y separately published work icon Axon : Creative Explorations periodical issue  
Alternative title: Ambiguity
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... vol. 3 no. 1 March 2013 of Axon : Creative Explorations est. 2011 Axon : Creative Explorations
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2013 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
A Buried Spring, Maria Papas , single work criticism
'This essay explores the relationship between grief and personal expression. I use Sigmund Freud’s conceptualisations of the German word heimlich as a way to understand the ambiguity of a grief that has been buried and the narratives of self that ensued. I argue that writing and other forms of personal expression allow us to bring these ambiguities closer to us, to examine them and then to properly let them go. This is the story of how grief shook my family. The more theoretical aspects of this essay were drawn from research which formed part of my Master’s thesis at Curtin University of Technology.' (Publication abstract)
Ahead of Usi"In the black crow and owl hours", Dennis Haskell , single work poetry
On Not Flyingi"The noise never stops wherever you are.", Dennis Haskell , single work poetry
On the Vergei"The older you get", Dennis Haskell , single work poetry
In the Housei"As my mother drifts into dementia,", Philip Neilsen , single work poetry
School Chemistry Classi"Phosphorus was my friend", Philip Neilsen , single work poetry
Long-Form As Moral Category, Benjamin Ball , single work criticism

'This essay explores the modern quandary of how to successfully produce long-form narrative journalism for the internet. By ‘successfully’ I mean producing narratives in a way that engages people, igniting their passions and imagination, and fostering deep listening (Clarke 2012; Joseph 2010: 83). The ambiguous meaning of ‘long-form’ provides the substance for what follows. The essay’s rubric begins with journalism, but its ideas and arguments are intended to trespass the borderlines of nomenclature to what may otherwise be termed literary journalism, creative nonfiction, reportage, true storytelling or, in some cases, simply art.

'This essay looks at the internet through a media ecology lens in order better to understand the logic of online communication, and argues that still photography provides a potent platform for long-form narrative journalism on the net; however this argument is founded on a deeper, thornier argument, based on the ambiguity of the term ‘long-form’. I argue that in the age of digital media our understanding of ‘long-form’ must extend beyond its descriptive meaning to encompass a broader, moral category of communication. It is the ambiguity of digital long-form, and the possibility of a social definition for this mode of narrative that is the motivation for what follows.' (Publication abstract)
Serious Sleepi"The earth has tipped as I fall into my room, amongst loose change,", Cath Drake , single work poetry
For Dennis Severs Housei"A woman in fingerless gloves took me into her house.", Cath Drake , single work poetry
The Rhapsode, Petra White , single work poetry
Ode on Lovei"What he has taken of me", Petra White , single work poetry
From : Shots in the Louvre, Adrian Caesar , sequence poetry
Star in Stonei"At the top of the marble staircase stands", Adrian Caesar , single work poetry
The Medusa Anglei"A good subject for an artist: survival", Adrian Caesar , single work poetry
Poetry - I Too Dislike Translating It : Towards a Poetics of Versioneering, Dan Disney , single work criticism
Rondoi"Over the steady, littoral ground bass one sees that", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work poetry
Punctuationi"Meditative on a brown park bench", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work poetry
Disembodied Agenti"I don’t know what to do about spirit,", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work poetry
Unfettered Flights of Thought : Between Madness and Creativity, Dominique Hecq , single work criticism
'This paper is in two parts. The first examines the relationship between creativity and madness as it manifests itself in the work of Freud and Lacan and culminates in Lacan’s theorising of the operation of suppléance, a proxy device that prevents subjective dissolution and provides a key to understanding the hidden order of artmaking. The second problematises suppléance by testing it against Ehrenzweig’s theory of creativity. The aim of the paper is to identify schemata that link madness and creativity using a psychoanalytic frame in order to question theory in ways that may be helpful for artists, and more specifically creative writers. It does so by focusing on Lacan’s conceptualisation of the real as ambiguous and ‘extimate’, two ideas also present in the work of Freud and Ehrenzweig. The ambiguity and ambivalence at stake here are retrieved from the unconscious as the ‘equivocation’ between the real and the imaginary (Lacan 2005a: 102; emphasis added). This equivocation is precisely what must be negotiated, I suggest, when madness beckons and a threat to the ego looms, unless some creative solution is found which enables the knotting of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. As an art, writing may be that which knots together the ex-sistence of the real, the consistence of the imaginary and the hole introduced by the symbolic, while also showing how these can each be transformed according to the way in which suppléance works at each level.' (Publication abstract)
Writing the Young Adult Verse Novel : An Interview with Three Authors, Elizabeth Claire Alberts , single work interview
'The contemporary verse novel for children and young adults, a hybrid genre that combines poetry and narrative, emerged concurrently in Australia and the United States in the late 1990s, and has continued to proliferate. In this interview, Elizabeth Claire Alberts discusses the young adult verse novel with three award-winning writers—Helen Frost, Steven Herrick and Ronald Koertge. The initial questions investigate how these authors position themselves, and their texts, within the verse novel genre—a classification that has been problematic because of its terminological implications. The subsequent questions consider the thinking and writing processes involved in creating a young adult verse novel, and if—and how—these processes differ from the creation of prose narratives or other types of poetry. Several questions explore the collaboration between poetry and narrative, and how these authors deal with the dualistic demands of the verse novel form. The creative processes involved in writing young adult verse novels have not been thoroughly discussed in contemporary theory, and the responses from Frost, Herrick and Koertge offer an enlightening perspective of writing in this form.' (Publication abstract)
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