AustLit

'We are all detectives. We eavesdrop. We are all wired to ask questions. One of the most primordial, intrinsic needs of humans is to comprehend the world and to communicate that understanding. Poetry and science have grown up together as siblings. For millennia we have stretched out our hands to the night sky and wondered where we have come from. Poetry and science are our way into wonder. They are closer together than they are apart. Early poets like Lucretius or Virgil wrote about science in reverence. We have read many poems and seen magnificent art on all kinds of science: topography, neuroscience, meteorology, engineering, microbes, cosmology. We read a poem and run to the science to know more. We look at the stars and run inside to write a poem. We have always wanted to push further our boundary of knowledge, connect with the environment and metaphorically lasso a galaxy or two while we’re at it.'   (Introduction)

'The first time I saw Ania would have been at a poetry reading in Carlton or Fitzroy about 1977, about the same time I got to know Eric Beach, Ken Smeaton, Howard Firkin and all the rest. She would have been on a small stage, or in a small clearing, before a small audience, probably, but not necessarily, in a small hotel. She would have been neatly and slightly conservatively dressed, with a tasteful dash of European flair (like, say, a beret) and about 26 years old. Being small herself, she fitted right in, and being Ania she did it on her terms.' (Introduction)

“Hiiieee… Katherine. What a crazy world we’re living in. Be great to chat with you. All the best. See you soon. Ciao. Ania.”

'Ania Walwicz and I were born on the same day of the same month. She would be 70 this May and I should be 48, but I’m not sure really, which one of us was younger. She told me she didn’t like the idea of being 70. It wasn’t about slowing down or wanting to write an ending. ‘I am just at the start at the beginning of the tale in the end of a book at the start only 69 young only morning at a time only now only now and in my office now where I teach myself to be alive I am only alive now only now please let it go on some more…’ Ania often wrote in places full of people. Full of life. In her shared office, the State Library, in class with her students, food courts… she wrote in the midst of people rushing around, doing everyday boring things. Ania was never boring. She was a whirling dervish of creativity ‘...hoo hoo hoo here I go now my foot in leather slipper shod happy soft on shine floor now I turn I whirl I spin round and around now…’' (Introduction)

'In a past year like no other, the collective of our creative community has never been more necessary and is crucial in the shift from survive to thrive mode.  There have been countless acts of generosity, imagination and empathy in the art world and we thank you for you, APJ readers and contributors, for being part of it.' (Introduction)