ESSAYS



EARTH Editorial

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Maria Takolander

Why ‘Earth’? Because we are of it, because we are destroying it, because there is nowhere else. Because to think about anything else right now feels like dissociation. The theme of this special issue isn’t radical. It’s not political. It’s …

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When Words Have No Equals: A Response to Lisa Robertson’s Thresholds: A Prosody of Citizenship

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Judy Annear

How far, then, is it possible to move beyond the confines of official languages, to find one’s voice? Is it possible to begin again, to reinvent oneself, and therefore change interactions with others, through language? Lisa Robertson certainly thinks so.

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Colours of the Ground: How Local Pigments Seek Local Words

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Gregory Day

It was just a moment, a single moment, but it contained so much. The bubbly little Getz in front of me was definitively, synthetically red. It seemed fast too, and intent, so I got a surprise when at the end of the overtaking turn-out it stopped almost to a complete halt so that I could go by.

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BAYT Editorial

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Zeina Hashem Beck

In Arabic, ‘bayt’ means house and also a line of poetry. Welcome. I hope you enter and explore.

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Dear White, It’s OK to be white

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Ghassan Hage

In October 2018, the motion ‘It’s OK to be white’ introduced in the Australian Parliament by White Supremacist Senator Pauline Hanson.

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In Search of Living Rooms Filled With Laughter: On Belonging as a British-Lebanese in a Time of Revolution

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Nasri Atallah

I had my first panic attack somewhere on the Central Line between Marble Arch and Bond Street. Sitting in an empty, well-lit carriage the world darkened and tightened around me. I thought I might disappear.

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The Arabic Poem that Jumped the Fence

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Huda Fakhreddine

In 1960, the Syrian Lebanese poet Adonis published his prose poem manifesto and the Lebanese poet Unsi al-Hajj published his collection Lan (Won’t) with its seminal introduction theorising for the possibilities of poetry in prose.

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Reel Bad Lebs

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Up until I was nine years old, my favourite film was Blood Sport. Frank Dux, who was played by Van Damme in the prime of his career, competed against the world’s best fighters in the underground martial arts tournament called the Kumite.

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PEACH Editorial

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Lucy Van

On 23 April 1979, Blair Peach, a teacher from New Zealand, was killed by a blow to the head delivered by an officer of the Metropolitan Police Force Special Patrol Group (SPG).

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System as Sociopath: Poetics, Politics and Nursing in a Letter from the States

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Cassie Lewis

Christmas Eve on the unit. The nurses’ station is in the middle of a long corridor, consisting of a low counter about ten feet long. A couple of psychiatric nurses are seated at laptops on wheeled stands, looking through medication orders, writing notes.

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Australian Marginalia: Encounters with Australia in Raymond Roussel, John Ashbery and Georges Perec

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Brendan Casey

You would not like Melbourne, for it is full of handsomes [sic] cabs. I adore it, for I love this form of locomotion. I have already used the candle-powered heater, for it is winter here; during the first part of the crossing, I think they would have melted without my lighting them.

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Phantasmagorically Noh: The Blindness and Rage of Brian Castro Deconstructed

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Javant Biarujia

‘write prose and cut your margins,’ a friend and editor advised — Brian Castro (22) Blindness The blindness presented here is metaphorical, if not phantasmagorical, for Castro calls his verse novel a ‘Phantasmagoria […] in thirty-four cantos’. For me, actual …

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