AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
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Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
A tale of two colonies by Osman Faruqi
Crawl, crawl, crawl to daddy: Unpacking sexualisation of men in leadership by Lauren Rosewarne
Rape is Rape by Jane Gilmore
Dating, dying, and digital connection in covid by Alex Bevan
Riding the high horse with Deborah Levy by Anna Sublet
Anecdotal fiction by Ned Hirst
Contents
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Cave Canem,
single work
criticism
'Nobody wanted to be quoted, unsurprising with a literary scandal. And this particular case proved unusually good. Australia has had Malley, Khoury, Demidenko ... and now John Hughes’ The Dogs.' (Introduction)
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Here Lies,
single work
essay
'One of the most memorable lines in 'Romeo and Juliet' is when Romeo stands under Juliet's balcony and she says, 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'' (Introduction)
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Whale Song,
single work
prose
'The cold shock is only slightly allayed by the wetsuit clinging to my body as I jump off the metal steps into the frigid ocean, but the pleasure of it trumps the pain. I take a few jagged breaths through my snorkel and feel my muscles immediately tighten as the blood in my limbs rushes from my extremities to my core. A shiver works its way from the base of my neck down my spine. There’s a splash behind me as Madhavi jumps in.' (Introduction)
- A Very Wise Disco Ball, single work prose (p. 15-16)
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White Knuckles,
single work
prose
'A few years ago I was diagnosed with a serious intermittent mental illness, and I made a decision not to rush to publicise it. I used that experience to write a journal article, about the queer politics of disclosure of disability, which carefully avoids saying what the diagnosis was. At a personal level, I have always had mixed feelings about 'coming out'-even though it can be politically powerful to do so, it can also mean giving into the demand to narrate how you differ from the norm. With the possible exception of young men at dance and drama schools, nobody has ever had to 'come out' as straight; white Australians are not routinely asked to tell their migration stories; abled people are not required to explain how they are socially enabled, et cetera.' (Publication abstract)
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Shower Your Love with White Flowers,
single work
essay
'Shower your love with white flowers. Drape her shoulders in wreaths of fragrance, take care to notice if a blossom nuzzles her clavicle, a drowsy bee in the flagrant magnolia flower.' (Introduction)
- Elegyi"Wild scree of unravelling,", single work review (p. 24-25)
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Australia in Three Books,
single work
review
— Review of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart : A Portrait of Paul Keating PM 2002 single work biography ; Robert Menzies' Forgotten People 1992 single work biography ; The Game : A Portrait of Scott Morrison 2021 single work biography ; (p. 26-29) - Star Ferryi"I find a copy of Robert Hayden's poems", single work poetry (p. 37)
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Dystopia Creep,
single work
essay
'The Centre for National Resilience was an uncanny place. Rows of beige-grey dongas with small shared verandahs faced each other, a concrete strip and a bit of gravel between them. The rows were separated into sections, and the sections were separated by chainlink fencing, numbered and lettered with laminated signs. We were placed in H block. You have to laugh.' (Introduction)
- Scissors and Clampsi"Stork scissors are the progeny of 19th-century", single work poetry (p. 47)
- Thought Is Free, single work autobiography (p. 56-64)
- Personal Slalomi"My daughter is born in February", single work poetry (p. 65)
- Eleuterio Cabrera's Beautiful Game, single work short story (p. 66-71)
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Is It Just Me?,
single work
essay
'Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life... but I do so urged by a necessity of truthtelling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth; here, may be one who knows a section; and there, one who knows another section; but to the whole picture not one is initiated.' (Introduction)
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53.720°N, 2.004°W : A Contrapunatal,
single work
prose
'The day begins with yoghurt and muesli in a stranger's kitchen, air thick with a rare summer heatwave and my discomfort over her 'tidying' my room while I was out. A message from you: here, waiting, parked by canal. But no hurry, I'm told, you have sandwich and crisps to consume. In my windowless room at the very top of the house, I search for clothes suited to clammy air, the suggestion of rain, and a climb up Stoodley Pike.' (Introduction)
- When Rabbits Scream, single work autobiography (p. 100-104)
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'I Catch the Pattern of Your Silence',
single work
'Here we tell of two stories, each similar in their demonstrations of complicity in silencing accounts of racial violence within the Australian health system. The first is a story about a medical rationalisation used to occlude the racial violence characteristic of legal processes used by families as a means of seeking redress; the second is the story of the legal rationalisation offered by a scholarly medical journal as justification for not accepting an article that charted the events of the first, thereby eliding still further Indigenous experiences of racial violence.'
(Introduction)
- A Little, Late, single work short story (p. 112-116)
- Bleached Paddocksi"Driving light of harvested paddocks", single work poetry (p. 117)