y separately published work icon Mascara Literary Review periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... no. 25 August 2020 of Mascara Literary Review est. 2007 Mascara Literary Review
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2020 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Family Portraiti"In their best Flemish clothes –", Rose Lucas , single work poetry
From Mallaigi"Heaving out from the harbour,", Rose Lucas , single work poetry
Border Protectioni"My life in lockdown looks", Amanda Lucas-Frith , single work poetry
A Bright Roomi"When you arrived, I snapped open", Amanda Lucas-Frith , single work poetry
The Year of Contagioni"In times of virus", Debbie Lim , single work poetry
Haunted Autumni"X marks distance. We never used to know this. X was golden, treasure. X was illicit. X marked", Dani Netherclift , single work poetry
Wall of Men, Janette Chen , single work short story
Pieces of Nothing, Anna Kortschak , single work short story
On Becoming One, Belinda Paxton , single work prose
The Meaning of Life and the Pandemic, Luke Fischer , single work autobiography
Jennifer Mackenzie Reviews Sreedhevi Iyer’s The Tiniest House of Time, Jennifer Mackenzie , single work review
— Review of The Tiniest House of Time Sreedhevi Iyer , 2020 single work novel ;

'Sreedhevi Iyer’s The Tiniest House of Time is a book for our time, examining as it does the profound silences that a family lives with, silences embedded in a history of displacement, and the uprooting from what was considered home. In tracking hidden and unspoken histories, of which there is little written record, the author has written something of a psychoanalytically focused and politically acute narrative, as she explores through her finely structured novel, an evocation of generational trauma across migratory continental space. With much sensitivity and intelligence, Iyer delineates the colonial legacy of race relations, and how this legacy weighs down on those societies still navigating them.' (Introduction)

Paul Scully Reviews A Passing Bell : Ghazals for Tina by Paul Kane, Paul Scully , single work review
— Review of A Passing Bell : Ghazals for Tina Paul Kane , 2018 selected work poetry ;

'Paul Kane’s A Passing Bell abounds in phrases that could be extracted as summaries of the work.  I chose the above to capture the tones of litany, compulsion and grief that pervade it and the striving for some species of beauty that is part of all poets’ motivation.' (Introduction)

Kiran Bhat Reviews Toward the End by Ali Alizadeh, Kiran Bhat , single work review
— Review of Towards the End Ali Alizadeh , 2020 selected work poetry ;

'While it was a mainstay of early 20th century writing, the styles, tendencies, and structures of social realist literature went out of vogue fairly quickly. Perhaps it is because of the proselytising nature of such texts, or because works of only one particular vision or message tend to lose freshness on multiple reads. Nonetheless, we live in a time where plenty has gone awry, and the world needs stronger voices yet. From the pages of Towards the End, it is clear that Ali Alizadeh aspires to be one such voice. He is eager to observe the hypocrisies and toxicities of an Australia connected to the global economy, and he aspires to use poetry as a space to right his country’s wrongs.' (Introduction)

Jackie Smith Reviews Turbulence by Thuy On, Jackie Smith , single work review
— Review of Turbulence Thuy On , 2020 selected work poetry ;

'If you pay attention to the nation’s arts sector, you’re probably familiar with Thuy On. For many years, she has worked as a freelance writer and arts critic with The Age and The Saturday Paper and Books+Publishing as well as holding the books editor position at The Big Issue. Earlier this year, On released her debut poetry collection Turbulence to rave reviews of her own.' (Introduction)

Abigail Fisher Reviews Heide by Π.O., Abigail Fisher , single work review
— Review of Heide TT. O , 2019 selected work poetry ;

'Trying unsuccessfully to write this review in June, I ride alongside the Eastern Freeway to Bulleen. The gallery is closed but I visit the bees, the bare trees, the corrugated cows. Plaques along the path by the river gloss over the Wurundjeri history of Bolin (‘lyrebird’, later Anglicised to Bulleen) and the process by which Indigenous custodians of the land were ‘driven out’ of the area throughout the 1850s, while documenting with painstaking detail the white settler casualties of severe floods in the following decades. That night I google the scar-tree, a red gum towering over the entrance to the kitchen garden, and learn its Woiwurrung name: Yingabeal, or ‘song tree’. Yingabeal is also a marker tree, situated at the convergence of five song lines and estimated to be between 600 and 700 years old.' (Introduction)

