'Traditionally, symposia followed a banquet so I must apologise for not providing a sumptuous meal with this special issue. However, this issue’s exploration of Roots and Routes holds true to the initial idea of the symposium as a discussion amongst friends/colleagues of some weighty matter. In this case we come together at the invitation of Professor Ananta Kumar Giri from the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India to explore issues pertaining to ethnicity, sociocultural regeneration and planetary realisations. It was Professor Giri who coordinated these special symposium contributions. The format presented here is one occasionally practised by various disciplines where a leading scholar in the field sets out a range of issues in a ‘poser’ and invites trusted colleagues to engage with their ideas. So this is not so much a dialogue in the sense of an interactive or combative engagement but a series of scholarly reflections provoked by Giri’s poser.' (Editorial)
'In Venice, the second of Nick Earls’ interconnected novellas, sculptor Natalie Landry explains her current project. Demonstrating with her hands the angles at which her family of figures relate to each other, she explores the difference in degrees between intimacy and indifference. ‘Aloof’ is the word she settles on: ‘“This one you're paying attention, avidly, to something close by.” She lifts her fingers so that they’re almost straight again. “Now it’s dead to you. It’s in the foreground but not a threat, not interesting. You’re all about the horizon, something out there”’ (Earls 2015: 36). This theme of family relationships—how we are angled towards or away from the people closest to us, what lies in the foreground of our lives and what is on the horizon—connects all of the stories in Wisdom Tree to create a compelling work that is more than the sum of its individual parts' (Introduction)
