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The Australian Literature Resource
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- Time and Tide
AustLit News – December 2009 / January 2010
Welcome to the December 2009 / January 2010 AustLit newsletter.
AustLit News is a quarterly publication. You’ll find the latest news about submissions, conferences, festivals and new publications by following the links on AustLit’s home page to ‘Upcoming Events’ and ‘Hot off the Presses’.
Note: Newsletter hyperlinks to AustLit records are fully available to AustLit subscribers only. Enquire here about guest access to AustLit.
Thanks Tessa
This issue the news is about the News. Tessa Wooldridge has ceded the compiler’s chair to Carol Wical in order to concentrate on a special project to index 19th century newspapers and periodicals. Tessa started compiling the newsletter in 2002, AustLit’s second year of operation, making her its longest serving custodian. AustLit extends bountiful thanks for a job excellently done. Tessa’s ability to summarise the news and views of Australian literary and storytelling life has been highly regarded by all readers. Thanks, Tessa, for your hard work, erudition and dedication to the News over the years.
The News will continue to be brought to you on a quarterly basis and we are keen to receive contributions from our readership. Please send items to Carol Wical at info-austlit@austlit.edu.au
ARC LIEF Grant 2010
The Australian Research Council has awarded the AustLit consortium, under the leadership of The University of Queensland and Professor Richard Fotheringham, $520,000 for further development as Australian research infrastructure during 2010. Areas to be pursued include popular and pulp fiction, children’s literature, periodicals and newspaper publications and writers’ involvement in Australian film and television. Watch this space early in the new year for more specific news on the projects.
The Teaching Australian Literature Resource Is Go!
The Teaching Aust. Lit. Resource (TAL) team invite you to have a look at the newly developed Teaching Aust. Lit. Resource on the AustLit site. Developing this resource has been part of the ALTC funded Teaching Australian Literature Survey project. The Resource compiles data about Australian literature teaching organised by institution, course, unit, and texts studied. This data is available through a searchable web interface so that users can quickly find information about where and in what context Australian literary texts are taught and the types of assessment undertaken, providing links to relevant university websites in schools and departments at universities around the country. We are also keen to develop the international content, so please let us know about your courses in Australian literature, film, Indigenous studies, life writing, poetry and etc.
The Teaching Aust. Lit. Resource compiles information about the current teaching of Australian literature and is intended to provide an interactive site for the sharing of ideas and contexts about teaching Australian literature amongst the teaching community. With the engagement of the teaching community in its development and scope it will also offer opportunities to research trends in Australian literature teaching, including the design of units, the use of texts and the popularity of authors in the classroom.
We look forward to receiving your feedback on the TAL Resource. Let us know how you’d like to see it evolve. We acknowledge the funding assistance of the ALTC through it Discipline Based Initiative scheme, the AustLit consortium and the University of Queensland which enabled the creation of TAL.
Enjoy!
The TAL team Philip Mead, Kerry Kilner, Alice Healy, Anna Gray and Jonathan Hadwen
Farewell and Thank You
At the end of 2009 Deakin University will no longer be a contributing partner on the AustLit project.
Deakin has been an important partner in AustLit since its inception in 2000 and has brought significant quantities of data and expertise to the database in the fields of Multicultural Australian Writing and Children’s Literature. Having exhausted locally held content in these fields and enhanced AustLit’s coverage and dependability in those areas, Deakin has decided that it is an appropriate time to withdraw from the formal partnership.
Professor Wenche Ommundsen (now at University of Wollongong), Professor Clare Bradford and Mrs Anne Horn (University Librarian) guided the contributions and ensured a scholarly focus of the work. Through Deakin, the AustLit collaboration extended to include the State Library of Victoria and contributions from their collections have been highly valued.
The AustLit community will remain deeply grateful for their support of AustLit and belief in its value to the scholarly community in Australia and beyond.
The Deakin community will continue to benefit from their considerable financial and intellectual investment in AustLit by ensuring their staff, students, and alumni are able to use AustLit in their studies and research.
Jake Milroy attended the Indigenous Studies Indigenous Knowledge conference with a stall displaying Black Words .
Kerry Kilner is set to return (via the MLA Conference in Philadelphia) from study leave in London in January, well-armed to keep us at the cutting edge of digital humanities.
Jacqui Stockdale and Sylvia Kelso from the James Cook AustLit team presented papers at the Tropics of the Imagination conference in Cairns in November. AustLit Board member, Associate Professor Cheryl Taylor, gave the keynote address.
