Lionel Lindsay (1874 – 1961) - Henry Lawson, circa 1919, pencil and charcoal; Henry Lawson, circa 1919, etching

Henry Lawson (1867–1922) was an Australian short story writer and bush poet. His writing explored the harsh realities of life in the Australian bush. Lawson grew up during the Australian Gold Rush. His family moved a lot as his father was a gold miner, but the family finally settled in Pipeclay, New South Wales. Lawson received little formal schooling and his father sometimes withdrew him from school to help with carpentry. However, his mother, a women's rights activist, encouraged young Lawson to read widely. Lawson acquired partial deafness at the age and his hearing further deteriorated as a teenager. In 1833, Lawson began an apprenticeship as a painter. However, the job was a poor fit for this poet. Lawson struggled to manage the challenges of deafness and the social and physical demands of the work. He was much more successful in assisting his mother with her periodical, the Republican. This work provided Lawson with the opportunity to publish his first prose piece. Lawson regularly contributed to The Bulletin magazine. He was most active in writing during the 1890s. He travelled to inland, rural New South Wales where he worked as a labourer, experienced draught, and collected many stories. In 1900, Lawson travelled to London with his family to expand his readership. However, his wife experienced mental illness and Lawson was pressured by time and financial constraints. The family returned to Australia after two years. Lawson struggled with bouts of alcoholism and depression throughout his adult life. He spent time homeless, in gaol, and in psychiatric intuitions. Later in his life, Lawson established a friendship with Isabel Byers, also a talented poet. For twenty years, she housed and cared for Lawson, supported him with finances, helped him to manage his mental and alcoholic problems, and facilitated contact with his children and friends. This care enabled him to continue writing.

istg if i see another dps edit of army dreamers by kate bush i will —

One thing that’s been lurking about in the back of my brain for a little while but has really kind of hit home as I read Woolf again and see all these L. M. Montgomery posts is how deep a feminist streak runs through Montgomery despite how little her work is talked about as such. And I think the locus of this female self-determination rests on her obsession with place. Woolf talks about the creative woman needing a room of her own, and Montgomery extends that to a house of her own. EVERY heroine has an almost pathological closeness or identification with either her childhood home (Green Gables, New Moon, and Silver Bush) or the home that represents adulthood and building an independent life (the Disappointed House and the Muskoka cottage). Nature and connection to the natural world obviously plays into these connections and contrasts with actual patriarchal ownership of these properties. In addition, despite how much of a “romantic” writer LMM seems, she also expressly links marriage to property ownership and personal empowerment through being mistress of a house. She mentions this everywhere (the condition of being an old maid always means dependency too but often on relatives and less sympathetic people) but I think of this particularly with Emily and Pat: Emily loves that Dean will let her live in the Disappointed House more than Dean himself, and that Emily will rescue it from disappointment is side by side on the page with her wedding to Teddy. Pat makes Silver Bush into her world and can only make a change in her life once the house is gone (the fact that her childhood lover comes back to her literally at the ruins of the burned house always stayed with me. It feels like a very obvious exchange of loves).

A last thing on the subject of feminism though is in Tangled Web, when Margaret Penhallow’s (most unusual for LMM but also in some ways the most on theme) choice of using her money is to buy a house and adopt a son. House-keeping and child-rearing are both traditional feminine tasks yet the fact that Margaret does them alone and independently shows LMM’s priorities and desires to shake off the natural connection between having a husband and being able to have a place of your own.

I’m almost 100% sure LMM and Virginia Woolf would never have read each other’s works and probably wouldn’t have liked them if they did, though considering they were contemporaries, I enjoyed teasing out similar resonances in how they describe the female condition of their time.

Four men in uniform, to carry home my little soldier.

What could he do? Should have been a rock star (Nuwanda)

but he didn't have the money for a guitar. (didn't have time)

What could he do? Should have been a politician (a poet)

but he didn't have a proper education.

What could he do? Should have been a father (an actor)

but he never even made it to his twenties..

