AustLit
Latest Issues
Contents
- The Jolley Prize, single work column (p. 1)
- Vale Shirley Hazzard, single work obituary (p. 1)
- Fellowships Galore, single work column (p. 1)
- Vale Anne Deverson and Georgia Blain, single work obituary (p. 5)
- Tissues on the Sofa, single work correspondence (p. 5)
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Watson's Panopoly,
single work
essay
review
'In The Bush (2014), Don Watson explored notions of what that most variegated of terms, ‘the bush’, meant to earlier generations, including his own family. In A Single Tree, he presents extracts from writings of all kinds for what he calls ‘a fragmentary history of humans in the Australian bush’. He takes as given the diverse applications of the word ‘bush’ over time and chooses pieces that give expression to a multiplicity of feelings, words, and thoughts around aspects of Australian place.'
(Introduction)
-
Head to Foot,
single work
essay
review
'At the launch of Up Came a Squatter, Geoffrey Blainey reflected on how important the wool industry was to Australia for more than a hundred years. He noted that forty or fifty years ago you would not have bothered to mention the fact: it was as understood as the vagaries of Melbourne’s weather. Now wool is not even among Australia’s twenty top exports. Many of those present listening to Blainey and the author speak were from the Western District, descendants of Niel Black and others who established squatting runs in the 1830s and 1840s on the lands of Australia Felix ‘discovered’ by Major Mitchell during his overland expedition of 1836. An inevitable result of the land’s rapid occupation by squatters was the dispossession and near destruction of the local indigenous peoples.'
(Introduction)
-
Sowing a Wind,
single work
essay
review
'When times were difficult, Cynthia Reed Nolan ‘drew the veil’. Born in Evandale in 1908, the youngest of six children, Cynthia always sought distance. From an early age, like siblings Margaret and John, she longed to escape from Tasmania. Oddly, however, this was not what John Reed expected of her. Such anomalies make this biography, which foregrounds her life before she became Cynthia Nolan, particularly interesting. Drawing on newly available correspondence, it portrays a sensitive, ironic woman previously overshadowed by more famous contemporaries.'
(Introduction)
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Oceanic Depths,
single work
essay
review
'If a collection of stories is put together on the basis that these are the ‘best Australian stories of 2016’, is it fair or reasonable to hope for some kind of cohesiveness or gestalt beyond those three explicit parameters of quality, place, and time? The answer will depend largely on what the editor’s ideas might be, not only about what makes a good short story, but also about the way to make a group of individual stories add up to a book: to something more than the sum of its parts.'
(Introduction)
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Blow After Blow,
single work
essay
review
'Extinctions takes its time giving up its secrets, and there are some we will never know. One of its most persistent enigmas is what kind of book it is. I wondered, during the first half, whether it was a powerful and perceptive example of the Bildungsroman for seniors: an elderly person (usually male) meets someone new who teaches him to be a better person, to pay attention to the important things in life, to treat those he loves properly, to reconcile himself to his past – in short, to grow up'
(Introduction)
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Entering Other Countries,
single work
essay
review
'If Peter Boyle’s new and selected, Towns in the Great Desert (which I reviewed in ABR, March 2014), was a tour de force of the imagination, and a book of stunningly strange and brilliant poetry, this next book, Ghostspeaking, surpasses it in ambition and virtuosity. Across nearly 400 pages, Boyle introduces us to eleven Spanish-speaking poets from Argentina, France, Spain, Cuba, Canada, and Puerto Rico, with small biographical portraits, reports of interviews, and translations of selections of their poems and memoirs. Often the work he translates is unpublished or only available in rare editions.'
(Introduction)
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[Review Essay] Where the Light Falls,
single work
essay
review
'In the midst of preparing for an important London exhibition, photographer Andrew is drawn back to Australia by the sudden disappearance of his former girlfriend, Kirsten. His compulsion to resolve this troubled relationship evolves into a desire to account for an earlier loss. As Andrew grapples with his ambivalence about a new photographic subject, and his ability to sustain the ‘small, bright miracle’ of his present-day relationship with Dominique in Berlin, the complex role of photography in his life is redefined.'
(Introduction)
-
Publisher of the Month with Michael Heyward,
single work
interview
'In 1979, when I was twenty, I took Vincent Buckley’s poetry seminar at Melbourne University. He introduced us to the work of the Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting, by then in his late seventies. That summer I went to Britain in pursuit of Bunting. In Newcastle I knocked on the door of Bloodaxe Books and explained my mission to Neil Astley, the publisher. It was the first publishing office I had ever been in. I thought: this is what I am going to do. Neil phoned Bunting and I caught a bus to the council estate where he lived. We talked until the light faded. My future had found me. After I came back to Melbourne, I set up Scripsi with Peter Craven.'
(Introduction)
- Jealousy of the Undertow/Tombstonei"The need to recall the journey", single work poetry (p. 55)
- Chipsi"Can I say", single work poetry (p. 55)
- Black Cockatoosi"Red-", single work poetry (p. 56)
- Lapis Lazuli/Sketches from the Nilei"You tilt lapis to your lip –", single work poetry (p. 56)
- The World's Yardi"Right at the back of the world's yard I am sitting. I have nothing.", single work poetry (p. 56)
- Statements to Forget When Rememberedi"no one ha", single work poetry (p. 57)
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Worlds and Fragments : Four Collections from UWA Publishing,
single work
essay
review
'A book called Our Lady of the Fence Post (UWA Publishing, $22.99 pb, 105 pp, 9781742589121) by a poet called J.H. Crone is an irresistible proposition, simply as a notion. Luckily for readers, neither is at all fanciful. This verse narrative explores the events around the appearance in 2003 of a likeness of the Virgin Mary on a fence post at Coogee, near the site of a memorial for five local rugby players killed in the Bali bombings. Crowds of fervent worshippers flocked to the scene.'
(Introduction)