AustLit

'Isinglass is a prose narrative written around a beautiful conceit. A meditation on the interdependence of history and fiction, the work is set in the destruction of the Ur-city and of four other cities. All five are called Isinglass, successively of the Waters, Dust, Fire, Sky and the Last. Waves of migration are an essential part of this ficto-prehistory of creation and destruction.' (Introduction)

'In each copy of Simon Groth’s Ex Libris, twelve chapters have been randomly arranged in a different order, meaning, as Ryan O’Neill writes in his introduction, ‘each copy of the novel is sui generis’. How the story begins and ends remains the same for everyone – the first and last chapters of the book are immutable – but what happens in between changes. The number of different combinations available? Approximately 479,001,600. It’s a boggling possibility, one that will either intrigue the reader or act as a deterrent. Fittingly, the cover has the blocky letters of the title split into fragments. The task of putting haphazard chapter instalments into a cohesive story may seem intimidating. Groth’s advice is to approach his book like a jigsaw puzzle: the fixed outside chapters act as the framework, holding together the pieces within that each reader fills in a different manner. The end result is a completed picture.' (Introduction)

'A long stretch of rubber flooring lines the entrance to Mount Druitt train station, encased on both sides by graffitied glass. Hordes of early risers dash across in a mad bid to make the 7am train. I know it well because I am in the throng, having calculated the exact amount of time required to make it from my bus stop to the platform. The claustrophobic hallway always feels too long and too narrow, as if it were specifically designed to shuttle us all into a race where the victor is awarded first access to one of four opal card readers. A momentary but palpable transition takes place once I have passed through the automatic gates. As if willed by the chorus of tapped-on Opal cards, I am transported into the role of commuter, beholden to the moral and temporal boundaries that constitute the station. It is not a space that invites idling but rather a vestibule for getting from Point A to Point B.' (Introduction)

'The last time I dared to be spontaneous, I walked out of a tattoo parlour at half past one in the morning with gladwrap enveloping my left bicep, and a bandana tied around my neck. The adrenaline wore off by morning and I came forward to my mum the next day in a sheepish fashion. She cried.' (Introduction)

'Mum tried to find her footing in the loose rocks on a narrow path sandwiched between golden wattle and mountain devil shrub.' (Introduction)

'In the middle of last year, I visited Hobart. Officially, I was there to help run a writing workshop; unofficially, I was there for a gathering organised by a philanthropist with an interest in the environment. The guest list was eclectic – some scientists, an artist who has been creating work from ocean plastics and her partner, a writer or two – but there was no agenda, no expectation of resolutions or outcomes. Instead, seated in an old building in Hobart’s city centre, we talked about our work, the world, the future, searching out points of connection and intersection, discussing ways of expressing and managing the fears we were all, in our different ways, grappling with.' (Introduction)

'Death’s intrusion upon love is an old complaint. Philosophically, in Western Europe, it may have emerged as a problem in response to ideas of human limitation in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. This was early materialist thinking intended to prepare the late Roman mind for the finitude of life, belief, control and pleasure. The poetry of death-in-love is another matter. It is characterised by rage, disbelief and helplessness. It is ancient and myriad.' (Introduction)

'Guwayu – For All Times is a poetry collection carefully woven by Wiradjuri writer and academic Dr Jeanine Leane. It evolved from a series of commissioning projects undertaken by Red Room Poetry over the course of sixteen years. Guwayu, a Wiradjuri word that that can be interpreted as all times are inseparable, captures the fluidity of the work, a collection that refuses to be fixed or tied down. Leane’s weaving symbolic of other Blak anthologies reverses the white gaze by following community-controlled editorial protocols.' (Introduction)

'I stopped writing my memoir a year ago. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of understanding, maybe. I shit you not, I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe. But why should I tell anyone about it? I stopped because I realised that forcing someone to look at me is no guarantee that I will be seen. How could I write about, say, my experience with a cult that abused and traumatised a loved one, among tens of others, culminating in a court case in which the offender was acquitted, and the complainants victim-blamed publicly, made the butt of jokes? How could I, when I am steeped in a culture which views cults as a joke: something to meme, or dedicate a season of a tween TV show to, or an episode of a podcast to, or to make into merchandise?' (Introduction)     

'There is a case to be made about the relationship between accelerative capitalism and its eager embrace of Eastern mysticism’s notion of unlimited human potential. Both discourses use, for one thing, the lexicon of liberation – sex, good, superego, bad. And there is no way to stop the cosmic forces of either human consciousness or capital because apparently that is where the intelligent evolution of all existence is taking us. The controversial love-guru, Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho), once grunted that criticisms of his wealth, which included the world’s largest collection of Rolls-Royces, reeked of communist inclinations. Speaking at Woodstock, Swami Satchidananda urged American youth to aid the world spiritually now that they were leading it economically. Some of the greatest publicity for these globalised yogis were their celebrity devotees; Maharishi Mahesh, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, had the Beatles; Steve Jobs – whose Apple logo was, by one account, inspired by his reverence for the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba – had reportedly only one book on his iPad when he died, Paramahansa Yogananda’s The Autobiography of A Yogi.' (Introduction)