Michael Rowe

Creative Writing

2021

• West 38th - For the third time today, Ford picks up the phone and hears nothing but the buzz and click and background hum of a busy call centre. He doesn’t normally answer calls from random numbers…

2020

• The Grass Sled Gift - The running of the 3rd annual Grass Sled Gift, January 1978.
• My writing life - An essay I wrote in response to the topic Write a creative reflection on ‘My writing life’ for a Professional Writing course at La Trobe University.
• Southeastern Australia Seasonal Temperature Outlook - The Southeastern Australia Seasonal Temperature Outlook, in the style of Dylan Thomas.
• Cinderella retold - A first person, as-it-happens retelling of the closing paragraphs of the Cinderella fable, rendered as a series of Twitter posts.

Critical Reviews

2021

• Crime Fiction - the hard boiled detective - A synopsis of the key argument of Felicity Plunkett’s 2002 article “The Monkey’s Mask and the Poetics of Excision” and demonstration of how it is relevant to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey’s Mask.
• A Spike Jonze love story, or a philosophical warning? - Spike Jonze’s film Her raises many interesting questions about what it means to be human. It explores the boundary between machine and human by presenting an idiosyncratically rosy view of the near-future, and then uses this to reflect on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the nature of human relationships.
• Whose story are we telling here anyway? - Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell is an autobiographical documentarythat explores Polley’s family history and her personal journey to uncover her identity.

2020

• Blackbuster - A short review of the film Blackbuster, written and directed by S.F. Tusa.
• Critical Analysis of A View from the Bridge Design Note - A critical analysis of my design notes from A View From the Bridge.

2019

• A View From the Bridge - Design notes from a production of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge that I lit in 2019.

Philosophy

2023

• How is the permanence/non-permanence of self explained in Dharmic religions? - Hinduism says the self is permanent, Buddhism says the self is impermanent. How are these doctrines explained in each religion?

2021

• A Spike Jonze love story, or a philosophical warning? - Spike Jonze’s film Her raises many interesting questions about what it means to be human. It explores the boundary between machine and human by presenting an idiosyncratically rosy view of the near-future, and then uses this to reflect on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the nature of human relationships.

Reflections

2019

• Remembering mum - A eulogy for Gwen Rowe.