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 THIRSTY FOR THE JOY - Book launch
THIRSTY FOR THE JOY: Australian & American Voices, by Brian Doyle (One Day Hill, Australia, onedayhill.com.au) is a collection of "proems, voices, tales, snatches of songs in the street, prose in pubs, shards of story, cadenced remarks, litanies, chants, musical mutters, brief adventures told with high glee, words parading with rhythm and swing," overheard and arranged on the page in lovely stacked lines that look like Poems but run screaming in the other direction from Artiness and Elusiveness and Allusiveness.
Set in the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales, and in many of the United States, Doyle's "proems" are always brief and often funny, poignant, startling, painful, haunted, salty, and hauled from the hearts of men, women, and children in the two nations that, as he says, "are countries of vast hope and possibility, once cousins under the yoke, who now are crammed with stunning people.There is a shared wriggle of creative genius in the Australian and American character, some nutty relentless hope, some prickly brilliance, some irrepressible music, some mad amused energy, some exuberant itch, that might be, if channeled and shared, a way forward. It seems to me that Australia and America, more than any other two powerful and energetic countries and cultures in our time, have common cause toward uncommon healing.
If we could together somehow catch and meld all the energy and zest and grace of our people, what sort of new nations might we make?"
Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon, and the author of eight other books of essays and "proems." His work appears in Australia in Eureka Street magazine and in The Age newspaper, both in Melbourne.
"What I like about Brian Doyle's writing is that it's real -- it's got mud and blood and tears, but it's also got earthly angels who teach him to grasp onto each small epiphany as it opens before him."
Martin Flanagan, The Age
"Strangers pour their stories into Brian Doyle's attentive ear; with a self-effacing craft, and a reverence for what's holy in the everyday, he shapes them into poems of bounding energy and surprising moral depth."
Helen Garner, author of True Stories
 MARTIN FLANAGAN
Martin Flanagan is a storyteller, journalist, poet, author and public speaker. Described as "a legend of Australian journalism" in TIME magazine in 2003 after his last book, "The Game In Time of War", he was born in Tasmania in 1955 and graduated in law from the University of Tasmania in 1975.
He is the author of eight books including "The Call", an imaginative re-construction of the life of the founder of Australian football, Tom Wills. A stage adaptation of "The Call" co-written by Flanagan will open at the Playbox Theatre in October. Among his other books, "1970 and Other Stories of the Australian Game", was listed by the Victorian State Library as being one of the top 150 books since Victoria's inception. He is currently working on a screenplay for a feature film based on the relationship between Irish poet W.B. Yeats and political activist Maud Gonne. Asked his philosophy to do with newspapers, he quotes the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, himself a former reporter, who said, "The medium is an invitation. It is there to be used". His Saturday sports column, "One of The Crowd", takes an equally unconventional look at sport and in 2003 it earned Martin the AFL Coaches' media award for the best sportswriter. His writing has appeared in many magazines and in different countries; in 2000, during the Sydney Olympics, he was asked by BBC radio to record a letter from Australia giving his overview of the event. He has appeared regularly on radio programs including "The Search for Meaning", Radio National's "Books and Writing" as well as assorted sports programs.
As a journalist and writer he has interviewed the likes of George Best, Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop, Barry Humphries, Ramohan Gandhi, Ron Barassi, Peter Cook, Patrick Dodson, Archie Roach, Paul Keating biographer Don Watson, and singer Paul Kelly. He has had meetings with the Dalai Lama and Queen Elizabeth II.
He has spoken in prisons and football clubs and at university graduations and literary festivals. He delivered one of the inaugural Alfred Deakin lectures and more recently a lecture for the Overland literary magazine. One of his most recent speeches was to the AFL Presidents and CEOs before the start of the 2004 season. Martin speaks on Australian Sport, Culture and Politics. Praise for Martin Flanagan. "Martin Flanagan's writing is sanguine, intelligent and passionate. It belongs in a newspaper tradition which for some years was thought to be under threat from television... if you hold up your ear to Flanagan's writing you can hear the roar of the presses and sound of the city going to work . . . he is story teller. He celebrates the special providence in the fall of a sparrow and he rejoices in the house of language". . . John Clarke
"Martin Flanagan must never be allowed to stop writing about football. I say this because he is the only football writer that I have read who is so good I think he could nearly describe a heartbeat and that if you want to touch the essence of football, this what you have to do". . . . Don Watson
"His voice and vision are original . . . Flanagan has a poet's eye and ear and writes with love of the people,
 MEDIA RELEASE
17th August, 2005
‘THE LINE'
A man's experience of the Burma Railway; a son's quest to understand
BY ARCH AND MARTIN FLANAGAN
Arch Flanagan, 91, is a retired school teacher. In 1943, as a sergeant in the Australian Army, he was forced to labor on the infamous Burma Railway upon which it is said, that one man died for every sleeper laid. In the 50 years since, Arch has written four separate pieces reflecting on the experience - two short stories, a memoir and an obituary for his commanding officer, Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop.
Martin Flanagan is a poet, writer and journalist and is the fourth of Arch's six children.
‘The Line' is a dual drama - one is an elderly man's reflection on the peak experience of his life. The other story is the son's relationship with that experience, the way it has shaped him and the line he takes in his writing life.
MEDIA ENQUIRIES
‘The Line' by Arch and Martin Flanagan is due for release in late August .
Martin Flanagan can be contacted for interviews: flanagan@alphalink.com.au
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