Poetry and prose as pedagogical tools for addressing difficult knowledges: translocational positionality and issues of collective political agency

In this paper the focus is on the possibilities that poetry and prose offer as pedagogical tools that can both accommodate and address difficult and painful knowledges. The paper presents and analyses poems and prose written by students at a non-traditional secondary school for disadvantaged girls (many of whom identify as Indigenous Australian). Through stories of grief and pain, but also hope and possibility, the poetry/prose book signifies a sense of collective political agency against oppressive relations towards the girls creating new moulds of existence. Contra to dominant approaches to recognising and valuing Indigeneity in schools, these writings represent Indigenous culture as a complex, dynamic and contingent social practice. While it is contended that a valuing of marginalised cultures is an important aspect of cultural recognition, the paper argues that a broader and more critical focus is required in beginning to address Indigenous oppressions.

'Untranscended / life itself': the poetry of Pam Brown

Pam Brown's cynicism, satire, attractions and repulsions seem built around an absent centre, something always already in the poetry lost in the tedious non-occurrences of contemporary Australian life. Brown has typically published in a scattered, small-press way and while this small-press, small-readership approach is something most Australian poets know intimately, Brown has made it into an art form, and one which seems in keeping with her own ironic and at times cynical approach to the world of appearance, celebrity and media hype.

The impossible infinite: Les Murray, poetry, and the sacred

In 1983, the provocative and idiosyncratic Australian poet Les Murray published a volume entitled The People's Otherworld. At the heart of that middle volume of Murray's work is a poem about grace entitled Equanimity. Here, McCredden examines how does the poetry of Murray seek to represent the sacred.

More dominant in their inactivity: consumer response and the adoption of digital TV in Australia

After much hesitation, discussion, and power brokering, Australia adopted digital TV for its Free-to air broadcasting on January 1, 2001. However, by December 2002, only a few thousand homes had adopted the technology. This paper examines the implementation and regulation of digital TV in Australia from the point of view of the ‘established base’ the new technology will replace, theories on diffusion and innovation of new technologies, and the Justification Model, which sees technology choice as social gambling. It then evaluates the various protectionist regulations and limitations imposed on the technology to safeguard the various stakeholders, the implementation strategies used, lack of digital content, marketing efforts, negative media coverage, and the economic realities of the technology, and argues that if consumers reject the technology altogether, it would lead to Australia missing the future applications of digital technology and the opportunity to address the issue of the ‘digital divide’ in the 21st century.

Seasonal and diet comparisons of the diets of four dominant fish species within the main channel and flood-zone of a small intermittently open estuary in south-eastern Australia

The diets of four highly-abundant, dominant fish species within the Surrey River, a small intermittently open estuary in south-east Australia, were examined from specimens collected between July 2004 and June 2005. These four, similar-sized species (Atherinosoma microstoma, Galaxias maculatus, Philypnodon grandiceps and Pseudogobius olorum) have limited ability to spatially segregate along the length of the estuary owing to its small size relative to other estuarine habitats. All four species fed on a variety of prey items including crustaceans, insects and detritus. Despite this parity, the four species were demonstrated to occupy differing dietary niches that were concluded to be responsible for reducing interspecific feeding competition. Seasonal variations in the diets were observed for A. microstoma and Philypnodon grandiceps, with these species also exhibiting contrasting diel feeding behaviours. The closure of the estuary mouth led to the flooding of its margins, resulting in an increase in the size of the estuary and providing alternative food resources for the fish to exploit. It appears the inundation of the flood-zone facilitated further significant divergence in the diets of the fish and is likely to be of high ecological value to the estuary.

Contemporary poetry and the sacred: Vincent Buckley, Les Murray and Samuel Wagan Watson

VINCENT Buckley's Golden Builders and Other Poems (1976) is an important poetic experiment in its direct and exulted address to the city and to the sacred. The city is Melbourne in which Buckley lived, worked and wrote for forty years. In the original volume, the epigraph to the twenty-seven part sequence 'Golden Builders' is from William Blake's Jerusalem, a profound and idiosyncratic yoking together of the corporeal and the sacred

Poetry as a starting point for drama: learning to tolerate ambiguity

This article explores the use of process drama in an English classroom to explore issues raised by 'A poem for the Rainforest' by Judith Nicholls. The drama is used to explore both the themes and forms of the poem, the episodic nature of the drama reflecting the episodic form of the poem. The work engages the students, and the process drama works to layer complexity onto the issues rather than simplifying them.