Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962), ex-mill girl novelist

This short article explores the life and work of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, the first working-class woman in Britain to publish full-length novels. It assesses her politics and her literacy legacy and is part of the Women's History Network's series, 'Reclaiming Women's Histories'.

On the environmental valuation of catastrophe: revisiting mining disasters in the United Kingdom, 1851-1962

In the context of environmental valuation of natural disasters, an important component of the evaluation procedure lies in determining the periodicity of events. This paper explores alternative methodologies for determining such periodicity, illustrating the advantages and the disadvantages of the separate methods and their comparative predictions. The procedures employ Bayesian inference and explore recent advances in computational aspects of mixtures methodology. The procedures are applied to the classic data set of Maguire et al (Biometrika, 1952) which was subsequently updated by Jarrett (Biometrika, 1979) and which comprise the seminal investigations examining the periodicity of mining disasters within the United Kingdom, 1851-1962.

Johnson and Juvenal in John Ashbery's 'An Additional Poem' (1962)

A note on Ashbery's metaphorical and intertextual practice.

Something like an emergency

‘Something like an emergency’ is a collaborative project between Josephine Scicluna (words) and Tom Kazas (music). It was performed at ‘The Hunger Artist: Food and the Arts’, 2010 Double Dialogues conference in Toronto. This entry presents the performance text and exegetical responses from the writer and musician, providing both a theoretical context, in the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Gaston Bachelard, and a discussion of the improvisational basis of the project.

The poem investigates the hunger of writing as a desire to break through impasses of language: in love and in the writer’s translation of vision. The difficulties of ordering food in different languages and countries become a metaphor for breaking communication and the writer’s (often frustrated) desire to deliver the right words onto her plate. From countless bowls of lentil soup (which were never vegetarian) on overnight bus trips in Turkey to Venice and Vegas Live on Birrarung Mar, this work forms a series of meditations on hunger - presenting the troubled body of the writer, troubled images of the body and conversations and places which have gone awry.