Featured in

- Published 20250204
- ISBN: 978-1-923213-04-3
- Extent: 196 pp
- Paperback, ebook. PDF

Already a subscriber? Sign in here
If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au
Share article
About the author

Toby Fitch
Toby Fitch is poetry editor of Overland and a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney. He is the author of eight...
More from this edition

Songs of the underclasses
Non-fictionDiē was the best driver I knew. ‘When you drive, you stare at everything but see nothing. You’re inexperienced,’ he lectured. ‘When I drive, I stare at nothing – I can chat, I can sing. But I see everything. Parking spaces, jaywalkers with a death wish, doggies and kitties. And for hours at time, without breaking concentration. It’s like meditation.’ Diē’s love language included showing me footage of near-miss traffic incidents on WeChat. Each trip of ours decreased my risk of appearing in his feed. These hours became the most time we had ever spent together.

Shelf life
Non-fictionEarly in his career, Charles Dickens notably underestimated the reputational risk of library-shelf browsing when he invited the critic George Henry Lewes home for tea. Over steaming cups, Lewes eyed naff triple-decker novels and bland travel books, ‘all obviously the presentation copies from authors and publishers’. He recalled the experience in a waspish elegy published shortly after Dickens’ death: ‘A man’s library expresses much of his hidden life, I did not expect to find a bookworm, nor even a student, in the marvellous “Boz” but nevertheless this collection of books was a shock.’

Home is where the haunt is
Non-fiction I BELIEVE WE are all haunted by the place of our birth – which is chosen without our consent. Unlike a place of residence, which...