Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

Last week, on a flight from Perth to Melbourne, I began reading The Casual Vacancy, a novel that has been sitting unopened on my bookshelves since I bought it a several years ago. I’d opened it a few times but then closed it and put it back on the shelf, so now I hoped that the three-and-a-half-hour flight might force me to get to grips with it. I’ll admit that as the seat-belt sign went off I wished I’d chosen something else for the journey, but ten minutes later I was wishing I’d started it sooner. The novel is set in the first decade of the 21st century but I was captivated by the recognition of so much that was familiar to me from living in a village near a small town in England from the 1950s to the eighties.   Initially the petty…

A brand new trailer has dropped for Kriv Stenders’ Australia Day ahead of its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival.

The trailer shows an edgier side to Stenders, who’s best known for his family friendly Red Dog film’s, and marks the third collaboration between Stenders and Bryan Brown who starred  in Kill Me Three Times and Red Dog: True Blue.

Sean Keenan’s career is going from strength-to-strength and he looks to be at the top of his game here – making us even more excited to see him star as John Grant in the upcoming Wake In Fright telemovie.

On Australia Day three young people from diverse cultural backgrounds are running scared.

April is a 14-year-old Indigenous teen fleeing from a car crash.

17-year-old Iranian boy Sami is running from a crime he didn’t commit.

Lan, from China, is escaping sexual slavery.

Elsewhere there’s Sonya (Shari Sebbens)…

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the Summer issue of The High Window. We are delighted by the growing international interest in our online journal and printing press. This issue sees work from across the age spectrum, from Sophie Reisbord, aged 15, to Maurice Rutherford who is 95 this year, with a range of ages in between!

In previous issues detectable themes have appeared in the submissions accepted, but the poems in issue 6 are incredibly diverse. What strikes us is the language that crackles at sometimes subtle and sometimes loud decibels, and that the poems are profoundly confident in themselves, as if the poets had chiselled their thoughts to the point of no return: this is what I have to say. As Peter Daniel’s writes in ‘Down and Up’:

On the upper side of the cloud cover, God sits deciding
what’s on the cards, sharpening the moon like a sickle.

Jack Thompson and Aden Young in Don’t Tell.

When I told Jack Thompson I was calling from Fremantle in Western Australia, he was quick to let me know how fond he was of the Port City.

In the mid-90s, Thompson acted in Graeme Rattigan’s Under The Lighthouse Dancing which was shot just off Fremantle on the west coast’s most famous island playground, Rottnest.

“Jacqueline McKenzie played my wife in that,” Thompson remembered fondly.

Twenty years later Thompson and ‘Jackie’ – as he affectionately refers to his friend – are starring together in another film, Tori Garrett’s directorial debut, Don’t Tell, which sees them playing opposing barristers.

“I’ve known Jackie for quite some time and she’s really good in this movie. She plays the barrister who works for the church and I’m pleased to say that I win the case,” Thompson chuckles deeply.

He’s referring to the real life…