At the end of his big book Gallipoli, Les Carlyon observes that if the campaign made more sense ‘it would be a lesser story’. There’s much in what Carlyon says. The 1915 campaign was insignificant in the scale of the Great War; it achieved nothing, and petered out like a forgotten afterthought. It makes little sense, then or now.

It is thus in the intangibles and absurdities of the story, as well as the cracks and fissures of the Gallipoli landscape, that Carlyon makes his narrative. He tells it for a general reader in a vernacular voice, supported by a wealth of research into histories, diaries, and especially the ground itself. This focus on the terrain and soil is the key to this book: it is ultimately not written for historians, keen amateurs, or relatives of servicemen in far-off Britain or Australasia. Rather, it is a passionate book for those making the pilgrimage, real or metaphorical, to pay respects at a sacred site of Australia’s heritage.

Much loved public characters who venture into fiction in their mature years are, of course, on a hiding to nothing. Their apprenticeship, their experiences, their intuitions have all been spent or deployed elsewhere. In the case of Robyn Williams, these were as a distinguished science reporter and analyst for the ABC. The knowledge and opinions that he gathered there have been brought to the making of his pre-apocalyptic first novel, 2007. This is, the cover warns, ‘a true story, waiting to happen’. Williams’s mentor in fiction is George Orwell, who is quoted with approval by a cashiered and bibulous former Cambridge don, Cyril, now exiled to a weather station at Cape Grim in north-western Tasmania (site of the world’s purest air, as it happens). Orwell advocated ‘retaining one’s childhood love’ of the things of the natural world, toads not least. The alternative was ‘hatred and leader worship’.

There are times when the act of editorialising seems reckless, if not otiose. Any such column, written on 20 September, runs the dual risk of belatedness – or prematurity. So appalling were the events of 11 September, and so ominous their ramifications, no one can be confident of the likely international developments in coming weeks, days, or even hours. All we can do at ABR is to sympathise with the families of those killed in New York, including a number of Australians, while also following events and covering the issues and inevitable publications in these pages.

We moved out from the stone of Mallarmé’s mind, through silence of thought
from the start knowing the difference between sex in the head
and sex in bed, the form of women became
a way to hold chaos that singing bird
in an imaginary cage that was projected there
just ahead of where our eyes remembered the look
that kills, our unbelieving bodies listening to the rock’s voice
the sails, the oceans the walks on moonlit beaches rocking the old abyss time
and talking all night with Augustine in Hippo
explaining age and insisting time was a mere projection of the mind
O Africa in a Mustang in 1967
Highway 61 through rivers of prose
ideas slanting sunlight through the monsoon
a world blossoming from a single voice reciting The Garden in an empty room
Facing the mirror, drinking under the volcano
of teenaged lonely boys with Birmingham Rollers tumbling home
the bleak stage with a classic lady repeating a sentence
with a syntax that could loop a memory for her despairing husband in the air
and the crow at every crossroads flashing its hen-bird feathers
the black that’s blue and smudging the examination
the regret we wouldn’t let become more guilt
as we passed mountains in the desert fourth time round. The songs,
delicate music and the flashing savage adjectives employed in anger. The morning after
the manuscripts, great piles shuddering in the light
and relentless questions probing the hearts that loved
saying the word ‘heart’ over until its meaning multiplied into impossible meanings
The finger a tool and a weapon, splitting the line, the pronoun and the pen
the feather, the father, the children, years belying kindnesses
until redemption was a kitchen filled with light
and Creeley padding across the floor of the poem no shoes no issues
singing inwards dancing out
he’s gliding out from paintings on the gallery walls
this poem’s taking us in then out into three-dimensional waking dreams
laying the words down walking around the press carrying the lead
type faces, smoke proofs spelling the news the bleak-eyed story told again
yes, tell’em it’s fun, let’s go.
We are sitting here Mr Creeley, your maps
spread on the floor of the tent
wings of a thunder bird the breeze the motor purring in flying out
the stars the white moon hanging just like you said
we are living and while you’re singing there’s meaning, still no reason to repent.