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This 'digital chap-book' of poems by Australian poet Ian Irvine (Hobson) meditates on the relationship of stamps and philately ('stamp collecting') to social identity (especially Australian notions of national identity) in contemporary society. The collection also explores the fascination of stamp collecting and - in a biographical touch - the poet's use of stamp collecting, as a child, to unconsciously mediate the migrant experience of being great distances from extended family. Many pieces employ 'docu(mentary)-poetics' techniques which help to make the collection resemble a kind of subversive 'stamp catalogue'. Copyright Ian Irvine (Hobson) 2013 published by Mercurius Press, Australia.
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Hermes and the
Philatelic Construction
of the Multiverse
Text copyright Ian Irvine, 2004-2013, all rights reserved. All images of stamps are from photographs taken by the author or from public domain sources – for the names of stamp
designers please consult relevant national philatelic catalogues.
[Mercurius Digital Publishing (Bendigo, Australia), 2013]
Acknowledgements
‘Desparatis and the Peasant Roo,’ appeared in Verandah 21 (Australia) 2006.
‘The Paper Icon (and the Genie)’ appeared in Idiom 23 (Australia), Vol.18 2006.
‘The Refugee Fund’ appeared in Fire (UK) ‘Special International Edition’, March 2008.
‘The Great Mother’ and ‘The Ten Dollar Utopia’ appeared in LiNQ (Australia), Vol. 33.
‘By Airmail’ appeared in Tamba (Australia), No. 38, Autumn Winter, 2006).
‘The Poet’s Super’ appeared in Tarralla 4 (Australia) 2005.
‘Proud Tilt of the Masses’ appeared in Verandah 23 (Australia), August, 2008.
Several pieces were also highly placed in literary competitions, including ‘The Guardian of Literary
Culture’ and ‘The Paper Icon and the Genie’ in the Summerland Poetry Competition, 2005.
Contents: Hermes and the Philatelic Construction of the Multiverse
1. Mint Unhinged
2. A Miniature Truthiverse
3. The Great Mother: Hermes and Queen Victoria
4. The Five-cent Alfred Deakin
5. Desperatis and the Peasant Roo
6. The One Shilling Black
7. The Poet’s Super
8. The Guardian of Literary Culture
9. The Refugee Fund
10. The Paper Icon (and the Genie)
11. The $10 Utopia
12. The One Pound Soccer
13. Bureaucrats of the Empire
14. By Airmail
15. Proud Tilt of the Masses
Mint Unhinged
Stamps are generally optimistic and celebratory
they enter the world full of possibility,
in mint condition,
immortal, godlike
many-coloured and precious to behold
striking to the eye,
trailing moon-dust and meteor crystals,
unshadowed, unsullied,
lacking Saturnine indolence.
The star sign, surely, is Gemini –
stamps are mercurial, closely entwined
with ideal and archetype -
Wordsworth’s daisies –
but gaudy and loud
singing of
the best of all possible worlds.
The postmark, however, is shadow of Eden,
fine, or dark and bludgeoned on
the story is the same
it blots out vision, obfuscates,
pins soul and hope to one destiny,
one life, one soiled and limited
path. The pristine image
is smudged or creased
or torn.
Likewise, perforations are damaged
and face value is made worthless
by the journey of life.
The once uniformal gum, dissolves
into codependency with envelope, and
thenceforth, liberation becomes
something we struggle to conceptualise.
The Postmark = The Fall
The devil’s mark, meaning:
sin and limitation,
Plato’s cave.
Only the collector can enact
a partial resurrection.
I prefer used stamps,
narratives of survival, they acknowledge
a life lived raucous and suffered,
a partial vision retained
and long hours spent
grieving for youthful ideals.
before a brutal and blurry finale –
submissive to Saturn.
Unlike poets
philosophers and scientists
prefer their stamps mint unhinged,
But this is to dissolve narrative and suffering,
purpose and joy,
into a cumbersome perfection.
A Miniature Truthiverse
It has been a mystery to non-collectors that postage stamps, old or new,
weave so binding a spell upon those who collect and study them. ... The
mystery is not to be explained in a sentence. [Preface to F.J. Melville,
Stamp Collecting]
I saw once again
a universe framed,
a truthiverse of sorts
an elemental stew,
of energy,
colourful-atoms
and broiled down matter,
inner lit, and
tide-like,
with soul stuff shift-shifting
this way and that,
like beans in a shaman’s rattle.
