Cirrus@Austlit

'The invitation to write for the Meanjin magazine is welcomed in the spirit of Reconciliation and Truth-telling. I share from my Goori doogal (Aboriginal heart) about my family and tribes, culture and history with colonisation; our Wularanguru historical language mapping project; and of matters still to be resolved, including the original language placenames. ‘Brisbane, port, the capital of Queensland, Australia and the country’s third largest city. It lies astride the Brisbane River on the southern slopes of the Taylor Range, 12 miles (19 km) above the river’s mouth at Moreton Bay.’' (Introduction)

'Late in 2021, I attended a conference in Tarntanya (Adelaide) organised by a collective of thinkers called Reset Arts and Culture. I listened particularly closely to a panel about labour and the arts that was chaired by Vitalstatistix director Emma Webb. I’d been writing about these issues, and against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, discussions had taken on a new urgency.' (Introduction)

'A few days before I flew from Australia to travel alone through Scotland for three months, my eye caught on a book behind the counter of a book shop: Landmarks by the British nature writer Robert Macfarlane. The blue-and-white cover looked like a wood cut. I asked the assistant for the book, and opened it to a glossary of words under the title ‘Lights, Hazes, Mists and Fogs’. I mouthed the words listed there: brim’skud, from Shetland, was the smoke-like haze that rises from breaking waves. Maril’d, also from Shetland, described the sparkling luminous substance seen in the sea on autumn nights, and on fish in the dark. The contents page of the book was divided into regions such as ‘Flatlands’, ‘Waterlands’ and ‘Coastlands’, and each section was followed by a glossary of place-terms for weather, landscape and nature gathered from Norn and Old English, Anglo-Romani and Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Gaelic and the Orcadian, Shetlandic and Doric dialects of Scots.' (Introduction)

'Reducing my Australia to just three books makes me feel like someone panning for gold in a fast-moving stream filled with the precious metal. If I stand still long enough and shake the pan hard enough, surely just three exceptional nuggets will be left. It’s fair to say that I have a privileged perspective.' (Introduction) 

'Childhood is a formative experience. And reading can be a transformative experience; between the lines and shelves of books there are spaces to inhabit and new ways to metamorphose. I found myself thinking about the contours of these experiences while reading Shannon Burns’ Childhood, which felt invigorating and courageous, at times breathtaking in the execution. Burns has the past interacting with the present with graceful uncertainty, tracing rifts and voids in memory. Often in life-writing there is a sense of mining the past, processing and refining its contents into a narrative that seems irrevocable and crystal-clear, leading to conclusions that point to redemption. Instead, many of the events detailed in Childhood remain uncertain due to the nature of their origin.' (Introduction)

'Something has been bugging me lately, like a seed stuck in my teeth. In a review of Amy Thunig’s Tell Me Again for this same publication, I considered the memoir alongside my own doubts about the utility of exposure: what compromises do I make to be seen, and how much control do I really have over whether I am seen or merely watched?' (Introduction)

'I try to interrogate my reader bias as often as I can; the questionable motives behind my rage or comfort when reading, how hard and how often I project my own life onto the protagonist, and sometimes even, to my own shame, onto the author. And I wonder how often I am so hungry to read something that does my feelings and my experience justice (knowing full well I’m the only one who can write that), that I start to be frustrated when a book fails to do so. I suppose I’m still working on my book, and a great way to procrastinate is to think about how other people are writing their own books, and all the things they should have done differently. It’s been a safe and reliable distraction. I’m not above it.' (Introduction)

'This year I reach an important milestone: ten years working in the literary industry. In 2013 I entered my first ‘real’ lit job, as an editorial assistant at a small magazine publisher in North Melbourne. I had worked as an intern at two other publishing companies during my master’s, but this was the first time I would actually be paid for what I had studied for five years to do—really, as a voracious reader and writer, for my whole life.' (Introduction)