I can't help it. I know it's superficial but I'm revelling in this late, short blast of summer weather. Those uninterrupted blue skies over London make me happy. I love the strange sense I have of my childhood Australian summers revisiting me in London in October. I never thought I'd be lowering the blinds to …
Author: Hilaire
I am a writer of poetry and prose. I was born and brought up in Melbourne but have lived in London most of my adult life.
notes from yesterday
A breezy, summer's-last-hurrah day. A rare lie in, cups of tea, Radio 3. Late breakfast: wilted spinach and poached eggs on toast, to set us up nicely for the day's cultural exertions. First stop, the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair at Exmouth Market, organised by the excellent CB editions. An inspiring, if slightly overwhelming, event …
an array of pencils
Here is my current selection of pencils. I like to have a few on hand, two or three in each room and at least one in my handbag. There is something pleasing about using a pencil. It's modest, workaday, unpretentious. There's nothing to go wrong; they'll last as long as there's lead in the casing. …
worrying about my reading habits
Am I reading enough? Am I reading enough contemporary fiction? Have I read enough of the classics? Do I read enough literature in translation? Is it a problem that my reading choices are scattered, random, unstructured? Dare I confess that I have never been a voracious reader? That I never read under the bedclothes with …
literary connections
I've recently finished reading, in quick succession, The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington (introduction by Ali Smith) and There But For The by Ali Smith herself. I found Carrington's novel charming and surprising, wonderfully anarchic, but with a dark subtext about humanity's exploitative and destructive relationship with mother earth. There are elements that reminded me of …
cultural pick-me-up
Headed to the British Museum after work on Friday to check out a couple of their Australian Season offerings. Out of Australia featured prints and drawings by Australian artists from the 1940s to the present day, and was an absorbing and varied show. Amongst my favourites were Sidney Nolan's powerful felt-tipped pen drawings of drought-struck …
a new chapter, and other clichés
I've been resisting writing too much about recent personal events (apart from screeds in my private journal), but now that one chapter has closed and a new one is about to open, I thought it high time to chuck a few clichés out there. I've been living through them, after all, for the last few …
waking up to Chandler
A fairly unusual occurrence for me - a book finished within a week: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which I read because it came endorsed by my sister, and because I felt I should have read Chandler. How many other authors are there I should have read? More than enough to induce panic, guilt, …
three good things I did this week
1. Wednesday evening to Loose Muse at the Poetry Café, for some stimulating and varied readings from women writers. A mixture of open mic spots and longer readings from the two featured poets, Karen Head and Katrina Naomi. I was particularly taken by the poems Katrina Naomi read, which were quirky, a bit edgy, perfectly pitched. …
London peloton
This is one of the things I love about London - setting off on my bike on a summer morning, a cloudless blue sky above and the tall plane trees resplendent in the sunshine, vivid green against the blue; the air almost fresh (for London), already a sense that the temperature is rising; catching a …
Hilaire 