Never-Never Land : affective landscapes, the touristic gaze and heterotopic space in Australia

This article explores how the imaginative use of the landscape in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008) intersects with the fantasy of Australianness that the film constructs. We argue the fictional Never-Never Land through which the film’s characters travel is an, albeit problematic, ‘indigenizing’ space that can be entered imaginatively through cultural texts including poetry, literature and film, or through cultural practices including touristic pilgrimages to landmarks such as Uluru and Kakadu National Park. These actual and virtual journeys to the Never-Never have broader implications in terms of fostering a sense of belonging and legitimating white presence in the land through affect, nostalgia and the invocation of an imagined sense of solidarity and community. The heterotopic concept of the Never-Never functions to create an ahistorical, inclusive space that grounds diverse conceptions of Australianness in a shared sense of belonging and home that is as mythical, contradictory and wondrous as the idea of the Never-Never itself. The representations of this landscape and the story of the characters that traverse it self-consciously construct a relationship to past events and to film history, as well as constructing a comfortable subject position for contemporary Australians to occupy in relation to the land, the colonial past, and the present.

Negotiating the creative and the critical : Paul Dawson’s creative writing and the new humanities

In the first Modern Language Association newsletter for 2006, renowned poetry critic and MLA President, Marjorie Perloff, remarked on the growing ascendency of Creative Writing within English Studies in North America. In her column, Perloff notes that "[i]n studying the English Job Information List (JIL) so as to advise my own students and others I know currently on the market, I noticed what struck me as a curious trend: there are, in 2005, almost three times as many positions in creative writing as in the study of twentieth-century literature" (3). The dominance of Creative Writing in the English Studies job list in turn reflects the growing student demand for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the field—over the past 20 years, BA and MA degrees in Creative Writing in North American tertiary institutions have quadrupled (3)...

Embouchure

Poem

Insurgency

Poem

Staging childhoods : experiments in authentic theatre making practice with children

This practice-led PhD project investigates the ways in which society positions children through a broad set of social, cultural and historical considerations and examines these within the frame of theatre making. The study proposes a model of practice that moves beyond participant empowerment toward a more dynamic understanding of the creative process that sees adults and children working together to create mainstream artistic product. It contends that this model creates conditions conducive to authentic theatre making practice with children as evidenced in the researcher’s original performance work Joy Fear and Poetry.

Plagiarism 2.0 : the new economy of academic dishonesty

As a writer, teacher and scholar of ‘the knowledge economy’ in the broadest sense, plagiarism fascinates me. I first encountered plagiarism in my Year 12 English class. We had been working for weeks writing poems and had submitted them to our teacher Mr How for assessment. Mr How was generally a pleasant individual who I remember as one of my favourite school teachers; however, he did not suffer fools easily. The time arrived for each of us to read our work to the class. Year 12 poetry being what it usually is, most of our efforts tended to blur into an angsty, slightly pretentious, self-important mess (similar to staff meetings in many university departments). However, one student’s poem stood out. It was emotive, insightful and economical in its use of language … and best of all, it did not suck! The poem’s author was one of the class’ biggest jocks, and not usually one to display such sensitivity, so we were all a little taken aback by what we were hearing. Stunned silence! At the poem’s conclusion, Mr How congratulated the student on such an excellent effort and produced a copy of the collected works of Emily Dickenson (if I remember correctly) from under his desk. He asked the student to turn to a page he had marked and recite the poem printed there. It was, of course, the same one the student had passed off as his. This time, there was no stunned silence: just the sound of remorseful sobs from our jock-poet-plagiarist who had been exposed in front of his classmates.

Lago Nicaraguense

Poem

Late Hammershoi

Poem

The Ash Burner

Growing up with his father in a small coastal town, all Ted knows about his mother is that she died when he was a boy. His father has brought them halfway across the world to start anew, but her absence defines and haunts their lives. When Ted meets Anthony and Claire, an intense friendship begins, carrying them to Sydney and university. They introduce him to poetry and art, and he feels a sense of belonging at last. But as the trio’s friendship deepens over the years, Ted must learn to negotiate the boundaries of love, and come to terms with a legacy of secrets and silence. Written with extraordinary grace and sensitivity, The Ash Burner explores beauty and desire, grief and loss, and the search for one’s true self.

“You could scream the place down”: Five poems on the experience of aged care

This article presents five poems constructed from interviews with older people adjusting to living in residential aged care. They are part of the “Inside Aged Care” project, on-going longitudinal phenomenological research tracking the lived experience of aged care from the perspective of residents, family members and service providers. Poetry, through the process of poetic transcription, provided an engaging, evocative and almost visceral way to help us appreciate what it might be like to be ageing in aged care. To date, despite a growing body of work documenting the importance and impact of research in the form of poetry, applying a literary lens is rare in gerontological research. At a very practical level, therefore, we hope these poems help older people, their families, students and those working in aged care better understand the unique world and perspective of new aged care residents.

The Scent of Ancestral Memory

Poetry expresses the physical and spiritual worlds that other kinds of writing cannot. Travelling open our minds and frees our spirit. Creative writings and meditations on life, spirit, grace and relationships, art and nature weave their way through these lyrical poems. Some poems are suitable for study in the Australian Curriculum.

Children's Literature Digital Resources Project

Children's Literature Digital Resources is a full text digital repository of Australian children’s literature from 1830 to 1945. Users can read online the complete texts of a selection of early Australian children’s literature, both popular and rare. Digitised items include children’s and young adult fiction, poetry, short stories, and picture books. Users can also read related full text critical articles that were digitised as part of the project.

The Reef Cycle: Paradise; Paradise Plundered; Paradise Preserved by people Power

This is a musical theatre production with an environmental message addressing a Queensland, Australia tussle between the development of the Galilee Coal Basin and the potential threat to the health of the Great Barrier Reef along the Queensland coast. The drama is enacted by characters representing "goodies" and "baddies" and includes epic poetry, dance, orchestra and drama. The whole performance is enacted in the midst of a post graduate student art exhibition with a coral and coal theme.