Roger Osborne was invited to speak about the Aus-e-Lit Project at the Tools for Collaborative Scholarly Editing over the Web workshop at the University of Birmingham at the end of September.
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On 15 October, the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House came alive with the 15th Deadly Awards celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community achievement. Black Words National Coordinator Dr Anita Heiss, was a presenter on the evening and is a proud supporter of Lorraine McGee-Sippel (pictured here) who was awarded Most Outstanding Contribution to Literature for her book Hey Mum, What's a Half-Caste? (Magabala Books, 2009) |
Congratulations to Juliet O'Conor
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Juliet O'Conor, Children's Research Librarian, State Library of Victoria, and member of the AustLit team for Deakin University, has recently had published her first book: Bottersnikes and Other Lost Things: A Celebration of Australian Illustrated Children's Books (Miegunyah Press 2009) . We all congratulate Juliet on her personal and professional efforts and thank her for this contribution to Australian literary history. |
Here Come the Judges
This year ASAL Queensland is responsible for awarding the ALS Gold Medal. AustLit’s Dr. Roger Osborne, the University of Queensland’s Dr. Bronwen Levy and Dr. Maggie Nolan from the Australian Catholic University make up the panel. Currently compiling a long list from nominations received from publishers, the panel would be glad to receive further suggestions from ASAL members.
Australian Society of Authors
ASA Executive Director Dr Jeremy Fisher has announced that he will leave that position on 11 December to take up the position of Senior Lecturer in Writing at the University of New England. Dr Fisher has served as Executive Director since 1994.
Australia Council Literature Board
Professor Dennis Haskell was appointed the as the new Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board.
Australia’s First M-Book
Marieke Hardy’s short story ‘Vigilante Virgin’ was serialised by the Age in twenty 350 word week-day instalments from 12 October to 6 November. Nothing new! I hear you say. But wait! The ‘mobile book’ was only available via SMS subscription. Subscribers received one SMS per weekday between 12 October and 6 November 2009. Each SMS contained a unique link to a mobile site enabling access to a new instalment of the Age 'TextTales with Marieke Hardy' service. Each of the 20 episodes has a maximum length of 350 words. The ‘short, sharp and darkly funny new “mobile book” is the perfect way to avoid public transport eye contact and keep the seat next to you empty by making you unexpectedly laugh out loud.' (Advertisement, The Age (12 October, 2009): 20.)
Nautical But Nice
The Red Room Company has just wrapped up their project Sea Things which saw work commissioned from Graeme Miles (TAS), Petra White (VIC), Luke Beesley (QLD), and Sandra Thibodeaux (NT). Poems were also collected from secondary school students in Perth, Darwin and Thursday Island, as the project charted a seafaring odyssey in private, commercial and naval vessels up the East and West coasts of Australia.
Indigenous Literacy
West Australian Black Words team member Jake Milroy alerts us to the continuing good works of The Fogarty Foundation. The Foundation is showing some upstanding support of Indigenous literacy with funding being allocated to distribute 1,000 copies of the Waarda series for young readers to remote indigenous communities. More here.
Best of the Indigenous West
The latest issue of the Westerly is now available showcasing some of the best writing from the West. This issue focuses on writing from Indigenous Western Australians with the contribution of fantastic short stories, life stories, poetry, essay, and prose.
See also the latest Black Words newsletter with information and news from the Black Words team around Australia.
E-book Meets Big Brother
P.D. Martin’s new project Coming Home will be produced chapter by chapter as guided by reader voting. Aussie FBI profiler Sophie Anderson returns to Australia to solve her brother’s 28-year-old murder. To contribute see more on the author’s website.
In Praise of Collaborative Development
The National Library’s Rose Holley inspires in her report on the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program ‘Many Hands Make Light Work’: ‘The primary motivator for embarking upon collaborative text correction was to improve data quality and this has been a success. Another outcome is that the Library is now beginning to understand that engaging users in services, empowering them to make a difference, and building social networking communities is almost if not equally as important to the users as having high quality data. Giving control to users and entrusting the community to have such a crucial role in the development of a service helps build a dedicated, responsible, engaged, and committed user base.’ Read the whole report here.
Developments currently underway through the Aus-e-Lit project are focused on the ability for user communities to contribute to the ongoing development of the resource. Keep watching the news for announcements of how you can get involved.
Deadlys
The finalists for Outstanding Achievement in Literature at the 15th Deadlys ceremony at Sydney Opera House on 15 October, were:
The award went to Lorraine McGee-Sippel.
Leah Purcell won the Female Actor of the Year.