And so I conscripted Stanley Gibbons
the Penny Black
and the 5/-
Sydney Harbour Bridge
and all those kangaroos!
Each album a cathedral
each stamp
a stained glass gateway
to the past.
I was
hungry once again
for thresholds
and miniature dreams
The Great Mother
(Hermes and Queen Victoria)
When Hermes willed the stamp
upon the colonies of an unconceived Australia
the convicts and miners, squatters and soldiers -
in fearing plural selves—Chinaman and Hollander,
Irishman and Koori—thought only of mother,
The Great Mother, Queen Victoria.
And thus we see Her Majesty
in all colours, dyes and shades of dyes,
The Ornate Mother, The Side-Reel Mother
What need of a world? What need
of an Identity? What need of stamps depicting
bushland or desert, wombat or kangaroo?
Mother England was
the World.
The 5 Cent Alfred Deakin
(Australia Day Dreaming, January 2011)
The Deakin stamp
in the album of Federation
shows him no-nonsense Victorian
steadfast archetype of the patriarchal leader,
nation founder with mandatory beard
He probably wrote a dull autobiography
I muse.
They celebrate his achievement
every Australia Day
but I’d prefer to turn the page, close the cover
on White Australia
on Aboriginal dispossession.
But the pale, green Deakin
(small, numerous, boring)
slips from the album
—a sign perhaps?
Deakin believed in signs and
a transpersonal unconscious.
And his stamp begins to animate—
I pick it up.
Occult stamp!
it has become the man.
Deakin nods and bows.
I rub my eyes
find myself in the Deakin library.
The books are strangely organic—
they talk, they even sing.
And he’s there, channeling Mohammed,
Wordsworth, Swedenborg, Bunyan …
We talk on the train to Bendigo
it’s March 1898
he’s writing the speech
the one that helped found the nation.
Later, he’ll fight for women’s suffrage,
arbitration and the old age pension.
He asks about the state of the Federation
I say:
‘You wouldn’t recognise it …
but then again …’
‘Politics is like journalism and sport’ he says
(a hint of regret?)
‘each is enslaved to the imperfect present,
to realism and compromise,
they acknowledge the social as a zone of conflict …’
He pauses as the carriage is invaded
(patriots with Aussie flags and loud voices)
When he resumes I can barely hear him
‘…Trapped in the telescopic hour, we entertain
vague notions of the greater good …’
Someone hands him a flag
He rises—prepares to address the multitude.
He does not meet my gaze.
De Speratis and the Peasant Roo
‘In 1942 Jean De Sperati was charged at Chambery,
France with producing counterfeit stamps. The 500-odd
different types of rarities he forged have a value of over
$4 million on today’s market, if genuine. The great
problem in detecting Sperati’s forgeries lay in the fact
that many were part genuine.’ [From The Australasian
Stamp Catalogue, 20th edition, pg. 4.]
In philately the ID is much repressed, all that
gloss and striving, progress and achievement,
doesn’t sit well with the melancholy
that fosters self-analysis.
The ID is always retrospect,
we shiver at the sight of Hitler stamps,
or pictures of China’s red hordes—heroic or murderous?—
invading Tibet.
The collector’s fascination with shadow
is revealed by a love of faults, flaws and
forgeries—deviations by intent or accident,
from the official narrative.
Jean De Sperati liked stamps,
he forged hundreds of them,
one was the ₤2 Kangaroo, black and red—
first watermark (or soul?)—a British crown atop
an ‘A’ for Australia.
By techniques alchemical, strangely
Medieval, De Sperati faded low value
kangaroos—only the postmark remained—
next he printed the ₤2 black and red,
that aristocrat of Australian stamps,
atop his vanquished peasant roo
some would say
a simple change of clothes.
The result
a changeling stamp, upwardly mobile and
ambitious, but also mischievous—
neither wholly legal, nor wholly forged.
The soul stuff—paper, perforations and watermark—
legitimate enough, likewise the post-office smudge,
only the image is corrupt, the persona, if you like.
