What a gift this was to be to share my insights on and understanding of Australian Indigenous literature with this passionate, switched-on group of Harlem Clemente students. They were so keen to hear and know about their less well -off brothers and sisters down-under. I shared with them the way that our university supports Indigenous…
Category: x Blogging
Wonderful James Baldwin Exhibition in Down-Town Manhattan
Don’t miss this one if you are staying on in NY. At 533 West 19th is this commemoration of America’s greatest contemporary African American writer. Photographs, art works, videos, stories and letters give a rare, more private insight into how this man transformed his life and helped profoundly to shift fixed attitudes toward African Americans.
Moma -NY 2019
A goodly handful of us had a wonderful treat today: not only did we see and discuss some of the more controversial Post WW2 American artists, but we had hour long wanderings among the most well known 20th Century modernists: Such a happy team 🤣👍🎶 Inside we started with iconic Rothko and Picasso: It is…
Central Park Cameo: dogs and runners and snow…..
Early morning snaps on my run…. Altitudinal squirrels in the high branches bracing themselves against the cold wind…
Day 7- Brooklyn & Brooklyn Bridge: Walt Whitman and Hart Crane
Hi All, here is the wonderful discussion we had this morning – about “Pies” then about Walt Whitman’s “epiphanic” (thank you Naomi!) depiction of New York in “Mannahatta”, followed by Hart Crane’s ecstatic description of Brooklyn Bridge. We also briefly compared Joseph Stella’s 1939 painting The Brooklyn Bridge (at The Whitney) with Hart Crane. So enjoy…
Day 7: Brooklyn & Brooklyn Bridge- Walt Whitman and Hart Crane
Tutorial Day 6: Waitress, The MET and Harlem’s Gospel Service
James began our session today with a lively discussion on Waitress with a particular interest in whether you saw this Broadway stage version to be a reduction of the force found in the film. In the discussion there was a real sense that many of you thought that the play version was sentimentalizing a brutal and…
Day 5 Gospel Service in Harlem
Today Sunday we had the extraordinary good fortune to be part (again- last time in 2017) of the Gospel Service at the Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem: Personally I found this service incredibly powerful and moving, but I can also understand why some people might find it confronting and challenging. To this end I have…
New York Day 4: Day Off! Central Park & The Whitney (including Andy Warhol)!!
Day 4 – Day Off- with an early morning run round Central Park followed by a visit to The Whitney Gallery on the Hudson River with a special retrospective exhibition of Andy Warhol. Central Park in the early morning creates a great sense of the deeper context of New York. Here you become aware of…
The MET in New York
This post includes the morning tutorial on To Kill a MockingBird and on the insights gained from the literary tours. Go to the end of the blog for these…. We had a great tour through the Modern and Contemporary Gallery today looking at early 20th Century Regional Art – in the form of Thomas Hart…
Introduction to the Literature of New York with Nick Birns from NYA – Washington Square and Greenwich Village
A day to be remembered! Nick so generously took us through his life-long experience of New York and his passionate lover of the literature that it has produced, and his deep sense of the social and ethical insights that reading and understanding this literature can give. Thank you Nick! With Nick’s permission here is the…
Made it to New York for the start of our amazing tour through the literary and dramatic haunts of this awesome city! Join us for our adventure
Take- off Stop-over in LA (LAX) The highs and the lows of digital creativity in the LAX Terminal. Here is American digital artistry on show: And here is art as handmaiden of consumerism- in your face!!!! Arrival in New York…. a blissful 2 degree C (after the nearly 40 in all three cities from…
New York 2019 Tutorial 2
Hi All, thank you for your wonderful contributions to today’s classes. We felt that you learnt a lot and -if you read the texts and ready and listen to the study guides you should not have a problem with our quizzes. The drama quiz will remain on January 9th (NSW & VIC 11-12; QLD 10-11.…
First Tutorial for New York 2019 cohort: The Literature and Drama of New York
Thank you all for your attendance and keen participation today. We have two recordings of our presentation and discussion. The first is the recording from the Sydney cohort, the second from the Melbourne and Brisbane cohort combined. Attached also please find the slides from today’s tutorial. Enjoy revisiting this content as needed for your quiz…
African American Writing: Harlem, New York: James Baldwin
Please find here the first audio talk on James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain. Also find underneath, notes and links to the content mentioned in the talk: Page of Links and Clips on James Baldwin (1924-1987) https://www.biography.com/people/james-baldwin-9196635- Please watch the short 3 minute clip on James Baldwin’s life at the start of this article. It…
Grace IV: Contemplative Experience, Poetry of Grace @ Aquinas, Poetry of Grace IV Contemplative Experience, x Blogging
The Poetry of Grace Contemplative Experience IV: Part 4
In today’s last session we turned first to exploring the ways in which William Blake explores the conditions that create GRACE. In his Songs of Innocence and Experience he has two songs that are about Nurses. In Nurse’s Song in Songs of Innocence he presents the Nurse in a state in which “her heart is at…
Getting Ready for New York: Literature and Drama!
