AustLit

'The seminal Australian film Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) opens with a sweeping, circular pan around a desert landscape. It begins in silence, briefly focussed on a small house next to a railway track, but the camera soon moves on, curving around to the right, taking in an unending dusty expanse of yellow earth and pale blue, cloud dappled sky in all directions. The disorienting pan of the desert, the awareness of temporality as the simple shot goes on, work to bodily involve the viewer. The stillness of the landscape, contrasted with the steady movement of the camera, creates a feeling of presence in the scene – the spectator’s gaze roves over the landscape, taking it in and experiencing the isolation and solitude as if they were standing in it. The familiarity of the ‘outback landscape’, an archetypal image of Australia, also stirs affective responses in the Australian spectator, reminding them of their ‘closeness’ to the film’s eerie locality. ‘This is who you are to the world’, the film seems to say. This closeness, combined with the camera work which positions the viewer ‘in’ the desert, renders this scene extremely bodily – the spectator is pushed against the landscape, invited to feel the heat and dry stillness of the outback, as well as the isolation, before any plot or characters are introduced. Thus, we are invited to experience the film sensorily before we engage with it cerebrally, aligning with the hopes of director Ted Kotcheff, who “wanted people to watch the film and be sweating”. (Introduction)

'Is the future something to fear, or is it our saviour from the present? We have no idea what’s coming; we hope it’s something better, but suspect it’s only getting worse. In 2020, it is hard to be optimistic without caveats; you’re not alone in thinking of what lurks around the corner, or off in the distance, brings about a spike of anxiety. Is there still space for seeing what’s to come as a haven? Rebecca Jessen’s second literary publication but first poetry collection, Ask Me About the Future, though written in the Before Times (pre-pandemic), is a timely call to face our fears, to wade into the unknown with Jessen as our intrepid guide.' (Introduction)

'Todd Turner’s Thorn mines the relationship between the earth and the things which populate it, musing on their motives and daily moves. An uneasy symbiosis between animals and people, the natural and the built, is rendered in detail-oriented odes to memory, observation and wonder. In this, his second volume, Thorn re-treads some of the ground of Woodsmoke (2016), reflecting a similar drive to luxuriate in the minutiae of language. The specificity of Turner’s images allows the reader to see through the poetic eye, lending a haptic quality to his creations. There is a clarity and care to each poem, a tiny world where every word is in its right place, even if everything is not. As the collection’s blurb, written by Robert Gray, explains, Turner has much to draw upon in his rendering of a complex world; “a horseman and boxer on one side, a craftsman who creates artistic jewellery for a living on the other”. This eclectic collection of life experiences is reflected in the breadth of this collection, unconstrained by any one influence or vantage point from which to connect to the world around him. ' (Introduction)

'Judith Beveridge tells us what she is. In the introduction to her collection Sun Music: New and Selected Poems, she describes herself as a lyrical poet, and discusses her belief that poetry must be a “showdown between the word and the poet” (xv). '  (Introduction)

'If this book were a sound, it would be the roar of a motorcycle down an empty road; bold, and for the moments when it’s in your path, dominating of all your senses. This book swallowed me and churned me in its guts and, as all good books should, spit me back out, a little bit different.' (Introduction)