Grim, funny and unremitting, Evelyn Araluen’s The Rot is a book attuned to dark times

By Thomas H. Ford, Senior Lecturer in English, La Trobe University

“Girly, there’s something rotten in your keep cup,” Evelyn Araluen writes in Girl Work!, a poem in her new collection, The Rot.

We are trailing after a young female Hamlet figure, a contemporary up-and-coming princess or “girlboss” off to work in some creative-industries office job, who is studiously ignoring the spectres summoning her to political action.

The poem reminds us that Mao Zedong once said “imperialism is ferocious”. But “who has leisure time for revolution these days?” Who even “has time to…

Read complete article

~	US: Prioritize Rights During Saudi Leader’s Visit

~	Nigeria: Government must clear names of executed activists Ogoni Nine

~	Somalia: Thousands of climate-displaced individuals being failed by authorities and the international community – new report

~	The Democrats are riding a blue wave, but major questions remain for a divided party

~	Politics with Michelle Grattan: Remembering the day Gough Whitlam lost his job

~	Three hours of free power sounds great – but it could raise other costs and hamstring rooftop solar

~	A Roman emperor grovelling to a Persian king: the message behind a new statue in Tehran

~	Is AI really coming for our jobs and wages? Past predictions of a ‘robot apocalypse’ offer some clues

~	A centuries-old grid of holes in the Andes may have been a ‘spreadsheet’ for accounting and exchange

~	What is myasthenia gravis, the rare disease tennis great Monica Seles lives with?