Theodore Ell studied literature and modern languages at the University of Sydney, spent time in Florence for archival research, and was awarded a PhD in 2010. For several years he worked freelance as an editor, translator and researcher, work that culminated in his book A Voice in the Fire (2015), which brought to light unknown Italian anti-fascist writing. In 2018, he accompanied his wife on a diplomatic posting to Lebanon, and while living in Beirut, they survived the port explosion of August 2020. Returning to Australia in early 2021, they settled in Canberra once again. Theodore’s non-fiction and translations have been published in Australia, Italy, and the United Kingdom. He is an honorary lecturer in literature at the Australian National University. His essay, ‘Façades of Lebanon’, won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize.
One of the dangers of academia is that ego interferes with the formation and sharing of knowledge. Colleagues are enemies, discussion is manipulation, subject matter is weaponised. British author James Cahill studied at Oxford and Cambridge, worked at a gallery in London, and recently joined King’s College London, but his first novel, Tiepolo Blue, is burdened with a feeling that these environme ... (read more)
Nightfall on the sill. Trinkets, hardened dust. Skyin the gaps of a broken comb – the medley
of towers, antennae. The city: a queuefor dinner at a swish place, or a catwalk.
Thoughts of not doing an evening by halves –not dress circles or crystal filled in series,
only forgetting the rule of doubt for hours,leaving morning till morning, whole vacancies.
This sill, monogrammed by wine ... (read more)
In Italy, Dante is known as il sommo poeta (‘the supreme poet’). Ironically, such reverence obscures the creative personality. We know Dante responded to the shock of being exiled from Florence in 1302 by writing a visionary poem of hell, purgatory, and paradise, in which his tormented life and feuding world were set right – but why did he do it? With little biographical evidence and no orig ... (read more)
How would we have viewed the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death if there had been no Covid-19? The editors of Divining Dante are candid about their fears that the pandemic might narrow their celebratory anthology to poems of doom and disaster. After all, the cosmic system of Dante’s Comedy is one of the few fictional creations to match the scale and reach of the pandemic. D ... (read more)
Listen to this essay as read by the author.
As the March and April evenings grew hotter, the streets of East Beirut were as empty as our calendars. The grumble of traffic had disappeared. Without the usual smokescreen, the nearby mountains and coastline were visible for weeks. Parks are scarce in Beirut and gardens are private, but this spring, vines and bougainvillea were clambering ov ... (read more)
