Cirrus@Austlit

'In her fifth full-length poetry collection, Tossed up by the Beak of a Cormorant, Nandi Chinna continues to write about her engagement with the natural world. Authored in collaboration with Wagaba Nyikina Warrwa Elder, Anne Poelina, this book sees her move north and west into the Kimberley. This is where the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) runs through Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Nyikina, Walmajarri, and Wangkatjungka Country. It is a place that poetry readers will recognise from the geographically proximate classic Reading the Country (1984) by Paddy Roe, Stephen Muecke, and Krim Bentarrak, Ngarla Songs (2003) by Alexander Brown and Brian Geytenbeek, and the ethnopoetic George Dyungayan’s Bulu Line (2014), edited by Stuart Cooke. With that in mind, Chinna’s Kimberley is a place that is remote for many readers, but not entirely unknown.' (Introduction)

'Without question, the seminal text of our times is Bluey. More than any other cultural product of the last ten years, Bluey binds together the imagined community, highlights the popularity of watch on demand, and reflects and generates the zeitgeist. Its popularity demonstrates this, but that does not account for its ubiquity at the level of discourse and commodity. Bluey is everywhere once you see it. Yet within that reality, we lack a critical consciousness of what Bluey actually means; failing to understand the semiotics of the scooter, the toothpaste, the plush toy in our daily lives let alone how we might unpack the actual animated show from which this stems. For a whole generation of children, their parents and carers, Bluey deserves to be read closely then, if only to help us know more about who we are right here and right now. That starts with acknowledging the suburban reality of where 87% of Australians actually live. Bluey if it lives anywhere lives in that heartland most of all. '  (Introduction)

'My love of the world game and of world literature exist alongside one another. 1994 stands as a remarkable year when I both fell in love with USA ’94, watching Roberto Baggio sky the ball over the cross-bar to lose on penalties, and when I began reading novels on my own. In 1998, I watched France win while visiting family in Singapore, a true testament to adolescence, eating fried kway teow in front of the big screen, watching Frank Leboeuf and Lilian Thuram defend as though their lives depended on it, which they surely did. In that year, I remember with great fondness reading J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K as I began to find my way through contemporary writers who had won ‘Big Prizes’. By 2002, when South Korea and Japan hosted the World Cup, I had started making my way through the classics, from Kharms to Camus to Coleridge. And so, football and reading have always been about leisure to me.'  (Introduction)

'When you arrive in Singapore, chances are you will arrive at Changi Airport. You could come by the Causeway from Johor Bahru, but chances are that you will fly in, to a clean, quiet, gleaming, glistening, orderly terminal that looks more like a luxury mall than any other airport you have been to, especially LAX. The muzak will lull you, the travelators move you, and the janitors spray and wipe behind you. This is travel that is sanitised, suburban, temperature controlled by sensors and computers. After you pass customs, you will grade their service on a touchscreen and it will tell you to ‘have a nice day’. As you collect your bags, you will not be jostled, not even hurried let alone harangued, and you will begin to glimpse the concrete and green just out of reach, just in the humidity out there outside, all before you step aboard the MRT to take you anywhere in the city state you might desire, sweat-free. The money is made of plastic and there are stewards in case you need guidance, all while being welcomed into an idea of the present that has harbingers in the past and future. Welcome to Singapore.' (Introduction)

'Iris spoke to Robert Wood about return and renewal, balance and purpose, and how poetry matters across borders.' 

'Kim spoke to Robert Wood about belonging, belief, and reading.'

'Kaya spoke to Robert Wood about language, heritage, and routes.'

'A number of recent political events in Australia will have enduring and wide-ranging impacts on freedom of expression in this country. They include the denial of access to archival papers concerning the Whitlam dismissal, which Professor Jenny Hocking detailed in the April 2020 issue of ABR.' (Introduction)

'Suburbanism is a book of twelve essays on contemporary poetry. Robert Wood looks at New York, consumerism, lifestyle, birds, the Western Pilbara, diaspora, theorising, India, republics, malls, and supermarkets. He offers a fresh take on poetry as it relates to the suburbs, encouraging the reader to reflect on meaning in our own time, and to think about the field of New World Literature.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

 (Introduction)