AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The Way We Live Now is a special issue of Southerly edited by Melissa Hardie and Kate Lilley. In the spirit of Lauren Berlant, this issue tracks “the unfolding activity of the contemporary moment”: “a stretch of time in which one moves around with a sense that the world is at once intensely present and enigmatic, such that the activity of living demands both a wandering absorptive awareness and a hypervigilance that collects material that might help to clarify things” (Berlant, Cruel Optimism 4). The diverse work offered here, in Southerly’s first online-only issue, gathers “Australian” writing produced in many different places and circumstances. Heterogenous and singular in its contents, the layered contiguity of digital publication optimistically promotes the lateral and multitemporal formation of the commons, true to the big ambitions and longevity of this venerable “little magazine.” Our contributors dwell in and on the permeability of extreme and ordinary states, temporal confusion and disturbance, bringing genre to bear on forms of technological, linguistic, and psychical mediation, exposing Berlantian “impasse” in myriad ways. We are grateful to Create NSW for a grant to pay contributors at a particularly disastrous time for arts funding. Most of all, we are grateful to the brilliant contributors who have entrusted us with their work. We loved putting this issue together. We hope our readers love it too.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Precarity and Possibility by Illawarra Climate Justice Alliance - Just Transitions Working Group
Contents
- Gentle Strength, single work essay (p. 5-10)
- Black Star, single work essay (p. 11-13)
- Suspended Loop, single work essay (p. 14-15)
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Challenging the Colonialities of Symbolic Annihilation,
single work
criticism
(p. 16-22)'Indigenous researchers often articulate relationality as a measure to maintain transparency and accountability to other Indigenous peoples, and as a direct challenge to the disconnected colonial writings about us, by others (Kovach; Dudgeon and Bray). My own relationality statement for this article asserts my belonging and investment as a Wiradjuri, transgender/non-binary person, a Professor of Indigenous Studies, a sound artist and performer, and as someone with a large family who I care for and who trace a thousand generations of connection to land and life across the continent of "so-called Australia" (Day 367). In the context of an article focused on queer Indigenous representation, asserting my broader kinship responsibilities to queer Indigenous Mob (TallBear 5-15; Carlson et al. 23) also flags intent to create space that begins with us and ends with a challenge to others to represent. '
(Introduction)
- To Autumn Again, single work essay (p. 23-33)
- Live from the Chemo Lounge, single work essay (p. 37-47)
- Two Livestreamed Funerals, a Cancelled Wedding and the Saving Grace of Poetry, single work essay (p. 48-49)
- Knowing True Crime, single work essay (p. 50-58)
- Pandemic Bathing, single work essay (p. 59-63)
- If There Are Zebra Finches, single work short story (p. 64-68)
- Pandemics Past and Present, extract novel (p. 69-72)
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From Catastrophe,
single work
review
— Review of Summertime : Reflections on a Vanishing Future 2021 single work prose ;(p. 73-75)'In the final days of 2019 fires were moving ever closer to Danielle Celermajer's home, an area of rainforest on Dharawal country on the New South Wales south coast. To the north and south fires were burning through the forests, rapidly and out of control, causing huge destruction. In between preparations, evacuations of animals, and monitoring the volatile conditions, she wrote. This writing, from inside her experience of catastrophe, became Summertime.' (Introduction)
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Pam Brown, of Gareth Morgan-Dear Eileen,,
single work
review
— Review of Dear Eileen 2021 selected work poetry ;(p. 76-79)'Even though the impact of information technology has reduced smaller postal items to notices, flyers, occasional brochures and ads for Australia Post's assorted products, for me there's still something auspicious in seeing the person in the yellow hi-vis jacket stopping at the letterbox. Each postie on our street uses a different mode of delivery—walking with a push cart, wearing a heavy back sack or riding a push pedal or motorised bike to deliver the mail in all kinds of weather.' (Introduction)
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Matthew Clarke, of Peter Boyle-Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness,
single work
review
— Review of Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness 2019 selected work poetry ;(p. 80-82)'In an early verse from Enfolded in the wings of a great darkness, Peter Boyle describes a simple artistic tableau: "Round and clear / three pears sit on a small tray on the table," not unlike, he says, "the conical spirits / of some Chinese landscape / or Dutch still-life from the time of Vermeer." The invocation of these two genres points to the broader impulses of Boyle's elegiac, book-length poem. Like both still life and landscape painting, Boyle's work is about the disappearance of the human body, and how the ordinary world of things survives that loss. Boyle, though, is not especially interested in the subtleties of ekphrasis. In fact, the description of the pears is designed to underline their separateness from the world of language. They possess a "stillness" that captures Boyle's attention: "their fragrance of / water made solid // a presence to steady the mind."' (Introduction)
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Two Poets Read at a Tangent (From Work Journals),
single work
review
— Review of Manners of an Astronaut 1984 selected work poetry ; Thirsty Weather 1978 selected work poetry ;(p. 83-86)'Just finished re-reading Gig Ryan's Manners of an Astronaut (1984), her second collection of poetry. The switches within a sentence often across lines of one expression to another, from one image to another seemingly unrelated is always deft. Jerky movements of perception brought into counterpoint "alignment," so to speak. We see all failed manners—then their contraries—dragged into the failed vision of day; failed "manners" and a desire to make sense when sense is disrupted.'(Introduction)
- Shufflemancyi"This is where I couldn't be sure", single work poetry (p. 87-97)
- Offlinei"and that's a trope, or one in the making:", single work poetry (p. 98)
- Triolet on Receiving Email from Ci"My iMac's a new sort of medium.", single work poetry (p. 99)
- Each One Asks in Fear, ‘will It Be Me?’ (an Internet Performance of Michael Dransfield's All the Great Presidents)i""fair and sustainable"", single work poetry (p. 100-104)
- The Federal Government Has Extended the International Border Ban until Junei"A new coolness has crept", single work poetry (p. 105)
