Cirrus@Austlit

'The death of an author can be an awkward subject for critics. Death calls for empathy, goodwill (however retrospective), and mourning. The genres appropriate to it – elegy, eulogy, obituary – tend to be ones that burnish the subjective. Faults may be mentioned but only as part of a wholistic appraisal of a life whose worth is ultimately affirmed. This sits in tension with criticism’s objective register and the open-ended nature of interpretation and judgement. Affirmation can come across as sentimental, objective appraisal as heartless or ‘too soon’. Perhaps death is a moment when critics ought to keep their thoughts to themselves.' (Introduction)

'What would it mean to live in "a story-less world where our rich literary traditions no longer existed, and have been excised from memory"?'  (Introduction)

'Alexis Wright’s book Tracker: Stories of Tracker Tilmouth has won the 2018 Stella Prize. Tracker is, in Wright’s words, an attempt to tell an “impossible story”, using the voices of many people to reflect on the life of Tilmouth, a central and visionary figure in Aboriginal politics.' (Introduction)

'In early 2016, a writer from Western Sydney, let’s call him Lucas Carmanito, expressed some opinions in Meanjin. It was a self-described ‘screed’/‘tirade’ against… well, a lot of people. Or, at least, a lot of figures standing in for people: ‘[those] with fantasies of finding a home amid [artists]’, ‘arts community dreamer’, ‘social arts hopeful’, ‘change makers’, ‘king creators’, ‘uninvited guardians of language’, ‘political animals’, ‘demi-gods of arts management’, ‘small masters of today’, ‘social climbers of the arts’, ‘anti-artists’, ‘phoneys’, ‘vampires in our midst’, ‘fakes’, ‘hucksters’, ‘devious characters’, ‘sly culture creepers’, ‘malignants’, ‘noxious weed-lingerers’, ‘Melbourne literati mafia’, ‘cultural gorillas’, ‘Melbourne-centred lit-scene mobsters’, ‘resident fakes’, ‘anti-art overlords’, and ‘cynical shysters’. That several of these figures evoke the kind of sharp-taking film character that talks about ‘wise guys’ was no coincidence. Gore Vidal was the presiding muse, and Carmanito began by glossing one of his provocative generalisations...'  (Introduction)

'Ali Cobby Eckermann, poet and writer, was born on Kaurna country, and grew up on Ngadjuri country in South Australia. She has travelled extensively and lived most of her adult life on Arrernte country, Jawoyn country and Larrakia country in the Northern Territory. Eckermann met her birth mother, Audrey, when she was in her thirties and learned that her mob was Yankunytjatjara from north-west South Australia. Eckermann’s first book of poetry Little Bit Long Time was published in 2009 by the Australian Poetry Centre. She has been prolific, publishing several further volumes including the verse novel, Ruby Moonlight, reviewed in this issue by Mridula Chakraborty, which won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards book of the year in 2013.

'The following conversation took place in May 2015 on the lands of the Gadigal people, whose elders we respectfully acknowledge. On one part of their land, just around the point from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, now sits a series of wharfs that have been converted into luxury apartments, a cultural complex and a hotel. We sat in the hotel’s lobby. Around the table also were Lionel Fogarty and Samia Khatun, though they mostly chatted to each other. The wharf complex was then hosting the Sydney Writers Festival, and Ali had come directly from a public conversation with Ivor Indyk and fellow indigenous poet Samuel Wagon Watson. Indyk runs Giramondo Publishing, which had just released Ali’s latest collection Inside My Mother, also discussed by Chakraborty in her review.' (Introduction)