The start of a new month means that there's a new issue of Readings Monthly available online and in our shops. Below you can read the Mark Rubbo's column from the latest issue – and keep an eye on the blog for more updates and recommended new releases throughout the month!

It was with sadness that I read of Jack Hibberd’s passing; it made me feel a nostalgia for the creative energy of the Carlton of the ’60s and ’70s. In the late ’60s, Jack was a young intern living in Carlton. In his spare time, he wrote poetry and fell in with a bunch of creatives who said his poetry had a theatrical quality. These actors and writers showcased their work at the Pram Factory and La Mama and Hibberd started to write plays for them. Around the same time, he also spent a few years in London, where productions featuring audience participation intrigued him; he didn’t like the productions, as he felt they didn’t respect the audience, but thought the idea of audience participation had merit. From that, he developed the idea of his most popular play, Dimboola, where the audience participated in a much-loved social ritual as guests at a wedding reception.

Hibberd was also influenced by the English playwright Harold Pinter and his use of idiom. He felt that Australian theatre was too dominated by overseas works and wanted to write accessible, popular theatre about Australia using the local idiom. Hibberd’s plays were often a verbal extravaganza and presented a world in chaos. Writing for productions at La Mama’s small space forced him and other playwrights to experiment and produce a unique kind of theatre. He felt most affinity with another La Mama writer, John Romeril.

It is sad that Federal Government funding for La Mama has ceased, forcing it to stop productions next year while it explores new ways of operating, new partners and new funding streams to ensure that it can continue being the crucible it was for theatre pioneers such as Jack Hibberd.

When my partners and I took over Readings in 1976, its previous owners’ focus was on promoting the books coming from the small presses of America’s West Coast and it was something I continued. One day Jack, who was a good customer, said to me ‘Why don’t you have any Australian books in your window?’ That simple question was an epiphany for me; in a flash I realised that Readings’ role was to be a champion for Australian writers and their books, and it’s a principle that has guided us ever since. I’ll always be grateful to Jack.

Jack’s last play, Killing Time, premiered last year, appropriately with a production at La Mama. He leaves an amazing legacy of close to 40 plays and many poems. We particularly like the poem below and asked his family if we could reproduce it here as a tribute to Jack. They said yes; the poem was published in Meanjin in 1968.

A Jesus Kind of Joy

I PROFESS an interest in it all,
The world-wide symphony of things,
The good, the hopeless, and the small,
The crass cacophony that sings.

I hope for, the not so tall
And the always about to win,
I wish them honey for their gall,
A sweeter sacrifice in sin.

I give to you, my maudlin man,
Love, that you might use it well
On malcontent and also ran,
A Jesus kind of joy in Hell.

I hand it out with great élan,
A little largesse for each day,
The doing well of what I can,
The loving faith in what it may.