AustLit logo

AustLit

y separately published work icon Axon : Creative Explorations periodical issue  
Alternative title: The Poetics of Collaboration
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... vol. 6 no. 1 2016 of Axon : Creative Explorations est. 2011 Axon : Creative Explorations
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2016 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Introduction, Antonia Pont , Cassandra Atherton , single work essay
'The question of collaboration is one that arguably can't be ignored in contemporary academia, creative fields, or current philosophical and critical landscapes. The word ‘collaboration’ at once brings to mind the conspiratorial nature of crime as well as the cooperative nature of teamwork and the harmonious meeting of minds and practices. It is, then, a slippery word, and for this reason serves as a fertile provocation for the inquiries unpacked and developed in this special issue of Axon.' (Introduction)
A Kind of Rituali"This sundown gathering", Luke Fischer , single work poetry
Ghostly Sisters : Feminist Collaborative Performance in Australia, Ann Vickery , single work criticism
'This article examines how feminist performance has been, and continues to be, a key vehicle for the collaborative exploration of sexual difference and female subjectivity in Australia. It focuses specifically on the Lean Sisters and Generic Ghosts, whose collaborative performances occurred during the seventies and eighties, and their impact on subsequent feminist collaborative performance groups. As the article demonstrates, this counter-cultural tradition of performance typically deploys tactics of intertextuality, cross-media experimentation, humour, and détournement to critique gender oppression and its recurrence, while staging new possibilities of an embodied feminist politics.' (Publication abstract)
Calliope's Runi"Flowing from her model is the disease of astonishment.", Ann Vickery , single work poetry
Quartet for Strings, Jen Webb , Paul Hetherington , sequence poetry
Allegroi"She’s on the verandah, examining the orange tree. Two more seasons and it’s likely to produce good", Paul Hetherington , Jen Webb , single work poetry
Slowi"That town we lived in when the children were small. One of many little towns we moved to", Jen Webb , Paul Hetherington , single work poetry
Minueti"A lyrebird that can sing like Te Kanawa but makes the sound of a chainsaw. Cats exchanging purrs for", Paul Hetherington , Jen Webb , single work poetry
Rondoi"We have gathered our lives and they look like something we no longer know. So much extravagance", Jen Webb , Paul Hetherington , single work poetry
Relocation of the Big Prawni"Cutting you loose was always the Big Hernia,", Fiona Hile , single work poetry
For Love Alonei"Never fall in love with the being of the other,", Fiona Hile , single work poetry
Empiricali"A factory, the train line curving off", Lisa Gorton , single work poetry
Slipperiness, Strange Attractors, and Collaborative Sociability, Jen Webb , Paul Hetherington , single work criticism
'The trope of the lone creator or individual ‘genius’ is a dominant one in current conceptions of artistic practice and creativity. However, in this paper we suggest that writing and art, and creative practice more generally, might be reimagined in terms of a collaborative sociability; and that this is a way of recognising art’s almost endless, protean permeability. The idea of collaborative sociability might also be a way of understanding how artists ‘labour together’ even when they may not be aware that they are doing so. Just as some forms of influence and intertextuality constitute a form of collaboration, so all texts may in a broad sense be intertextual and collaborative when understood in the context of the zeitgeist in which they are produced—even works by authors and artists who are largely understood to work outside of explicit collaborative frameworks. But if collaboration may be what many writers and artists are doing much of the time, collaboration remains potentially fraught and, to a significant extent, mysterious in its various expressions and outcomes. It demands flexibility and a willing embrace of its inherent unpredictability.' (Publication abstract)
Elena!i"We are building the ruins.", Kevin Brophy , single work poetry
Palimpsestuous Voices : Difference, Distance, and Collaboration in 'Speaking Geographies' and 'Speedfactory, Siobhan Hodge , Rosalind McFarlane , single work criticism
'How do multiple poets speak at once, and what purpose can it serve? Poetry collaborations can involve sophisticated layerings of voice and impositions of meaning, depending on the intentions of the poets involved. In this article, a theory of ‘palimpsestuous’ poetic voices will be substantiated in the case of poetry collections where these voices fluctuate and come together to selectively promote certain ideas or issues. Two poetry collaborations—Speedfactory by Bernard Cohen, John Kinsella, McKenzie Wark, and Terri-ann White, and Speaking Geographies, an on-going poetry project by this article’s authors Siobhan Hodge and Rosalind McFarlane—will be examined in detail. In the case of these two collections, environmentalist concerns are particularly highlighted by their engagements with poetic voices. As this article will demonstrate, collaborations offer poets unique opportunities to set up contrasts between the personal and the communal, coming together with great effect to promote or condemn issues or values.' (Publication summary)
Icarus at the All Night Supplyi"The moon rose like it had been hit,", Amanda Johnson , single work poetry
Dirty Wordsi"We have managed to ticket", Siobhan Hodge , Rosalind McFarlane , single work poetry
Precarious Decencies : Negotiating Creative (Im)mortalities, in Life, Together, Antonia Pont , single work criticism
'This paper takes up the question of what might hinder the collaborative impulse among artists and specifically poets, and offers—as one possible answer—the complication posed by the urge of an artist for immortality, or for their (individual) name to live on. The paper begins by returning to a moment in Plato, namely that of the Symposium and its observations concerning the connection between poiesis (making) and a questing after immortality. Contrasting with what seems like Plato's broadly positive framing, the paper takes up a second reading of immortality (or the 'will-to-live') found in an early text of the Yogic canon, that of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. In this second text, written somewhat later than Plato's, the will-to-live is framed otherwise, as one of five afflictions that can be 'made thin' by practice. The paper's wager is that, viewed in this way, as an affliction, the will-to-live (or urge for immortality) deserves consideration as a hindrance to the impulse towards collaboration. Noting, however, that in the poiesis of writing poetry, where there is both the making of things and the action of making things, this creative constellation always contains the tempering solution to its own inherent lures. Writing, although providing fuel for immortal appetites (due to what it makes), also works to temper the worst of this same impulse via the contribution of practice—as dedication, craft and community-as-practice. The practice of writing, therefore, is already at play, and can be emphasised explicitly for any poet or maker who also wants to be able to want to collaborate. The practice of writing, then, and its turn away from investments in identity, works to thin out the more destructive face of an urge for a dubious eternity that can eclipse our ability to work together creatively with others in this life. ' (Publication abstract)
A Clare, Cassandra Atherton , single work prose
The Ratsi"there are rats in the roof", Antonia Pont , single work poetry
X