Writer/director Warwick Thornton was awarded Outstanding Achievement in Film for Samson and Delilah.
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards
The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts announced the Fiction and Non-Fiction winners of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
- The Pages - Murray Bail
- People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
- Wanting - Richard Flanagan
- Everything I Knew - Peter Goldsworthy
- One Foot Wrong - Sofie Laguna
- The Good Parents - Joan London
Two books share the Non-Fiction award: House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann by Evelyn Juers and Drawing the Global Colour Line by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds.
Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize
New South Wales author Jean Kent is the winner of the inaugural Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize. Kent received a cash prize of $1,000 for her poem 'The Polish Guitarist's First Paris Concert'. The poem will be published in the Summer issue of Meanjin , due out in December 2009. The Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize is a tribute to Australian poet, Dorothy Porter. The prize is judged by Andrea Goldsmith and Kristin Henry and co-sponsored by Porter’s agent Jenny Darling.
Patrick White Award
This year’s winner of one of Australia’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Patrick White Award is the novelist, short story writer and essayist, Beverley Farmer. The Award, worth $25,000, was established by Patrick White with money received for the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. He set up a Trust that has been administered since its beginning by Perpetual Limited.
2009 ASA Medal
Author Hazel Edwards has been awarded the 2009 ASA Medal. Established in 2003, the ASA Medal is awarded biennially in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the Australian writing community. The medal complements the ASA's main focus as an advocate for the rights of authors and illustrators. Previous winners include Glenda Adams, Inga Clendinnen, Tim Winton (the inaugural winner) and Anita Heiss (in the under-35 category).
Breath Film Rights
Australian actor Simon Baker (currently starring in the television series The Mentalist) and American film producer Mark Johnson have acquired the rights to Tim Winton's most recent novel, Breath .
Gerald Murnane held off an impressive list of challengers to take out the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2009 with Nam Le’s The Boat securing the Best Writing Award. Nam Le’s collection has now garnered ten awards.
Two international prizes for Australian children’s literature writers and illustrators: Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2009 Bilderbuch (Illustrated book) to Shaun Tan for Tales from Outer Suburbia and the Preis der Jugendjury (Award of the Yourth Jury) to Marcus Zusak for The Book Thief .
Craig Silvey has been awarded the second Indie Awards Book of the Year for his second novel Jasper Jones . The inaugural winner Breath by Tim Winton went on to win the Miles Franklin award.
Poet Emma Jones has added the Forward Prize for Best First Collection to her Queensland Premier's Literary Award for The Striped World . She has also been shortlisted for the 2009 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
The list of nominations for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) for 2010 has been announced. The award is named in honour of Swedish children’s writer Astrid Lindgren who was an advocate for children, peace, democracy and anti-violence all her life. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is presented to individuals and organisations who uphold this tradition. These can be writers, illustrators and other publishing professionals but also those who speak up for children and children's rights. Sonya Hartnett won it in 2008 and this year three Australians are on the list, Morris Gleitzman, Shaun Tan and Hazel Edwards. The winner will be announced in March 2010. More information and a full list of nominees is available at the ALMA website.
Morris Gleitzman was also longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, 2009 for Then .
In the World Fantasy Awards: Margo Lanagan was joint winner for Best Novel, and Shaun Tan, Best Artist.
The IMPAC longlist has been announced. The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind. It involves libraries from all corners of the globe, and is open to books written in any language. Works that are to considered must be nominated by Libraries in each capital city of the world. The award is and initiative of Dublin City Council and is conducted in partnership with IMPAC, a productivity improvement company. The prize is €100,000 which is awarded to the author if the book is written in English. If the winning book is in English translation, the author receives €75,000 and the translator, €25,000. The winner also receives a trophy which is sponsored by Waterford Crystal.
The School Paper
Trish Lunt, Christine Oughtred, Juliet O'Conor, Michelle Preston, (Deakin University)
More than 800 issues of the Victorian School Paper held by the State Library of Victoria and Deakin University have been indexed on AustLit. This periodical was published by the Victorian Education Department between 1896 and 1968 and issued (at the initial cost of one penny.) up to 12 times each year to Victorian state school children to support curriculum in literacy and literature. Each issue was published specifically for grade or year level groupings.
This indexing task has been both challenging and illuminating, providing information about authors, illustrators and key figures during the periods of publication and tracking cultural shifts across the ongoing development of an Australian public consciousness. While there is a strong affiliation with British history, literature, and the Empire across the publication, the development of an Australian nationalism is embedded in the early issues, then intensified by the outbreak of World War I and the enormous impact of the Gallipoli campaign. A Eurocentric identity emerges based on an appreciation of the natural environment, not only as a poetic metaphor, but as the basis for economic growth.
