Cirrus@Austlit

'The poems, novels and novellas that draw from paramythic forms and tropes draw from its symbolic power and its performative function, and often use it subversively to speak the unspeakable. They often merge incommensurate forms and include foreign words and registers or dialects, which lead to the need for translation, as well as the possibilities for what Apter calls the 'untranslatable'. Foreign words and strange customs as well as oral story-telling forms may be untranslatable to outsiders - but their usefulness is tied to what Apter refers to as a 'linguistic form of creative failure with homeopathic uses.' So, when the paramythic voice, forms and tropes are located, translated, compared and interpreted in works by Australian writers having a Greek heritage, we have a new way to read Australian literature. We no longer read these texts in isolation given an affiliation with an ethnic minority group, but instead we see these as works that, as Gunew says, 'share a world', works that include and converse with other neo-cosmopolitan writers with double or multiple cultural perspectives.' (Publication summary)

(Introduction)

'In her collection of poems Cicada Chimes, Helen Koukoutsis, an Australian poet of Greek Orthodox heritage explores the conflicting emotions produced by death and loss. The collection begins with her father’s funeral and ends with a dramatic manifesto that shows grief’s expressive power. The questions that frame this reading of Cicada Chimes are:  how does this modern Australian poet utilise cultural and religious traditions for elegy? What type of spirituality does Koukoutsis identify with? And how does her work both draw on, and critically distance itself from traditional Greek rituals of lament? I will argue that Koukoutsis’ speaker positions herself both inside and outside her Orthodox faith tradition. Her inherited Eastern Mediterranean beliefs and customs are a source of consolation for her, but they are also sites of alienation and oppression. This collection of poems negotiates this contradictory relationship to tradition.' (Publication abstract)