “White” literary staircase from early colonial times right up to contemporary times with Francis Webb, Lisa Bellear and then…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

David Malouf- Fly Away Peter: Part 2

by michaelgriffith1 • October 23, 2018 • 0 Comments

We had a great time exploring the powerful poetry and symbolism of David Malouf’s wonderful short novel Fly Away Peter today. Here is the audio lecture on this topic followed by the audio tutorial. Enjoy! Below this is the White-Board brain storm from Tutorial 3 and the PowerPoint for tutorials 1 and 2. week 12…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Francis Webb’s Eyre All Alone & David Malouf’s Fly Away Peter

by michaelgriffith1 • October 16, 2018 • 0 Comments

Today’s lecture began with some further comments on the poetry of Francis Webb. In particular I looked at “End of the Picnic”, “Black Cockatoos”, “Banksia” (from the Eyre All Alone sequence and “Harry” (from the Ward Two sequence. The first part of today’s audio lecture covers these poems. Enjoy listening! We then moved on to David Malouf’s…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

20th Century Poets, Francis Webb and Judith Beveridge

by michaelgriffith1 • October 9, 2018 • 0 Comments

Today we began by exploring the life and language of Francis Webb, especially his poem “Five Days Old” which gives such a deep insight into the way he uses language to transform his experience into such a momentous event. We then had the privilege of having as our guest the poet Judith Beveridge who spoke…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Patrick White- Australia’s only Literature Nobel Laureate.

by michaelgriffith1 • October 2, 2018 • 0 Comments

Please see the end of this Blog for audios “In all directions stretched the Great Australia Emptiness, in which the mind is the least of possessions, in which the rich man is the important man… in which beautiful youths and girls stare at life through blind blue eyes… the buttocks of cars grow hourly glassier,…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Literature in the Early 20th Century!

by michaelgriffith1 • September 18, 2018 • 0 Comments

We began today with a glance at Henry Lawson’s “Drifted Back”, a short story which encapsulated aspects of his own life story, but which also reflected back on Lawson’s impressions of what was being lost as Australia moved into the new century: Community, Mateship, The Old Bush School, the destruction of the environment with the…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Colonialism from 1880 on: Republicanism, Feminism, Federation, and beyond…

by michaelgriffith1 • September 11, 2018 • 0 Comments

Firstly let me share some more Outstanding Blogs. These are all inspirational! Thank you for your creative work on these. And thank you all for such a great Blog Crop! If these are anything to go by I am really looking forward to seeing your final ePortfolios! Nicola on Copacabana Beach Angelina on Letter to…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Best OZ Lit Blogs- First Run!

by michaelgriffith1 • September 10, 2018 • 0 Comments

Students completing Australian Literature as a first year subject at ACU have the opportunity to write a weekly blog in either a creative or critical mode. They chose from a range of topics that reflects the reading for the week and that interfaces with their own experience. The work produced in this genre is outstanding…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Early Colonial Australian Literature

by michaelgriffith1 • September 4, 2018 • 0 Comments

Today we covered a host of impressive literary and artistic figures that included the Anonymous poet of the Swan River who really “had a go” at those politically motivated tyrants who wanted to say that the taking of Western Australia from the indigenous peoples was a good thing! Frank the poet got a look-in with…

Australian Literature, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Art Gallery Visit for Australian Literature Students 2018

by michaelgriffith1 • August 29, 2018 • 0 Comments

Thank you all for your keen participation and all your answers to questions as we were going around the Australian sections of the NSW Art Gallery. I hope you all got a sense of how important it is to get a sweeping picture of the development of Australian painting from its Aboriginal origins through to…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Week 1: The Mountain Has Its Own Meaning

by michaelgriffith1 • July 31, 2018 • 0 Comments

Today we explored the meaning of this wonderfully suggestive line from Judith Wright’s poem “Rockface”. Judith Wright’s line picks up a core theme in Australian Literature from the earliest days of colonization through to our own times: what is our attitude to the Australian landscape? Is it utilitarian and appropriative? Or is it open to…

Australian Literature, Oz Lit, Visionary Blake, Visionary Imagination, x Blogging

