Understanding concepts

Change is a process involving catalysts, transformations and experiences. The catalysts come in a multiple of forms and can vary from a significant life altering event as portrayed in Maeve Binchey’s Firefly Summer and Janine Shepard’s Never Tell Me Never or as common place as lessons learnt by an un named child in Gwen Harwood’s ‘The Glass jar’. Harwood’s eclectic poetic style effectively portrays her unfathomable wisdom of change. Most profoundly her pieces ‘At Mornington’ and ‘Prize Giving’ explore the means of maturity and time being concurrent as well as the inevitability of change they give rise to. ‘At Mornington’ also develops similar issues of change being a gradual process, a sudden process, or a forced process as elaborated in Miroslav Holub’s ‘The Door’.

Catastrophic events are often catalysts for rapid physical and mental change. Binchey's irefly Summer presents us with a subtle and laid back writing technique to create a sense of normality...