Haiku workshop

Recently I was invited to give a short poetry workshop with primary school students

We discussed haiku and senryu, then they undertook an exercise making cut-up poems using my book Earthwords.

Fivebough field trip

Parkview Public School's third grade students were given a guided tour of Fivebough Wetland on 20 August to learn about the important role of this ecosystem, which attracts migratory birds from as far away as the northern hemisphere

In the much-anticipated follow-up to the Beak Technique workshop at the School in July, that illustrated the relationship between habitat and bird diet.

"This excursion highlighted the important role the landscape plays and how it has developed over hundreds of millions of years," said Red Earth Ecology's Jo Roberts.

Activities included identifying birds and beaks using binoculars, map-making, hearing about the history of the Wetlands and seeing small invertebrates in water samples using magnifying glasses.

"We're grateful to the Murrumbidgee Field Naturalists for the loan of binoculars," said Ms Roberts. "Their assistance was also appreciated in creating the educational resources shared with students."

The excursion also included walking along the Wiradjuri Loop at Leeton's Fivebough Wetlands that demonstrates First Nations totems, fish traps and other cultural practices.

Enthusiasm among the students was clearly evident, as they were keen to share their observations and detailed experiences with local flora and fauna.

"One highlight was watching a swamp hen through the binoculars as it caught and ate a fish," said Ms Roberts, who also noted the popularity of looking at the magnified water 'bugs', which was an eye-opening insight into the microscopic world that supports the wetland food chain.

Worksheets developed by Red Earth Ecology for the project were supported with a Country Art Support Program grant administered by Western Riverina Arts and Create NSW through funding from the NSW Government.

 

Worlds apart

This week I watched two science fiction films and got me thinking

It started with the sequel to Avatar, which I got curious about because the original film was a cultural phenomenon that led to a brief flurry of 3D movies.

I liked the experience of 3D, possibly because it made me sentimental about the time I saw Creature From The Black Lagoon as a small child.

3D worked well with the alien landscape of the Avatar movies and there were films like Life Of Pi that I regretted not seeing in the cinema to enjoy the effect.

However, it always seemed like the 3D novelty wasn't going to last and I was aghast that the local Roxy Theatre in Leeton spent tens of thousands of dollars investing in it.

Cinemas had largely abandoned the format by the time the sequel to Avatar arrived and I'm curious whether there will be any 3D screenings of the third film in the series.

One thing I liked about the original Avatar story was the way it contained elements of Metropolis, particularly the use of a robot to infiltrate resistance to capitalist industry.

The titular avatars are attempting to support mining on the alien planet and the sequel takes the colonial narrative into the sea, where it presents a version of the whaling industry.

It's kinda grim, given how whaling persists today, but the audience gets to cheer the big fish smashing boats.

The next film I watched was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which is a Luc Besson film I had missed.

He's a director who would probably have been cancelled for various reasons if he was American.

There's a curiousity about the themes in his work for me, since I first reviewed Leon The Professional and thought the relationship between that character and a girl was also unlike the material from Hollywood.

Valerian is a natural successor to the successful film The Fifth Element, which again has a big age gap between the central characters, and in many ways I thought the recent film was more polished and better paced.

As I reflected on the two films I watched this week I found myself admiring the sci-fi elements from Valerian over those in the Avatar sequel.

Besson's film had so many more wow moments, where I'd shake my head at the imaginative twists, and it was surprising to see Herbie Hancock in there too.

 

Afterwards I read Wikipedia to see what I could learn and was surprised to read the French director had been influenced by the first Avatar film:

The release of Avatar served as both a blessing and a curse for Besson; he has said, "technically, I could see that we can do everything now. The film proved that imagination is the only limit." 

Then I read an interview with Besson where he criticised Hollywood movies for being too dark.

It prompted me to reflect on how much angst appears in American stories, and I appreciated the fun I'd had watching Valerian.

 

France has a great reputation for film and sometimes I find myself wishing that Australia had stronger quotas for local content, because our film industry has diminished in recent years as US productions gain tax-breaks to produce their blockbusters in our country.

There are many qualities of our local stories that I wished could be represented in more movies.

Another film I watched this week was Two Hands, which was called an Australian version of Goodfellas but really deserves to be recognised without that US lens.

I wish there were bigger budgets for local productions and hope we still have a film industry beyond making material for the streaming services.

