'In July critics and teachers of Australian literature met in Nipaluna/Hobart to commemorate the thirty-year anniversary of the Mabo decision, and to trace its various afterlives in the novels, films, and poems of the settler-colony. Keynotes and papers contemplating the changing aesthetics and politics of Australian writing were punctuated by austere reminders of the decimation of an already exclusionary humanities sector. The scattering of early career researchers subsidising precarious sessional work by drawing on their superannuation, stories of suddenly terminated contracts in place of missing colleagues, and remaining ones drowning under compounding administrative duties as professional services are stripped to their absolute and untenable minimums. The dissonance between symbolic progress and material regress was a stark reminder of the disingenuities settlement, and the inadequacy of merely representational politics. The essays in this edition of Overland are un-themed, but all investigate the relationship between place and labour, and the necessity of collectively re-imagining that relationship.' (Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Editorial)
Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
'That's what drives us to fight': labour, wilderness and the environment in Australia by Jeff Sparrow
Coal flower aesthetics by Elena Gomez
'There is a Bugarrigarra story from north-west Australia about spirit children, the rayi, who emerge from the water to create future children in the minds of dreamers. Among other things, the story suggests that rights and obligations can be inherited as well as bestowed. The story is significant to Paddy Roe, a Nyigina man from Broome in Western Australia, whose authority and custodianship is linked to a vision of a pregnant stingray he experienced with his wife, Mary Pikalli. In part, the vision conveyed the future coming of children in his family.' (Introduction)
'‘Might as well,’ I heard myself say. I was telling myself to record the poems I wrote in the margins of The Trouble with Being Born whenever poetry struck in the middle of reading it. I normally record it or them elsewhere. But I put them here today, Chinese or English, regardless.' (Introduction)
