Cirrus@Austlit

'Randolph Stow (1935-2010) prefaced his novel To the Islands with this quotation [see epigraph below] drawn from the writings of his great great uncle. Coming from an island that is also a continent, where 'arguably, 'island-ness' was and still is at the core of the Australian worldview' (Davies and Neuenfeldt, 2004: 137), the notion of 'island', sometimes imaginary, sometimes having a geographical precision, is manifest in Stow's writings in many different ways. An aura of mystery pervades all of his novels, the sea is often present, and there are recurring themes of isolation and boundedness.' (Author's introduction)

As a researcher for AustLit, I have tried to identify and locate points of entry through which even a monolingual researcher might access and build awareness of Australia’s multilingual literatures. Community language newspapers, which have existed in Australian since the nineteenth century, and which continue with substantial circulations in the twenty-first century, are excellent resources if one is fluent in the respective language. Bilingual or multilingual magazines or newspapers are not as common, but can provide an English reading researcher with documentation of community literary activities that would otherwise remain inaccessible. These magazines are like islands – multilingual islands in the midst of the dominant monolingual literary culture. In the Australian literary context it may be appropriate to think of the production of literature in other languages as islands of literary activity where multiple languages are maintained amidst the surrounding English writing. In this essay I’ll discuss a number of literary journals that provide access to Australia’s multilingual literary activities. Two of these are indeed multilingual, carrying articles and creative writing in a number of languages. The third is bilingual, publishing content in English and Vietnamese only, but will be included it here as an indication of the breadth and significance of writing in Australia in languages other than English, writing that is diasporic and transnational as well as multilingual. (Author's abstract)