AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
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Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Fade into you by Leila Lois
This Heart, This Heart by Purbasha Roy
Becoming Cyborg by Rayan Chakrabarti
Bride by Javeria Hasnain
Contents
- Polaroid of a Girl with a Sparkleri"Happy New Year!", single work poetry
- Cataloggiai"the aperitivo antipasto", single work poetry
- Flocki"her white as rice gown", single work poetry
- Performancei"Sure—there were flowers then", single work poetry
- History Intrudes upon the Marketplacei"Your body walks in grey space under grey light.", single work poetry
- Silence, single work
- An Existential Age, single work prose
- Marble Track, single work prose
- Taaf طاف, single work prose
- Joel Ephraims and Daniel de Filippo in Conversation with Urn Yoda, Urn Yoda (interviewer), single work interview
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Anne Brewster Reviews Borderland by Graham Akhurst,
single work
review
— Review of Borderland 2023 single work novel ;'Graham Akhurst’s debut young adult novel Borderland is a tour de force. It is a coming-of-age story, set on the lands of the Turrbal, Yuggera and Gungarri people. We are introduced to Jonathan Lane, the first-person narrator, who has just graduated from St Lucia Private, an oppressive private secondary school where he had been a scholarship student. His time at St Lucia had not been an altogether happy experience for him. We are told that he ‘hated the attention he got for looking different and being poor in a school full of rich white kids’ (6). ' (Introduction)
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Mark Seton Reviews Text Messages from the Universe by Richard James Allen,
single work
review
— Review of Text Messages from the Universe 2023 selected work poetry ;'It’s 2023, and our world flounders under an encroaching deluge of Artificial Intelligence apps, especially ChatGPT, that might enable anyone to ‘generate’ poetry, so why bother! The good news, I believe, is that the poetry that touches us, moves us and connects us still emerges from a living, breathing, feeling, embodied poet. That’s what Richard James Allen generously offers the reader in his latest work Text Messages from the Universe. And it’s fun too!' (Introduction)
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Kavita Nandan Reviews Once a Stranger by Zoya Patel,
single work
review
— Review of Once a Stranger 2023 single work novel ;'A significant part of the success of a story is the degree to which we are moved by it in some way. Once a Stranger, a novel about the search for acceptance, is written with heart and an awareness of loss in the negotiation of relationships with family, history and home. At first glance, the novel’s structure and conceit seem too straightforward – the past and present are navigated by the sub-headings ‘before’ and ‘now’ and feelings are conveyed quite simply: ‘Ayat felt the loss as deep as a punch to her stomach’ (48). However, while the language may sometimes be humble, more so in Part One than in Part Two in which the metaphors of belonging and alienation deepen, the message is not.' (Introduction)
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Eman Elhelw Reviews Bitter & Sweet by Amal Awad,
single work
review
— Review of Bitter and Sweet 2023 single work novel ;'Kicking off in a flooding kitchen, Amal Awad’s Bitter & Sweet, as the title suggests, is a story of the highs-and-lows of life. The life of Zeina, Palestinian-Australian chef, unfolds in Sydney’s inner-city restaurant scene with its fusion of cuisines, fine dining, and familiar casual eats. Through Zeina’s eyes, we experience the fresh wounds of a marriage breakdown, the struggles of keeping her father’s restaurant dreams alive in the decaying restaurant Casablanca, and the relationship dynamics of one’s forties. Bitter & Sweet sits amongst the many acclaimed restaurant-based novels of recent years, yet stands apart as a story where food is a main character. Casablanca is not only the setting through which Bitter & Sweet’s story takes place but operates as a metaphor for Zeina’s journey to happiness.' (Introduction)
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Judith Huang Reviews Who Comes Calling? by Miriam Wei Wei Lo,
single work
review
— Review of Who Comes Calling? 2023 selected work poetry ;'Miriam Wei Wei Lo’s Who Comes Calling? begins with an open hand of a poem, its structure mimicking five uncurling fingers numbering off the things which Australia means to the persona, as a girl growing up in Singapore with family in Australia.' (Introduction)
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Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn Reviews Why We Are Here by Briohny Doyle,
single work
review
— Review of Why We Are Here 2023 single work novel ;'Clairaudience, says the Macquarie dictionary, is the alleged power of hearing voices of ‘spirits’, or sounds inaudible to normal ears. The protagonist of Why We Are Here is not a psychic, but she is an aspiring dog-whisperer, and her landscape is punctuated with muted strains of grief as she mourns the loss of her father and partner during the pandemic. In the absence of others, she ‘hears’ the voices of her loved ones. Her partner is deified in biblical pronouns, with ‘He’ and ‘His’ capitalised. ‘I never met Him then, but I love, love, love that child,’ she writes of her partner’s young self. Her father, also, has a distinct voice and character that weaves into BB’s narration. With her dog, a subtle inversion takes place. The name BB derives from the Spanish ‘Bebe’, which also means ‘baby’. BB’s voice is acerbic and tender, wryly observant, unmistakeably human. Baby the dog’s voice comes in staccato spurts of commands, evocative of the dialogue from The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay. The exception to this is a surprisingly affecting monologue by Baby at the conclusion of Why We Are Here. ‘I know that I was not always like this,’ the dog telegraphs.' (Introduction)
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Nina Cullen Reviews The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt,
single work
review
— Review of The Jaguar 2022 selected work poetry ;'Sarah Holland-Batt’s Stella Prize-winning poetry collection, The Jaguar (2022), is entirely absorbing and accessible. It does not work to evade or obscure, rather its precise language and imagery culminates in a narrative that is incisive and moving. The collection is structured into four distinct parts with each section comprising profoundly visceral and poignant poems and elegies that unify and harken back to the traditional elegy form, in the commemoration and celebration of painful relationships.' (Introduction)
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Jenny Hedley Reviews Icaros by Tamryn Bennett,
single work
review
— Review of Icaros 2020 selected work poetry ;'The use of medicinal plants or herbs originates from Indigenous knowledge systems which predate colonisation by thousands, or in the case of Aboriginal pharmacopeia, tens of thousands of years. Phytotherapy, a science-based medical practice first described by French physician Henri Leclerc in 1913, uses plant-derived medicines for prevention and treatment of ailments. Today, industrial pharma hacks plants’ intrinsic biotechnologies for maximum profit, producing pills and potions engineered to ease mental and physical maladies. What has been overlooked by the dollars that be (aka extractive capitalism) is the use of traditional plant medicines for diseases of spirit.' (Introduction)
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Gurmeet Kaur Reviews The Dancer by Evelyn Juers,
single work
review
— Review of The Dancer : A Biography for Philippa Cullen 2021 single work biography ;'The Dancer is an unusual biography. Dedicated to the subject, it is written ‘for’ rather than about Phillipa Cullen. The author’s close relationship with Cullen determines the biographer’s intentions — Juers and Cullen were university friends and remained in touch until she unexpectedly died at the age of 25. The book is a memorial, an extended eulogy and an archival object that solidifies Cullen’s legacy in Australian experimental dance history. It is also a poetic narrative that documents the events, ideas and people orbiting around Cullen in 1960s and 1970s Australia.'(Introduction)
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Theodora Galanis Reviews Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright,
single work
review
— Review of Praiseworthy 2023 single work novel ;