Overburdening tropes like the ghost or the zombie with so much emotional baggage turns the genre into an instrument for more ‘mature’, ideological massaging. Instrumentalism never makes for good art.
Trading art for animosity. Poetry in Australia seems to be enjoying something of a boom. Mainstream Australian cultural agents, such as they are, pay scant attention to the work of the country's contemporary poets-I can't recall a book of poetry ever being discussed on ABC TV's The Book Club-and the view of Australia as a relatively anti-intellectual, unliterary milieu persists, and yet thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people regularly participate in the writing, performance,…