And thus equipped he presents
as royalty—as Emperor or King—
a confidence trickster, to those in the know,
mocking right breeding
and the divine rule of kings.
Even the capitalists are duped,
how fragile the old-school tut-tut, for
with a little theatre we all can move,
like Jesus, between the classes. Even
currency—God made manifest in trade—
proves insubstantial, pliable,
a mere scrawl on coloured paper.
Today, his status
unmatched by even the genuine article,
Jean’s peasant kangaroo sits all-atop
the social heap. More prized
than almost every citizen kangaroo, more prized, even,
than later ₤2 black and reds.
I think of De Sperati now,
and Hermes, God of trickery and thieves
and Ned Kelly, immortal despite all
protestations,
and know that life (ultimately) resists
all rigidities of sign
and system.
My own path—
soul beneath a mere hap-hazard
of garments however
finely spun.
The One Shilling Black
‘After a week the Kulin
chose to meet with
Batman, who trod their
lands with a hungry eye.
… Batman
communicated his desire
to purchase land in exchange for blankets, steel
blades, mirrors, beads and a ‘tribute, or rent
yearly’ … Land purchase had no meaning to the
Kulin …However, they had a notion of welcome
and temporary usage for strangers.’
Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800,
Richard Broome
The One Shilling Black is seminal,
it depicts a tall Koori
classic pose, noble, etc.
wise and ambivalent,
within a dark landscape,
(how fitting?)
and the Yarra like a blacksnake
wriggles
between the worlds
The (apparent) Symbolism:
Progress Made Manifest
but also,
Guilt Assuaged
‘Look, have we not built a City of God
out of the black man’s suffering?’
What was the Koori thinking?
The white designer is clearly troubled—
He shows us Melbourne from the Koori’s perspective,
from his side of the Yarra,
and the city, la ville tentaculaire, is
absorbed into black—
a semiotic intrusion or mere coincidence
made euphonic and seedling
by history?
These days the One Shilling Black
is coveted by collectors and
historians—to the general public
it whispers a nation still mired.
And more besides—
Civilisation is not intimate
Civilisation is a fabulous abstraction
a mere conjoining of geometric forms,
labyrinthine,
a terrifying maze (up close).
for black and white alike.
The Poet’s Super
To progressives, stamps are unambiguous
symbols of bourgeois capitalism,
but to me, they are beacons of hope
gateways to the pleasure principle
and on a more practical level,
a poet’s super.
Being a poet I have no super to speak of,
there is no later life balance to
go up, up, and up – on average –
in sharp simplistic peaks and troughs
my retirement is less than guaranteed
But poets are inventive
Whenever I have spare cash
I buy the Kiwi Queen Victorias
imperforate and fragile, full-faced and regal
or those stolid kangaroos
grazing surreal pastures, red, yellow,
green, brown, pink or blue.
Though their popularity waxes and wanes
with the price of gold, tax laws and
technological change
I treasure them – like old girlfriends
or long banished youthful ideals,
‘It’s an impractical addiction!’
‘No basis for an investment portfolio!’ it’s true
‘All very hit and miss!’
from an expert’s point of view,
‘Overly complex, and very old-fashioned!’
‘Make your assets productive!’
and ‘Perhaps you’re a little repressed?’
and ‘Most stamp dealers are sharks.’
‘Just like fund managers,’ I reply,
‘but don’t you think there’s something romantic
about an old poet selling the 5/- Harbour Bridge
to pay his electricity bill?
or some of the pre-decimal Navigators
to pay for a new set of dentures?
When I grow old, I’ll sell miniature memories
ontologies, ideals, archetypes, alternative pasts
half a dozen a week
to top up the pension.
The Guardian of Literary Culture (Civilising the Natives)
All the books in the professor’s
personal library
look anemic—in need of sunlight and
vitamins—
they remind me of old stamps
in musty albums.
He stopped collecting decades ago
I think, and now
he only reads the classics.
Occasionally, of course,
he dusts off a cover
and delivers a lecture
in suitably reverential tones.
The undergraduates are mostly silent
aware
of the massive burden of tradition.
Stamps, like literary masterpieces,
prefer life in the real world—
when paraded at philatelic gatherings
they shun the electronic glare,
feeling not unlike battery chooks,
and remember better days.
