Issue Details: First known date: 2019... vol. 23 no. 2 October 2019 of TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs est. 1997 TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The October 2019 edition includes scholarly contributions that espouse a wide variety of relationships between form, function and the writer – from the literary fragment, poetic form and interpretation, essaying with food waste, and explorations of narrated futures of place, to error, failure and the past self as ‘other’ in memoir, the contemporising of medieval forms, and a revision of screenwriting pedagogy.' (Ross Watkins and Julienne van Loon, Editorial.

Notes

  • Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:

    Grettir in Sheffield: Rewriting Icelandic saga as a contemporary novel by Tony Williams (Northumbria University)

    A great, upwelling flux of mutability: Failure and error in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s A Dialogue on Love by Frankie Hanman Siegersma (La Trobe University) 

    Eugen Bacon, Writing Speculative FicKatja Hilevaara and Emily Orley (eds), 

    Katja Hilevaara and Emily Orley (eds), The Creative Critic : Writing as/about Practice review by Amelia Walker

    Craig Batty and Zara Waldeback, Writing for the Screen: Creative and Critical Approaches, 2nd Editon review by Tom Drechsler-Savage

    Trent Hergenrader, Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers
    review by Pablo Muslera

     Jason Tougaw, The Elusive Brain: Literary Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience
    review by Jean-François Vernay

    Jean-François Vernay, The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation review by Nataša Kampmark

    Moya Lloyd, Butler and Ethics review by Maya Nitis

    Katharine Coles, Look Both Ways: A double journey along my grandmother’s far-flung path review by Jen Webb

    Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey review by Kevan Manwaring

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2019 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Fragmented Narratives : Minding the Textual Gap, Nigel Krauth , single work criticism
'This paper establishes a general view of how writers have utilised the process of writing in fragments since ancient times in expository, memoir, biography and fiction genres. A selection of fragmented narratives from classical, medieval, twentieth century and recent authors is discussed with particular focus on three forms – the aphorism, the feuilleton and hypertext – building to the idea that writers fashion a fragmented text so as to hand over a significant part of its meaning-making to the reader. In doing so, the writer manipulates the work as a mosaic of fragments and writes meaning – ie ‘directions for reading’ – into the gaps between the fragments. Relevant theoretical work by Walter Benjamin, Wolfgang Iser, J Hillis Miller, Simon Barton and others is applied to the discussion.' (Publication abstract)
 
Does Function Follow Form? Openness and Formal Association in the Early Poetry of John Forbes, Aidan Coleman , single work criticism

'This article aims to reconstruct features of John Forbes’ compositional process in his first decade of serious practice, through analysing drafts and early versions of his poems. I compare early versions of ‘Here’, ‘The Joyful Mysteries’ and ‘Stalin’s Holidays’ to their final incarnations to show how Forbes was resistant to a fixed, or single, idea when writing a poem. In the context of such openness, Forbes’ poems often moved towards a sense of closure, through the pressure his use of form applied and through its more suggestive qualities. Following a comment Forbes made in an interview, I label this process ‘formal association’. I contend that Forbes sought a balance between closure and openness, while arguing that the dynamic interplay of this openness with formal association, during the composition, was crucial to his achievement.' (Publication abstract)
 

Group-devised Screenplays and Film Projects in Higher Education Curriculum, Marilyn Tofler , Ekaterina Pechenkina , single work criticism
'Group work is a well-recognised pedagogical practice in Higher Education (HE), meant to facilitate peer collaboration in contexts simulating realistic industry situations. While group work is credited with helping students to develop a range of communication, social and negotiation skills, it can also disenfranchise students, leading to disorganisation and creative disputes. With increased numbers of students taking up HE film and television and creative writing degrees, group work is necessary to prepare students for industry practice. However, with limited time within a semester to produce such artefacts as screenplays and short films, group-based projects can backfire, creating tensions and conflicts, and resulting in decreased student satisfaction. This study discusses the process of implementation and evaluation of a redesigned screenwriting model, where the act of restructuring the group work component of the studies to ensure that all students participate in the writing of the team’s screenplay helped shift the unequal power balance between students and boost individual student agency. While contextualised in the field of screenwriting and filmmaking, the findings pertaining to group work dynamics and the mindful use of student evaluations to improve teaching can be transported to other disciplines and contexts. Personal skills developed through HE group work, such as collaboration and negotiation, may be applied to other real-world industry and international settings.' (Publication abstract)
Writing the Self as Other : Autrebiography, Paul Williams , single work criticism
'According to Roland Barthes, the autobiographic act of remembering and reclaiming the past commits the fallacy of conflating the author, narrator and protagonist, and giving the first two power over the latter. The past self is a fictional ‘other’, and the writing of memoir is a reading of the past self as a text. JM Coetzee therefore calls his meta-autobiographies (the three-part Scenes from a Provincial Life) autrebiographies, or ‘other-life-writing’. In this paper, I discuss the need for writers of memoir and autobiography to construct a past self as ‘other’, and argue for the impossibility of any kind of authentic representation of the ‘self’ in memoir or autobiography.' (Publication abstract)
 