Lamb to the Moorhouse

This morning I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole and arrived at a surprising subject

It started when I read Austin Kleon's newsletter and saw a discussion of copyright, which took me to a comment about Australia's publishing industry:

This is all sadly true. I'm currently writing a biography of an Australian author and have done similar research into publishing history in Australia in 19th and 20th centuries, and the same situation was at play. Local authors were passed over for imported (usually pirated) copies of British and European (in translation) books. Unlike United States, however, Australia had a very strict censorship regime, with customs seizing and destroying any imported books they thought obscene (this included destroying a shipment of Zola novels). In the U.S. scene, it may be worthwhile looking into Edgar Allan Poe, who argued against the "publishing" situation and lack of copyright. His Dupin series of detective stories, for example, had a French protagonist, in order to persuade American readers that it was imported and so worth reading...
When the Berne Convention on Copyright came in and some copyright protections were in place, things got better for American authors (into 20th century), somewhat. But not so Australia, in which "colonial editions" continued to be published until 1972! Australian authors for the main had to be published by a British publisher, and have their books imported into Australia. The distance meant they lost control over editing/proofreading of their ms before publication, and they had a lower royalty rate. Until 1950s it was a fixed 5% (when British authors had 15%), and until 1972 it was only raised to 10% - but throughout, there was no rising scale of royalty if a certain number of copies were sold.
Until 1968 when Australia (finally) updated its copyright laws (and international treaties), Australia had no copyright protections in United States: that meant that U.S. publishers (technically) could have done to Australian books what they did to British books in 19th century, and pirate them (but they didn't); but worse, without Australian copyright being recognized in American, they couldn't sell their books to an American publisher. They had to go through a British publisher, and have them negotiate with American publishers...
Censorship continued until 1972, with books banned here long after they had been unbanned or available in other countries. James Baldwin's novels, for example, were banned in Australia when they first came out in the 1960s.
Australian publishing hasn't really survived these initial set-backs. The industry and the literary culture is moribund.

This prompted me to consider the current discussion of Australian copyright and whether foreign-owned (so-called) AI (really, large language models) should have unfettered access to our country's cultural works for free.

While I am generally of the opinion that copyright is an antiquated model, it is the one that provides remuneration to a (small) group of creatives (but mostly the corporations that take ownership of works) and (in theory) incentivises the creation of new cultural material and other intellectual property.

Given the author of the comment quoted above wrote their reflection in 2022, I began wondering what they'd make of the contemporary debate about copyright.

However, I was reluctant to create a LinkedIn account and found that Lamb's Substack requires a paid subscription for me to ask, so I started looking for interviews with the author and soon found myself interested in the book he's been promoting -- a biography of Frank Moorhouse.

It looks like a good book and I'm really curious about the subject's experience of living in Wagga, where he worked on The Daily Advertiser newspaper.

That journal is usually referred to as The Agoniser by people I know, and it's become renowned as the place where sometime Nationals leader Michael McCormack wrote a homophobic editorial (that he's since distanced). 

So, before long, I've found myself interested in learning more about Moorhouse from digging into interviews with Lamb.

Muddy mix

My partner Jo and I go for walks along a nearby water channel

The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area has many of these and the gravity-fed system is an engineering marvel.

Recently they've been enclosing some channels with pipes, which has led to our local channel dropping to a trickle.

Many birds seem to be enjoying the opportunity to fossick in the mud, also some humans too.

There are many sunken treasures, particularly witches hats and bits of metal.

I had passed a strangely shaped object a couple of times, thinking it was a dumped toolbox before I recognised the XLR connections and realised it's a wedge-shaped speaker box.

When I shared this photo my friends commented that it's "monitoring the water level" and offers "sub bass"!

Residencies make artists

I have watched many of Emily's pedal reviews and enjoy her observations

One of the things that jumped out in this recent video is her recollection of an artist residency.

There's a lot in there about elitism in the arts, as well as the rationale for her new album.

If you have been on an artist residency though, then you might recognise Emily's comment about how it made her feel like an artist.

I think this is one of the best aspects of a residency, where the residents identify as the role after doing there own thing elsewhere and not considering it art.

The best residencies have an open-ended quality that allows room for this development to occur. 

Magic kingdoms

This seems like the sorta thing Disney would produce if they used pollsters instead of test audiences

Or maybe it's just a question of where the audiences are located? 

Personally I pay Disney little money and have enjoyed their franchises, and am becoming really curious to see if the Shogun series can survive going beyond the book with a second season.

Sure, the Marvel and Star Wars spin offs have been hit and miss. 

I read Shogun for fun in high school and the TV mini-series at that time already felt dated.

So it's been fun to revisit the story but reminded me how much I wanted to see the battle just beyond the end of the book.

Toxic avengers

I'm beginning to think that "toxic masculinity" is a term that appeals to many people 

Rather than serving as a gentle way to change behaviours by suggesting something dangerous, it's become so polarising that it only succeeds in confirming biases in different directions across the gendered landscape. 

In that way it reminds me of the crisises that feminism has encountered whenever someone with a marginal identity asks if a political movement representing 51% of the population can claim to reflect their particular margin.

Usually those moments see the margins considered, possibly shifted or given new labels, then the small number of people it impacted either follow the renewed movement or find their own splinter to support. 

The feminst authors I've read are generally aiming to show solidarity with men where it will improve lives for everyone, such as reducing the burden of gender schema. 

However, I think history shows that one doesn't simply change the rules and expect the game to adjust -- more often it leads to a new code of sports or church for believers.

So I wonder if masculinity is toxic enough to die or if it will just get more extreme? 

How to take a great author photo