AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
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Only literary material by Australian authors individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Pantheon Clock by Lynette Thorstensen
Chamber of art and wonders Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Dec 2016 by Sarah Penwarden
Contents
- Knock on the Door at 6ami"“please can you call triple 0? need an ambulance sorry”", single work poetry (p. 10)
- Boab Tree, Derbyi"Step on the coach. First stop is our famous “Prison Tree,” now a “protected site”", single work poetry (p. 11-12)
- To Name What We Feeli"They get threats, so the building has no signage...", single work poetry (p. 13-14)
- Pull It Away, single work short story (p. 15-20)
- Letter to the Editor, single work prose (p. 21-34)
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Violence in Colonial Women's Novels,
single work
essay
'Rachael Weaver has alerted us to the racial violence of colonial short stories, and notes that "[m]any novels also show graphic instances of frontier violence as part of larger and more wide ranging narratives" (fn 1, 33). One sub-genre of the novel form that does this is the carceral novel, such as Caroline Leakey's 'The Broad Arrow' (1859) and Marcus Clarke's 'For the Term of His Natural Life' (1874), which depict the explicit violence of the penal system through convict protagonists. This essay shows that violence abounds in colonial fiction not only in genres that make it explicit, but also where it is embedded - in novels usually categorised in the realist-romance genres (Giles; Dalziell; Thomson). often analysed in terms of gendered inequity (Harris), class relations (Thomson), and colonial representations of "national" identity (Allen; Spender; Gelder and WEAVER), novels by a number of major female novelists from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War are revisited here through the lens of their treatment and performance of violence.' (Publication abstract)
- Simmer Downi"Abstract: I'm sensitive to the view of many women", single work poetry (p. 54-56)
- The Agony in the Gardeni"The garbage truck rattles the Virgin print", single work poetry (p. 57-58)
- Killing One Hundred Wedge-tailed Eaglesi"is what happens when you send your sons to ag college", single work poetry (p. 59-61)
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A Question of Intimacy (Or: Against Suicide),
single work
essay
'Writing is pure loss, for Maurice Blanchot, and the only way to comprehend the loss inherent in the act of writing is to write, and in doing that to seek nothing but “the ceaselessness of the return, effect of disastrous instability” (Blanchot 1980, 89). This is a difficult notion for the young writer, immature in her approach, naïve in her own ideas of success and failure: her own capacity. she does not come at writing merely to write, but to say something. To have said something. To speak. so pre-occupied is she with her private need to speak that she hardly knows what she says, half the time. she writes because: she knows if she doesn’t she’ll die.'
(Publication abstract)
- James Monroe 1817-1825i"Armorers arm Major James Monroe", single work poetry (p. 72-73)
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How to Commit the Perfect Murder,
single work
short story
'Hello. Glad you could make it. I gather you are like me and have at least once said to yourself, "I could kill so and so," but didn't act on it for some reason to do with right and wrong. Don't worry you have come to the right place. Haven't you wondered more than once what it would be like to watch someone die? I can tell you it's not like in the movies where people die instantly from say a bullet. In real life people convulse for a few minutes and try to breathe but can only make gurgling sounds as they swallow their own blood. Don't start getting squeamish on me now. All the blood and the gore is a means to an end. Don't feel sorry for your victim. Feel angry because you have to clean up all the blood afterwards when removing the evidence. There is no such thing as a clean murder. There is always a mess. Even if you choose poison over guns, chances are that your victim will vomit everywhere and if you stab someone especially from behind you will scare the hell out of them and most likely they will piss or shit themselves...' (Publication abstract)
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I Love Lucy : 1957,
single work
essay
'Mummy clamps her hand around my wrist. her fingers are streaked with orange paint that cracks and flakes and falls onto the carpet like sprinkles from a birthday cake. her rings push into my bone. I twist but she tightens her grip.'
(Publication abstract)
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A Roo Battue,
single work
essay
' "In the autumn of 1813," writes John James Audubon, in his account of the great migrations of the passenger pigeon.'
(Publication abstract)
- Transnationali"Airport sweet airport", single work poetry (p. 100)
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A Ceiling Made of Stretched Canvas,
single work
short story
'the windows never stop rattling paint chips flake off window frames with every gust how can i paint with all this dust driving me to flaking distraction the water choppy, reflecting cold pewter sky outside a bloke in a hi-vis vest is hammering stakes near the timber yard fences hey, just go ahead and trespass, mate don’t bother asking the door slams more flaking paint Timber yard for sale sign on what used to be the wharf piss off, mate blind freddy can see you’re doing your job i don’t give a fuck if leonardo da vinci himself sent you dilapidated, sure but huge a huge studio jesus, with sydney’s real estate, even for rentals developers eager to turn industrial heritage into airbnb pull the plug on my wifi the greed of the man i refer to as my benefactor easy for artists in the renaissance, painting pretty madonnas for some old bugger who needed to bribe his way into heaven insufficient patronage'
(Publication abstract)
- Spare Keysi"Dying is just like living but faster,", single work poetry (p. 107-108)
- Brunoisei"There is no smell to her. She is candlewax and a cake-batter", single work poetry (p. 109)
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Wanting to Be White,
single work
short story
'The lebs, filos, bogans and fobs of 2770 surround me. i can hear them, yelling out yullah, kuya, maaaaate and toks as they pack out Starbucks. They’re not angry—everyone here is just ethnic or povo or both. it’s 8 pm on a Tuesday night. Starbucks is the spot, cause after Westfield closes there’s nowhere else to go. (Publication summary)
- Last Julyi"Last July, the asylum of my childhood home scratched the clocks", single work poetry (p. 120)