While the content of the School Paper varies according to its specific student audience, the academic structure and culture of the series is consistent. The key elements of each issue are: a cover illustration, poetry, literary fiction, moral tales, historical accounts, Education Department notices, spelling lists, annotations describing key figures, places, or events, and a concluding song. These pieces were intended for inclusion in the curriculum.
The role of the publication in educating Victorian children was significant. It was a vehicle for imparting social responsibility, from information about health and hygiene (first aid, maggots, and abstinence), to the introduction of road rules!
The advent of World War I brought a focal shift to the School Paper for Grades VII and VIII. These issues stand as a record of a nation at war, with specific sections such as 'Progress of the War' and 'The State Schools' Relief Fund' becoming regular features. During this period, much of the literary content (fiction, poetry and drama) relates to British and Greco-Roman imperialism, but also to sacrifice, honour, bravery, and domestic thrift; see, for example, the issues of May 1915 and August 1917.
The events at Anzac Cove were reported in prose and photographs and honoured in poetry. In November 1915, an early biography of John Simpson Kirkpatrick (aka William Simpson) appears. The April 1916 issue is indicative of the reverential nature of the School Paper during this period. This issue illustrates the value of indexing this body of work; literary works that are not otherwise recorded on AustLit have been located and framed by significant cultural context, for example, Frank Williamson's 'Three Comrades' which remembers three of Williamson's students who died at the Front. Other contributions to Australian cultural history are illustrated by H. J. Willis's 'A Lonesome Pine' - and 'Our Heritage' by James Lister Cuthbertson.
Deakin Staff Reflections:
The seeds have been sown, the garden has been nurtured and now Deakin staff are reflecting on the rewards of their involvement in the AustLit project.
Photo: ‘A Typical Victorian Country School’ courtesy of the National Library of Australia.
Christine Oughtred:
I have been very fortunate to see the ‘underside of the tapestry’ of the information rich database that AustLit is, and to be in the position to add unique, early Australian children's books from both the Deakin Library special collection and the Victorian State Library to the database. It has even had its satisfying personal sleuth moments but I also feel rewarded knowing the indexing of academic and review journals held at Deakin helps researchers access current opinion on the exciting developments and newly published works in the field. As a current Deakin PHD student said to me 'doing my research on elegy and Australian poetry has been made so much easier by the AustLit database' and I look forward to continuing its promotion among Arts and Education students in my liaison librarian’s role at Deakin University.
Thank you for the patience of all who have supervised my work, Carol Hetherington and Jane Rankine in particular, the camaraderie of the AustLit team, and the Deakin staff, Anne Horn, Joan Moncrieff and Clare Bradford who have allowed me the opportunity for significant staff development and professional satisfaction in contributing to the database.
Michelle Preston:
The highlight of my time with the AustLit Children’s Literature Research Community was having access to the rare and special book collection at Deakin's Waterfront Campus (Geelong), where I came across a book written by my old Vice-Principal from Matthew Flinders Girls High School, Miss Bromwich. Miss Bromwich taught at the school when my mother attended it and her book was published in 1964 (the year I was born, so she really was 'old' to me back then). It was called Mathematics for Girls and although the examples of cooking and apron making conform to the gendered norms of the time, it was really quite progressive in encouraging girls to study maths and calculus. Thank-you and good luck to all the AustLit team; I have really enjoyed working on this project
Juliet O’Conor:
At the end of the year Deakin staff will have completed indexing all issues of the Victorian School Paper from 1896 to the end of 1930, the period in which it was the official reading material in schools, plus the World War II years. The issues for the War and Depression years reflect the social history of those times. This will be valuable to researchers across disciplines with the anniversary of the beginning of World War I just around the corner. Contributing to the AustLit database via the Deakin group has introduced me to the collegiality that exists within the Children’s Literature community; a much valued position to be in.
Leila Ismail:
Working with the Children’s Literature Research Community at Deakin University was very rewarding in both a professional and personal sense. By the close of the project the Deakin team had enriched not only the AustLit database, but the record of Australian children’s literature in general. The research done by the Deakin AustLit team provides a fascinating snapshot of a hitherto under-represented, but nonetheless vital, chapter in Australian literary history. I feel proud to have been a part of it and have no doubt of its value to current and future scholars.
Indexer Robert Thomson chases down a disputed identity.
