Cirrus@Austlit

'In some topoi of poesy lore, it is believed that the first iteration of Homeric oral verse as a material text was woven by women on a loom – deft fingers spinning, immortalising epic tales. In the Odyssey, an abandoned Penelope sits at her loom, creating, then destroying, her tapestries, waiting for her husband Odysseus’ return to Ithaca from his decade-long voyage. Angela Costi reveals a honed, acute awareness of the traditions, epics, journeys, traumas, travails and triumphs that shaped and brought her to write the existential topography that is her latest collection of poetry, An Embroidery of Old Maps and New (Spinifex, 2021). In these pages, the poet is at once Penelope and Odysseus – speaks as weaver and voyager, sufferer and seeker. But here, when the poet takes up the thread, she does not tear; she tenderly and compassionately unwinds and uncovers those stories, people and worlds in which she recognises who, how and why she is, and in so doing, she reconnects, remakes.'  (Introduction)

'Gentle and Fierce is a book of essays that provides glimpses of Sydney author Vanessa Berry’s life by dissecting her encounters with non-human animals in various contexts – in the household, in captivity, in art and in the form of ornamental objects. Through Berry’s encounters with animals, we piece together her life as a city-dweller and an intellectual, a solitary who is as much an observer of other humans as of the animal world. Her essays allude to the destruction of the natural world and the marginalisation of other life forms by humans as Berry strives to connect with nature despite a paucity of opportunities to do so. ' (Introduction)

'At night, I can hear the foxes screaming. Nothing is wrong, this is just what they do, particularly during mating season. The first time I heard it, I thought something was seriously wrong – that a small child was being chased through the bush, or that I was at the epicentre of a B-grade horror movie. That I might be next. There’s always something a little disconcerting about seeing a fox on this continent. They have been here longer than my ancestors, but they don’t belong here either. Introduced in 1855 for ‘sporting purposes’ (i.e. ‘to be hunted’), foxes had become rife across the mainland within just 20 years.' (Introduction)

'From the beginning to the end, front and back covers inclusive, Maxine Beneba Clarke’s newly released book, How Decent Folk Behave, is rich with carefully curated images and words that connect with and confront the reader. Poetry is both mystical and tangible. For many of us, particularly us writers of colour, it’s the natural way in which we tell our stories. According to Nina Simone, the artist’s duty is ‘to reflect the times’. This quote precedes the table of contents and gives context to the following pages – Beneba Clarke’s account of our recent collective events.'  (Introduction)

'I was eager yet simultaneously exhausted to begin reading Racism: Stories on fear, hate & bigotry. This is not a criticism but rather acknowledges my visceral familiarity with the phenomenon. I suspect too many of us know, intimately, what racism feels like and how it manifests in our lives, often infusing our lives as embodied trauma, regardless of attempts to refuse the internalisation of harmful othering narratives. Produced by the Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement, the editorial team have curated a suite of stories by First Peoples writers, Black writers, and writers of colour to create a timely insight to the multiplicity of personal experiences. Reflections and stories of racism are interwoven with varied perspectives on how racism exists, ranging from the foundational violence of colonisation, Australia’s ongoing coloniality, the nuances of structural and systemic racism, to contested definitions, often imposed by those who inflict it rather than those who endure it. Centring experiences and voices who are often marginalised for their difference, the anthology enacts a resistance to how discussions on racism are derailed or quelled. It is also hard to know if contributors felt empowered, given this form of exposure and substantial labour is so often demanded from people whose lives and identities are marginalised. Attempts to challenge or claim social power often come with costs. It is also a delicate undertaking when Aileen Moreton-Robinson, in Talkin’ up to the white woman cautions that virtuous objectives of fighting racism might instead entrench the essentialising ideology of it.'  (Introduction)

'Alice Pung’s fifth book and second novel, One Hundred Days (Black Inc, 2021), deals with the difficult relationship between sixteen-year-old Karuna and her manipulative and overbearing (but also loving and hardworking) Chinese Filapino mother. Karuna’s father, who is Anglo Australian, has left the family and she has fallen pregnant to a boy she knew only briefly. The setting is 1980s Melbourne. Information is not readily accessible and hysteria about AIDS is rife. Pung tells a simple story that is rich and layered, exploring with compassion both the dysfunction and the strength of a complex mother-daughter relationship and ultimately empowering and vindicating the teenage protagonist.' (Introduction)  

'Laura Elvery’s second collection of short stories, Ordinary Matter, takes its inspiration from the mere twenty times women have won the Nobel Prize for science. And yet it isn’t science that connects the pieces in this collection, but the ‘softer’ stuff: the women in these stories are united by themes of motherhood, love, art – experiences which are often problematised, or portrayed as obstacles to a more ‘successful’ career-driven life. The choice between intellectual and domestic fulfilments, women are typically told, is an either/or deal. In Ordinary Matter, Elvery upsets these stereotypes, levelling the playing field between domestic, creative, and intellectual ambitions.'  (Introduction)

'Tony Birch is a Naarm (Melbourne) based writer, who is probably better known for his prose, including his short story collections and novels, of which, The White Girl, won the Indigenous Writers’ Prize of the 2020 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. He was also the winner of the Patrick White Award back in 2017. Whisper Songs is Birch’s second volume of poetry and comes five years after Broken Teeth. Much of Whisper Songs was written during last year’s COVID -19 related lockdowns and may be seen as a meditation on his Aboriginal identity. However, in Whisper Songs, the reader is more than a mere spectator of the poet’s autobiography and revelation. Rather, Birch invites us to share something of a largely personal journey, exploring a sense of heritage and connection to Country.'  (Introduction)

