RISINGSEAFALLINGSTAR

Sea Worshippers

Sat 8 Sep 2018

Philip Hoare (UK)

Auditorium 2, State Library of Queensland

Environment

350

#Performances

#About the event

Duration: 60 minutes

Hoare's sense of urgency and his passion for marine realms has mounted through a sea-trilogy. RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR is no ordinary book. It mounts no straight-ahead argument. It clings to no single genre. Instead, like the sea itself, it moves, flows, absorbs, transforms. In its pages we find passages of beautiful nature and travel writing, lyrical memoir, seams of American and English history, and much more. We find Thoreau and Melville, Wilde and Byron, John Waters and Virginia Woolf, all linked through a certain refusal to be contained, to be strictly defined—an openness to discovery and change. Running throughout is an air of elegy, a reminder that the sea is an ending, a repository of lost ships, lost people, lost ways of being. It is where we came from; for Hoare, it is where he is going.

Unfortunately Micheline is unable to attend the event due to inclement weather in Sydney causing flight disruptions.

Marine biologist Micheline Jenner discovered humpback breeding grounds off the Kimberley coast, has swum through orange golfball-sized pygmy blue whale poo to uncover a feeding spot, and is one of very few people to witness a humpback whale giving birth. In The Secret Life of Whales she reveals the unknown world of these giants of the deep and shares insights from her work with humpback, blue and pygmy blue whales, taking us from Australia to Antarctica and beyond. Enlightening and eye-opening, The Secret Life of Whales reveals fascinating information about how whales live, tapping into Jenner’s world-leading research and infectious enthusiasm for these magnificent creatures.

'Australia’s whales are lucky to have had observers, admirers and protectors like Micheline Jenner. But so are the citizens of this island nation, for the Jenners have not only advanced our scientific knowledge, they’ve enriched our culture.' –Tim Winton

Chair: Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

#Artist

Philip Hoare (UK)

Philip Hoare is the author of eight works of non-fiction. His book Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It was followed in 2013 by The Sea Inside. His new book, RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, the third of his sea-themed works, is published by Fourth Estate.

An experienced broadcaster, curator and filmmaker, he presented the BBC film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and is a regular contributor to The Guardian. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, UK, and curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read, www.mobydickbigread.com, a free online version of Melville's book which has received 5 million hits to date.

#Moderator

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

Dr Karl’s media career spans more than 30 years, talking about Science in newspapers, radio, TV and books — 43 to date. His accolades range from the Ig Nobel Prize from Harvard University for his groundbreaking research into belly button fluff, to being one of Australia’s 100 National Living Treasures. Since 1995, he has been the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at the University of Sydney.