Just keep writing until the water runs clear. Nominated for Lenny’s Book of Everything (young adult fiction) If you have a favourite book then why not try to rewrite it in some way but through a completely different prism? Infuse the work of other writers with your sensibility. A fun way to write a poem is to put phrases through Google translate ad infinitum until you get some interesting phrasing spat out – one of my students recently filtered the English lyrics for the all Eurovision finalist songs through the languages in the competition in order to compose a Eurovision poem. There are a number of ways to take the pressure off and to generate writing that bypasses the need for direct expression. I think writers need to remain playful and experimental. I tend to riff off things I find online or phrases I have written down in my iPhone notes.

The Feather by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood.

The Incredible Freedom Machines by Kirli Saunders and Matt Ottley.

Waiting for Chicken Smith by David Mackintosh.

Sonam and the Silence by Eddie Ayres and Ronak Taher.

Lenny's Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee.

The Things That Will Not Stand by Michael Gerard Bauer.

You Daughters of Freedom by Clare Wright.The Bible in Australia by Meredith Lake.Half the Perfect World by Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell.

Beautiful Revolutionary by Laura Elizabeth Woollett.He received the 2020 Max Crawford Medal from the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

He is a member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), and a member of the Australian Book Review Board. He is also the author of The China Breakthrough: Whitlam in the Middle Kingdom, 1971 (Monash University Publishing, 2012) and co-editor with Mike Smith of The Australian Archaeologist’s Book of Quotations (Monash University Publishing, 2015). He lectures in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne. Holton Book Award, the John Mulvaney Book Award, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2019 Book of the Year at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. His latest book, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc., 2018), won the Ernest Scott Prize, the Felicia A. Dr Billy Griffiths is an Australian writer and historian.

Billy griffiths deep time dreaming