The turbulence of coming into being,
all those bright colours,
and rivers of many-coloured inks.
The violence of the minting process,
at the mercy of fabulous machines.
Then came sheet life among
rows of shiny happy clones,
all destinations, theirs to imagine.
And soon enough the rending,
the tearing from sibling and friend
before the first stirrings of eros,
a brief encounter with
tongue and lip
and closeness to man or woman,
before the inevitable stamping down
Ennui begins with a postmark.
Even then, dated and fallen
there was still the ecstasy
of imagined travel—exotic locations—
and the gaze of appreciative eyes
before the inevitable casting out.
But for others
the chosen few—samples, survivors—
there was album life.
A superannuated existence far
from the world’s temptations,
pored over, perhaps, by the aesthete
more often, imprisoned
by investors.
Likewise,
the university is an album for dead writers.
Observe the wizened academic—
high on his Theoretic pony
a self-proclaimed guardian of literary culture,
observe him guillotine a young writer:
‘Yes, all very well to study writing as a craft
but can you quote from the classic poets?’
he said
this priest of literature
this collector
this investor in the soul-stuff
of dead writers.
The Refugee Fund
In 1974 Cyprus issued a stamp -
white-framed with grey background, it
foregrounded an ink-drawn child,
a little girl
a refugee
an asylum seeker, perhaps,
hunched, homeless and
with only a meager bag of possessions.
She is slumped among barbed wire swirls
circling, scraping, lacerating.
The caption is in three languages,
in English it reads:
Refugee Fund
That wise designer
who foresaw
Woomera
Baxter, and ‘the
Pacific Solution’.
The Paper Icon
(and the Genie)
I sit in the cold-steel dawn,
all a-skitter, pilgrim in loin-cloth,
staring at Jerusalem’s blue hills, Biblical dust.
I say ‘Open sesame!’ or some such skullduggery,
to the tiny paper icon: hoping, believing,
faithed up.
A tiny genie stumbles into the cool morning air, he
yawns, looks dazed – probably hung over – and campish
indifferent. Professional enough – though theatrical.
A cat howls in reprobate …
unimpressed by genies.
I say, ‘Imagine an orchard in a sun-warm valley,
ripe fruit, languid, literatorial afternoons
alchemy nights, brilliant child-colours,
rainbows and talking parrots …
on the other side.’
The genie smells of sex, harem perfumes,
and stale hashish, he looks stoned
and overworked.
And I adjust the magnifying glass
to get a closer look at his pagan shoes
and sultan’s pot belly.
He responds by dancing a half-hearted tap
then shape-shifts into something larger,
a man.
‘What’s your problem, Mister?’ he says.
the English is drug-slurred and accented – obtuse,
Arabian - but clear enough.
I say, ‘Colour the light, and explain
the ancient contours of dark.’
He sighs, ‘Okay Mister, you know the story,
that’s one wish.’
And suddenly I am
fabric of ink and gum, atomized,
part of some popular artist’s
dream-haze – but aureole
The genie nudges me to one side, leans against
a pillared arch, and strokes a wood carving.
I laugh at the elephant vistas, remarkable
trees, and mythopoetic birds.
In the distance mercurial spirits
tease the souls of charm-lost mortals,
fog-wrapped and blindfold.
I say, ‘The ceaseless song returns,
providing.’
The genie flicks an ornate switch,
and speakers fire the audio on creation –
Glorious poet throng! Muse voice!
This task complete,
he scratches an ass cheek and
collapses into a deck-chair,
here at the place between worlds,
‘Two wishes kaput, Mister,’ he says
swatting a large desert fly, obsidian-blue,
‘One wish remaining.’
I think selfish thoughts,
Say, ‘Art-fuse, love and poetry
for self and kin and species …’
He raises a jaded eyebrow,
- have I surprised him?
‘Three wishes done, Mister.’
A smoke routine follows
- impressive enough,
to a mortal.
And the genie was true
to his word
for the paper icon
is a cathedral still .
The $10 Utopia
‘It is said that Ned Kelly dreamed of a republic in the North.’
Let us reframe
the idea of Utopia.
