AustLit
Alternative title:
The Real Through Line
Issue Details:
First known date:
2014...
vol.
4
no.
2
December
2014
of
Axon : Creative Explorations
est. 2011
Axon : Creative Explorations
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Latest Issues
Contents
* Contents derived from the 2014 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
- 4 Propositionsi"for instance ducks in a row it is a", single work poetry
-
Literary Stiles and Symbolic Culture : Returning to the Problem of Writing,
single work
criticism
'In an attempt to uncover all the drivers that construct a society that is inherently anti-ecological Jones, in this chapter of his doctoral thesis, Walking for food: regaining permapoesis, turns the lens onto writing itself and offers up a provocation: Does writing erode ecological intelligence? We know or believe writing constructs civil intelligence, that is intelligence required for growing cities and other anthropocentric environments, but does it aid or hinder the development of ecological society? The chapter takes the form of a letter written to writer and environmentalist Maya Ward. Maya's reply can be read as part of Jones' full thesis, available through the UWS library and online databases.' (Publication summary)
-
Every Day, Streams of Changes : Networks in Time, Place, Process in the ‘Snapshots Project’,
single work
criticism
'This essay examines an email poetry project, the Snapshots Project, as an example of poetries that work with dailiness as a form of serial associative writing. Using responses to a survey of some of the participants and some examples of poems written for the project, I explore the various ways poets can experiment with dailiness in their writing and the ways they interpret ‘the moment’ variously, from the report, the description and the anecdote, through a range of more formal linguistic preferences. Time and location markers attached to the email posts provided a kind of mapping or network for these poems. Many respondents noted the project created both a sense of communality, of network, by providing a long view of how a day unfolded across longitudes and latitudes, and a venue for responsiveness.' (Publication abstract)
-
Hosts and Ghosts : Hospitality, Reading and Writing,
single work
criticism
'This essay starts from J. Hillis Miller’s ‘The critic as host’, an anatomy of reading which connects ideas of ghosting and hosting. If the reader or critic hosts a text, s/he does so both as ‘eaten and eater’, containing ‘the double antithetical relation of host and guest’ (Miller 1977: 442). Miller finds in the ethical reader someone aware of these ‘reciprocal duties of hospitality’. With its images of winding ivy and squirming parasites, Miller’s essay contains a dynamic disclosure of the spirit of attempt that drives it, and the energies of the ‘species of that fanaticism, or rapture, or even revelry that Immanuel Kant calls Schwärmerei’ that, elsewhere, he invites readers to enter (Miller 2005: 253).
'These ideas haunt and illuminate my practice as writer, editor and critic. This essay explores the possibilities of applying Miller’s evocation of the ‘reciprocal duties’ involved in inhabiting a text as a reader to these other varieties of habitation. My research into confessional poetry and life writing repeatedly washes up questions of (and into) the liminal spaces between the imagined and something we like to think of as fact. In writing about ‘real’ people, hospitality’s questions become challenging: what to serve, bring or hide in a cupboard; how best to listen; questions of transgression, politeness and pleasure. Similarly, the creative editing of another writer’s work is premised upon a privileged hospitality: an interlocutor can only be effective if a writer has invited her into the work, and is willing to accommodate her reading.
'The form of this essay’s exploration is inspired by the poetic assemblages of Joseph Cornell, which Charles Simic describes as ‘vehicles of reverie’ where objects and ideas are shuffled into conversation through a ‘dime-store alchemy’ (Simic 1992).' (Publication abstract)
- H-Lessness : Relevant Logici"No axon may as such", single work poetry
- Australia Dayi"Barbeque and cricket", single work poetry
-
Marx, My Muse : Towards a Far Left Poetics,
single work
criticism
'This paper proposes and develops a theoretical approach, supported by a creative illustration, to a political aesthetics. It is proposed that, in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the project of a Marxist or radical Left aesthetic theory may be revived to investigate and also potentially inspire cultural production opposed to capitalist ideology. I draw on the theories of thinkers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Ranicère and Alain Badiou to outline one possible development of such a prism. Benjamin, Adorno, Ranicère and Badiou are in many ways very dissimilar thinkers, and their perspectives on art are at times at odds with one another. It is precisely due to their disagreements that I have chosen to combine a number of the key themes of these thinkers’ aesthetics, to advance a more comprehensive, inclusive approach. In the spirit of Marxism’s dialectical Hegelian foundations, it is the aim of this paper to produce an overview of a possible radical aesthetic theory and poetics through juxtaposing and pressurising counterposing perspectives which share an oppositional stance apropos of capitalist cultural hegemony.' (Publication abstract)
- The Great Australian Dream, Delivered in the Manner of Gatsbyi"Always over one’s shoulder, you’ll find the trees that forgot to breathe.", single work poetry
-
Beyond Facts and Accuracies : Long Form Poetry as Biographical Method,
single work
criticism
'This paper addresses long form poetry as non-fiction medium—specifically as biographical medium—discussing examples by writers such as Jordie Albiston, Susan Howe and Lyn Hejinian, to consider the diversity of ways in which poets are writing/documenting the lives of historical figures. My aim is to demonstrate how poetic biographies can extend our representations of these characters into new dimensions, using poetic play—the line, metaphor, frisson, juxtaposition, space and rhythm—to convey aspects of character and experience in innovative and exciting ways. I propose an extension of non-fiction writing into the poetic form as a way towards addressing historical inaccuracies and aporias, thus not only opening a space for the representation of marginal voices, but offering new frameworks for life writing.' (Publication abstract)
- Grave-Craft, sequence poetry
- Falli"After they shot your father", single work poetry
- Nightfalli"Perhaps I can put that another way:", single work poetry
- Placevillei"those painless", single work poetry
-
Return to the Palindrome of the Real,
single work
criticism
'This essay is concerned with how rhetorical claims concerning 'the real' or a 'return to the real' almost invariably find themselves caught up in specious repetitions of one kind or another. Having offered a series of examples thereof and arguments there against, the essay turns to an examination of an ancient writerly algorithm, the palindrome. Several crucial features of the palindrome are identified and described, and the claim that the palindrome paradoxically offers a real 'real through line' is justified: in fact, the palindrome is shown to be 'a fragment of the real.' (Publication abstract)
-
Water, Diaspora and Desire : Belonging in Contemporary Asian Australian Poetry,
single work
criticism
'Contemporary Asian Australian poets have recently begun to attract more attention, particularly with the publication of the anthology, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill, Contemporary Asian Australian Poets. This essay engages with three of these poets: Debbie Lim, Shen and James Stuart, and reads their poems through a diasporic lens. Contrary to scholarship that investigates belonging using the more orthodox ideas of home and land, this reading engages with fluidity and mobility through the depictions of water to better represent the diasporic experience. Further, these poems employ desire and the desiring subject to engage with the way diasporic belonging is figured as contested and contingent. Each of these elements will be explored in the poems in order to investigate the link between diasporic belonging and depictions of water.' (Publication abstract)
- Walked Words : On Walking to The Real Through Linei"our Civilisation", single work poetry
-
Stretching the Imaginable,
Paul Hetherington
(interviewer),
single work
interview
'Between July 2012 and June 2014 Paul Hetherington and Petra White conducted an interview by email about making and thinking about poetry, including the ways in which Petra approached her work and her views about poetic innovation, imagination and reading others poets’ work.' (Publication abstract)
- Dreamboati"There we are", single work poetry
- Wrecking Partyi"Mulberry.", single work poetry
- The Night Airi"He is running through the school", single work poetry
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 15 Feb 2016 14:12:23
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