So the woman’s dream is, by their and our hands, hysterical. (And not entirely woman.) Voices of expression and tins of regret. It seems that, despite all tendencies, we have stairs instead. Or steps. Or plans of steps, stepmothers and stepladders. Stemming...
Data is extractable and its valence changes. Precarity in relationship > when we are situated in relationship to circumstance > when others situate us in relationship causally. White supremacy destabilises and shakes, only once in a while. Is white...
You can’t tell if your family gave up growing vegetables. Your Mum, gazing over, wishes for peaches. Our turmeric/sage/ parsley (the talking herb we call it in our family language) tastes like nothing. Night -time, in the garden, you observe minute LEDs...
If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it. Anne Carson You take photos of the auction, the world’s straightest Mardi Gras. They fill the street like the opposite of rubble. You have no skin here; you raise $100 000 and...
Inspired by the Tamil saying, “மாற்றம் ஒன்றே மாறாதது”(matrum ondrae maaraathathu) Translation: Change is the only unchangeable thing The bird sits alone, Waiting, and mulling boredom, Feeling like dust float. Change, ablaze unchanged,...
Blood orange sun burning and tar melts under peach haze while house sails obscure in custard winds coughing hacking strangling to breathe and soft fur faces are singed and bloodied birds falling are like dying while flying like drink driving and trees turn to less...
stood before an automated door that refused to acknowledge my existence I thought but I’m here & yes I do remember when time online was less anxious—not a threat to national security democracy of course an election is not a cake walk though strolling...
After Zora Neale Hurston Tima carried a long-legged ease about her, thundering strides of a leader, full lips and wide eyes and melanin. She would raise her hand like the switch in Adelaide weather, abrupt and sure, delivering answers in Maths like they were meant to...
‘Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.’ – Ibn Khaldun The pandemic crisis has...
In the morning, the noise of the trucks from the distant freeway has stopped. There is just the sound of the wind blowing on the gate outside my window and, every now and then, a bird tweeting. I wheel my bike onto the street. There are only five reasons to leave...
Panorama Blackness is a pleasure. I can imagine the long line of women who look like me & wonder where their bodies end & mine begins. Flesh of chocolate A face checked by the hand of God. My DNA is made of blood, sweat & tears.’ I was formed by the...
Our days of rest are passed in silent prayer Before the promise of our teenage courtship Convinces us to do away with care And sees us come together, lip to lip. Within his bed and veiled in whitest sheet, Our hidden love evades forbidding eye, As I anoint and humbly...
Draw me a picture of mountains, child. Sketch creatures, trees, flowers, butterflies and birds flying, swept high by winds in wild skies. Together, we will name these denizens of nature, make up words to pattern silent pages, (echoes of our almost empty world,...
Calvin hauled the mattress out of the boot. He had it draped over the bonnet and up the windscreen by the time Ngaire back. ‘The blokes in the first car say about twenty hours,’ she said as she climbed up beside him. She could feel the windscreen wiper poking through...
James Church is the pseudonym of a former CIA operative who writes remarkable detective novels set in North Korea. His main character is an oddly plausible and endearing North Korean detective named Inspector O. In addition to his novels, Church also writes columns in...
Image credit: Kon Kudo. Dear soft rubber, hard metal dress me: one part at a time interject with vanit y, shoulders nearby hold arm above head press face against windscreen stay MALLEABLE ...
Image by Farhad Bandesh. The following artworks, writing, poetry and music come from four asylum seekers—Mustafa, Abbas, Farhad, and Behrouz—who have been detained for the past five years by the Australian Government on Manus Island and Nauru. Hundreds of refugees...
What else have I dreamt of, waking in twisted sheets as the blue dawn walks the slope at the end of our beach? The hands have memory, the breath too. In the sky, a letter in cloud, a rune of ending, written without hands, without breathing. The hands have memory, the...
The East Asia-Australia Flyway is a migratory shorebird highway that over 8 million birds use to travel between the Arctic Circle and Australia.[1] Countless tiny birds make this amazing journey each year, however their path is now being impacted by climate change...
She learns shame when she’s 11 years old. When their cackles echo through her nightmares and snarl to the rhythm of the 8 o’clock bell. -ding- dong-ding-dong – Her eyes follow the herds as they reluctantly pull apart – pushing and shoving, teasing and hugging – and...
On the first anniversary of my mother’s passing, a letter was forwarded to me from the Holocaust Centre. My mother had been prominent in Holocaust Education. A woman in Wisconsin was writing a book and looking for my mother to provide her with background...
Artist Statement This short film explores the current political issues surrounding refugees in Australia, focusing on their social rejection. It draws from my family history of persecution and migration. I want the work to remind people that the world is not made up...
“The ocean is at its best today.” It was hard to believe how this sentence which, on the surface, seemed so optimistic, could be so depressing. An individual’s engagement with creation is inherently personal. For some, the idea of creation is deeply embedded in...
– Photographs and interviews by Elena McGannon Artist Statement Four years ago, after being isolated and raped on a night out with friends, a female district attorney told Danielle Tansino that the man who raped her would not face prosecution because “jurors don’t...
When we first released our opening theme, we included this blurb to kickstart some responses: “To create, creativity, the power to create, creative resistance – things as elusive as they are central to what makes us human. It may be difficult to define what it means...
… Through many years of To me creating Creating can be the most I find it hard to grasp the word “create” and Every now and then Sometimes I survive by creating, I don’t know where I would Create? Make a mess and pick up the pieces....