Thomas More in shorts
cranking up the barby
prodding crocodile steaks
his speech staccato studded with
quotes from Plato and Homer,
Augustine and the Romans,
talking ideal futures,
to the bored reviewer.
His new book, Oztopia:
New Pathways for a Rudderless Nation
sits beside the chops and sausages, it’s
stained by a single drop of tomato sauce.
‘This is not a media event,
this is medicine for the soul of a nation!’
says Thomas, then
‘Would you like more onion?’
The reviewer—dizzy with wine—
stares
at the book’s cover
The design?
A leadlight map,
a continent of nations—
black folk and golden wattles
ghosted in the background.
In the future they’ll commission a stamp,
the catalogue listing reads:
The $10 Utopia
The One Pound Soccer
In 1927
instead of all those royal heads
beefy and definitive
violet, orange, green, red, blue and lemon
all those dreary Your Majesties
lined up cheap and boring
in the album of God and Country—
what if they’d printed Johnny Warren’s dream
the One Pound Soccer
and a forked path for Australia.
(In memorium Johnny Warren, d. 2005)
Note: The first Australian stamp depicting a popular sporting activity was
not issued by the Post Office until 1960, it was the 5d Sepia commemorating
the 100th
Melbourne Cup. Soccer was finally depicted on an Australian
postage stamp in 1976, in the form of the 18c Goalkeeper. It was part of a
series commemorating the Montreal Olympic Games.
Bureaucrats of the Empire
‘Although the Commonwealth came into existence in 1901, and the Post
Office was immediately organized on a Federal basis, the first Commonwealth postage stamps were not issued until 1913. The long
delay was due partly to political wrangling on the basic design to be
adopted. Republicans strenuously opposed the incorporation of the head of the British Sovereign on Australian stamps. This group managed to
carry the day with the result that the first postage stamps were of the
kangaroo in map design. When, however, the Fisher Government was defeated in 1913, one of the first acts of the Cook Government was to order the issue of a series of stamps
bearing the portrait of King George V.’ [From The Australasian Stamp Catalogue, 20th edition, pg. 4.]
Humane culture begins in the zone between
monoliths. It erodes difference
(at the risk of vertigo) and is parallels
the currencies that move between Empires
—each soiled by each
Twelve years after Australia’s birth, a paddock of
ancestors, wary, exhausted, gapped by extinction—
gnar-ruck, eastern hare-wallaby, pig-foot
bandicoot—negotiate a temporary truce
with King George V. The thick-necked king, all
desperate for allies, agrees to share envelope and
postcard with eighteen kangaroos, each
caged, like the last thylacine in Beaumaris zoo, inside a map
of Australia, and branded of soul, watermarked, by an unseen
Crown atop the letter A. Recall
from the first stirrings of
the heliocentric view of the earth
philately and cartography
were engaged to marry - future
bureaucrats of the empire.
The stamp and the map, siblings or cousins,
each define geography in terms of
a given metaphysic of culture—a zone
where occupation merges with
aesthetic imagining.
But,
stamps and maps annihilate Australia—
that original Australia, home to
gibber mouse and the paradise parrot. That
soulful Australia. Unbounded. Undifferentiated.
That singing, ancient Australia.
Maps and stamps colonize soul—
they modulate and infiltrate the enclaves
of being, program vision, to see this
and un-see that … and always
what is unseen, is violated.
Cartography inscribes
in the wake of conquest
philately traces the contours to sanctify
the fledgling state—
both anaesthetize conqueror and
conquered alike,
send the paperwork to Atlas and Catalogue—
and thus a history is launched.
Nations have personalities
stamps = persona (mask)
A catalogue of stamps =
persona imposed on geography.
By Airmail
‘Hermes is one of the symbols of the power of the working and creative
mind. … He embodies the revelation to mankind of wisdom and the way to
eternal life. He is the word which, to the degree to which they are open to it,
penetrates to the very depths of people’s consciousness.’ The Penguin
Dictionary of Symbols, Pgs 499-501
Hermes is the God of postage and stamp collecting,
my world-hop aunts and uncles existed
only as memories and occasional
scrawls and scribbles on papers and envelopes
blessed by the messenger God.
