The Unsuspected Slums - Frank Prem

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Résumé :
the truth will cost you a shilling just one shilling will you come along to listen? ~ Living on the susso. Losing yourself to rotgut and the metho. Living cheek by jowl with neighbours, using a tin tub for bathing and washing your clothes. Confusing flea bites for measles . . . Welcome to the inner-city Melbourne slums of the 1930s. In The Unsuspected Slums, Frank Prem revisits Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Port Melbourne and the other slum areas of Melbourne that were later torn down and rebuilt after sustained agitation led by accountant and Methodist lay preacher F. Oswald Barnett and his colleagues. Drawing on Barnett's original photographs, Prem reproduces and poetically interprets these stark records of daily life inside Melbourne's apparently unsuspected slum pockets scattered throughout the inner city. In contemporary, mid-2020s Melbourne, agitation over housing has returned as a pressing social issue, with the High-Rise estates that once replaced the slums now themselves slated for demolition. The world has changed - and yet, some things remain the same. eight shillings and sixpence for a house made out of packing case wood still it's a roof over our heads isn't it?...

Biographie:
Frank Prem has been a storytelling poet for more than forty years. He spent his professional working life as a psychiatric nurse within the public mental health system in Victoria, Australia.His poetry has appeared in magazines, e-zines, and anthologies in Australia and internationally. He has performed and recorded widely in spoken word settings and has published more than thirty poetry collections.Prem is an Adjunct Research Associate with the School of Education at Charles Sturt University. He lives with his wife in the historic township of Beechworth in north-east Victoria.Website: www.frankprem.com...

Sommaire:
the truth will cost you a shilling just one shilling will you come along to listen? ~ Living on the susso. Losing yourself to rotgut and the metho. Living cheek by jowl with neighbours, using a tin tub for bathing and washing your clothes. Confusing flea bites for measles . . . Welcome to the inner-city Melbourne slums of the 1930s. In The Unsuspected Slums, Frank Prem revisits Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Port Melbourne and the other slum areas of Melbourne that were later torn down and rebuilt after sustained agitation led by accountant and Methodist lay preacher F. Oswald Barnett and his colleagues. Drawing on Barnett's original photographs, Prem reproduces and poetically interprets these stark records of daily life inside Melbourne's apparently unsuspected slum pockets scattered throughout the inner city. In contemporary, mid-2020s Melbourne, agitation over housing has returned as a pressing social issue, with the High-Rise estates that once replaced the slums now themselves slated for demolition. The world has changed - and yet, some things remain the same. eight shillings and sixpence for a house made out of packing case wood still it's a roof over our heads isn't it?...