Articles from Heathen Scripture

A salute to the captain of the good ship Queensland. On visiting Campbell Newman’s sunny state last week, I was asked to be part of an event called The Sincerest Form of Flattery, in which writers mimic the style of a favourite author. I decided to go with A.B. Paterson. When I’ve got a minute I might rework this, keeping to the Banjo’s original metre. But I rather had to knock this piece together on the day, so this is it, as performed at the Brisbane Writers Festival.

You can tell there’s pre-election tension in Malaysia when they start locking up writers. On Tuesday, Australian-educated political publisher Ezra Zaid was arrested and brought in front of a judge, where a date for him to be charged was set for July.

For Malaysia observers, a move against Ezra’s ZI Publications was hardly a surprise. In a country where official censorship remains heavy-handed, ZI releases the kind of books that politicians would prefer were not available.

It’s a fair question. Last year I was punching out articles and raging against the dying of the light. This year, a quiet has largely settled over my corner of the internet. But what kind of quiet? The kind where I decided I hated everyone and retreated to a rustic mountain cabin to grow my own tomatoes in a beehive and teach my dog to pump clear cold water from the stream?

The last few nights, we’ve had those beautiful late-March evenings you get in Melbourne. So many in fact that the last one has draped over onto the first day of April. Those nights where it’s like summer has forgotten that it was supposed to be over, and come wandering back into the party half an hour after it left to catch a cab.