Lachlan Brown called, in an interview with Fiona Wright, a quote from
my essay The Suburban Problem of Evil his favourite one on
the Suburbs: saying I said, “nowhere else can the eternal
and the eternally
reversing dialectic between icon and iconoclasm be so sharply
observed,” or something like that’, and, without my referral
to source (me), that does sound accurate. I live where the lights
from the Mountains, the glittering or fog-lost Glenbrook Gap,
horizon the trees that hide the far Nepean, with a long
foreground of streets where cardboard houses orientally cling
low to the earth like children in between, like children
playing a game in a ring, aeroplaning close again,
shrilly, to the strange familiar earth. My vast veranda
creates ghosts and spirits, asks them until they answer,
but none answer the same, and in their courtly structure
function to contradict themselves and then each other,
providing fruitful conflict for the centre. Moonwild above me,
squealing with summer, the flying foxes in the rubber tree
squabble and fuck and seem to bounce their siblings
up and down the steel roof like gremlins. I am thinking
of Yeats’s ‘The centre will not hold’ and, God, mine hasn’t. I
hope I have more luck with the bowing roof, since my
chair swing is attached to it and shaking. I am at this time
uneasy anyway about the suburbs. The great religion
of overseas travel has descended on them like a filter
with picturesque colours, every concrete curb and corner
a Women’s Weekly World Discovery for Fine Writing. I do not
know how far this penetrates the core: long insurrection.What
I wrote tested innocence, violence, and they crucibled together
in perpetual furtive catalysts as rhythmic as this weather,
as unprepared. The suburbs are never plainly seen. Their reverence
– the icon –
only ornaments their experience. They change ornaments
like holy diction but to distance from their dead:
iconoclasm.
The sky is bled.
This grey roof holds alone.The moon becomes the sun.
Reversing magnets, to their caves, the river’s bed,
the flying fox spin home. __________________________
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
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97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
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86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
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83: MATHEMATICS
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82: LAND
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81: NEW CARIBBEAN
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80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
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50.0: NO THEME IV
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49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
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49.0: OBSOLETE
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48.1: CANADA
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48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones