India India

From useful surveys of Indian-Australian literary relations to a challenging appraisal of the coverage of recent attacks on Indian students in Australia; from a resurrection of the Indian Mollie Skinner to a ground-breaking comparison of life writings by Aboriginal and Dalit/Untouchable women, plus a haunting and absorbing array of stories and poems from some of the most exciting contemporary Indian and Australian writers, India India not only presents a veritable feast from the subcontinent, but reflects just how deeply our cultures, literary and otherwise, are intertwined. An, as ever, there is a selection of the best new Australian writing, whatever its subject. Stunning stories, striking poetry, provocative and absorbing essays: this issue is rich, sumptuous, and packed to the rafters, one of the finest from one of the finest Australian journals.

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

POETRY

FIVE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN POETS

Arundhathi Subramaniam, Sharecropping

Keki N. Daruwalla, Letters from Tomyris

Meena Kandasamy, four poems

Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Your Hands On My Body

Temsula Ao, A Thousand Beds

Judith Beveridge, The Deal, Little

Philip Salom: Sitar: Sympathetic Strings for Jayanta

Richard Deutch, A Postcard, Pinochle, For My Mother

Sarah Rice, Reflections

Jennifer Maiden, The Year of the Ox

Julie Chevalier, poles apart

Craig Powell, Georg Tintner’s Bicycle, Borrowing Georg Tintner’s Bicycle

Margaret Bradstock, Tank Stream Dreaming, A Ringing Glass (Rilke)

Christopher Edwards, Rilke renditions (12 & 20)

Toby Fitch, Parallels

Todd Turner, The Weeds, Hauling

Derek Motion, regional

Ali Alizadeh, Election Announced, The Bubble

SHORT FICTION

Chris Raja, The Burning Elephant

Aashish Kaul, A Dream of Horses

Christopher Cyrill, Al-Maghrib

Sarah Klenbort, The Chinese Circus Comes to Cessnock

Kunal Sharma, House and Happiness

John Kinsella, Mange

Graeme Kinross-Smith, Famille

Anna Jaquiery, Burma

ESSAYS

Paul Sharrad, Reconfiguring “Asian Australian” Writing

Malati Mathur, India and Australia: Cross Cultural Connections

Ipsita Sengupta, Understanding Mollie’s India: exploring texts, co-texts and contexts of Letters of a V.A.D. and Tucker Sees India

Maria Preethi Srinivasan, Constructing Aboriginal and Dalit Women’s Subjectivity and Making “Difference” Speak

K.G. Naga Radhika, Presenting the Past: Historiography in Aboriginal Theatre of the 80s and 90s

Patrick Bryson, The Men Who Stare at Bogans

Mark Macleod, Reading My First Time in India

Meenakshi Hariharan & C.T. Indra, Negotiating Immigrant Identity: Hazel Edwards’ Fake ID as a Techno-Gothic Child Narrative

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

…………………..

AND IN THE LONG PADDOCK

POETRY

Temsula Ao, Mothers . . .

Mona Attamimi, Betel-Nut

Judith Beveridge, The View from the Monastery

Richard Deutch, The sun from behind the house, Evening Meal

Johannes Bobrowski, trans. Richard Deutch (with Craig Powell,

Rudi Krausmann): Valéry or the Beans

Patrick Jones, Natural Bitterness

Craig Powell, A Christmas Letter

SHORT FICTION

Michelle Cahill, The Lucid Krishna

Helen Dinmore, Counting the Dead

Zoe Harrington, Depono

Bem Le Hunte, What the Servant Saw

Maree McCourt, One Point Six One

Trevor Shearston, Dog

ESSAY

Meenakshi Bharat & Sharon Rundle, Tackling the Topic of Terrorism

REVIEWS

Ali Alizadeh, of Kerry Leves, A Shrine to Lata Mangeshka, and Vicki Viidikas, New and Rediscovered, ed. Barry Scott

John Jenkins, of Philip Hammial, Skin Theory, Susan Hawthorne, Earth’s Breath, Felicity Plunkett, Vanishing Point, and Jordie Albiston, The sonnet according to “m”

Aashish Kaul, of Peter Boyle, Apocrypha

Tessa Lunney, of Gretchen Shirm, Having Cried Wolf, Barry Divola, Nineteen Seventysomething, Bob Franklin, Under Stones, and Emmett Stinson, Known Unknowns