What a waste, army dreamers

Ooh, what a waste of army dreamers.

(hopefully it makes sense & no one had done it before me, I'm just tooo into this song and I need to see a dps edit of it asap but sadly I do not have the abilities to make it myself)

poet spotted 🫵

Waiting

the clicking trill of a bush cricket sounds against the night like a car alarm, loud and insistent, waiting for someone to notice and turn him off

but his calls go straight to voicemail everytime, no matter how much he rings

so he hangs up and tries again, permitting a few moments of silence while he redials the only number he knows

the shrill dial tone picks up where it left off, deafening in it's proximity as he calls out again into the night

waiting

by Brie Thomson

Am I the only one that gets Kate Bush vibes from this Taylor Swift photo? Specifically the Babooshka music video! She wanted to test her husband/ She knew exactly what to do.

army dreamers by Kate Bush is so dead poets society it makes me SICK

Band codes for the poets

I’m just stuck on thoughts about how a lot of the poets, if not all of them, are band coded.

Neil: Neil is most definitely Taylor Swift. More so a lot of her Folklore/Evermore stuff is so inherently Neil and both Taylor/Neil talk a lot about the pain life brings but the love that it brings in reward. 

Todd: Todd is hard because he in actual fact doesn’t come into his own until the end of the movie but most Fanon Todd ideas centre around his love for reading and writing. This might not resonate with everyone but I feel he’s Kate Bush. Whimsical, and taking inspiration from literature, but also so in tune with life ad how to create art, not just a song.

Charlie: I couldn't decide on just one. Charlie in the good old tunes is Queen. It’s that rock and roll lifestyle but teamed with friendship and unfortunate loneliness for a romantic. But Charlie also fits in with a lot of modern music, because he doesn’t fit his own time period. He’s so Matty Healy coded it’s untrue. Could you imagine Charlie at a The 1975 concert? He’d be fucking living. I had this dream where Charlie and the Poets go to the concert and, somehow, Charlie ends up on stage, singing with Matty on The Sound, and serenading Knox, and they end up kissing during Robbers, which forces Knox to go on stage and snog Charlie because he's jealous.

Knox (Fanon because Canon doesn’t exist in my head for him): The Beatles. Imagine early 60s Paul McCartney. He wants to be in a happy classy love story, and very upbeat, but also he’d appreciate all the pining heartbreak songs.

Meeks: ABBA. If Meeks wasn’t American, he’d definitely be Swedish and I just can’t explain it. Maybe it’s the friendship with Charlie but he’s the other side of the 70s music coin to Charlie. It’s the happiness of songs like Dancing Queen and Super Trouper. I could imagine him having a breakdown to Slipping Through My Fingers.

Pitts: Pitts would be Jersey Boys. He’s smooth and he'd break out those sweet dance moves while still remaining calm and collective. I LOVE IT. 

Cameron: Silence. Not because I don’t think he matches with any band, he just strikes me as the Poet that will listen to everyone else’s music taste and think it’s all just ok. He hasn’t got strong opinions on that and doesn’t care about whether music is on or not, he could live quite easily without music. That’s ok! Music isn't for everyone and Cameron lives his life with only a couple of things that makes him stand out.

Lionel Lindsay (1874 – 1961) - Henry Lawson, circa 1919, etching; Ex libris, the Lionel Lindsay Art Gallery and Library, Toowoomba, 1957, wood engraving

