Cirrus@Austlit

'From up high the way the sea curls and then kisses the beach looks like a row of apostrophes, spilling onto the shore. And the colour, the blue of it - like someone shot a hundred tonnes of ink into the ground; like maybe before, once, the ocean was a grey hole in the world, just cornered by all this yellow sand. There's a helicopter up there right now and little else. The sky is nubile and flat, like a really nice placemat...' (Publication abstract)