'Of course it’s anticipatory to talk about the post-pandemic; all around the world, it seems, are reports that we have entered the post-COVID era, while locally we recognise that we might have outrun the pandemic, the disease itself still lingers. Moreover, its effects – on personal lives, on individual and national incomes, on the health and education systems which are still staggering toward recovery, and on the profoundly damaged art sector, which did so much to support wellbeing during the lockdowns – continue to frame our lives.
'The lateness of this issue of Meniscus is directly related to the COVID/ post-COVID effects; the editors have been struggling to find enough time to give proper attention to the submissions, and a number of the poems and stories included here address COVID, directly or indirectly. Other poems and stories pick up on ongoing issues of racism, climate change, gender relations, and the existential quo vadis story that is such an enduring theme in literary writing.' (Deb Wain and Jen Webb Editorial introduction)
Only literary material by Australian authors individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Glass Bear by Sarah Barr
Control and Somnambulent Corpse by Robert Beveridge
Venus told Me by Pavel Frolov
Blue Suspension by Ian Ganassi
Diversion and Microwave by Oz Hardwick
Memorial by Tom Hazuka
Juanito and the Beanstalk by Tim Mayo
Spire and The Invasion of the Library by David McVey
Perhaps Something Like an Ending by Chris Muscardin
So Says Shelley by Keith Nunes
Tinderbox by Sarah Penwarden
A Little Night Magic by Donna Pucciani
You Left Without Telling by Sandip Saha
Because of the Webs by Hibah Shabkhez
Grandmother and Unheard by Elizabeth Smither
Why I Stalk the Sun and The Window Poem by Jason Visconti
Missing : for Qi Hong by Yuan Changming