Henry Lawson (1867–1922) was an Australian short story writer and bush poet. His writing explored the harsh realities of life in the Australian bush. Lawson grew up during the Australian Gold Rush. His family moved a lot as his father was a gold miner, but the family finally settled in Pipeclay, New South Wales. Lawson received little formal schooling and his father sometimes withdrew him from school to help with carpentry. However, his mother, a women's rights activist, encouraged young Lawson to read widely. Lawson acquired partial deafness at the age and his hearing further deteriorated as a teenager. In 1833, Lawson began an apprenticeship as a painter. However, the job was a poor fit for this poet. Lawson struggled to manage the challenges of deafness and the social and physical demands of the work. He was much more successful in assisting his mother with her periodical, the Republican. This work provided Lawson with the opportunity to publish his first prose piece. Lawson regularly contributed to The Bulletin magazine. He was most active in writing during the 1890s. He travelled to inland, rural New South Wales where he worked as a labourer, experienced draught, and collected many stories. In 1900, Lawson travelled to London with his family to expand his readership. However, his wife experienced mental illness and Lawson was pressured by time and financial constraints. The family returned to Australia after two years. Lawson struggled with bouts of alcoholism and depression throughout his adult life. He spent time homeless, in gaol, and in psychiatric intuitions. Later in his life, Lawson established a friendship with Isabel Byers, also a talented poet. For twenty years, she housed and cared for Lawson, supported him with finances, helped him to manage his mental and alcoholic problems, and facilitated contact with his children and friends. This care enabled him to continue writing.

Oliver Keane and Andrew Cushin are going to the All Of Those Voices London premiere tomorrow 16/3/23

Someday soon I really need to reread the Pat of Silver Bush books and write up an analytical comparison of David Kirk and Dean Priest. The first time I read Mistress Pat I was like Why Does This Feel Familiar, but back then (like 7 years ago) I hadn’t thought up my 95 Theses on Dean or nailed them to my Tumblr doors, so now that I have, it’s time to deconstruct this LMM archetype.

(I will say that 7 years ago David felt to me like a “safe” portray of Dean, but now I need to drill down on where the differences lie.)

Also I feel like Pat is interesting because it’s the one LMM series that deals crucially with close sibling love/dynamics, as opposed to her plethora of only-children heroines or siblings in an extended family sprawl situation. So that’s another thing to contemplate.

Divine Messenger

--prompt from @nosebleedclub "kindling" (5 January)

"There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, 'I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.'" -- Exodus 3:2-3

A beacon of light deludes us into thinking we will receive the truth on feathery wings. No--we will only know it after the whips cut out our muscles and rip out the gore which makes up our home.

I am already blind because I wandered to the darkest places-- navigating only through the light of the wolf moon, diluting in the clouds due to the thickening fog. I only returned on frostbitten feet, not because the watchmen call for my hands, but to receive this message and run.

Paper falls onto the ground-- their spells are already broken, for they are transmuted to mere kindling for an empire of gears and codes, unaware of the aesthetics of passion. Beyond the glowing hands and frequent prayers for a more perfect society, they know not the suffering of the subjugated-- those who bear the crown of thorns for purposes other than theatrical, those who alert others through speaking tongues-- poetry must always speak truth, unless it puts out the divine flame.

I do not confess here, for I know what I've done is just. I release my binds, leave them to the smoke, and let my memories collect dust.

From ashes I'm born, and to ashes I will come back to when I die. But I do not know why a merciless god would smite out of vengence against a country who indulges in beauty and art. I bear witness, purging the sea of tears to give solace to the hedonistic but truthful amongst us. They know the limits of denial, and let them feel the colors brand on themselves-- the color of pomegranates, bursting, bleeding, blooming in the winter night...--Elda Mengisto

GREATNESS

View On WordPress

Oh lei, oh lai, oh lei, oh lai, oh Oh lei, oh lai, oh lei, oh lai, oh

@homenum-revelio-rpg

ft. @craz-insanity, @g-lawrence

Whoops.

Accidentally came across that fucking Kate Bush song.

God dammit Tracy. Fuck cancer.

I know you're here with me.

Preservance, Preservance written on a card with a red pen.

You always come to me in my dreams wearing the blue hoodie that somehow was as blue as your eyes.

When I see bees I am still terrified.

I think it's you flying around and reminding me we heal with time. The toxin leaves our body, and our skin covers the puncture.

I felt you when I was climbing up the steep hill to get to the other side of Nicholls Oval Park.

I heard a "woot" and wondered if you were an owl perched on a branch observing.

Reassurance that I am safe in this place.

Preservance. Preservance.

I hate using past tense to think about you.