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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Antigone Kefala is one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere; it would be difficult to overstate the significance of her life and work in the culture of this nation. Over the last half-century, her poetry and prose have reshaped and expanded Australian literature and prompted us to re-examine its premises and capacities. From the force of her poetic imagery and the cadences of her phrases and her sentences to the large philosophical and historical questions she poses and to which she responds, Kefala has generated in her writing new ways of living in time, place and language. Across six collections of poetry and five prose works, themselves comprising fiction, non-fiction, essays and diaries, she has mapped the experience of exile and alienation alongside the creativity of a relentless reconstitution of self. Kefala is also a cultural visionary. From her rapturous account of Sydney as the place of her arrival in 1959, to her role in developing diverse writing cultures at the Australia Council, to the account of her own writing life amongst a community of friends and artists in Sydney Journals (2008), she has reimagined the ways we live and write in Australia.'
Source : publisher's blurb
Contents
- Introduction, single work criticism (p. 1-19)
- ‘To Find Our Measure, Exactly, Not the Echo of Other Voices’ : Antigone Kefala’s Ex-centric Australian Modernity, single work criticism (p. 19-42)
- The Geography of Soul - Angelo Loukakis Worldly Interiors in the Fiction of Antigone Kefala, single work criticism (p. 43-50)
- Worldly Interiors in the Fiction of Antigone Kefala, single work criticism (p. 51-68)
- ‘Re-defining Yourself in Some Other Terms’: Kefala’s Self-Referential Weavings, single work criticism (p. 69-88)
- Decentered Heterologies in the Poetic Journeys of Antigone Kefala, single work criticism (p. 89-110)
- Dreams in Kefala's Prose Stories, single work criticism (p. 111-138)
- Antigone Kefala : ‘Clinical’ View Over a Shadowy Conscience/Consciousness, single work criticism (p. 139)
- ‘Before Whom Shall the Drama Be Enacted?’, single work criticism (p. 178)
- ‘We Had Nowhere To Go’ : Artist Friendships and Migrant Poetics in the Work of Jurgis and Jolanta Janavicius, single work criticism (p. 188)
- Antigone Kefala: Of Journeys, Songs and Stories, single work criticism (p. 199)
- Feeling for Time for Antigone Kefala’s Fragments, single work criticism (p. 211)
- In Between Lives: The Island and Alexia: A Tale of Two Cultures, single work criticism (p. 223)
- Antigone Kefala and the Accented Voice in Australian Poetry, single work criticism (p. 233)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas, Editors. Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities.
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 22 no. 1 2022;
— Review of Antigone Kefala : New Australian Modernities 2021 anthology criticism 'Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas’s edited work Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities is more than an overdue tribute to a significant Australian writer from elsewhere, who has continued to publish her work for over half a century. This collection traces Antigone Kefala’s life and her publishing career in Australia, and considers her work’s reception. Initially, the publication shows, Kefala’s writing was classed as ethnic, and then multicultural, but more recently it has become part of a wider understanding of ‘arts for a multicultural Australia’ (McMahon and Olubas 6). The scholars and writers who have contributed their essays to this edited collection offer a mix of critical appraisal, personal reflection, and their affirmation of commitment to a shared vision for the expansion of Australian writing, embodied in Kefala’s work. As Sneja Gunew argues, we need to ‘expand and even distort our understanding of international aesthetic categories such as Modernism and to question the dominance of English within those categories so as to include and account for the multilingual’ in the story of Australian Literatures as well (7).'(Introduction)
-
Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas, Editors. Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities.
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 22 no. 1 2022;
— Review of Antigone Kefala : New Australian Modernities 2021 anthology criticism 'Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas’s edited work Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities is more than an overdue tribute to a significant Australian writer from elsewhere, who has continued to publish her work for over half a century. This collection traces Antigone Kefala’s life and her publishing career in Australia, and considers her work’s reception. Initially, the publication shows, Kefala’s writing was classed as ethnic, and then multicultural, but more recently it has become part of a wider understanding of ‘arts for a multicultural Australia’ (McMahon and Olubas 6). The scholars and writers who have contributed their essays to this edited collection offer a mix of critical appraisal, personal reflection, and their affirmation of commitment to a shared vision for the expansion of Australian writing, embodied in Kefala’s work. As Sneja Gunew argues, we need to ‘expand and even distort our understanding of international aesthetic categories such as Modernism and to question the dominance of English within those categories so as to include and account for the multilingual’ in the story of Australian Literatures as well (7).'(Introduction)
