Elemental

Elemental is concerned with our experience of the elements in an era of climate change. The four elements of classical thought (earth, fire, water, air) align with what we now call four states of matter and hence to what is termed the “material turn” in contemporary debates in the humanities. This material turn seeks new ways of understanding the physical world and is motivated by the urgency of shared vulnerability on the planet.

In Australia this experience of extreme weather, including floods and fires, embroils the entire ecosystem including literary ecologies. This issue considers a range of Australian writers who address the modern experience of the elements in their volatility and magnificence, raising questions, recording and responding to the matter as the matter at hand.

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CONTENTS

Editorial

ESSAYS AND MEMOIRS

Angela Rockel, ‘Red’
Ian Buchanan, ‘Not our element’
Alice Bishop, ‘Wyenondable Ashes’ 
George Kouvaros, ‘Oi Kaymeni (‘The Burnt Ones’)’
Roslyn Jolly, ‘St. Thomas’ Churchyard’
John Stephenson, ‘A Richer Dust’
Michael Hooper, ‘Singing Seahorses: Eyre and the Air’ 
Dael Allison, ‘Angry Waves’
Gabrielle Dixon-Ritchie, ‘‘Aesthetics in Welcome Crisis’: Kate Fagan’s The Long Moment as New-Lyricist, Post-Romantic, Transversal, Post-Language Poetry’

POETRY

Geraldine Burrowes, ‘premonitory sky’ 
Dugald Williamson, ‘Caprice’
Pam Brown, ‘Twelve noon’
Catherine Vidler, ‘Intersection’ 
Ivy Alvarez, ‘True bones’
Kate Lilley, ‘Atomic’
Carol Jenkins, ‘The Pattern’
Stuart Cooke, ‘Old World’ 
Laurie Duggan, ‘After a storm, Brisbane’ 
Chris Oakey, ‘Falls’
David Brooks, ‘Choosing to Stay’, ‘Silver’ 
Simon West, ‘Hail Guns in the Goulburn Valley’ 
Sophie Curzon-Siggers, ‘mourning takes me in red’
Noel Jeffs, ‘Drying out the land’
Philip Hammial, ‘Ca vous en bouche un coin’
Vanessa Page, ‘Petrichor” 
Brett Dionysius, ‘American Love Poem’ 

SHORT FICTION

Raelee Chapman, ‘The Bird Watcher’
Moreno Giovannoni, ‘The Bones of Genesius’ 
Claire Corbett, ‘The Trillion Pearl Choker’
Lauren Aimee Curtis, ‘He took me to motels’

REVIEWS

Brigid Rooney, of David Carter, Always almost modern: Australian print cultures and modernity 
Felicity Plunkett, of Robert Dixon, Alex Miller: the Ruin of Time 
Justin Clemens, of A.J. Carruthers, Axis, Book I: Areal, and of John Watson, 3 Painters: Marquet, Bonnard, Beckmann
Shaun Bell, of Christos Tsiolkas, Merciless Gods 
Cameron Lowe, of Liam Ferney, Boom
Nicolette Stasko, of Peter Boyle, Towns in the Great Desert
Kate Livett, of Judith Wright, The Coral Battleground
Judith Johnston, of Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, The Colonial Journals and the Emergence of Australian Literary Culture 
Vivian Smith, of Evan Jones, Selected Poems, and Stephen Edgar, Exhibits of the Sun 
Lesley Hawkes, of Amanda Curtin, Elemental
Catherine Noske, of Robert Dixon, Brigid Rooney (eds.), Scenes of Reading: Is Australian Literature a World Literature?
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, of Laurie Duggan, Allotments, and John Mateer, Emptiness: Asian Poems 1998–2012  
Ali Jane Smith, of L.K. Holt, Keeps
Julie Chevalier, of Ania Walwicz, Palace of Culture, and Lisa Jacobson, South in the World

Click here for the Long Paddock…

COVER: Runner Above the Sea of Fog: Grampians, Victoria, after Friedrich by Kate Livett