These Things Are Real

Wearne’s epics and fragments are like the traces of a ruined culture, in which everybody got to star in their own domestic drama or screwball romance. Until you realise that it’s happening, here and now: you are being waltzed around the living room of middle-class folklore.Bonny Cassidy

Australia’s finest verse satirist. Peter Pierce

Alan Wearne specialises in monologues and verse narratives. A young widow in post-war Melbourne fends off the approaches of her best friend’s husband; a retired femocrat recalls her lovelorn Maoist youth; a single mother falls into an abusive relationship with a drifting musician; a heroin addict is haunted by his dealer’s murder of a youth. Also included is ‘The Sarsaparilla Writer’s Centre’, a collection of satires on music, football, religion, politics, and poets.