In literary terms, violence provides a readymade drama, an impetus for action and reaction, shock, emotion, transformation—from Milton’s War in Heaven to Modernist aesthetics of shock to the contemporary thriller. Literature is also a site where violent experience is variously recorded, masked, performed and objectified. The work in this issue of Southerly is situated at the intersections where intense personal experience meets the force of pervasive operations including poverty, colonialism, gendered and racialised violence from the colonial period to the present.

The issue also includes a range of unthemed material and reviews as well as the shortlisted and winning poems from the David Harold Tribe Poetry Award.

POETRY

Stuart Barnes: “DVO” & “Hidden Nature”
Julie Chevalier: “portrait”
Brenda Saunders: “Bennelong”
Anita Solak: “BILJANA – SHARP MIND“
Liam Ferney: “Bomb Nostalgia”
Rose Hunter: “what is Costco”
Gareth Morgan: “restaurateur’s nightmare“
Daniel Swain: “Personal Essay“
Iggy. J. Louis: “What’s Pretty“
Lucas Smith: “Pleistocene Rewilding”
Ian Gibbins: “home maintenance“
Nike Sulway: “strange men“
Toby Fitch: “Lippy Mirrorball“

NON-FICTION/MEMOIR/ESSAY

Brendan Ryan: “The Killers” 
Indigo Perry: “The Party“
Mette Jakobsen: “Words in Flight“

FICTION

Jordan de Visser: “A Small Collection of Things in Reverse”
Raelee Chapman: “The Undercurrent”
Ashleigh Synnott: “Story of a Gumtree”

REVIEW

Hannah Ianniello: of Justine Ettler, Bohemia Beach
Elizabeth McMahon: of Moreno Giovannoni, The Fireflies of Autumn: And Other Tales of San Ginese
David Brooks: of Barbara Noske, Thumbing It: A Hitchhiker’s Ride to Wisdom
John Kinsella: of Philip Neilsen, Wildlife of Berlin