L. Bernard Hall and the feminine in Australian painting 1885-1935

This thesis draws on images to explore the processes by which an individual - Lindsay Bernard Hall - and a categorical concept - the feminine - became devalued in Australia's national tradition. It celebrates Hall's contribution to Australia's cultural heritage and the significance of his art in the visual record of modernising womanhood.

"Against Colony Collapse Disorder; or, Settler Mess in the Cells of Contemporary Australian Poetry"

This article considers the state of contemporary Australian poetry in light of colonial and late capitalist forces. It suggests that obscurity in innovative poetry is a mechanism that enables representation of the contemporary and activates new relational modes and activity among its readers. It considers how contemporary Australian poetry writes out of and transforms a toxic legacy, with particular focus on the absurd and disobedient humour.

When she refuses to settle: reading adolescent female sexuality and sexual abuse in the poetry of Genna Gardini and Kate Lilley

This essay compares the representations of adolescent sexual abuse and female sexuality in the poetry of South African poet Genna Gardini and Australian poet Kate Lilley. It explores Sabine Sielke's contention that differences in sexuality have predominantly constructed female sexuality as victimisation. In contrast, contemporary poets like Gardini and Lilley unsettle such alignment, demonstrating not only its constitutive limits but also providing a counter-discourse of radicalised agency.

Reflection: humour in poetry: in praise of the light touch

While humour can be defined as something that is fun or amusing, it can also reference something much darker, such as l’humeur noir. André Breton’s Anthology of Black Humor, the first of its kind, was intended to “showcase…the Surrealist conception of humor” according to his translator, Mark Polizzoti (1997: v). The prose poems in this selection are often surreal and use a kind of gallows humour to discuss death and abandonment.

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.