Making Recipes : Essaying with Mess and Embodied Knowledges, Sophie Langley , single work criticism
'How might a writing form that includes both creative and academic work explore what sociologist John Law might call the ‘messiness’ of embodied knowledges (Law 2004)? Meeting the challenges of learning to live differently in a world that appears to be becoming increasingly uninhabitable for humans (and many other species) requires different methods of research that allow us to think anew about ‘the messes of reality’ and embodied knowledges (Law 2004: 2). My research threads together the practice of making things with food scraps that would usually otherwise be wasted and the practice of essaying. Drawing on philosopher Lisa Heldke’s notion of ‘cooking as inquiry’ and recipes as tools this paper uses an autoethnographic approach (Ellis et al 2011; Spry 2001) to explore how the form of the essay might expand recipes for things to make from food scraps to include theoretical and philosophical inquiries that have both informed and been informed by the practice of making things with the scraps. In this way, my research and this paper are both about experimentation in everyday cooking-like practices, and experimenting in writing, theorising and research, where the writing is not merely a metaphor, but also enacts the modes of inquiry discovered, explored and played with in the physical practices.' (Publication abstract)
 
Kurangk/Coorong Atmospheres : Postcolonial Stories and Regional Futures, Emily Potter , Brigid Magner , single work criticism
'This paper proposes an atmospheric understanding of regional writing, and considers a critical methodology for assembling a literary history of the Kurangk/Coorong region of South Australia. In opposition to literary history guided by national forms, this methodology works from within the shifting entanglements of postcolonial place and its many stories, recognising the material impacts of poetic practice on more-than-human environments. The future of the Kurangk/Coorong is caught up in how this place has, and continues to be, imagined and narrated.' (Publication abstract)
 
When ‘I’ Is Me : an Author in Search of His Character, Jeremy Fisher , single work prose

'As a writer, I have no qualms about drawing from my life to fuel my creative practice, though I adhere to some rules: like Brien (2002), I am guided by ‘a sincere desire to tell the truth’. It is in this manner that I have sometimes used myself as a character in works of fiction, as in ‘Letter to my children’ (in Fisher 2013a) and ‘Into the light’ (Fisher 2008). In these works, I refer to the sexual assault and subsequent suicide attempt I experienced in 1973 when I was 18. Some readers have objected to my classification of these works as fiction, arguing that I was writing non-fiction, memoir or biography. My counterpoint, however, is that these stories are not recounts of what actually happened but my imagined narratives using actual events for their framework; they are my sincere attempts to tell a story I still find difficult to comprehend nearly fifty years later. Undoubtedly, some of my unconscious motivation was therapeutic. Like Gandolfo (2014), ‘there were certainly benefits at a personal level from going through the difficult process of turning that experience into fiction’. Nevertheless, consciously I was attempting to write narratives with content and themes relatively uncommon in literature when I was that 18 year old; that is, I was exploring my deviance from the norm, as my sexuality was described to 18 year old me by a well-meaning psychiatrist.' (Introduction)

Yourself at Nineteeni"Your brother mails photos. Staring hard, the present deliquescing into the past, you inhabit your old self, thin again, with hair", Ian C. Smith , single work poetry
1973i"Self-taught, he found a way to a better job; foreman at a soundproofing firm, the irony of this lost until now, his application", Ian C. Smith , single work poetry
Notes from a Residency, Tom Melick , single work prose

