Cirrus@Austlit

'In Australia, August is Poetry Month. In the United States, it is celebrated in April, the spring month with its rich poetic association with spring. Apparently April was chosen, however, because it was the best month for promotion as well as for celebration. The imperatives to promote and to celebrate stand in some tension. Poets and lovers of poetry may long to return to the golden age of poetry early in the twentieth century when every newspaper and magazine regularly published poems and had poetry editors. The name of the poet laureate was known throughout the land. Poets, too, were seen to embody and to help shape the national spirit. Rupert Brooke in the early days of the 1914 war, for example, and Wilfred Owen at its ending. Or Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova in Russia, where Stalin feared poets despite their lack of battalions. '

'Our public debates are often marked by hostility and exclusion. Many of them touch on identity, and seem to say more about the protagonists than about the issues. Underlying and adding to the heat of such debates are questions about Australian identity. Can a Muslim, a Jew, an opponent or supporter of Israeli actions in Gaza, be regarded as authentically Australian, for example? Though the debates are usually vituperative in tone and simplistic in argument, they raise, however, deeper questions about why they start and what fuels their energy.' (Introduction) 

'Some years ago a pleasant British crime procedural was named The Last Detective. The title was shorthand for, ‘If we needed someone to solve this crime you would be the Last Detective we would send.’ The Last Detective, of course, was always the first to solve it.

'Two recent news stories recalled the series. Both concerned the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. At a time when the news is awash with economic stress, rising inequality, wars and rumours of war, and multiple threats to democracy, the last stories I would have thought pertinent were that of the recovery of the bus used in the movie, and the project to remake the film involving its original cast.' (Introduction)

'My Father’s Shadow is a beautifully constructed three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle in which perfectly formed and elegant stories from different times and places are juxtaposed and tested for fit, so forming a pattern of meaning that is never closed.' (Introduction) 

'In recent years dumping names and persons has become a cottage industry. In some cases ancestral names replace more recent ones. In other cases the current name is seen as objectionable. Generally, I have been unmoved by the debates – I can see arguments for and against. On hearing of a proposal to rename Deakin University, however, I found myself annoyed. But after more reading I saw the force of the proposal. I have a lot of time for Alfred Deakin, the second Australian Prime Minister who led the movement for federation. Deakin, however, also advocated both in Victorian  and later in Federal parliament for policies based on racist theory which have wrecked the lives of Indigenous Australians. So what should the university do?' (Introduction)

'In public discussions of Artificial Intelligence people have, for the most part, focused on how it will affect employment and the reliability of news. These are certainly serious matters that will relatively soon affect the livelihood of many individuals and the shape of society. They also prompt us to ask, as AI becomes more varied and sophisticated, how it might change our understanding of ourselves as human beings. To grapple with this large question it may be helpful to ask more apparently playful and peripheral questions. One such question asks whether AI could write good poetry.' (Introduction)

'Like many Australians, I was dismayed by Stan Grant’s decision to stand down from his work with the ABC. Dismayed for him at the racist abuse that he had suffered. Dismayed for us as a community that he should have been so unsupported. Dismayed for Australia that his argument that racism is entrenched in Australia was once again verified. Dismayed for myself that one of the most consistently stimulating public intellectuals in Australia should be so silenced.' (Introduction)

'Taking to the Field highlights overlooked women who made noteworthy contributions to science in Australia, despite gender-based limitations. This thought-provoking book delves into the complexities of gender and science, revealing a more nuanced and diverse history than previously assumed.'(Introduction)

'Eighty years ago, Catholics sought the great Catholic Novel. Candidates such as Graeme Greene, Evelyn Waugh, JF Powers and Walter Percy were mentioned and often found wanting. The deeper question, of course, is what might count as a Catholic novel, and indeed whether a novel that was distinctively Catholic could be a great novel. At a time highlighted by Hitler, Stalin and war the specifically Catholic themes were often identified as sin and forgiveness focused on the tortured death of Christ. Graeme Green’s novel Brighton Rock was taken to invite the question whether the antihero Pinkie, who at the end of the novel jumps suicidally from a cliff, might have repented between the cliff top and the water. ' (Introduction)

'I met Paulie Stewart on the last pages of All the Rage, when he came to work at Jesuit Social Services. There he lit up any room that he entered and helped change the lives of young people with whom he worked. I knew that he was the brother of Tony Stewart, one of the five newspaper reporters killed at Balibo, and that had also been a member of a band of which I had vaguely heard: Painters and Dockers. I found that he was a great story-teller. Two tales stay in my mind.' (Introduction)

'Towards the end of Brenda Niall’s new book My Accidental Career she muses on her reluctance to insert herself into her biography of Judith Cassab and the authority that allowed her to do so in her biographies of Archbishop Mannix and Irish Jesuit William Hackett. She says, ‘When it came to Hackett and Mannix, I was back in a world that I remembered well. I had the right to speak’. '  (Introduction)

'This week is bookended by the Anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations (13 February) and World Social Justice Day (20 February). The Anniversary of the Apology recalls a specific, local event which was preceded by long discussion, celebrated with great publicity, and accompanied by great emotion. Social Justice Day is more general and timeless in its reference and largely passes by unnoticed. It offers a larger view of the rhythm of public life. The difference in focus between the two events is like that of the beach seen at the onrush of a king tide with its rearranging of the beach and local flooding and of the view provided by the tide charts and current patterns over a year. These different perspectives need to be held together. ' (Introduction)