AustLit

'This essay investigates the development of seeing as an affective, political and potentially transformative practice across the course of John Kinsella’s poetic career. It analyses how seeing becomes a means for Kinsella to apprehend the relationship between self and environment and to consider how local-scale is tied to broader-scale change. At the same time, it traces Kinsella’s concern at the ways in which Western theories of vision shape and reinforce structures of power, particularly in terms of gendered and colonial violence. Moving through and then past ekphrastic debates, I argue that Kinsella considers how poetry and art might, in their own ways, ethically engage with both the human and more-than-human and actively navigate and reflect upon states of connection.' (Publication abstract)

'Growing up in Australia in the 1970s, I much preferred the hijinks of Han Solo and Chewie to Princess Leia’s sexualised damsel in distress. My sister and I spent an entire summer pigging out on Choc Wedges and Barney Bananas so we could collect the men’s cricket team on specially marked sticks. Feminism seemed a world “far, far away”. Yet what Australian girls could and couldn’t do was being explored through a glut of screen adaptations of classic novels.' (Introduction)

'The conference coincided with the fortieth anniversary of both the Archives and of Mardi Gras, providing a timely point to consider not only how solidarities might be generated but also how to sustain and develop them. In also celebrating the start of Deakin University's Gender and Sexuality Studies Research Network, the conference was a reminder of the shifting histories of precarity and support within the academy and the complex issues that emerge in traversing the academy and communities. What does it mean to have a history or histories, what are the critical intersections of all our stories?" Closing with a reading of the "Uluru Statement from the Heart," Nestle's address situated these questions in the context of hopes for a decolonised future: what kind of solidarities will that require? In the Anthropocene where "even our breathing/seems to warm/the world too much," she suggests that maybe it is better to gather "my own disturbing junk heap" and to "not over-tread." [...]her poem, "The Wind Has No Borders," reflects on the importance of listening to others rather than just speaking one's own histories.' (Introduction)