This week on the ABR Podcast we feature Robin Boord’s essay ‘Consolation of Clouds’, which was placed third in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize. The essay conveys the mystery surrounding the death of a woman’s father, a pilot in the Korean War, who died unexpectedly at home after a mechanical failure on a training flight. Boord writes in poetic prose that creates narrative movement through a gradual succession of images connected by the recurring motif of sliding, strange, penetrable clouds. 

Robin Boord has worked as a theatre director and a psychologist. Her novel manuscript Out of Place was shortlisted for the Unpublished Manuscript Award in the 2024 South Australian Literary Awards. Here is Robin Boord with ‘Consolation of Clouds’, published in the July issue of ABR.