Mark Mordue is a writer, journalist and editor working internationally. He was awarded a 1992 Human Rights Media Award for his journalism. His travel book Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip was published in both Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2001) and the USA (Hawthorne Books, 2004). Film director Wim Wenders acclaimed it as the first book of its kind to take the road genre “into the 21st century”. Mark was 2001 Asialink Australian Writer-in-Residence at Beijing University and currently teaches writing and journalism at the University of Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He was Guest Editor of the literary journal Meanjin's 'On Rock ‘n’ Roll' issue (November 2006) and is currently in the process of completing a first novel for his M.A. in Writing (by Research) at UTS.
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk Penguin Books Australia There were things I had forgotten about Orhan Pamuk. I suspect this forgetting arises from the fact the Turkish novelist is such an elegant writer and heroically bookish figure. Yet close … Continue reading
Here I am. Here! Listening to Pere Ubu’s Chinese Radiation. There we are. There! Kissing, in bed, naked, young, studying our own feelings, our university, You wondering what Bob Dylan meant in Desolation Row, While all I can think about … Continue reading
Tim Rogers is a white ghost in a window; nothing there but the discernible rub of a bodyshirt in reflected light, and a sweet, croaky voice singing about milk and love. Through the double-plated glass of a recording booth at … Continue reading
AT THE HEIGHT of German hyperinflation in 1923 and 1924, people would sit on the streets ready to barter with crates of paper money. It was sold by weight and worth more than old bones but less than rags. This … Continue reading
DAMNED COLD. An ice storm over Nashville has closed down flights across the state of Tennessee. Driving is just as treacherous, but despite the weather a startling 1952 powder-blue Cadillac convertible hurries on through the night along a rising, twisting … Continue reading
If I were to have a nervous breakdown and come apart, I can see how reading too much Bret Easton Ellis would help me along. I’ve spent the past few weeks wandering through his novels, alternately amused by his wit … Continue reading
Kenneth Branagh at a You Am I gig?! I had to look twice. It turned out to be an ostrich-like version, but that’s New York for you: imitations, echoes, shadows … of fame, fatal fame. It’s been styled into people’s … Continue reading
A tyrant can shoot down a tiger but shakes in fear when someone whispers a poem.A poem whispers down a tyrant but shakes when a tyrant shoots a woman.A woman is a tiger shooting poems through a tyrant’s dreams.Twice in … Continue reading
Snow By Orhan Pamuk Faber/Penguin, 436pp, $29.95 ‘The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the Continue reading
It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon and Tex Perkins is still in bed. “I’ve been doing interviews on the phone all day,” he says. “Thought I may as well make myself comfortable. Continue reading
You wake up in the middle of the night. And the word ‘kindness’ is in your head. Continue reading
Just got off train. Pretty amusing ride Continue reading
The poem of the dead is made of this: dirt or fire, bones and skin, worms or ash, favourite things, a book, a ring, a guitar or just a toy, a song to carry out the coffin out, tears and wine and tea that’s not too strong, a cruel blue sky, consoling rain, the weather as a voice, one shiny car, quiet movements made, a stunning Bible line, a few lyrics from Dylan Thomas’s light, white flowers, a Stop sign, a priest whose words just sink away, the incense in the air, a friend who laughs, a mother’s cries, a father’s face of stone, a hand upon your shoulder now, a strange car ride, a bird’s cold tune, a child who lost another, cakes and bread and garden chairs, the note they left, the will they wrote, the things that we have heard, their favourite clothes, and when it passed, take a handful of this soil, the milk is here, the beer is there, an aunt from way up north will speak to you, new machinery creaks them into fire, a curtain closes slow, a hallowed be thy name is called, the sunlight on the graves, smoke rises from a chimney slow, we turn our eyes and walk away, by night the loved ones, still, are gathered around the songs we used to know, the family lives alone with loss, the ceremony is tomorrow. – Mark Mordue Continue reading
Gil Scott-Heron greets me genially. He’s slightly spidery in his dangled movements, surprisingly slight and aged Continue reading
IN one of his greatest poems, People, Yevgeny Yevtushenko says, “In any man who dies there dies with him/ his first snow and kiss and fight”. Part of an intense recognition of our mortality, the poem also deals with the power of memory and the role of art as Yevtushenko admits: “The secret worlds are not regenerated./ And every time again and again/ I make my lament against destruction.” Having encountered the loss of three people in the past year — all by suicide — it’s no wonder the Russian’s poem should speak to me. At the same time I was struck by a recent viewing of Clint Eastwood’s film Hereafter, and its focus on George Lonegan (Matt Damon), a spirit medium trying to escape the burden of his relationship with the dead Continue reading
Jarvis Cocker wanders through London’s Tower Books and Records like a spy in a foreign country. Continue reading
The very thought of writing this story made me feel like vomiting over my laptop and down my flannelette shirt. Yet another lifestyle piece on Cool with a capital “C”, another voice-deadening set of icons whose style and attitude should be genuinely rebellious and outside easy mainstream embrace Continue reading
THE 19th century French writer Charles Baudelaire once compared the plight of the poet to that of the albatross. A sacred bird which would “nonchalantly chaperone a ship across the bitter fathoms of the sea”, it sometimes suffered the boredom of sailors who would capture and torture it, “a sovereign of space.. Continue reading
Former Cold Chisel songwriter Don Walker calls him ‘a national treasure’. Hunters and Collectors made his song ‘Stuck On You’ a live anthem Continue reading
“No use permitting some prophet of doom to wipe every smile away. Come hear the music play…” Cabaret – Music: John Kandor / Lyrics: Fred Ebb Continue reading
Birds are shrieking through the trees all over Rushcutter’s Bay. Continue reading
Who are you? In a year bookended by James Cameron’s Avatar and David Fincher’s The Social Network, this was the central theme, as our lives were absorbed into an accelerating digital culture made up of iPhones, iPads, iTunes, Twitter, Wii, X-Box, PlayStation, YouTube and Facebook Continue reading
Christmas. ‘Tis the season to be jolly? Sing we joyous all together Continue reading
