Susan Sheridan

Susan Sheridan reviews 'Collected Poems: Lesbia Harford' edited by Oliver Dennis

November 2014, no. 366 • 01 November 2014

In her short life (1891–1927), Lesbia Harford wrote hundreds of poems and a novel, took a law degree at the University of Melbourne, had love affairs with both women and men, worked as a machinist in clothing factories, and was active in the anti-conscription movement during World War I and the International Workers of the World (‘the Wobblies’). She was the quintessential modern woman of th ... (read more)

Susan Sheridan reviews 'Down in the City' by Elizabeth Harrower

February 2014, no. 358 • 19 January 2014

Elizabeth Harrower’s début novel was first published by Cassell in London in 1957. Down in the City begins with a hymn to Sydney, with its beaches, harbour suburbs, city arcades – and disreputable Kings Cross, ‘a haven for the foreigner and racketeer; a beacon for long-haired boys, mascaraed women and powdered men. It is Montmartre: it is bright and wicked.’ ... (read more)

Susan Sheridan reviews 'Moving Among Strangers: Randolph Stow and My Family' by Gabrielle Carey

December 2013–January 2014, no. 357 • 01 December 2013

When Gabrielle Carey wrote Puberty Blues (1979) with her school friend Kathy Lette, it was closely based on her own experience as a teenager. This initiated a writing career specialising in autobiography. Her novel The Borrowed Girl (1994) is based on her experience of living in a Mexican village, and So Many Selves (2006) is a personal memoir. Her new book extends the work of mourning and remembe ... (read more)

Susan Sheridan reviews 'Collected' by Rosemary Dobson

July–August 2012, no. 343 • 10 July 2012

This volume contains all the poems that Rosemary Dobson wants to preserve. They represent a substantial portion of her output, which seems right for a poet who began with a degree of quiet confidence and poise that belied her youth. From the earliest, published when she was in her twenties, to the latest, dictated only last year by the ninety-year-old poet to her daughter, the poems attest to the ... (read more)

Susan Sheridan reviews 'True North: The story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack' by Brenda Niall

April 2012, no. 340 • 01 April 2012

In April 1934 sisters Mary and Elizabeth Durack joined their eldest brother, Reg, at Argyle Downs Station in the Kimberley. Mary was twenty-one, her sister eighteen. Educated at Loreto Convent in Perth, they had been reared on a diet of stories about life in the north told by their father, Michael Patrick Durack (known as ‘MPD’), when he returned from the family’s pastoral holdings every wet ... (read more)

Susan Sheridan reviews 'The Flight Attendant’s Shoe' by Prudence Black

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337 • 24 November 2011

The international air hostess was the ultimate twentieth-century modern girl – mobile, cosmopolitan, glamorous. She was paid to travel around the world, journeys that, in the early years of intercontinental travel, could take several days and involve stopping at exotic places such as Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, and Cairo on the ‘Kangaroo Route’ between Australia and London. She was, of cou ... (read more)

Susan Sheridan reviews 'Selected Poems of Dorothy Hewett' edited by Kate Lilley

March 2011, no. 329 • 01 March 2011

Dorothy Hewett is a vivid presence in all her poetry. This selection from her life’s work opens with a poem written in her last year at school. It begins:   The dark fires shall burn in many rooms; will they sometimes miss me with my tangled hair – still girls in dark uniforms … ? ... (read more)