Plagiarism

"Yet isn’t it the case that all this says something that nobody wants to admit? These current scandals in poetry confirm that people worldwide still desperately care about poetry despite its absolutely essential irrelevance to any economic indicator you might mention, and that – despite the crazy uproar surrounding the instances of plagiarism – this shows that poetry will continue to enjoy a glorious future yet."
by Justin Clemens, 16.Sep.13
‘“Of borrow’d plumes I take the sin”’: plagiarism and poetry
Overland
https://overland.org.au/2013/09/of-borrowd-plumes-i-take-the-sin/ 

Jeff Sparrow, editor, 'Overland'

"We need, instead, to create new audiences, to build communities for whom information matters. In a previous Overland Rjurik Davidson described this in terms of creating a counter hegemonic public sphere, a counterculture of writers and readers, thinkers and activists, publications and campaigns, and an infrastructure that allows people to make news rather than merely consume it.

To put the matter another way, it's not enough for nonfiction writers to simply describe the world. The point, as always, is to change it."

Jeff Sparrow on Truth, Politics and Nonfiction
"Cats are out, sloths are in"
Overland, Issue 214, Autumn 2014
http://overland.org.au/ 

Schopenhauer as Educator

"People are more slothful than timid. Their greatest fear is the heavy burden that uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them.

It is only artists who hate this lazy wandering in borrowed manner and ill-fitting opinions. They discover the guilty secret of the bad conscience: the disowned truth that each human being is a unique marvel."

Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator"

John Armstrong, 2013, Life lessons from Nietzsche, Macmillan, London.

http://www.johnarmstrong.com.au/ 

Courage

Courage - Conference on Freedom of Expression, a photo by Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek on Flickr.

" ... there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation ... communication on the deepest level is possible."

from a talk given by Thomas Merton, 10 December, 1968 

http://www.soundstrue.com/shop/Choosing-to-Love-the-World/113.pd