Cirrus@Austlit

'Gwen Harwood is one of Australia’s most important poets, renowned for her lyrical brilliance and wit. Her Collected Poems, published in 2003, earned her praise as one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. She also appears in Roelf Bolt’s Encyclopedia of Liars and Deceivers as ‘Gwen Harwood, Housewife and Poetess’.' (Introduction)

'I was going to start this book review with a confession. I wanted to confess to you the reader, that I had already decided that I would love this book before I had even read it. Not because Black and Blue had just taken out one of Australia’s most prestigious literary accolades, the Victorian Prize for Literature, as well as the Prize for Indigenous Writing, but because I love Ronnie and her family. I think the world of all of them and figured I would love every single word that Veronica Gorrie wrote. Add to that, I hate cops, and every other agent of the carceral state. So, it was only natural that I would relish reading what I imagined would be an exposé of Ronnie’s time in the force: exposing the levels of racism, corruption and sheer arrogance of the institution of policing. But as it turns out, this review of Veronica’s memoir won’t be starting out as a confession to you, dear reader, but rather to Ronnie, and to be honest, I’m a little nervous.' (Introduction)

'In July 2021, the American billionaire Jeff Bezos completed the first private flight to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere and back in a spacecraft unapologetically resembling a giant penis. New Shepard, as it was called, carried Amazon’s owner, his brother Mark (Jeff’s spitting image), an 82-year-old ex-pilot, and a young Dutchman whose enthusiasm for the 8-minute space trip cost him $28 million. In the press conference after the landing, a grinning Bezos thanked all the Amazon customers around the world, saying, ‘you guys paid for this’. The audience indulged the good humour of one of the wealthiest men on the planet. Haha! None taken!'  (Introduction)

'When I first sat down with Vanessa Berry’s collection of essays, Gentle and Fierce, we were in the midst of another destabilising Covid wave. One of the images from her collection that stayed with me was the latticework of letters on Sylvia Plath’s grave, which Berry visited in Yorkshire. The notes, left on Plath’s grave by admirers, had been eaten by snails. One handwritten co-contribution reads Sylvia, know that your words live on, even though you are gone, with the words ‘even though’ interrupted by ‘a string of irregular, squarish holes with curled edges, the work of snails’. While a slow-moving gastropod differs from a rapidly replicating virus, I could not help but think of the gaps the virus has created, not just through death, but in supply chains, leadership, our patience. And while a virus is not an animal, insect, or gastropod, it has forced us to pay attention to the fact that the nonhuman world has intentions of its own. Berry’s collection of essays likewise compels its readers to attend to the presence of our nonhuman companions.' (Introduction)   

'There are more Australias than I can count. Though we inhabit some of them together, many we not only don’t share with others, but couldn’t even fathom sharing. Some are real, most are mythical. Politicians love to invoke a certain mythical version of Australia whenever they need to appeal to some sort of nationalistic impulse. When it comes to regional Australia, that is, all of the places outside of this country’s capital cities, the mythology is populated with clichés about rural settler life. We all know them: there are the farmers battling against drought just to feed the ingrate cities, old saws about how rural towns are places where ‘real’ Aussies live. Yumna Kassab’s latest work, Australiana, a multifaceted exploration of regional Australia, goes a long way toward dispelling such limiting narratives. Kassab presents a full and rich account of life outside of major cities, and, continuing the moral project begun in her debut work, House of Youssef (Giramondo, 2019), she draws us into this world to separate myth from reality.'(Introduction)   

'In her 2019 memoir Imperfect, Lee Kofman wrote about the disfiguring scars she sustained as a child, the result of several major surgeries. She describes going to great lengths to conceal these scars as an adult, with her ‘shell of stockings and long dresses’. It is this impulse towards concealment and secrecy that first led me to feel a great (and covert) sense of kinship with Kofman. In my case, it was my own mental illness, and its strange physical manifestations, that I was driven to hide.'(Introduction)