The great people at Northern Books are organising a launch for Treason.

It will be at the Taproom, Shedshaker Brewing, at the Mill in Castlemaine, on Tuesday 10 January at 6 pm.

I will be in conversation with the wonderful Helen Symon KC.

You will need to book your attendance here.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Treason is now available around the world

Last year, during the pandemic, the hard copy of Treason was published here in Australia. 

However, postage costs made it awkward to distribute this internationally. 

This has now been sorted, and Treason is now available internationally through Blurb.

If you live in Australia, the Blurb version will not be cheaper, but anywhere else, it is.

Incidentally, I was very pleased with the endorsements given on the back cover!

Counterpoise

This week's 'Music Show', with Andrew Ford, on ABC's Radio National, opened with Hugh Crosthwaite's 'Counterpoise', a haunting work for solo violin.

The piece is played by Sarah Curro, who is interviewed, along with her husband Paul Davies, a luthier, about the different qualities of violins. It's a fascinating interview.

Hugh's piece was inspired by my poem, also called 'Counterpoise', published in my first book of poems, Angels, like laundry.

Counterpoise

 

Behind, beside, before;

once, nonce, hence – 

time pools in the present

tense; deeps of now brim– 

never to be reclaimed,

ever flowing silently away.

Mulch, mushroom, messmate;

foundation, footings, framework –

building begets spaces,

earth cleaves to sky;

light brings forth shadow,

action yields to rest – 

stone, plank, tile,

myrtle, moss, manure.

 

 

Pulse, breath, blink;

bone, flesh, hide –

inner engenders outer,

launches soaring dreams;

summer’s gold garnered for 

fecund swelling fall – 

pith, pulp, peel;

never, nigh, next -

New grows old, old

gives way to new.

On time’s curving arc, end-

ing is beginning –

former, forthwith, final:

past, present, prospect,

was, is, ever.

Mothlight

My third book of poems, Mothlight, has now been published.

Mike Vernon has done a wonderful job with the photographs through the book, making it a beautiful production.

Here are some things that others have said about it – for which I am very grateful:

    In 'Mothlight', Brian Walters reveres both the natural world and the power of the clear poetic line. One poem at a time, he edges us closer to seeing, to captivation, to wild play, to progress. At a time of renewed environmental awareness, this collection invites the reader to do the only thing that is left for us to do – a gentle moving through the world.

–      Amanda Anastasi, poet

 

    I love these poems, the surprise of them, the wideness and range of vision, the delicate precision of the lens shifting from the personal, the heart, to the glory of the world. The exultation and celebration of the natural world is a constant and marvellous echo of Hardy. There is too, a similar humane heart.

–      Helen Elliott, literary critic and writer

 

    A Brian Walters poem is a walk in fair weather and good company in the high country in winter; it is an act of kindness and courage you wish had been your own. His voice is a forest of Old Testament timbers—the Cedars of Lebanon transposed well south and reborn as a sclerophyll woodland. His lines are an elegant eucalypt elegy, a vote of thanks, a currawong choir.

    –         Mark Tredinnick, poet

 

I will be reading my poems at the Poeticas gig, 2 pm this Saturday 27 August 2022 at the Northern Arts Hotel – 359 Barker Street Castlemaine. 

It would be great to see you there!

I was banned by Facebook

 

On 20 August 1944, Count Schwerin von Schwanenberg was brought before the Nazi ‘People’s Court’, charged with treason. He was unshaven and wore no tie. Prominent in the July plot against the Nazi regime, he knew he was about to hang. 

When Nazi judge Roland Freisler angled for an apology, Schwerin would not be cowed, but spoke out about the ‘many murders’ of the Nazi regime ‘at home and abroad’ – drawing Freisler’s apoplectic ire. Hoping they would obtain useful propaganda footage, the Nazis filmed this exchange, and the film has survived – a powerful example of a person speaking truth to power.

 

I posted this clip on Facebook, with some background information, as part of a regular series of posts promoting my book Treason, which recounts the German resistance to Hitler.

 

I have posted the clip a few times before. 

 

This time I received a notification from Facebook that my post was blocked, because it violated Facebook’s community standards. 

 

I was plunged into the Kafkaesque realm of Facebook’s processes.

 

The notification stated ‘this is because you previously posted material that violated Facebook’s community standards’. The previous week, Facebook had notified me of such a breach, but when I asked for a review, they overturned this and apologised for getting it wrong. According to Facebook’s retraction, there was no previous breach. But there was no way for me to point out this mistake to Facebook.

 

The notification set out Facebook’s standards – all laudable – but did not say which standard was breached, nor how. 

 

Despite failing to specify what was wrong, Facebook required me to select from a menu my reason for saying that the post should not be blocked. This is like someone on trial being told to defend themselves when they are not told the charge.

 

Despite this absurdity, I asked for a review and marked the option ‘The post does not violate Facebook’s community standards’.

