AustLit

'The Marina du Château room was the perfect location for the 2021 international conference "Indigenous Environmental Practices as Responses to Pollution," directly following the 2021 conference on Alexis Wright's Carpentaria in Brest. On October 21 and 22, 2021, the sunlit room lined with high windows opening on a large, oval balcony directly looked out on the Brest Harbour, such that the sky and ocean became integral parts of the conference venue. The ocean's mesmerizing power added an ethereal touch to the intriguing conversations of all participants, including Alexis Wright and Tara June Winch. Brest was the perfect point of convergence between the Americas and Oceania, with participants from all over the world, virtually and on-site, reflecting on contemporary environmental challenges and the different ways Indigenous artistic practices tackle them.' (Introduction)

'Jean-François Vernay, declaring the scope of cognitive literary studies in this collection, says that the eight contributors draw on recent scientific findings "by exploring the mental processes at work in the creative minds of writers and readers" (2). Terms particular to neurocognition, he says, usefully emphasize that bodily conditions and environments alike influence individual perception and cultural development. While it would be interesting to hear a neuroscientist discuss Australian literature, all of the contributors here come from the literary side; thus, the collection seems less a radical melding of science and literature than a sometimes refreshing, even exciting, extension of conventional strategies of literary criticism in agglomerating methods that originate in other disciplines. Even without hard neuroscience, a focus here on the dynamism of interactions between writers and readers produces new opportunities, strong ones indeed, for close examination of those relationships.' (Introduction)

'Robert Harris's The Gang of One, Selected Poems is divided into six sections and represents a lifetime of work. Five of the sections contain selections from specific collections, while the sixth section is a mash-up of uncollected poems. Unfortunately, because the sections are fairly unbalanced in length (some are quite short; others are very long in comparison), it is difficult to get a clear picture of the collections that each section represents. For longtime fans of Harris, this book might provide a way to look back on past favorites, but for those new to his work, the book has the feel of a tasting menu. Like other books of selected poems, it does not give us a clear picture of what the poet is hoping to accomplish.' (Introduction)