‘Remos’
Bush balladeers and enthusiasts might be interested to learn that I managed to more or less establish beyond reasonable doubt (!) that ‘Remos’, the author of the well known bush ballad ‘The Overlander’ (and other lesser known ballads such as ‘The Kennedy Men’ and ‘Squatting in Queensland’), was Phillip Somer, as historian Geoffrey Bolton suggested in 1963.
As far as I know, no one had disputed Bolton’s Somer/Remos hypothesis until the early 1990s, when Hugh Anderson put forward a theory that ‘Remos’ might have been the journalist and writer George Loyau. This idea was subsequently mulled over in the September 1991 issue of Australian Folklore in articles by Philip Butterss and Hugh Anderson, with Butterss remaining unconvinced by the Loyau theory, and Anderson by then perhaps slightly less convinced on Loyau, but remaining firmly unconvinced on Somer.
To that point the evidence for the Somer/Remos connection came via a contributor to the ‘Songs of the Bush’ column in the Queenslander in 1894, who had stated that the bush ballad ‘The Kennedy Men’ ‘was composed by P. Somers [sic], in the early days of Bowen, 1861’. The other evidence for the connection was of course in the name ‘Remos’, which in reverse spells ‘Somer’. But beyond this, tantalisingly little was known of Somer, and the kind of evidence which might have established beyond doubt that Somer and ‘Remos’ were the same person remained elusive. Interestingly enough, for his 1991 Australian Folklore article, Hugh Anderson went digging for historical material and came up with a number of nuggets which shed at least some light on the hitherto obscure and elusive Somer, all of which nevertheless left Anderson firm in his view that Somer couldn’t have been ‘Remos’.
Anyway, the final pieces to the puzzle emerged as follows: In 2006, whilst indexing the 19th century issues of the Queenslander, I came across a long forgotten poem by ‘Remos’, titled ‘Governor Blackall in Bowen – 1869’, a humorous account of the Aboriginal welcome given to the Queensland Governor when he made an official visit to Bowen in the period 14-16 October, 1869. This poem suggests that ‘Remos’ probably witnessed the events described in the poem, and would therefore have been in Bowen at the time. I didn’t give the matter much thought in 2006, but more recently, whilst Googling away, I came across a reference in Dawn May’s book Aboriginal Labour in the Cattle Industry (1994) involving a letter which Phillip Somer wrote to the Queensland Colonial Secretary, concerning the 'past and present position of blacks in [the] Kennedy District’. As I discovered, the letter was dated ‘Bowen, 14 October, 1869’. I suspect that I might have had Somer’s ghost looking over my shoulder at this point, for it hit me in an instant that this letter placed both Somer and ‘Remos’ in Bowen at the time of the Queensland Governor’s visit in 1869, and that when taken with the earlier evidence, this amounted to fairly conclusive proof that Somer and ‘Remos’ were one and the same person – and of course when I studied ‘Remos’s’ poem and Somer’s letter in more detail, I realised that they contained striking similarities, with both drawing attention to the plight of the local Aboriginal people, and both advocating the appointment of a 'black protector’. Hot on the trail I then turned to the microfilm copy of the Port Denison Times (the Bowen newspaper), where I found two other long forgotten poems by ‘Remos’, one of which, ‘A Kennedy Snorter’, appeared in the Port Denison Times on 16 October, 1869, just two days after Somer penned his letter to the Queensland Colonial Secretary at Bowen. For me this settled the issue.
As for Somer, he still remains an elusive figure, and I’ve only managed to piece together a bare bones sketch of his life. He died in 1876, following an accident at the Townsville saleyards, when he was kicked in the head by a horse – and this might well explain why he had passed into obscurity by the 1890s, when the Queenslander ran its ‘Songs of the Bush’ column.
Author and poet Hilde Knörr passed away in October at the age of 92. Tributes emphasise her kindness and generosity of spirit, qualities that infuse her works.
A life of firsts ended with the passing of author, art historian and consultant Marjorie Tipping MBE in late September. Tipping was the first woman to earn the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination from the University of Melbourne and the first woman president (1972-1975) and fellow (1968) of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
Novelist Catherine Gaskin left us this September. Best known for her novel Sara Dane which was adapted for television in 1982, Gaskin leaves us with 24 novels. Gaskin came to Australia at the age of three months from Ireland. She was educated in Sydney. Her first novel, This Other Eden , was published in 1946 when she was seventeen. After her second novel, With Every Year (1947), was published, she went to England, travelling to Ireland and the US before settling on the Isle of Man. From 1947, she made only a few short trips back to Australia before re-settling in Sydney in 1999.
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