Literature in Spring 2018

by michaelgriffith1 • July 30, 2018 • 0 Comments

Hi All, this semester I am teaching Australian Literature to first years (with long-time colleague Elaine Lindsay): You can listen to Elaine in an interview she had on ABC radio recently with novelist Tom Keneally: http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s4432426.htm I am also teaching Twentieth Century Literature to second years and The Visionary Imagination (William Blake, Patrick White and Brett…

Francis Webb, Oz Lit, x Blogging

Francis Webb Seminar 1- Aquinas Academy07/02/2017

by michaelgriffith1 • February 7, 2017 • 0 Comments

Today’s session explored the complex background to Francis Webb’s powerful creative imagination. We looked first at “On First Hearing a Cuckoo”, partly inspired by Frederick Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring. Here is a reading of the poem and the conversation that ensued: The seminar then moved on to explore two of Webb’s early poems…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Seminar Series on Francis Webb

by michaelgriffith1 • February 4, 2017 • 0 Comments

Back on home turf I am now about to present a series of four two-hour seminars on the life and poetry of Francis Webb. The series is called “Poetry and Grace: The Life and Poetry of Francis Webb”. This takes place at the Aquinas Academy in the Rocks, Sydney. This will be a wonderful opportunity…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Francis Webb Seminar Series Feb 2017

by michaelgriffith1 • September 30, 2016 • 0 Comments

Please find advance warning of a Francis Webb Poetry Seminar Series Running in Feb 2017 Click here for PDF: 2017-mg-francis-webb-gods-fool Please find advance warning of a Francis Webb Poetry Seminar Series Running in Feb 2017

Bush Walking, Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

MidWinter Spring!

by michaelgriffith1 • July 10, 2016 • 0 Comments

Little Gidding I Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart’s heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror A…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

Top 19th Century Lit ePortfolios ACU 2016

by michaelgriffith1 • July 10, 2016 • 0 Comments

There were some truly outstanding ePortfolios in this group of ACU students celebrating their experience and insight into the work of Romantic poets and the fiction of Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Tolstoy among others. The focus questions underpinning these ePortfolios were Writers and artists in the 19th Century were preoccupied with trying to solve the…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

Best Blogs from OZ LIT 2016

by michaelgriffith1 • June 11, 2016 • 0 Comments

Hi All, I have a fabulous bag full of wonderful OZ LIT ePortfolios for you to enjoy. These are the very best of the bunch; all earned a High Distinction for their efforts. There is some wonderful material here reflecting on the literature and art of Australia from ancient times right up to the present. Students…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

David Malouf- Fly Away Peter

by michaelgriffith1 • May 20, 2016 • 0 Comments

This is such a wonderful novel to teach because it deals with such simple matters so deeply and movingly. The scene at the end of the novel where Imogen Harcourt is grieving over Jim Saddler would have to be one of the most amazing moments in Australian literature: It was that intense focus of his…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

Best ePortfolios from last semester

by michaelgriffith1 • May 16, 2016 • 0 Comments

Please take a look here at the following sample if you want some inspiration: https://michaelgriffith1.com/2015/11/27/best-eportfolioblogs-spring-2015/

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Twentieth Century Oz Lit Poetry and Prose Part 2

by michaelgriffith1 • May 13, 2016 • 0 Comments

This week we finished our exploration of Patrick White’s amazing depiction of contemporary Australian society: its emptiness, but also its powerful potential for renewal in “Down at the Dump” and “Miss Slattery’s Demon Lover”- both in The Burnt Ones (1964). As a prelude to David Malouf‘s visit to us in a fortnight we explored “The Year of the Foxes”,…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Australian Poetry and Prose in the Early 20th Century

by michaelgriffith1 • April 29, 2016 • 2 Comments

We had fun today exploring a range of authors: John Shaw Neilson, Miles Franklin, Frederic Manning, M.Barnard Eldershaw, Judith Wright, Rosemary Dobson, Francis Webb and Gwen Harwood. What an amazing cross-section of talent! The one strongest idea that came to me during the lecture was a question that arose after we pondered the meaning of A.D.Hope’s…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

