Cirrus@Austlit

'“Our house is on fire” said Greta Thunberg who in 2018, all by herself, began regularly walking out of school to picket the Swedish parliament about the need for urgent action to hold back the climate crisis. Inspired by the March 2018 student-led March for Our Lives that, after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, demanded gun control and generated huge further actions by students on this issue, Greta was thrilled when students responding to the climate emergency began to walk out of their schools in a growing number of countries around the world, with demonstrations calling for their governments to take urgent action on global heating.' (Introduction)

'POET, fellow bird enthusiast, and academic, Melissa Ashley has a skillset that greatly animates the language, passion, and research of her debut novel, The Birdman’s Wife. Written from the perspective of the wife of celebrated ornithologist, John Gould, The Birdman’s Wife reveals a long-forgotten contributor to ornithology, Elizabeth Gould, and depicts her journey through art and science. From the moment Elizabeth meets her husband and begins her artistic career that continued right up until her death, Ashley follows Elizabeth’s progression and fills in the gaps that history has missed.'  (Introduction)

'SOMERSET Maugham (1874-1965) was a successful British playwright, novelist, short-story writer and travel writer, whose writings were often closely linked with his travel experiences and the stories he heard in the course of his far-ranging journeys.

'Mirandi Riwoe, on the other hand, is a Brisbane born and based writer of IndoChinese and Irish-English-Australian parentage whose novella, The Fish Girl (2017), was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2018.'  (Introduction)

'AUSTRALIAN national identity has been constructed on being built upon survival. The words “hate” and “race” contain divisive meanings—yet place them side-by-side, as Maxine Beneba Clarke does, and they transform into a metonymy for the dominance of White culture in Australia.' 

 (Introduction)

'IN 2006, Helen Nickas, a Greek-Australian, published an anthology titled Mothers from the Edge, a collection of tributes by twenty-eight Greek-Australian women to their mothers. Nine years later, Fathers from the Edge appeared: in this anthology both men and women, twenty-four in number, write about their fathers, who are or were invariably immigrants to Australia. Some of these men were twice displaced, and many were witnesses to unspeakable horrors, being of the generation whose childhood and youth were deeply affected by the German occupation and the Greek Civil War. Both anthologies feature writing that is simply and directly expressed, while being often deeply introspective. In recollecting their relationships with their parents, the writers wrestle with problems both past and present.'  (Introduction)

'DRAWING Sybylla is a magical spell, casting us back to view the struggles of Australian women writers and their demands to be heard. The novel comprises two components, the women’s stories and the interspersed “Between the Chapters…” which follow the narrator, an author herself, and her journey in learning these women’s stories. In the beginning of the novel our narrator, at a conference, is listening to Sybil Jones talk about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and begins to sketch the speaker before her. As if magic is at play, our narrator travels through her drawing of Sybil into an alternative universe and is invited to learn of the struggles that women have faced when writing in Australia’s past. The woman guiding the narrator in this magical realm, the flâneuse as Kelada terms it, our narrator calls Sybylla.' 

 (Introduction)

'IN March 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Serbian artist, Marina Abramović, takes a seat in a simple wooden chair under bright theatre lights. Across from her, over a wooden table, is a space for prospective participants to join her extraordinary performance art piece The Artist is Present. She waits silently for an observer to become a partaker; she will connect with them through nothing but a gaze.' 

 (Publication abstract)

'AILEEN Palmer was a poet and author in a wide range of other genres. She was also a linguist with an advanced grasp of a number of languages—putting this to good use in sensitive translations. A political activist, she lived and worked in Australia and overseas and both her work and her name deserve to be better known. Sylvia Martin’s beautifully written and carefully researched biography of Aileen certainly makes a major contribution to that task. The title of Martin’s biography suggests that, as the eldest daughter of two important Australian writers, Nettie Palmer and Vance Palmer, its subject was born into a writing life. This other main theme of this biography is suggested in its subtitle as not only did Aileen Palmer have “ink in her veins”, she also had a “troubled life.” These dual concerns—with her various writings and the turmoil and distresses she experienced—make for a finely balanced and nuanced life study.' (Introduction)

'JUDITH knew she did not have long when she assembled this book, poems made over thirty years, she had not told her friends that she had cancer, she had sold her house and was planning more overseas travel with her daughters. This book travels far, just as its author travelled to countries, places, homes - just as a thought on paper expands to become a poem, to become a tour, to become a book. Recurrences I see in this book, not in any order of importance, are names, sea-water/river/creek, place/land, trees, sky/wind/clouds, politics/politicos, dark/light, dead and live, family and friends, ageing, memory and care.'   (Introduction)