'1. I could be sitting on an upturned bucket in a former retail space in Shanghai. I could be staring at the ceiling: electrical wires, pipes, brownish-yellow stains from the air conditioning. I could be outside, on the street, face pressed against the window, squinting at a pile of miscellaneous clothing store leftovers: mannequin stands, hooks, coat hangers, metal shelving, empty cardboard boxes, unidentifiable shiny things. The floor is wet, reflecting the ceiling. In one corner: smashed brick, plaster and mirror. Empty plastic bottles of water and energy drinks. Geometrical outlines along the walls left by fixtures now removed. If I showed you a photograph of the space and said nothing you might ask, was there a flood? If you looked a little closer at the same photograph you would probably notice the patterns on the floor left by different boots and wonder, as I did, how long has it been since people walked through here? If you looked – really looked – at the far left edge of the photograph, you would see a sleeping bag hanging from a hook on the wall. Are these the marks, you might ask, left by those who dismantled the store – stripping it back, drinking energy drinks, piling the debris in the centre, and moving on? Did the people who left these boot prints also sleep here at night? Did they finish a long day and get into sleeping bags in the very place they had been laboring? Or, maybe you want to travel further back, before the photograph, before it was decided that this store would be converted into an exhibition space, and ask: when did people stop shopping here? What did people buy here?' (Introduction)

In the Belly of the Physicisti"To quale is too tense a verb to parse", Gershon Maller , single work poetry
Poem with Its Throat Cuti"I think, therefore, I am curious", Gershon Maller , single work poetry
North, Oliver Wakelin , single work prose
Dark Arts : Keeping Company with Witch’s Eggs and Devil’s Fingers, Julie Vulcan , single work prose
And the Process Perplexed Them, Peter Nash , single work prose

'It was an ongoing nightmare. The writers could not agree. One considered character, plot, and outline, paramount. The other could not have cared less: to hell with constraint; the only thing convention appeared to achieve was discombobulate creativity even as it emerged. At this point the writer allegiant to protocol proffered a solution. He suggested putting their words on the line. To wit, write a story illustrating nuance. That is to say, a tale contrived accordant to their preferred methodology…' (Introduction)   

The Imp in Imperfection, Conor Ross , single work prose
Creating Hurricanes through Thought, Doris Pushpam , single work review
— Review of The Thinking Woman Julienne Van Loon , 2019 single work autobiography ;

'The Cartesian dictum ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, I think, therefore I am, states that the proof of our existence lies in our ability to contemplate our existence, to doubt, to think. Julienne van Loon in The Thinking Woman forces us to confront this notion as part of a six-chapter, part memoir, part study of philosophical thought. With the help of six women prolific in their fields of study, van Loon critically interrogates thought, the importance of the act of thinking, and what it means for our existence. She starts with a chapter titled ‘Love’, followed by ‘Play’, ‘Work’, ‘Fear’, ‘Wonder’, and ‘Friendship’. Each is an amalgam of van Loon’s lived experiences and her intellectual engagement with the ideas of women thinkers including Laura Kipnis, professor of media studies at Northwestern University in Chicago, novelist Siri Hustvedt, socialist feminist Nancy Holmstrom, French feminist and structuralist philosopher Julia Kristeva, psychoanalyst and feminist critic, Marina Warner, and the cultural historian Rosi Braidotti. This polyvocal discourse leaves the reader with a wholesome and new understanding of the dynamics of life.' (Introduction)

Scripted Explorations of Gender and Sexuality Offer a Rich Sense of Place, Stayci Taylor , single work review
— Review of Ghosts of Leigh Dallas J. Baker , 2017 single work drama ;
Experimental and Exegetical : Joshua Lobb’s Flock of Stories, Lynette Washington , single work review
— Review of The Flight of Birds Joshua Lobb , 2019 single work novel ;

'The Flight of Birds by Joshua Lobb, a novel in twelve stories, is accompanied by an exegetical work. As the title indicates, the stories feature birds and their interactions with people. The reader is asked, at least initially, to consider the stories purely as fictional enterprises, isolated from the ‘Field Notes’ which follow at the end of the novel component. Rightly so, as first and foremost the role of a story is to engage the reader; it needs to function as a story before any other purpose, such as exegetical insight, can be attained.' (Introduction)

Something Unforgettable, Ali Cobby Eckermann , single work review
— Review of Aboriginal Country Lisa Bellear , 2018 selected work poetry ;

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 29 Aug 2024 12:53:30
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