This 70th anniversary issue pays particular attention to current moment of Australian writing and reading as these are focussed for us by 70 years of publication.
There are stories and poetry on the passing of time:
new inter-generational relationships,
the anachronisms of middle age, on the image and memory,
the press of the lived present. The issue also includes a reconsideration of Australia’s “cultural cringe”, which turns
60 this year; and essays on a lost poem of
Henry Lawson and on the New Theatre redraw the literary past for us. There are also detailed readings of some of our finest writers including Christina Stead and Robert Gray and a reading of Alexis Wright that speculates on the co-ordinates of Australia’s literary future. There is also a substantial reviews section including the biographies of Elizabeth Jolley and Veronica Brady, new
work by Marion Campbell and critical studies on
poetry and on Australian humour.
POETRY
Kit Brookman: M. Hutchison • Graham Catt: Young and Old • Sheryl Persson: Language Acquisition • David McCooey: Collective Hypnosis • Pam Brown: American Memories, Melbourne • John Carey: The Aunt’s Story – a Pinewood Classic • Jill Jones: The Round Earth; Frenzy • Maria Takolander: Domestic • Helen Hagemann: Ferris Wheel • Robyn Rowland: Snap frozen • Andrew Taylor: Siebenschläfer/Dormouse • Cath Vidler: 20 one-word poems • Ainslee Meredith: Blue Tonic • John West: Grandpa • Andy Kissane: Two poems from the sequence titled 'Out to Lunch': Skipping Lectures with Raskolnikov; Chewing the Fat with Captain Ahab
FICTION
Kerrin Haward O’Sullivan: Four Winds • Gretchen Shirm: Moments • Chris Conti Cordon: Empty; Labyrinth • Georgina Luck: Rip Under the Pines • Bronwyn Mehan: While She Waits • Anne Myers: Letting Go
ESSAYS
Kevin Hart (The 2009 Blaiklock Memorial lecture): “Only This”: Reading Robert Gray (with an introduction by Robert Dixon) •
Laura Joseph: Opening the Gates of Hell: Regional Emergences in
“Carpentaria” and “Dreamhunter” • Jill Dimond: Henry Lawson, the Doo-dah Dilettante and a Lost Poem • Ian Henderson: “Freud Has a Name for It”:
A. A. Phillips’s “The Cultural Cringe” • Fiona Morrison: The Elided Middle: Christina Stead’s For Love Alone
and the Colonial “Voyage In” • Gabriela Zabala: New Theatre – Unacknowledged and Out of the Mainstream: The Life of “A Theatre With a Purpose”
REVIEWS
Felicity Plunkett on Brian Dibble, Doing Life: A Biography of Elizabeth Jolley • David Brooks on Kath Jordan, Larrikin Angel: A biography of Veronica Brady • Nicolette Stasko on Marion Campbell, Fragments of a Paper Witch • Marilla North on Fran De Groen and Peter Kirkpatrick, editors, Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour • David Brooks on Philip Mead, Networked Language and
Peter Kelly, Buddha in a Bookshop: Harold Stewart and the Traditionalists • Robin Marsden on John Hawke, Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement
Raelee Chapman, A Drive In The Country
Kim Farleigh, The Final Saga of War
Jean-François Vernay, Lost in Diversion: Repetition and Ennui in Antoni Jach’s The Weekly Card Game
Siang Ju reviews Patrick O’Neil’s Sideways – Travels with Kafka, Hunter S. and Kerouac
Tessa Lunney reviews Shirley Walker’s The Ghost at
the Wedding