Tag: newsletter 1

Beyond tropes: Why Eve Langley’s legacy must be understood through a trans inclusive lens

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Sam Elkin The sad tale of Eve Langley, author of the 1942 picaresque classic The Pea Pickers, has transfixed readers for generations. The Pea Pickers, a fictionalised autobiography, tells the story of Steve and Blue, two gender non-conforming sisters who don men’s attire to work as agricultural labourers outside Bairnsdale in Gippsland during the Great Depression. The book, long accepted as an Australian classic (albeit one marred by racism), perhaps captivates readers today less than the sad, complex story of Langley themselves. Soon after the publication of The Pea Pickers, Langley was sent to a mental asylum in Auckland as…

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By the People, For the People: Trans Poetics and DIY Culture, Part 1: ‘Jagged Edges and Rough Words’

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Rae White Acknowledgement: This piece was written on stolen lands in Magandjin, the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I’m at one of my fave poetry open mics, Echoes from the Cave Inn, waiting for my name to be called. The crowded room is full of fellow queer, trans, and gender diverse people eating freshly made pizza, sipping beers, and hugging mates they haven’t seen since last month’s open mic. I get up on stage wearing my jorts, and bright pink and orange tie-dye shirt that…

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Binary Opposition

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Rashida Murphy Some years ago, a writer told me she didn’t believe in binary oppositions. This wealthy, white, well-connected woman, a theorist whose intense dislike of de Saussure was reflected in her work, argued that she did not have a structural advantage over an immigrant brown woman in publishing. Race and resources were not a factor in literary success and the real issue, she insisted, was talent. Then came the clincher—stories like yours are the flavour of the month, she said. For several years, I tried to believe the lofty ideal she had proposed. I focused on the real issue…

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In Praise of Rereading: Iterative Inhabitations and Sheltering the Paradise of Words

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Georgia Rose Phillips Sometimes, the line of a poem leaps out unexpectedly from the well of my consciousness when I encounter something close to what it resembles in the real world. On an unseasonably cold November day in Semaphore, South Australia late last year, I heard a line from Ashbery’s “Syringa” as I walked up the beach. I had been pressing through the afternoon’s sharp sandy gusts and feeling the overhang of winter in the cold sting of the breeze. As I moved towards the grey surface of water, dotted with white foamy caps, I had been starting to doubt…

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I had no words to describe my self: Job scarcity and identity in the dying university

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Jessie Seymour Check email again. Not expecting anything, but not quite able to stop myself. There’s a new message. It’s a rejection. Automated and impersonal. Doesn’t even have my name at the top. Relief. At least it’s an answer. This wasn’t even an academic job. I already applied to those – lectureships, short-term contracts, anything remotely within the field I trained for. No, this was a Casual Janitorial Staff role. They don’t even want me cleaning on campus. I close the inbox. * I’m trying to decide how I feel about being an academic. Or if I’m even allowed to…

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Un/telling y/our story, part one

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Amelia Walker Acknowledgement: I live and write on the lands of the Kaurna people. I pay respect to Kaurna Elders, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, always will be Aboriginal land. “I have never known how to tell a story” (Derrida 3). So Jacques Derrida declares in March 1984 as he fronts the crowd gathered at Yale University for his first of three lectures honouring the recently deceased Paul de Man, Derrida’s colleague and close friend. Least I’m not the only one, I think, my gaze floating from page to…

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Down with copyright-infringing LLMs—long live the small language model

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Jenny Hedley At my final PhD milestone conference, one of my writer friends whispered conspiratorially about how ‘we all hate AI’, sweeping me into the prevailing category of Writers Against Machine Learning. I did not then reveal my position, which is more complex than love or hate. If my (non-existent) published novel had been cannibalised by large language models (LLMs) via pirated databases as my friend’s had, my curiosity about the possible benefits of AI might similarly be quashed. For years now my interest in digital writing has been guided by the ethos of the Ouvrior de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo)…

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Barribugu mirana yiyura (The future is First Peoples)

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Anissa Jones Guwiyady’u gulbanga Gayan gayan Colin Gale, Dharug warunggad, ngayiridyi Native Title. (I’d like to dedicate this to Uncle Colin Gale, our Senior Dharug Elder and Native Title claimant.) Warami. Budyari Nhaady’unya. Yanyiminga muday Ngurrawa. (Welcome. Good to see you. Walk softly on Country with me.) When I see the word barribugu (future), I think of my grandchildren and their children. It is a place where I may just be a memory to them, someone special who makes them smile as they remember me, but it is also a place where I can dream that it will be better…

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