Almanac Poetry: Happy Families

Tolstoy famously wrote: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ In this week’s poem, Kevin Densley weighs in on the issue.

Almanac Poetry: A Very Minor Composer Speaks

In this poem, the speaker is a third-rate music composer, who in football parlance, according to KD, ‘would be lucky to make it onto the bench in the reserves’. [These aren’t the droids you’re looking for – Ed.]

Almanac Poetry: Wedding Party Photograph: the Marriage of Lucy Jane R— to Edward Thomas P—, the town of P—, South Australia, December 20th, 1905

This week’s poem from Kevin Densley focuses upon a family wedding photograph taken in a South Australian country town in 1905.

Almanac Music: ‘Gimme a Head with Hair’ – Songs about Hair

Yeah yeah! This week, the theme is hair in Kevin Densley’s long-running series focusing upon popular song.

Almanac Poetry: Muscular Christianity

In this Monday’s poem, KD looks at religion, physicality and art.

Almanac Music (Lyrics): Oils Are Definitely Not Oils

This Friday it’s a music parody from KD – Midnight Oil get the treatment.

Almanac Music; ‘You Go To My Head’ – Songs about Drink

In this installment of his long running series on popular song themes, KD focuses upon songs involving drinks – both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.

Almanac Poetry: Trapped

This Monday’s poem from Kevin Densley concerns a situation so many of us have been in – feeling very uncomfortable at a party because a particular person is present.

Almanac Music: ‘Eat the Music’ – Songs Involving Food

This week, in his ongoing series on popular music themes, KD focuses upon songs involving food. As usual, readers’ contributions are warmly welcomed.

Almanac Poetry: Good Old Unca

This week’s poem from Kevin Densley is an unpublished one from the archives, about an era when it was more likely that a relative down on their luck was staying in your granny flat – and giving every indication that they’d never leave!

Almanac Music: ‘We’d Go Down to the River’ – Songs Concerning Rivers

In this Friday’s installment of KD’s ongoing series about popular music themes, the topic is songs concerning rivers. As usual, readers are warmly welcomed to put forward their own contributions.

Almanac Memoir: Knowing Hazel

Instead of a poem, KD shares a short memoir about his late friend, internationally renowned writer and biographer, Dr Hazel Rowley, who died in Manhattan in March 2011. Rowley wrote biographies of authors Christina Stead and Richard Wright, as well as non-fiction works about iconic twentieth century couples Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Almanac Music: ‘Rooms on Fire’: Songs about Houses and Rooms

In this Friday’s music piece, KD deals with songs about the spaces in which we live – houses, flats, apartments and the rooms within. As usual, readers’ contributions are warmly welcomed.

Almanac Poetry: The Arnolfini Divorce

In this week’s poem, previously unpublished, Kevin Densley takes a famous fifteenth century European painting as the starting point for a twentieth century Australian immigration story.

Almanac Poetry: 6 Canterbury Street

This week’s poem, according to Kevin Densley, is ‘mainly about loneliness’.

Almanac Poetry: Fragments from the Lives of the Bushrangers

Be they tenacious troubadours or terrors of townsfolk, Kevin Densley has captured fleeting moments of several bushrangers in his latest, as yet unpublished, poem.

Almanac Music: ‘Moooooo!’ – Songs Containing Cowbell

This week’s themed music piece from KD involves songs containing the cowbell – in some instances, you’ll be surprised! As usual, contributions from readers are warmly welcomed.

Almanac Poetry: Mirror

One aspect of this week’s poem from Kevin Densley is the idea that looking at something can turn it into something else.

Almanac Poetry: ‘Death and Co.’ in Suburban Australia

KD describes this week’s offering – fresh off the presses – as a ‘humorous parody of Sylvia Plath’s strange and disturbing poem ‘Death and Co.’

Almanac Music: Nothin’ But A Hound Dog – Songs Concerning Animals

‘Songs Concerning Animals’ is the theme of this Friday’s music piece by KD; as usual, readers’ contributions are warmly welcomed.