This year’s NBA (worth $12,500, courtesy of its benefactor, Dr Geoffrey Cains) will be announced on March 12 at the State Library of New South Wales. Six works of biography and autobiography appear on the shortlist: Richard Bosworth’s Mussolini (Hodder Headline); Miriam Estensen’s The Life of Matthew Flinders (Allen & Unwin); Barry Hill’s Broken Song (Random House); Mara Moustafine’s Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files (Random House); Pamela Statham-Drew’s James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia (UWA Press); and Zoltan Torey’s Out of Darkness (Picador).

The Best Australian Poetry

Australians may not be buying slim volumes of poetry in numbers that would make Don Watson or Nikki Gemmell blush, but the market for poetry anthologies seems to be strong, after a few years in the doldrums. In recent months, we have reviewed several new anthologies, including the first in a new series from UQP: The Best Australian Poetry, edited by Martin Duwell. David McCooey reviewed the 2003 edition in our December 2003/January 2004 issue, and welcomed Duwell’s ‘refreshing lack of angst about the status of poetry’ and his ‘catholic’ choice of poems. ‘Advances’ was pleased to come across several poems that first appeared in ABR. Laudably, Duwell and his co-editor, Bronwyn Lea, will appoint a new guest editor each year. This year it will be Anthony Lawrence, who is already hard at work selecting poems for the 2004 edition. Meanwhile, on page 39 of this issue, Peter Pierce reviews Lawrence’s new collection, The Sleep of a Learning Man.

ABR goes to Canberra

The magazine goes on the road this month, with our first ABR Forum in Canberra. Peter Rose (Editor of ABR) and Morag Fraser (former Editor of Eureka Street) will be in conversation about that pullulating genre, life-writing. Pleasingly and fittingly, this event will be at the National Library of Australia, our national sponsor since 2002. ‘Writing from Life’ will take place in the NLA’s Theatre at 2 pm on Sunday, March 28. Entry is free, but bookings are essential: (02) 6262 1122.

World order a big winner

Here’s an award that all internationalists would like to carry off. Professors John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos of the Australian National University have shared the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order for their book Global Business Regulation. This prize, previously won by Mikhail Gorbachev and Gareth Evans, is currently worth US$200,000.

Creativity at the SLV

The State Library of Victoria is seeking applications for a new round of Creative Fellowships, which will allow ‘scholars and creative artists’ to use the Library’s collections. These are worth between $12,500 and $50,000 (the fellowships, not the collections), depending on the duration of the project. Applications close on March 31. You can download the form from the SLV’s website: www.statelibrary.vic.gov.au.

Fun at Faulconbridge

This year’s Norman Lindsay Festival of Children’s Literature is on March 20 and 21 at the Norman Lindsay Gallery in Faulconbridge, NSW. Some of Australia’s best writers and illustrators, including Terry Denton, James Valentine, Emily Rodda, Nadia Wheatley and Simon French will be attending. The festival offers a host of workshops and talks for both adults and children (aged eight to twelve), as well as guided bushwalks, music and performances. For more information go to www.nsw.nationaltrust.org.au. For bookings, you should call (02) 4784 3832.

Sara Hardy and Edna Walling

The Melbourne writer Sara Hardy reviews for ABR for the first time this month. It’s appropriate that she should review a new edition of Edna Walling’s A Gardener’s Log, for Ms Hardy has just been awarded the inaugural Peter Blazey Fellowship (worth $5000) in order to complete a biography of Walling, one of Australia’s most influential landscape designers. This new fellowship, which honours the memory of the late author and gay activist, has been established by the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne, and has been made available through donations from Peter Blazey’s brother Clive Blazey and his partner Tim Herbert. It will be offered annually.

You can say that again!

‘Blockbuster’ (this common designation itself should give us pause to think again) exhibitions do not in fact serve the art they expose. What is the reality of, say, viewing an exhibition in the company of nearly 5000 other people, or even half that number? One cannot look at, or study, or contemplate the exhibits in such a press. And is there any indication that a huge exhibition stimulates increased serious interest in an artist? In the ‘new religion’ of art, have works of art become the new relics that need merely to be glimpsed in order to obtain an aesthetic indulgence? Museums are under political and financial pressure to prove their worth by numbers, and certainly need the income, but huge numbers driven up by hype are ultimately self-defeating.’ (From The Art Newspaper editorial, February 2004)