Adele Dumont Reviews The Girls by Chloe Higgins, Adele Dumont , single work review
— Review of The Girls : A Memoir of Family, Grief and Sexuality Chloe Higgins , 2019 single work autobiography ;

'The title of Chloe Higgins’ debut memoir is shorthand for her two younger sisters, victims of a fatal car accident when the author is aged seventeen. Her family avoids using their individual names, explains Higgins, so that ‘they are separate from us, an abstract thing on which we need not hang our pain’. In her frank depictions of drug use, sex work, mental illness, and her fraught relationship with her bereaved mother, Higgins might be described as unflinching in her approach. But the telling of this story is equally characterised by a flinching: from the memory of her sisters; from her own pain.' (Introduction) 

Caitlin Wilson Reviews Thorn by Todd Turner, Caitlin Wilson , single work review
— Review of Thorn Todd Turner , 2020 selected work poetry ;

'Todd Turner’s Thorn mines the relationship between the earth and the things which populate it, musing on their motives and daily moves. An uneasy symbiosis between animals and people, the natural and the built, is rendered in detail-oriented odes to memory, observation and wonder. In this, his second volume, Thorn re-treads some of the ground of Woodsmoke (2016), reflecting a similar drive to luxuriate in the minutiae of language. The specificity of Turner’s images allows the reader to see through the poetic eye, lending a haptic quality to his creations. There is a clarity and care to each poem, a tiny world where every word is in its right place, even if everything is not. As the collection’s blurb, written by Robert Gray, explains, Turner has much to draw upon in his rendering of a complex world; “a horseman and boxer on one side, a craftsman who creates artistic jewellery for a living on the other”. This eclectic collection of life experiences is reflected in the breadth of this collection, unconstrained by any one influence or vantage point from which to connect to the world around him. ' (Introduction)

Hayley Scrivenor Reviews Benevolence by Julie Janson, Hayley Scrivenor , single work review
— Review of Benevolence Julie Janson , 2020 single work novel ;
Gabriela Bourke Reviews Archival Poetics by Natalie Harkin, Gabriela Bourke , single work review
— Review of Archival-Poetics Natalie Harkin , 2019 selected work poetry ;

'It can be tempting to imagine that colonisation is a thing of the past; that posting an infographic on Instagram on Sorry Day counts as activism; that the horrors white settlers inflicted on First Nations peoples can be considered in the past tense. Natalie Harkin’s Archival Poetics reminds us that colonisation is ongoing and that far from fading away, the savagery of colonial oppression remains constant in our communities and our culture.' (Introduction)

Jeremy George Reviews Where Only the Sky Had Hung Before by Toby Fitch, Jeremy George , single work review
— Review of Where Only the Sky Hung Before Toby Fitch , 2019 selected work poetry ;

'For all the obvious reasons I have been reflecting lately on what Walter Benjamin’s observes in his essay ‘The Storyteller’ ; “Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience… [however] his nesting places — the activities that are intimately associated with boredom are already extinct in the city”. If Benjamin draws a causal link between the destruction of experience and the genesis of modern information; the decline of “storytelling” and the rise of “news”, it is hard to imagine what his judgement would be of our relationship to the web today. The internet is, of course, a fundamentally nauseating and overwhelming ex-American military technology of mass surveillance. However, it is simultaneously (and undeniably) the nexus of new “experiences” and modes of living. The internet is an experience, indeed, strictly in Benjamin’s sense. If anything has brought the activities that are associated with boredom back to the city, it is the internet – the inventor of the “infinite scroll” sincerely regrets the consequences of his actions. So, what’s the pay-off regarding experience?' (Introduction)

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