I am a professional writer who lives in Canberra, Australia. I’m married to Ben, who likes to take photos. I love to read, but my ambition is to write.
I always loved reading and on my first day of school decided I would be a teacher. Eventually my love of reading led to a PhD at the University of Queensland and to university teaching, which I also loved. My field is early seventeenth-century devotional poetry, particularly the poets John Donne and George Herbert, but I got to teach many things: Greek tragedy, Victorian novels, Shakespeare, Tolstoy. I’m not teaching these days but the classroom remains a cherished place. I’m still interested in nearly all forms of English literature, and this blog is a way of noting and ruminating on my reading diet; and a way of spurring me to write. I’m somewhat wary of the contemporary, but not impervious to the best of it. I try to keep abreast of critical writing and commentary, as I often find it richer than its objects. You’ll notice a compulsive orbit around Jane Austen; Henry James occupies a tallish pedestal; PG Wodehouse always charms. Though I read more prose, I tend to think that poetry is more important than most things.
I also grew up in a Christian family and, though often frustrated by a streak of anti-intellectual or anti-aesthetic feeling in my own tradition, I find my faith informs my reading and my reading informs my faith in rich and fruitful ways. It is to me an exquisite pleasure to discover a piece of work that unites fine religious ideas or affections with the finest aesthetic and technical forms (truth and beauty?). Sadly these are rare, but I still seek them. If I could create one, my highest ambition would be realised.