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Barry Hill

Barry Hill is a poet and historian. His book Naked Clay: Drawing from Lucian Freud was short-listed for the UK’s 2012 Forward Prize.

Articles by this author

Cover of JM Coetzee’s ‘Late Essays: 2006–2017’
JM Coetzee’s ‘Late Essays: 2006–2017’ shows his deep respect and sympathy for fellow writers
Sly late style
“Coetzee the critic is every bit as good as Coetzee the novelist,” the Irish Times said of his third essay collection back in 2001. For Late Essays: 2006–2017 (Knopf Australia; $...
 
Image of Joy Williams
Celebrated short-story practitioner Joy Williams turns to micro fiction in ‘Ninety-Nine Stories of God’
Language to transcend
Joy Williams writes word-perfect stories. They are often wretchedly funny; she makes you laugh even when you don’t want to. She writes out of a damaged or wild or ecstatic or even...
 
Cover of The Art of Time Travel
Tom Griffiths’ ‘The Art of Time Travel’ is a thoughtful look at some of Australia’s most prominent historians
Strong boots
This is not so much a history, as an epic poem; and notwithstanding, or even in consequence of this, the truest of histories. – John Stuart Mill, ‘Carlyle’s French Revolution...
 
Giramondo Publishing; $26.95
‘Journey to Horseshoe Bend’ by TGH Strehlow
This book is a valuable reissue of a landmark Australian work, first published in 1969 and written by a man with a chip on his shoulder as heavy as a ghost gum. Its melancholic...
 
Meeting the Dalai Lama in the Blue Mountains
On the edge of a cliff
“How did you get on with the Buddha?” my daughter asked when I got back from the Blue Mountains. She caught my hesitation and let out a laugh, embarrassed at her slip of the...
 
Black Inc.; $29.99
‘A Short History of Richard Kline’ by Amanda Lohrey
This is another deft life-study by Amanda Lohrey, whose recent narratives have a sardonic edge with metaphysical reach. In the novella Vertigo (2008) she did not miss a beat. Its...
 
Ko Un, with his books. © Barry Hill
Meeting Ko Un
Wild Pilgrim
Strong poets must live on the knife edge of death/life. Few have done so better than Ko Un, the Korean who has been short-listed for the Nobel Prize since 2002. He has long been...
 
JM Coetzee’s ‘Diary of a Bad Year’
A masochistic scalpel
JM Coetzee’s ability to cut to the bone is terrifyingly impressive. He exposes the ribcage, with the heart beating inside it. There it is, you might say, that simple thing before...
 
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