AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This special double issue of PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature invited authors to curate an essay on the theme of place. The aim was to open up a dialogue between contributors from a multitude of disciplines, making space for analytical, creative, structured, argumentative, open, discursive and ruminative reflections fuelled by creativity and lived experiences. To curate is to take care (L. curare). In our view, the coming together of the manifold kinds of biotic and abiotic existence that are familiar through the medium of subjective human experience—and its literary and essayistic modes of representation—collectively produces notions of the ever-unfolding and plural becomings of 'place'. Place is both the site of and active agent in diverse subjective experience of space, which we have brought into conversation in PAN12. Locating residual ethical contours in the essayistic, photographic, lyrical and narrative modes, and disclosing affective insights in their analysis and critique, these essays of caring can be understood as forms of emotional practice, which we have brought together into three loose clusters, named 'dialogue', 'response' and 'exegesis'. ' (Introduction)
Notes
-
Includes works by Australian and international writers that are not individually indexed.
-
Only literary material by Australian authors individually indexed.
-
Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
-
Place : Emotional Practices / Geographical Perspectives,
single work
criticism
'This special double issue of PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature invited authors to curate an essay on the theme of place. The aim was to open up a dialogue between contributors from a multitude of disciplines, making space for analytical, creative, structured, argumentative, open, discursive and ruminative reflections fuelled by creativity and lived experiences. To curate is to take care (L. curare). In our view, the coming together of the manifold kinds of biotic and abiotic existence that are familiar through the medium of subjective human experience—and its literary and essayistic modes of representation—collectively produces notions of the ever-unfolding and plural becomings of 'place'. Place is both the site of and active agent in diverse subjective experience of space, which we have brought into conversation in PAN12. Locating residual ethical contours in the essayistic, photographic, lyrical and narrative modes, and disclosing affective insights in their analysis and critique, these essays of caring can be understood as forms of emotional practice, which we have brought together into three loose clusters, named 'dialogue', 'response' and 'exegesis'. (Introduction)
-
Agoras,
single work
essay
'I have a poem in mind. A 'late' Jam Tree Gully poem. It will be called 'Agora' and I will get to its first lines shortly.
'Why late? I haven't ceased being connected with Jam Tree Gully, nor have I ceased writing it. Maybe because I am thinking about its spaces in different ways now, from afar. I often write from 'afar', and as Tom Bristow has highlighted, I write poetry of 'in situ' and also 'at a distance', but as I have said to him, this is a complex equation with no binaries; they are both elements of the 'cloud' that makes up 'International Regionalism'. And I am not simply co-opting a techno-fetish by saying 'cloud', though I might be ironizing it. In essence, the ecologies I construct around the lens to biosphere collapse, the 'damage done' as I wrote in The New Arcadia (WW Norton, 2005), are silhouetted through the costs of technologizing. I have written 'neo-Luddite' texts in the past, deploring what I see as unnecessary technologies-especially those where 'product' takes precedence over 'necessity'. Under the rubric 'necessity' I would put certain medical advances, the basic technologies of sustaining human life (from the shovel, scissors, through to-maybe- comparatively low-impact modes of transport that don't exploit animals). Advances in computer technology are largely driven by corporate capitalism, and change is interminably linked to sales and profit. All advances, all product developments, cost the biosphere. My aim is constantly to reduce the ironies of consumption-to own less, to 'change' product less, to resists the sales pitch. For me, place is entirely contiguous with how it is or isn't 'sold'.' (Introduction)
- Graphology 640i"It's weird typing this with one hand", single work poetry
- Grantchester In Situi"The river's soothed angles", single work poetry
- Winch-Birdi"Unseen, and named not by our utterance but by his own,", single work poetry
- Winch-birdi"I have been searching for a clue,", single work poetry
-
'Poetry Needs Real Outcomes' : John Kinsella Responds to Tom Bristow's Questions on Place,
single work
criticism
'Let us conceive of the grassroots community becoming the intermediate micro-social space between the private and the public, macro-social spaces. What are the barriers to constructing sustainable communities, in your experience, and how does your place-based poetry address or represent the private-public dynamic? What happens when we take these questions to the more-than-human world?
'I believe in real outcomes. Poetry needs real outcomes. Activist poetry certainly needs real outcomes. Place is layered with real outcomes. Sustainable communities are those that are self-aware on the level of the individual and in terms of consensus. Awareness comes about through access to knowledge and data, but also through listening to the 'environment' itself. Data only tell us what is already evident. Communities with a 'spiritual' sensitivity to the place they occupy are inevitably aware of its needs, vulnerabilities, and characteristics of 'intactness'. A dialogue of respect allows for longevity.' (Publication abstract)
- Presencei"There is a tree-way of dreaming that is known to the sun and the birds....", single work poetry
- Goethe, by Seai"We are girt by sea. Rejoice", single work poetry
- Raveni"Turning from the path we catch", single work poetry
- Tübingeni"five years since I lived here", single work poetry
- Epidaurusi"Amphitheatre", single work poetry
-
Love and Vision : The Story of Kathleen McArthur's Care for Wallum Country,
single work
criticism
'In Wild Dog Dreaming, published in 2011, Deborah Bird Rose writes about 'Anthropogenic extinction' as 'a fact of death that is growing exponentially.' She notes that 'we are entering an era of loss of life unprecedented in human history' and states that '[t]he question, of course, is: if we humans are the cause, can we change ourselves enough to change our impacts?' (2) Rose moves on to quote Michael Soule's observation that '[p]eople save what they love', and asks with him, '[a]re humans capable of loving, and therefore of caring for, the animals and plants that are currently losing their lives in a growing cascade of extinctions?' She follows this question up with another, more imperative one, '[h]ow [are we] to invigorate love and action in ways that are generous, knowledgeable, and life-affirming?' (2) In interview three years later, Rose reiterates this view, urging her audience to take this moment, this challenge of the Anthropocene, 'to enhance our capacity for love, for care, for keeping faith with earth, keeping faith with life.'' (Publication abstract)
-
Reading Walkabout in Osaka : Travel, Mobility, and Place-making,
single work
prose
'Travelling by nostalgically hyper-modern monorail, I arrived at Suita in Osaka in search of Australian modernity. The Expo 1970 site is now a commemorative park, dotted with concrete infrastructure and brutalist architecture amongst gardens filled with autumnal colour, or spring sakura, depending on season. Its entrance is marked by an enormous two armed primitivist sculpture-The Tower of the Sun (1970) by Taro Okamoto-that looms 70 metres above the viewer, with three faces whose light-up eyes prove a disconcerting sight for night-time arrivals. The Osaka Commemorative Park is also home to the National Museum of Ethnology (known as Minpaku), which houses an extraordinary collection of ethnological artefacts from around the world and a well-stocked anthropology library.' (Publication abstract)
-
Bird-watching with Elizabeth Gould at Bowra Conservation Sanctuary,
single work
prose
'Abstract: Habitats are often defined by dominant features, be they related to geomorphology, climatic conditions, striking land formations or ubiquitous plant species. In Australia's semi-arid regions, mulga is a helpful concept for thinking about the nuances of this beguilingly stabile country, which seems to best connote the desiccated landscape. The word has an ancient lineage, traced to the central west, an Aboriginal term for a small flat shield, a weapon traditionally fashioned from mulga timbers. To many, 'mulga' means desert, wilderness, a place one can disappear, going 'up the mulga'. Mulga is also the common name of many of the animals that inhabit the region. There are mulga snakes, for instance, huge brown scaly ropes that snooze inside piles of greying lumber; and the mulga parrot, Psephotus varius, or many coloured parrot.' (Publication abstract)
