Author: insister_xz0h57

“What I really mean is: How will I stay alive, if I stop writing?” (2020)   Helen Garner Australian novelist and diarist     Writing between the lines: A gift There is a photo of me nursing Lucy pinned to the inside cover of my purple diary. The two of us are sitting outside in…

Can you come a little closer?  No, I was mistaken—it wasn’t you, it was just a fleeting shadow. Would you like to join your old friend for a coffee? No, never mind—you’ll only end up feeling like a perfect stranger. You’ll feel better when you get home and lay down next to the one you…

As a matter of fact, miraculous and magical things happen I can’t remember the first Alice Hoffman book I read. I don’t think it was Practical Magic (1995), even though I loved the movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. Practical Magic tells the story of twin witch sisters Sally and…

“Have you seen the grotesque of her in the Great Court at the University? How delightful is the sculpture of her behind a steering wheel in homage to the way she practically and politically moved men around!” Anna Frederika (Freda) Bage (1883-1970) Academic Biologist Motoring adventurer Sports administrator University administrator Women’s activist   Yesterday She…

“Happiness is the reflection of a smile”, from Holly’s words of wisdom: An appointment calendar for 1977. Hello Holly Hobbie I didn’t know anything about her except that her name was Holly Hobbie, and she was the first to keep my secrets close in a white diary. Holly Hobbie, an American writer, water colour artist…

She said, I said I love Margaret Atwood. She is one of those writers whose words ruthlessly wrap around me the moment I turn the first page and plummet my mind and body deep down into the darkness of the world she imagines so that, as she suggests, we might “bring something back out to…

Today I REAL-ly did wear a second-hand taffeta green dress I bought from Vinnies to work. On the way from the carpark to a room of my own on the sixth floor, my silver sandals REAL-ly did start to break. I REAL-ly did take a pair of scissors and cut off the loose straps –…

A terzanelle for Lynette Love. It’s a word I hear my Mum say a lot. “Hi Beth, how are you love?”, she asks when she picks up the phone with a soft tone that makes me think and wonder that maybe she is smiling. “That’s good love”, she says as she listens to my latest…

In love with words and poetry; it’s a matter of life and death    A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. Emily Dickinson Photo: “Emily Dickinson’s white dress“ Ursula K. Le Guin insister-ed that “love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it…