Almanac Memoir (and Music): Fool For You Anyway

January 29, 2021 by 1 Comment

Patrick White Award-winning novelist, short story writer and essayist, Carmel Bird described this autobiographical KD piece about youthful love as ‘a beautiful story. So simple, so sad, so true’.

Almanac Poetry: The Decline of Western Civilisation

January 26, 2021 by 3 Comments

This week’s poem from Kevin Densley is a short poem about a very big subject. He hopes that readers will find it ‘wonderfully pithy’.

Almanac Short Fiction: ‘A Pest Exterminator’s Tale’

January 22, 2021 by 1 Comment

KD describes ‘A Pest Exterminator’s tale’ as “a short story originally drafted a couple of decades ago and worked upon here and there ever since. It’s about many issues, including phobias, and has echoes of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. The environment is very much Geelong’s waterfront of decades ago, when it was still seedy and run-down and just starting to undergo the process of gentrification and renewal.”

Almanac Poetry: Jack Bradshaw and ‘Lovely’ Riley

January 19, 2021 by 3 Comments

This week, it’s ‘back to bushranging’ in the poetry of Kevin Densley – but his subjects, in this instance, Jack Bradshaw and ‘Lovely’ Riley, are not your typical bushrangers. His poem is about the exploits of a pair of oddballs who ‘were more like a bad vaudeville act than a duo to be feared.’

Almanac Poetry: Mickey Mouse’s Cranial Vault

January 12, 2021 by 1 Comment

In this week’s poem, Kevin Densley parallels modern American history with the evolution of Mickey Mouse.

Almanac Memoir (and Music): Words Are Not Enough

January 8, 2021 by 1 Comment

Secondary school memories involving music, girls, letters from girls, and screeching cicadas are the basis of this prose piece by KD, all tied in a neat bundle by a hit song of the era from “Ol’ Black Eyes” himself, the late Jon English.

Almanac Poetry (and Food): Stargazy Pie

January 5, 2021 by 4 Comments

Fish gazing heavenwards out of a pie? Of course! In this poem, Kevin Densley draws on his inner Cornishman (he does have some Cornish ancestry) to describe this unusual dish.

Almanac Poetry: Prince Albert Hotel, Daylesford, Victoria

December 29, 2020 by 3 Comments

This Tuesday’s poem from Kevin Densley features the picturesque Central Victorian spa town of Daylesford.

Almanac Poetry: Semaphore, Adelaide

December 22, 2020 by 2 Comments

Some places feel haunted by the past. In this week’s poem, Kevin Densley deals with one such location.

Almanac Poetry: Ghost Train

December 15, 2020 by 2 Comments

This week’s poem from Kevin Densley is set in the Geelong Show’s sideshow alley when he was a kid. The Ghost Train horror ride existed there among other attractions such as Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Tent, the Bearded Lady and Vanessa the Undresser.

Almanac Poetry: The Other Side of Bradman (A Response to Geoff Page’s ‘On the Death of a Famous Cricketer’)

December 8, 2020 by 7 Comments

Kevin Densley has written a response to Geoff Page’s poem about Don Bradman, ‘On the Death of a Famous Cricketer’.

Almanac Poetry: ‘Men of `Fifty-Four’

December 3, 2020 by 3 Comments

With today the anniversary of The Eureka Stockade, Kevin Densley’s poem reflects upon the thoughts of that by-gone struggle.

Almanac Poetry: The Day I Broke Billy

December 1, 2020 by 10 Comments

Many Almanackers will recall running their guts out as kids in Little Athletics. Kevin Densley does, and in this week’s poem he describes his most memorable race.

Almanac Poetry: ‘Sacredly Profane’ – a new collection by Kevin Densley

November 30, 2020 by 5 Comments

Congratulations to Kevin Densley on his new collection of poems ‘Sacredly Profane’. Read more in this post.

Almanac Poetry: Souvenir Postcard – Photographed by Mr Henry Poil – Wangaratta, Victoria, April 9 1865

November 24, 2020 by 4 Comments

Dead bushranger Dan Morgan on a postcard? Yes, you read that correctly. Kevin Densley explains in his poem this week.

Almanac Poetry: ‘Dealey Plaza, November 22’

November 22, 2020 by 10 Comments

With the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Kevin Densley remembers the event with his poem ‘Dealey Plaza, November 22’.

Almanac Poetry: Beyond Goyder’s Line, South Australia

November 17, 2020 by 7 Comments

This week’s poem from Kevin Densley involves nineteenth century family history, life, loss and heartbreak in the Flinders Ranges region.

Almanac Poetry (and Music): ‘Lionheart Summer’

November 10, 2020 by 10 Comments

The weather’s getting warmer – summer is approaching. This week’s poem from Kevin Densley, ‘Lionheart Summer’, is about a fondly remembered summer he spent in Adelaide (travelling there from Geelong) as an eighteen-year-old in 1980 … involving his grandmother’s beautifully cool bluestone house in Largs Bay, Test Cricket, the local beer, and a Kate Bush album.

Almanac Poetry: The Quest of the Holy Grail – in a Nutshell

November 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Not quite Monty Python, but certainly not ‘straight’ either, this week’s poem from Kevin Densley concerns the most famous knightly quest of them all.

Almanac Short Fiction: ‘Bostell’s Lager Man’

October 30, 2020 by 4 Comments

The opening of Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’, in which Gregor Samsa awakes from uneasy sleep to find himself transformed into a giant bug, receives an unusual twist in this short story from Kevin Densley. Is KD’s piece a strange cautionary tale? An example of ‘the Aussie surreal’? A modern Aesop’s fable with its origins in the brewery? You be the judge.