Tag: refugees

Long Paddock for Southerly 79.2: Writing Through Fences

The island continent has created an archipelago of incarceration spanning from South East Asia, Micronesia and Melanesia in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and across mainland Australia. This issue of Southerly, titled Writing Through Fences, is devoted entirely to the work of past and present refugees in these detention centres. The records of their experiences are devastating; their creative responses, across genres and media, are astounding. The issue also includes responses from Australian writers, activists, essayists and students, who engage with refugee writing as well as the practices and consequences of refugee incarceration. Writing Through Fences is guest edited by…

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By Hope

by Fiona Wright I want to start with a digression. On election night in 2007 – the night of the Ruddslide – I went to three different parties in the back streets of Newtown. I started in a somewhat unsound sharehouse, where the finishing touches were being made on a piñata shaped like Howard’s head as I arrived. I moved on to a poet’s house, where there was a 1969 ‘Don’s Party’ theme, changing into a second-hand, high-necked, purple paisley nylon dress from Madame Scrag’s along the way. At the third party, I mentioned that I was going to re-hem…

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Of Asylum and Aliens

Michelle Cahill  Like most of us I’ve been disturbed by the boat tragedies off the coast of Christmas Island. I sometimes describe myself as an “economic refugee” since my family’s postcolonial transit from Kenya to the UK and thence Sydney was in many ways bumpy so the extent and suffering of displaced peoples troubles me. At the end of the month I plan to travel to Medan to spend a week with the Jesuit Refugee Service and to visit the international detention centre in Bedawan as well as community- based refugees. Australia has been slow at processing its quota of…

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