AustLit

'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)

'Up to now, simulations of dark matter resemble shapes seen in the vast cosmic web that scientists have drawn to depict the universe. That is, the gaseous knots, filaments, and voids which link galaxies betray the shapes of what dark matter is thought to look like. But this mimicry stutters when the centres of those knots, filaments, and voids are observed, and the precise nature of dark matter—particles which make up 80% of the known universe—remains elusive. The task is to find a way to describe the spaces inbetween, because in the heart of the web pattern hunting breaks down; knowledge peters out.

'One clue to the mapping and describing of dark matter might be in the shape and shaping of stellar halos. These ghostly remnants of interactions between galaxies surround observable galaxies as faint halos of starlight. As with the moon and tides, galaxies push and pull each other, their great gravities shaping the fabric of their neighbours and viceversa: galaxies are cannibals, and the larger ones strip the thinning edges of smaller, star-massed bodies. These surrounding edges—made up of stars and gasses escaping the rims of the galaxies in which they were born—build up stellar halos. Within this cloud must be, somewhere, dark matter: that is the only current explanation for the terrific mass which is measurable and impactful within and without stellar halos, but which remains unseen. Chris’s research attempts to understand the differences latent in the maps we make of the universe, with the aim of producing a phenomenological model that matches observed data with theoretical models. The big question is something like this: Using models of what we can already observe in the universe, can measurements be made to pin down what dark matter is? Perhaps, this questions suggests, by drawing maps, something impossible to describe can be sensed.

'Daniel, as a creative writer, is inspired by a differing interpretation of phenomenology: he is looking for clues to aid both his descriptions of the past, and his understanding of how the past is formed in consciousness. Thus, this dialogue on the shape and form of matter will dwell on how constructions of the past are shaped; it will linger on vastness which cannot yet be described—the 80% of the universe which is dark matter, and the mysterious shapes of the past behind us. The gravitational pull of dark matter moves galaxies, forces them to touch and kiss and burst; the dark shapes of the past push and pull the present, and make patterns yet to be understood.' (Publication abstract)

'The requirement for separate creative and exegetical components by universities offering creative doctoral programmes is a largely accepted model in Australia. The Research Question Model adopted by Curtin University in Western Australia is an example of this. The parallel, ‘independent’ articulation of creative and academic responses is explored in this article by a supervisor and three PhD candidates all writing in the genre of creative non-fiction. We suggest that the boundaries between the scholarly and creative in creative non-fiction works are far from clear and that this reflects both contemporary non-fiction publishing and new movements in scholarly writing. We propose that Barthes’s ‘ambiguous genre’, the essay, may be one useful way of conceptualising the non-fiction creative doctorate.'  (Publication abstract)

'This paper will examine the effects of exile in life writing practice. It will consider how things from the past can be used to evoke and revoke what James Wood termed ‘homelooseness’. It will draw on examples from my own creative practice, a family memoir written from Australia about people in and from the United Kingdom. The memoir is informed by things plucked from a loose and disordered family archive, which exists across both countries. It is driven by a need to locate my own life within its new context in the Asia-Pacific. In the paper I will use the work of W.G. Sebald and Penelope Lively to illustrate the rootlessness things provoke and resist; I will touch on the melancholy inspired by that feeling. As well as showing the reality of dislocation, things-from-the-past can be useful tools for life writers concerned with the past or engaged with the problem of trying to capture slippery, liminal states of being. The conflation of one place or time with another, as described by George Poulet when critiquing Marcel Proust, can be triggered briefly by objects.'  (Publication abstract)

'It took a long time to get to 80 Mile beach. We drove in three-car convoy, stopping off when we needed to and wanted to. We saw stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, and spent New Year at a motel in Exmouth. At the beach - which used to be called 90 Mile, until somebody decided to measure it - the sand swirled thick through waves which rolled and rolled and rolled, turning quickly into foam, dragging us along the shoreline.'