AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A great deal of poetry and other creative writing uses diverse archival material, including the literary, historical and the biographical. Yet the relationship of creative writers—and creative artists more generally—to existing archives has often been uncomfortable and has posed significant questions for the writers, historians and archivists involved. This issue brings numerous research and creative perspectives to bear on these relationships, including the perspectives of writers who have found the archives richly populated with material relevant to their projects, and writers who have found very little archival material at all connecting to their creative work. In every case, these writers have addressed archival material in particular ways, shaping it for their own creative and often political purposes.' (Paul Hetherington Editorial)
Notes
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Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
3 Poems by Denise Duhamel
3 Poems by Tom Whalen
2 Poems by Leslie Prosterman
2 Poems by Lara Munden
‘The bones / say what / cannotbe give / voice’ :Archival untelling in M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! by Alyson Miller
2 Poems by Jon Wesick
Reimagining the archive by Roxanne Bodsworth
Anna Magdalena Bach's Missing Thimble by Anne M Carson
Rilke's Bees and The Archive As Hive by Willo Drummond
3 Poems by Robert Wylie and Benjamin Wilson
Contents
- Literary Journals and The ‘Monstrous Prevalence Of Poetesses’, single work criticism
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Poetry, Self-erasure and the Trace Writing Counter-history from an Embodied Archive,
single work
criticism
'This essay presents a poetic life writing practice developed through material exploration with diaries, to expose hidden, unwritten traces of anorexic experience that escape the archival page. Anorexia flouts tenets of traditional autobiography, skewing memory and breaking the ‘autobiographical pact’ of a truthful and consistent narrator. This article presents poetic digression and fragmentation to perform physical and cognitive anorexic intensities. This writing offers a counter-history to archival documents, leaden as they were with the voices of anorexia and medical discourse.' (Publication abstract)
- Epithalamiumi"You’re blueberries and I’m compost.", single work poetry
- In the Beginningi"The OB-GYN sliced through your mother’s", single work poetry
- Ridei"ride a tram up Collins, cross King, William, Queen", single work poetry
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The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette,
single work
essay
'This paper references the writing of the Australia Council funded verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette and the additional print folio created as a practical example of using formal and informal archives and the extent that places, people, and material form enabling networks for the production of new work. Because I trained as a visual artist rather than as a writer, I find it very difficult to confine myself to working solely in one medium. Archival material is not merely stored as a static and revered object but is capable of becoming mobilised and motivated by use, and to affect the practice of the artist/writer through ideas, travel and social contacts. The archive grows through the networks it assumes with the past and new material created from it, showing the circularity of creative production around archival material and its sites.'
(Publication abstract)
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The Kiss : Ekphrastic Poetry, Enargeia and the Immersive Installation,
single work
criticism
'Imperial Greek rhetoricians defined ecphrasis as ‘descriptive speech which brings the subject shown before the eyes with visual vividness’ (Squire 2015: n.p.), since which time understandings of ekphrasis have evolved and narrowed. Recently, however, definitions of ekphrasis have been expanding to incorporate new media, digital images and augmented reality that engage with haptic and auditive experiences. The ancient concept of energeia—‘the evocation of a visual scene in all its details and colours’ (Cave 1976: 6)—is relevant to these new understandings, including in the presentation of the kind of archival material housed in the Helen Shea collection at Emerson College. Digital ekphrasis, such as one finds in the Klimt: The Immersive Experience installation, open up possibilities for fluid and wide-ranging representations of archival material, along with powerful considerations of this material’s relationships to complex social interactions. Such digital ekphrasis is able to evoke visual scenes in great detail and cast new and creative light on ekphrastic relationships.' (Publication abstract)
- Standishi"Back at the beginning –", single work poetry
- Swapping One Dysfunctional Family for Anotheri"before we walked into the courthouse", single work poetry
- British Passport 94175i"I am the keeper of your little navy-blue book", single work poetry
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Salvaging Cypriot-Greek Migrant and Refugee Memories,
single work
criticism
'Poetry is one way of documenting what is missed, excluded and neglected by institutionalised archives. Smaller cohorts of migrants and refugees with a reliance on oral stories to record their existence risk minimisation of their impact, influence and contribution to the collective memory of Australia. The experiences of migrants and refugees from Cyprus are recorded mostly through the prism and value-system of two dominating cultures: a British-centric culture and a Hellenic (Greek) culture. This paper seeks to show an alternative documentation of the Cypriot-Greek Australian-based diaspora. Through interviews with several Cypriot-Greek poets and a study of their poetry, a poetic biography of Cypriot-Greek diasporic identity can be created, one that is nuanced and memorable.' (Publication abstract)
- Cobber's Musingsi"I have never known how to fit", single work poetry
- Beyond Measurei"A long story, a history, almost stopped with me,", single work poetry
- Imaginariumi"In this place, green shoots abound,", single work poetry
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Archives as 'Thin Places',
single work
criticism
'Drawing on the Irish notion of a ‘thin place’ (where the veil between us and the spirit world is so thin that we can sense those on the other side), this paper outlines an approach to archival research and creative practice which seeks to reawaken and give voice to the ghosts of some of Australia’s earliest refugees. This work uncovers new connections between the Great Irish Famine, a humanitarian crisis which halved Ireland’s population and the cyclical incarceration and abuse of young women in New South Wales in the 1860s and 1870s—to highlight a small but significant, yet largely unwritten, chapter in Irish-Australian history. Employing poetics of resistance incorporating elements of these young women’s outlawed native Irish language and culture, this work seeks to decolonise their memories and restore voice to those who suffered the brutal consequences of colonisation in both their native and adopted countries.' (Publication abstract)
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Othering, a Cento,
sequence
poetry
Epigraph: ‘a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance as well fitted for the oppression,
impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human
nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.’
—Irish Statesman, Edmund Burke in a letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe in 1792,
describing the Penal Laws introduced by the British government to control
the native Irish population during colonisation. - Inceptioni"Our great difficulty", single work poetry
- A Matter of Commercei"The cry of distress has rapidly", single work poetry
- Live Exports to Sydneyi"One hundred and seven days", single work poetry
- Bill of Ladingi"Forty thousand pounds worth", single work poetry