Hermes is the God of airlines and rocketry,
and every ascent of junk-metal jet
high into the atmosphere
high above the dwarfed cities, puddle brown
lakes and bath-blue oceans
is sheer alchemy – a gift from
Hermes Trismejistus, the cheerful daimon, he
who moves between the worlds.
Hermes is the God of the written word
and the handwriting of distant kin
- coded and decoded – is product of his magic.
In Hermes the writer sees a myth of Creation –
and whispers, “Let these words Soar!”
Australia acknowledged Hermes
in the one shilling and sixpence Airmail stamp
of 1929. There he is in the catalogue or album,
a slim purple youth with winged sandals,
moving between the worlds
but not of the world.
But Hermes is also a trickster
and a guide to the Underworld, to the
other Australia
of slaughter and convict-oppression,
tiger snake and scorpion, blue-ringed octopus
and funnel web spider.
Hermes is the God of map-making
who else but the messenger God
could aid us in visualizing plural worlds
- mortal and divine, continents, galaxies,
Universes – multiple heavens, infinite hells
All this to contemplate
In stamping an envelope, “By Airmail”
the worlds of the past
the realm of the Gods
distant nations and peoples,
planets, solar systems and galaxies
dispersed far and wide
across ocean and aether.
Proud Tilt of the Masses
Off the street today
a small album of Vietnamese stamps
—100,000 dong, or
“Seven dollars US, sir”.
It reads like official history
but is much more
colourful.
For a few years the peasants,
trades-people, nurses and conscript
soldiers got a good run in
Vietnam’s philatelic record.
They appeared in groups, heads
tilted proudly, the tallest soldier or
bureaucrat or worker at the rear,
and always
shoulder to shoulder with
male and female comrades.
And gainfully employed—
dressed to realize the material dreams
of their soviet educated elite.
The symbolism?
all for an independent Vietnam.
Like the man in overalls on this 1976 stamp—
a nearby office worker (cadre) seems neither
superior nor inferior—though history announces
a future of vast corruption,
stifled democracy
and greedy elites (kept afloat
by foreign investment).
These days the late century
switch-over
from Communist to
Neo-Conservative dictatorship
acknowledged by all
but the editors of Nhan Dan.
At what cost did the workers
tilt their heads in the paper-thin air
of so much postage? Always fixated
on a map of reunification,
an image of Ho Chi Minh
or that Yellow Star on a Red background
(like the t-shirt I bought)
and Lenin (thankfully, rarely Stalin).
In the days
before the Chinese invasion
the hammer and sickle functioned
as a semiotic foundation—
or should we say watermark?—
giving legal tender to a regime
(intent on invading Cambodia).
The old soldiers who run the government
justify much with history. They
have known B52s and unimaginable
hardship and loss. They are not easy
to dismiss as the country lurches
toward Adam Smith, tabloid papers,
and the internet—if only to feed
the thirty percent still malnourished
after decades of victorious living.
I peruse the semiotic favourites —factories and
machinery, military hardware, bundles
(or full baskets) of freshly harvested
fruits and vegetables—
a philatelic cornucopia for a people
wracked by starvation.
And industrious men with hard hats—
though the ethic of safety
absent
among the country’s millions
of motorbike riders
Go-getter stamps! Hammers poised to
bash nails into communal constructions,
and women tending noisy machines, as
farmers work idyllic rice paddies
(though the taxes and kick-backs
are harsh and random like
colonial oppression).
All this industry is tiring! Thankfully
the humble water-buffalo
features often.
So much for the stamps of the subsidy economy.
By the late eighties native flowers, fish, birds,
insects and animals began to reappear,
likewise—away from paper—traditional
Vietnamese cooking.
Soon after—a final irony—
alongside the flora and fauna, we note
resurrected scholars and military leaders
(so much history)—at least
this new nationalism is mostly indigenous,
(though tinged with China).
After contemplation, these
paper signifiers
accurate enough—
a mandarin is
a mandarin after all,
regardless
of the changed
dress code.
Author Bio (as at April 2013)
Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia) and Takahe (NZ), among many others. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink Books) and Agenda: ‘Australian Edition’, 2005. He is the author of three books and
co-editor of three journals and currently teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program at Bendigo TAFE (Australia) as well as the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui.