AustLit
Latest Issues
Contents
-
Our Octopuses, Ourselves,
single work
column
'There are many qualities to the octopus that render it strange, or weird, to a human mind: its cold, slippery body. Its excess of creepy tentacles. Its dissonant, almost chimerical structure. Its aloof intelligence. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, science fiction and horror writers fixed upon the figure of the octopus as the ultimate expression of eldritch dread. Cthulhu sprouted from the hallucinatory imagination of HP Lovecraft, and attacks by giant cephalopods became a staple of the maritime adventure novel. In an essay on the teratology of Weird horror, novelist and literary critic China Mièville links the historical emergence of the genre, around about the fin-de-siècle, to a growing sense of nihilism in the face of an oncoming crisis. To the writers of the Weird, writes Mièville, this formless being with an inexplicable surfeit of limbs was a reflection of the ‘chaotic, amoral, [and] anthropoperipheral universe’ they found themselves in.' (Introduction)
-
September in Poetry,
single work
review
— Review of Ask Me About the Future 2020 selected work poetry ; Blur by The 2019 selected work poetry ; Case Notes 2020 selected work poetry ; Late Murrumbidgee Poems 2020 selected work poetry ; - Rendered, Blank in Pages, single work short story
-
Adding People of Colour to a Racist Workplace Isn’t the Answer,
single work
column
'Over the last few months, we’ve seen the beginnings of an anti-racist reckoning in Australia’s media, arts and entertainment sector, nourished by the Bla(c)k Lives Matter movement. As former and current employees critique racism and marginalisation at workplaces ranging from newsrooms and television sets to art galleries and festivals, organisations have responded with promises to do better.' (Introduction)
-
‘What Would You Have Me Do? Go to the Wars?’ Sidney Nolan’s Soldier,
single work
column
'Sidney Nolan was one of the most prolific Australian artists of the twentieth century, completing an estimated forty thousand works of art.'
- The ASX Pours from Your Chesti"We squabble about the money skimmed", single work poetry
- Yoked, single work short story