The 1890s in Australian Literature

by michaelgriffith1 • April 22, 2016 • 0 Comments

We had a wild ride through all the amazing characters who made up Australian Literature at the end of the 19th Century. Despite the dominance of mateship and a proud masculine ethos there were in fact many fine women writers who challenged the stereotypes imposed by the men of the time: Each of these authors…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Mid 19th Century Australian Poetry

by michaelgriffith1 • April 15, 2016 • 0 Comments

What a wonderful contrast is made by Charles Harpur’s “A Mid-Summer Noon in the Australian Forest” (1851) and Henry Kendall’s “Bell-Birds” (1869). Kendall as a protegé of Harpur invested his picture of the Australian forest – “Bell Birds“- with meaning and magic, but his purpose was entirely opposite to that of his master (Harpur). This…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

NSW Art Gallery Visits 2016

by michaelgriffith1 • April 5, 2016 • 0 Comments

This week is the week all my literature units visit the Art Gallery of NSW. What a wonderful storehouse it is of aesthetic wonders and inspirational ideas. A visit to the gallery provides a total wrap-around, hands-on experience of what was going on in a particular literary period. For all prospective teachers I cannot recommend…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

End of Week 3 & Autumn begins?

by michaelgriffith1 • March 18, 2016 • 2 Comments

Hi All, so we have reached the end of the third week and summer is still here today, but the weekend – I have heard- will finally bring Autumn with it! So what has been cooking in Oz Lit, in 19th C. Lit & in Shakespeare & the Renaissance? In Oz Lit we are about…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Week 2 Summer/Autumn Semester

by michaelgriffith1 • March 11, 2016 • 0 Comments

Another fabulous week of literature and life! I thoroughly enjoyed my time exploring Kim Scott’s That Dead Man Dance with Oz Lit students today. This is an amazing work that really brings to life an indigenous experience of life in relation to landscape and everything in it. It does this so powerfully through the sharp contrast…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

Great Start to Semester One

by michaelgriffith1 • March 9, 2016 • 1 Comment

Hi All, I am not sure whether to call this autumn or summer semester! We are having the best summer for a long time and we are well into Autumn! Global warming??? At all events we have had a fabulous start to the semester in all literature units. The one blog topic for this week…

Nineteenth, Oz Lit, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

How to Create a New Category in WordPress

by michaelgriffith1 • March 8, 2016 • 1 Comment

Hi All, those of you doing Nineteenth Century Literature or Shakespeare this semester who already have a WordPress site set up from last year have been asking me: “How do I set up a new category so that all my 19thC Lit OR Shakespeare Blogs appear under these new categories”. Easy Peasy!!! Please follow these…

21st Century Lit, Oz Lit, Visionary Blake, Visionary Imagination, x Blogging

BEST ePortfolio/Blogs SPRING 2015

by michaelgriffith1 • November 27, 2015 • 1 Comment

Hello All, I want to share with you this amazing list of the best ePortfolio/blogs produced by ACU students during the second half of 2015. For their ePortfolios they had to showcase their best Creative and Critical Blogs, their Peer Reviews of others in the group, and they had to answer a broad question on…

Oz Lit

David Malouf- Fly Away Peter

by michaelgriffith1 • October 12, 2015 • 0 Comments

In today’s lecture we spent time exploring the last few pages of this amazing novel Fly Away Peter. Malouf’s creativity is so attuned to his characters’ inner experience that it is very hard not to be deeply moved by what his characters experience. This is the power of his creative skill, shaping sentences, phrases, images to draw…

Oz Lit, Visionary Blake, x Blogging

Patrick White’s Aboriginal Jesus

by michaelgriffith1 • September 25, 2015 • 0 Comments

Margaret Preston may have been roasted on a spit for daring to present Adam and Eve as an Aboriginal couple in offering this painting to the Blake Prize in the early 1950s. How dare one assume that our forefathers had anything to do with Aboriginality!!! Thus spake the right-wing factions of our country So how…

Oz Lit, x Blogging

Oz Poetry in the later 20th Century

by michaelgriffith1 • September 23, 2015 • 0 Comments

Today we covered a huge range of Oz writers: Rosemary Dobson, Francis Webb, Gwen Harwood, David Malouf (his poetry), Barbara Hanrahan, Les Murray, Michael Dransfield, Yahia Al-Samaway, Kevin Hart, Judith Beveridge, Kate Grenville and finally Chi Vu (her “A Psychic Guide”). Rosemary Dobson’s amazing Ekphrastic poem “Child with a Cockatoo” (based on a painting by…

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