Cirrus@Austlit

'The kind of learning I’ve been engaging in has left me not knowing the names of things, or forgetting them unless I am using them at that moment. There is so much I don’t know and the act of coding is facing that lack again and again. My notes show this grasping.' (Introduction)

'Jeanine Leane and I met in the Spring of 2022 to plot this interview over coffee. Jeanine has a quick, ferocious intelligence that moves associatively, while her fingers make languid circles in her hair. She is fine-boned and extremely upright. The day we met, she wore a fitted, double-breasted greatcoat with military detailing that flared at the waist. She told me she picked it up in Cambridge, England, on a day she was there as an invited speaker. After the talk, she said, while walking along the rigidly manicured paths of the Cambridge campus, she stopped to gesture at a flowering bush and was instantly policed by a porter, one of those grounds-guards in bowler hats who keep non-fellows from walking on the grass. ‘Do you know what day it is?’ Jeanine said to the porter. ‘It’s invasion day today, in so-called Australia. I’ll point at any flower I please.’' (Introduction)

'Jazz Money is a poet and artist of Wiradjuri heritage creating work across installation, digital, performance, film and print. Money’s first poetry collection, how to make a basket (UQP, 2021) was the 2020 winner of the David Unaipon Award. This transcript documents the in-conversation between Money and Sara M Saleh, a poet, writer and human rights lawyer. This exchange marked the launch of how to make a basket and occurred on the unceded lands of the Dharug people in December 2021 at Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE, formerly Information + Cultural Exchange). This event was co-presented by ACE and Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Throughout their conversation Money and Saleh share necessary and valuable thoughts about poetry as a democratic form, the power of story in contributing to personal and collective identities and the ethics and responsibility of writing.' (Introduction)

'Language is crucial to Darcey Bella Arnold’s paintings and installations. Words appear throughout the Melbourne-based artist’s work, in rhythms and forms that are almost impossible to replicate with typed script, as the text in one 2020 painting, é dit, reveals:...' (Introduction)

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'What characterises Dan Hogan’s poetry is the way that, each time we come close to fully apprehending the impending collapse of capitalism, we are waylaid by something more urgent and mundane: groceries, emails, calls to Centrelink, traffic jams on the way home from work. When the present is frantic, frenetic and demands our full attention, it becomes the only thing that is real. The tragedy with which we live, in Hogan’s words, is that we resultantly have ‘no time to grieve for lost futures’.'(Introduction)

'In a j carruthers’s new collection, verse stanzas, running vertically from top to bottom rather than left to right, challenge the dominant linear mode of thinking and writing in the West. They call attention to alternative forms of representation and reveal the existence of other landscapes. The purpose of the ‘axis’ is no longer confined to one-way movement, but to rotation and circular modes of thinking, writing, and generating new ideas.' (Introduction)

'Both of these considerable books, The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt and At the Altar of Touch by Gavin Yuan Gao, arrived into my hands, out of their padded envelope, with all of the gravitas of prize-winners. They are, both of them, winning books – they shine with sincerity and reach and craft – and they won me over with minimal resistance on my part.' (Introduction)

'Since 2015, Recent Work Press has published a consistently high standard of poets with years of accomplished adventure including Paul Hetherington, Peter Bakowski, Anne Casey, Damen O’Brien, Phillip Hall, Anne Elvey, Jennifer Compton, Rico Craig, Heather Taylor-Johnson, Cassandra Atherton, Jen Webb, Adrian Caesar, and so many others. Initially, it was Canberra-oriented but has extended its author base to include national and international poets. Also, it considers the work of newer poets such as the following with forthcoming debut collections: Ally Chua, Es Foong, and Thabani Tshuma. Shane Strange, the founder of the press, explains the impetus in an interview with Rosanna Licari of StylusLit (Issue 11) as:,,,' (Introduction)