'Poetry always involves a delicate negotiation between craft and art. Craft can easily be misunderstood as a set of skills completely external to what is being written. Yet a poet shows craft by moving confidently within the work developing on the page. Often, when one looks at an intricately rhymed stanza, perhaps one with five, six or seven lines of varying length, such as Stephen Edgar favors, one might be tempted to think that the work has been composed, even revised, in the poet’s mind and then set down on the page. There are such compositions, some of them admirable, and examples can be found in volumes of minor seventeenth-century verse. The effect is known as “Ciceronian”: the style is marked by balance, antitheses, and repetition; it was developed to a high pitch in prose, not verse. Nothing could be further from Edgar’s characteristic way of writing, which is usually “Anti-Ciceronian.” Here sentences unfold naturally rather than exhibit a resolved formal beauty, and often the style is marked by asymmetric constructions. The poem shows a mind thinking as it progresses from stanza to stanza.'  (Introduction)

'How do we give shape to what resists language? How do words move against the body, in dialogue with its silence, its noise? These tangled questions emerge from my reading of Eunice Andrada’s second collection of poems, TAKE CARE, and the writing of this review, which has taken weeks of slow thinking. Like many others, I have found both comfort and discomfort in poetry during a time of immeasurable loss. I leave most things unread, I seek a return to what is comfortable and familiar. In my own work, I attempt poems about windows or flowers; always in the eyeline of where it hurts, but slightly out-of-focus. Yet, TAKE CARE is piercing in a way that cuts through the haze with a deliberate sharpness. Connected through the theme of rape culture as it exists in everyday and institutional scales, these poems do not flirt around the intensity of their subject matter—they demand your recognition, as well as your unease. As Andrada writes in her author’s statement with Giramondo Press, in TAKE CARE she has “attempted to get as close as possible to the hurting bone”. '  (Introduction)

'Robert Lukins’ debut novel follows seventeen-year-old Radford as he commences at Goodwin Manor, “a place for boys who had been found by trouble” (19). The Manor is a dilapidated institution of reform in the Shropshire countryside, which the Queensland-raised Lukins has said was inspired by an old house he encountered while working as a postman in Shropshire. In the tradition of the British boarding school, the students are referred to by surname. To call it a school, however, is a bit of a stretch; as the narrator notes with characteristic obliqueness: “There was no schooling, but things like lessons” (42). The Manor is overseen by Teddy, whose good intentions are undercut by his tendency towards depression and alcoholism. While Government inspectors nose around from time to time, this intrusion of authority only serves to highlight the boys’ marginalised position relative to society at large.' (Introduction) 

'Our Shadows by Gail Jones is a family saga that examines the intimate lives of three generations living in Kalgoorlie. The story starts with Paddy Hannan, an Irish-born prospector who discovered gold back in 1893. Paddy’s history is woven in and out of the text and we travel back and forth between his story. We also meet sisters Nell and Frances, and grandparents, Fred and Else. The relationships drawn out in this novel are complex and layered, unfolding slowly as you read. There’s no doubt that Jones is a beautiful writer, precise, perceptive, and full of razor-sharp observations.'  (Introduction)

'To read Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt (2020), Elena Gomez’s second full-length poetry collection, is to be propelled headlong through the dizzy intersect of postmodernity and Marxist-feminist critique, to be flooded with possibilities for distraction, and for engagement. It is a work that not only demands rereading but requires it. Which is not to say that it cannot be drunk down along with your breakfast coffee (it’s slim enough that this is possible), but it is to say that the work is best enjoyed over a series of re-readings, with time for the ideas to settle into your insides, digest.'  (Introduction)

'Amani Haydar’s powerful memoir takes its title from Dr Oscar Serrallach’s term ‘the mother wound’, which describes how ‘the relationship between mothers and daughters is affected by unhealed traumatic experiences passed down matriarchal lines’ (333). In her family, Haydar says, the wounds have been inflicted by male aggression, war and migration (329).'  (Introduction)

'After the deliquescent dream of Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau’s Gunk Baby is a wake-up call from a silent number in the small hours of the morning. Leen lives in the fictional outer suburb of Par Mars, a typical sprawl of shopping centres, housing estates, and units fronted by flat open lawns. Yet just beneath all the grass and concrete runs an undertow of surveillance and violence that feels both strange and strangely familiar.' (Introduction)

'I initially didn’t want to review this book. It is written by a white woman, and as a person of colour (POC) who wants to elevate diverse writing, I thought it was important to only review other diverse writers. However, after discussion with a mentor and writer I realised that it is also important that we, as POC women especially, participate in criticism, not just of diverse literature but also more established writers. It is possible also to challenge and change traditional criticism by introducing diverse perspectives from diverse critic-subjects. This is called auto-ethnographic criticism, which acknowledges the inextricable link between the personal and the cultural and makes room for non-traditional forms of inquiry and expression. It is a way to quietly address the assumed authority of the ‘literary review’ or the role of ‘critic’. So, in this way it’s subversive for a POC to review white authors and writing.'  (Introduction)

'Like many Australian citizens, Lo has a complicated background. She was born in Canada and grew up in Singapore. She has Chinese-Malaysian and Anglo-Australian parents (Lo, About), and their meeting is part of the story of this book, which presents two parallel biographies, one of her Chinese paternal grandmother 梁月仙 (Liáng Yuè Xiān) and one of her Australian grandmother Eva Sounness.' (Introduction)