AustLit

'If, as Walter Benjamin suggests, a translation must 'lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification', translating is an act of creation predicated upon transference – a rewriting that entails a relationship with the other. This is in accordance with Benjamin's proposition that the translator must allow her language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. But what if the foreign tongue is one’s mother tongue? This performative paper explores what is at stake in the act of autotranslation when a writer returns to her mother tongue. I will use my own practice to identify what is recovered in this act, namely, a voice, a word, a letter threaded through the fabric of language. I ask why this act produces a linguistic and subjective destabilisation that opens up translinguistic play and suggest that autotranslation consists of a creation in each language with its own interferences, rhythms and affects. Though the theoretical frame of my investigation touches upon linguistic and translation studies, this paper is essentially underpinned by psychoanalytic concepts and concerns itself with experiential knowledge.' (Publication abstract)

'From what began as a dialog between two adventurous writers curious about the shape-shifter called a prose poem comes a stunning collection that is a disruption of language—a provocation. Speculate is a hybrid of speculative poetry and flash fiction, thrumming in a pulse of jouissance and intensity that chases the impossible.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This multi-generic bilingual piece is sourced from our Journal off-beat (forthcoming), begun in the aftermath of the 2019 Paris International Poetry Festival. It was brought to a conclusion on 22 March 2020 after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. The March entries convey how hope wrestles with despair and confusion. We sensed that the pandemic symbolised a warning of something worse to come. This is reflected in the liquefying of the text in journal entries and poetic responses from mid-March onwards. At that point Maurice Blanchot’s The Writing of Disaster became a backdrop for making sense of the global crisis which, like the idea of the apocalypse, seemed to arise from the unknown with an inkling towards endless deferral. Unlike Blanchot’s book, however, ‘The unwriting of disaster’ proclaims the continuing relevance of art in our lives and confirms how writing deepens our connection as human beings.' (Introduction)

'Dominique Hecq’s latest collection is an autobiographical journey into the real and imaginary of Australia. With her ‘faux-Romantic’ preconceptions, Hecq arrives in Australia from Europe in 1985, after a long fascination with the literature of a country she would eventually call home. Spanning thirty years, Tracks fictionalises this journey of uncovering the complex layers of a foreign land and of discovering its people, places and prejudices.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.