AustLit

'Although Australian indigenous poetry is often overtly polemical and politically committed, any reading which analyzes it as mere propaganda is too narrow to do it justice. By presenting the verse of Alf Taylor collected in Singer Songwriter (1992) and Winds (1994) and discussing it in the context of the wider social and cultural milieu of the author, my essay aims to show the thematic richness of indigenous poetic expression. Indigenous poets have, on the one hand, undertaken the responsibility to strive for social and political equality and foster within their communities the very important concept that indigenous peoples can survive only as a community and a nation (McGuiness). On the other hand, they have produced powerful self-revelatory accounts of their own mental and emotional interior, which urges us to see their careers in a perspective much wider than that of social chroniclers and rebels.' (Publication abstract)

'This paper takes its lead from the poet John Keats’ notion of ‘negative capability’ (1891: 48), exploring some of the key methodologies of representing landscapes in writing, specifically using place to effect the process of ‘… being capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubt, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason …’ (48).

Keats refers to the poet as ‘taking part’ in the life of the poem; and being in the poem. This paper features our own poetry, located in two different landscapes and with its own understanding of place, which captures a sense of connection to rugged and remote terrains. To evoke this sense of connection, Keats’ negative capability comes into play—understood in this paper as a metaphysical space where a meditative state provides the writer with a ‘glimpse’; a recognition of that moment of connection without which ‘poetry cannot happen’ (Oliver 1994: 84)

Our writing, as will be discussed, is individually informed by knowledge about environment and notions of poetic space, where ‘aspects of the unconscious move into consciousness’ (Hetherington 2012: 8). This paper explores the commonalities and distinctions between our work, using brief examples.' (Publication abstract)

'The start of the women‘s press in Britain in 1855 by Emily Faithfull was an important step on the path to emancipation – women had now a voice in the media. Thirty-three years later Louisa Lawson, who has been called the first voice of Australian feminism, published the first number of The Dawn. This was a watershed in that it gave women a voice, marked women‘s political engagement in the public sphere, and employed women compositors, making available to a broader public issues which were politically relevant.

'In the first number Lawson asks, ―where is the printing-ink champion of mankind‘s better half? There has hitherto been no trumpet through which the concentrated voices of womankind could publish their grievances and their opinions.‖ This article will look at some of the content in the journal during the seventeen years of its existence, 1888- 1905. ' (Publication summary)