It was great for James and I to meet you all today and to shake out some of your questions and concerns. This is the place where you are going to be able to find all the audio recordings both before and during our New York adventure. I will of course be putting this link…
The Poetry of Grace IV: Contemplative Experience Part 3
In this week’s session we looked first at Les Murray’s “The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle“. If you click on the title you can read the whole poem right here! We explored the ways in which Les’ poem builds on the ” ‘WONGURI‐’MANDƷIKAI SONG CYCLE OF THE MOON‐BONE“ which we explored in last week’s session. You can…
The Poetry of Grace IV: Contemplative Experience Part 2
This week we first turned our attention to Judith Beveridge’s wonderful poem “Flying Foxes, Wingham Brush”. In this poem she reveals her capacity to enter into the lives of these amazing creatures, giving them her full attention, drawing us in to the experience of their wondrous beings! Enjoy this audio lecture which moves at the…
The Visionary Imagination: William Blake, Patrick White, Brett Whiteley, Allen Ginsberg- Celebrating Class of 2018 ePortfolio/Blogs
BLAKEAN STORIES This was perhaps the most creative component of all the blogs: those many stories about strangers or family members who provided a trigger for seeing the world in a totally new way. Here is Jamie’s wonderful story about his sister from Vietnam in which he “describes a totally ordinary person in such…
Celebration of 20th Century Blogs: Century of “Innerness” in Literature and the Arts.
In this unit we explored writers and artists beginning with English Gerard Manley Hopkins right through to Trinidadian M. Nourbese Philip. The focus has been on the way writers and artists in the 20th Century have been trying to use their medium to break through the mirroring surface of things to the depths below, where…
The Poetry of Grace IV: Contemplative Experience Part 1
This is the fourth seminar series in a group titled The Poetry of Grace held at the Aquinas Academy in Sydney. Previous seminars have explored the poetry of Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke and Australian Francis Webb (these can be accessed from this WordPress site- just click on the Poetry of Grace link above). This 2018 seminar…
Australian Literature Blogs 2018
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…
William Blake’s “Grain of Sand” Alive and Well in 2018
Performances based around the work of William Blake and his legacy in Australia have taken place today in Strathfield (ACU)! What an amazing collection of young voices celebrating the continuing creative power of William Blake and his impact on such diverse talents as Patrick White, Brett Whiteley and Allen Ginsberg. Here are our pre-performance tutorials…
Introduction to the Literature and Art of New York: Tour January 2019
Hello All fellow travellers: Listen to the short lecture here as you look at the three slides that are immediately below this link. The slides are also placed within this space (if that is easier for you to use!) Click here for images to accompany this short talk: Intro:Overview Here also is a beautiful very short…
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
This play was performed today by our wonderful second year students who were exploring the ways in which Beckett was pushing the boundaries of English language along a continuum that had begun with Joseph Conrad, The poets of the First World War, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin and George Orwell. Beckett comes…
David Malouf- Fly Away Peter: Part 2
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…
Riders in the Chariot- Final Classes
Hi All, today was our final excursion into the world of Patrick White, especially his representation of Alf Dubbo, the Aboriginal artist as a ministering priest of a renewed Christianity. Patrick White shows us how Alf Dubbo’s belief is restored through his visionary imagination and in this way illuminates the way in which William Blake’s…
“Wherever I hang my knickers – that’s my home.”
Today we explored a range of immigrant writers who either embraced the English Language totally (such as Derek Walcott and Wole Soyinka), or those who enjoyed flaunting the creative powers of their own appropriation of English (such as Louise Bennett and Grace Nichols). This is a fascinating topic that shows the ways in which users…
Francis Webb’s Eyre All Alone & David Malouf’s Fly Away Peter
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…
Alf Dubbo (artist), potential redeemer!
Patrick White presents his hero Alf Dubbo -one of the four “Riders” in the Chariot- as a human being who brings into the present the transformative power of his aboriginal creative heritage. He does this through his deep animation of Christian themes, bringing these back to their true meaning in the sources of Christianity prior…
Nation, Race and Language- The Fate of the English Language at the End of Empire!