 

Facebook then advised that they try to have a person review the decision, but could not guarantee this, because of staff shortages due to Covid. 

 

Really? There are plenty of people they could hire to do this task, even during Covid. It’s a task that could readily be performed online. The excuse was specious.

 

Having asked for a review, I received a prompt response. Facebook had reviewed the post (evidently by its algorithms, not by a person, who would scarcely have had time to watch the video clip and read the post). Facebook stated that they had reviewed the post and confirmed that the post violated Facebook’s community standards. Again, they did not say why.

 

One thing is clear: Facebook’s algorithms are incapable of distinguishing an anti-Nazi post from a Nazi post.

 

Facebook then asked me whether the communication from them had been helpful. When I marked that it had not, they thanked me and said they used responses to improve their service.

 

Facebook notified me that there was a right of appeal to Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’. 

 

This ‘right’ of appeal is illusory. According to Facebook’s own figures, in 2021, the Oversight Board received over a million appeals, but the Board published just 17 decisions, overturning Facebook 11 times. Opting for an appeal was like buying a lottery ticket.

 

Even though a waste of time in terms of reversing the decision, I decided to lodge an appeal anyway. When I tried to click on the link, nothing happened – just the wheel of death as the attempt to log in timed out. I did this several times. Even getting to the Oversight Board was blocked.

 

This was not the first time I’ve had trouble with Facebook’s ‘standards’, with the same opaque processes.

 

Over several years I built up an earlier page promoting my book. I paid Facebook money to promote it, and the page grew to have over 11,000 followers. Then Facebook closed it down (and the linked Instagram feed), without any recourse, saying it violated their community standards, and again failing to say which standards, or how it breached them. Just before publication of my book, I lost all the investment of time and money made in building up this following.

 

As I emailed Facebook (of course, there was no reply) the page 

 

did not violate Facebook’s published community standards. Nor does it violate community standards as any reasonable person would understand them. The content, dealing with the bravery of those who stood up to the Nazi regime, usually at the cost of their lives, is entirely in accordance with the highest community standards.

 

It is important that the events of the Nazi regime, the mass murders which have given us the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’, are widely discussed and known. The efforts of those who struggled against that regime should also be part of our shared discourse.

 

I can’t speak truth to Facebook, because they are not listening. Bizarrely, the business takes a perverse pride in its refusal to support its customers. Who knows how Facebook’s processes are intended to work – but it is clear that this platform is not a safe place to invest. It is only capable of dumbing down our shared discourse and, as a result, diminishing our community.

A Promise Broken, a Victory Lost: the scandal of Wombat Forest logging

In the 1990s I was active in opposing the logging of the Wombat Forest.

In 1999, the Bracks government was elected, and in 2002 promised to end that logging, this being one of the conditions of receiving Greens preferences at that year's election.

John Thwaites (the Deputy Premier) announced the phasing out of the logging, with woodchipping ending immediately and final removal of sawlogs completed in 2006.

In 2019, during the VEAC process, the Minister stated, in writing, that no sawlogs would be taken out of the Wombat.

In 2019, the Victorian government announced that native forest logging would end in the State by 2030.

Last year, the premier, Dan Andrews, accepted, in part, the VEAC recommendations, and promised a national park for the Wombat.

However, there has now commenced, out of the blue, industrial scale logging in the very area proposed for the national park.

There are to be 175 logging coupes, so the undertaking is enormous. One of the coupes will carve through the very point where John Thwaites made his announcement to the community.

The coupes extend into areas that were never allowed to be logged even in the dark days of the Kennett era – in particular riparian zones and Special Protection Zones for threatened wildlife.

The first coupe logged had greater gliders present – no buffer zone was left around their habitat. Instead of leaving the required 100 metre buffer zone, machinery was working next to a tree with a wedge tailed eagle nest. Entire creeks have been compromised by bulldozing through them, compacting soil and disrupting drainage.

Despite the spin, this is not a ’salvage’ operation in any sense. VicForests is going in to get the large trees they were never allowed to take under the Kennett regime.

Numerous studies now show that:
1. logging of native forest increases fire risk, as the resultant regrowth is drier, sparser, and more fire-prone;
2. logging of native forest reduces water yield from that forest for the next 150 years, as regrowing trees take up water;
3. logging of native forest, particularly Victorian eucalypt forest, is one of the most carbon polluting activities humans undertake, as it releases some 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

The values that justified the dedication of this area as a national park are now being destroyed by VicForests.

VicForests remains an ongoing source of scandal. The Courts have repeatedly held that it has breached the law in its logging operations. It is now being investigated for spying on citizens. From the destruction of our forest heritage it has not even been able to generate a profit, let alone the kind of yield one would expect from so valuable a resource – assuming you valued it only for money.

Native forest logging employs very few people, and the favoured treatment this industry receives from government adversely impacts on the plantation sector by unfair competition that depresses prices. Plantations are already well able to supply all our needs from timber.

Has the Andrews government lost control of its logging agency, or is this agency doing its bidding?