C.J Dennis is best known for his 1915 verse novel The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. It sold 66,000 copies樂威壯
within eighteen months of its first publication, extraordinary even by today’s standards. It made Dennis famous, and made him one of the few poets in Australia to earn a living from his craft.

But whatever your preference The Bloke, or the sequel The Moods of Ginger Mick, or the satire The Glugs of Gosh, reading the verse of C.J Dennis is an opportunity to relish the sound and rhythm of Australian spoken language, and to take delight in the inventiveness of its rhymes.

This week’s Hindsight approaches this most larrikin of Australian poets through the eyes of his wife, a tough minded woman whose name was Olive Herron, although Dennis called her Biddy and she wrote under the pen name Margaret.

The setting is The Singing Garden, the Toolangi property where Den and Biddy lived from 1915 until Den’s death in 1938. It was called “Arden” back then, but the current owners Jan and Vic Williams now call it The Singing Gardens after C.J Dennis’s last book of poetry which was inspired by the garden Biddy cultivated there. Jan and Vic have also opened the site up as a tea room, and they host a C.J Dennis festival each year, because it gives the public the chance to share the same environment that C.J Dennis knew and loved and which was the source of much of his inspiration.

To listen to the program, click here …

First broadcast on Hindsight, ABC RN, on 16-9-2012

John Cage, one of the twentieth century’s most prolific and influential of all composers, is best known for his silent piece 4’33, the full orchestral version of which is now downloadable on YouTube. The purpose of that silent piece was to make listeners aware of sound around them, and come to the realisation that there is actually no such thing as silence.

This week in honour of the centenary of his birth Lyn Gallacher pays personal tribute to the composer who blew the future of music wide open by changing the way we listen.

Another one of Cage’s typically radical ideas was a score called Musicircus. It was designed to be a large-scale simultaneous performance event involving musicians, dancers, visual artists, poets and occasionally even a pony. The very first Musicircus was held in 1967 at the University of Illinois. The idea behind it then was to bring together too many musicians, to perform all at once, playing anything they like, in any way they like. Cage’s instruction was for ‘as much music as practical under the circumstances’.

Since 1967 many Musicircuses have been held all around the world, including a mega-Melbourne-Musicircus in 2007. This Australian performance involved over 500 artists and went all night. Cage described this work as a practise zone for living, and as such it reveals many of his seminal ideas about life, art and the world.

To listen to the program, click here …

First broadcast on Into The Music, ABC RN, on 1-9-2012