Elizabeth McMahon

Brigitta Olubas

Antigone Kefala is one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere; it would be difficult to overstate the significance of her life and work in the culture of this nation. Over the last half-century, her poetry and prose have reshaped and expanded Australian literature and prompted us to re-examine its premises and capacities. From the force of her poetic imagery and the cadences of her phrases and her sentences to the large philosophical and historical questions she poses and to which she responds, Kefala has generated in her writing new ways of living in time, place and language. Across six collections of poetry and five prose works, themselves comprising fiction, non-fiction, essays and diaries, she has mapped the experience of exile and alienation alongside the creativity of a relentless reconstitution of self. Kefala is also a cultural visionary. From her rapturous account of Sydney as the place of her arrival in 1959, to her role in developing diverse writing cultures at the Australia Council, to the account of her own writing life amongst a community of friends and artists in Sydney Journals (2008), she has reimagined the ways we live and write in Australia.

New Australian Modernities

Antigone Kefala

Behrouz Boochani

Omid Tofighian

Hani Abdile

Janet Galbraith

"The island continent has created an archipelago of incarceration in its surrounding seas. This issue is devoted entirely to the work of past and present refugees."--from publisher's website.

Southerly 79-2: Writing Through Fences: Archipelago of Letters

David Brooks

Southerly

What does war mean to us now? With our knowledge of the long aftermath, what does it mean to be at peace? What is the difference between post-war and peace? How do peace and remembrance combine? How do we remember in the midst of war? 2015 is the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli, a key date for Australia amidst the global remembrance of the Great War. These global remembrances have expanded our understanding of World War I to recognise the range of involvement, the span of impact and the long aftermath. It has focused us, too, on the cultures of reconstruction and memorialisation. ANZAC Day began as a memorial for the fallen soldiers of Gallipoli, but now includes all those who have suffered in wars of the past century. It is an Antipodean day of remembrance, but with our new understanding of war, what and how do we remember? Wars of Australian involvement, hostilities within Australia, wartime and post-war emigration and immigration, remembrance and remembering and memorialisation, trauma and illness, and peacetime after war, will all be addressed in the best essays and memoir, poetry, fiction, and reviews in this edition of Southerly.

War and Peace

Southerly Journal Volume 75 No 3

Australia is the planet’s sole island continent. This book argues that the uniqueness of this geography has shaped Australian history and culture, including its literature. Further, it shows how the fluctuating definition of the island continent throws new light on the relationship between islands and continents in the mapping of modernity. The book links the historical and geographical conditions of islands with their potent role in the imaginary of European colonisation. It prises apart the tangled web of geography, fantasy, desire and writing that has framed the Western understanding of islands: their real and material conditions and their symbolic resonance from antiquity into globalised modernity. The book also traces how this spatial imaginary has shaped the modern 'man' who is imagined as being the island's natural inhabitant or mirror. Importantly, the book challenges these habits of thought by their relocation within larger topological and imaginary visions from islanders themsleves.

Elizabeth McMahon

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