We began today’s lecture trying to respond to the question about language (in the screen shot below) and about the ways in which Samuel Beckett may be trying to address these questions. There were some great responses to the question from the class and you can hear these as the first items in the recorded…
20th Century Poets, Francis Webb and Judith Beveridge
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…
Alf Dubbo and Mordecai Himmelfarb
The Aboriginal and the Jew have a really important place in Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot. They embody two outsiders who have the key to a kind of wisdom that is not available to many. What is extraordinary is the way that Patrick White locates the seminal meeting between these two central characters in a…
George Orwell & Politics & Language
Audio Lecture on George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” and “Politics and the English Language”: George Orwell who experienced the horrors of imperial exploitation when working as a police officer in Burma began then to think of ways in which he could challenge corruption in politics, indeed in all human affairs, using his gift of language.…
Patrick White- Australia’s only Literature Nobel Laureate.
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,…
Morning Walk Down Lyre-Bird Gulley- Begins with Stone lyre-bird ends with Flesh lyre-bird.
The walk down Lyre-Bird Gulley (from Mount Kuring-gai down to Calna Creek and on to either Crosslands or Berowra Waters) now begins with this beautiful stone carving of a lyre-bird created by Noel Rosten (Australian Plant Growers’ Assocation) and his team of native plant enthusiasts from Asquith Boy’s High School. This lyre-bird and the gulley…
Some Fabulous Blogs from The Visionary Imagination.
Students completing a unit on The Visionary Imagination with a focus on William Blake, Brett Whiteley and Patrick White have produced their first batch of blogs and there are some wonderful entries. Here are some of the most compelling entries: enjoy. And thank you the creators! CREATIVE TASK- Write a letter to William Blake asking him…
Some Extraordinary 20th Century Literature Blogs
Please enjoy reading some of these amazing blog entries by students studying 20th Century Literature at ACU. Thank you all for the hard work that has gone into these entries: Thank you Helena for this wonderful re-imagining of Paul Baumer’s letter to the Frenchman’s wife: Click here. Thank you Dhwani for this amazing Hopkins imitation:…
Patrick White: Riders in the Chariot
What a wonderful world Patrick White takes us into in this remaking of the Australian social landscape in line with his own prophetic ambition to re-sacralize a spiritually desolate land. As he says in his essay “The Prodigal Son”: Because the void I had to fill was so immense, I wanted to try to suggest…
Samuel Beckett- Abstract Artist in Words…
Today we explored the ways in which Samuel Beckett continues the work of Modernists such as Virginia Woolf (“I want to sink deeper and deeper away from the surface” The Mark on the Wall) and T.S. Eliot (“Words after speech reach into the silence” Four Quartets) in his, Beckett’s quest to bring the art of text into alignment…
Australian Literature in the Early 20th Century!
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…
Brett Whiteley & William Blake 2018
Audio Lecture in the Brett Whiteley Studio Audio Lecture 1 in the NSW Art Gallery on Blake’s Job Engravings Audio Lecture 2 in the NSW Art Gallery on Blake’s Job Engravings Brett Whiteley’s “Grain of Sand” in Surry Hills & William Blake in Sydney: Blake’s “Job” in the NSW Art Gallery; What a fabulous connection was made today …
Art Consciousness and Spirit in Times of War
Today we explored Virginia Woolf (“The Mark on the Wall”), T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” and Katherine Mansfield’s “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”. These are three amazing modernist authors who, in the shadow of war (both the First and Second World Wars) were trying to find a way through to some personal or spiritual certainty.…
Australian Colonialism from 1880 on: Republicanism, Feminism, Federation, and beyond…
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…
Best OZ Lit Blogs- First Run!
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…
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell segues into The Book of Job, Whiteley’s Alchemy, Chaucer & Patrick White
Today we explore all those sections of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that provide a real insight into Blake’s deepest creative purpose and that also help us to understand where Patrick White was coming from in Riders in the Chariot. So we looked at his subversive “Proverbs of Hell” which sanctify the unsanctifiable (in conventional religion); we…
Modernism: T.S.Eliot & Virginia Woolf.
The visit to the art gallery of NSW last week was a perfect introduction to what we entered into today. It makes so much more sense talking about Virginia Woolf’s “Stream of Consciousness” and T.S. Eliot’s fragmented narratives (“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”- The Waste Land) afterhaving seen and discussed Picasso and Kirchner…
Early Colonial Australian Literature
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…
Patti Smith & The Doors- their celebration of William Blake’s enduring significance.
Today we launched into The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and especially we began by looking at the ways in which William Blake has become a prophetic figure for the Age of Aquarius in the second half of the Twentieth Century and beyond. It was indeed William Blake who coined the phrase “the New Age” .…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025 
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