Southerly

SOUTHERLY: VOL. 73, NO. 2 edited by David Brooks and Elizabeth McMahon

April 2014, no. 360

Nigel Featherstone reviews 'Southerly', Volume. 73, No. 2

Each note of the nightingale’s song is sung in only one tenth of a second. For humans to be able to appreciate the nuances of those elaborate performances, the songs have to be recorded and slowed down for replay.’ So writes Teja B. Pribac, guest editor of the latest Southerly, subtitled Lyre/Liar. Pribac goes on to explain that her volume examines ‘emerging ethical implications of writing, with particular emphasis on representations of nonhuman animals’.

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Southerly, Vol. 70, No. 3: India India edited by Santosh K. Sareen and G.J.V. Prasad

by Mridula Nath Chakraborty •

November 2011, no. 336

Mridula Nath Chakraborty reviews 'Southerly, Vol. 70, No. 3: India India' edited by Santosh K. Sareen and G.J.V. Prasad

Special issues are difficult and delicate, given the burden of representation. Editor David Brooks confesses to providing only a glimpse of the rich field that might constitute Indian–Australian literary relations. He offers ‘that very Australian thing – a showbag, a sampler, full of enticements to explore further’. Given the slow but steady realisation in Australia that India should be a focus of attention for its scholars and students, this is a timely attempt.

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Southerly, Vol. 69, No. 2: Southerly At Seventy edited by David Brooks and Elizabeth McMahon

by Jeffrey Poacher •

March 2010, no. 319

Jeffrey Poacher reviews 'Southerly, Vol. 69, No. 2: Southerly At Seventy' edited by David Brooks and Elizabeth McMahon

It is time to raise our glasses: Australia’s oldest literary magazine is now a sprightly septuagenarian. The latest number of Southerly marks the occasion by encasing itself in what appears to be a reproduction of one of its covers from the middle of the last century, complete with foxing and a pencil notation of its pre-decimal price. This retro jacket should serve as a reminder of the journal’s longevity. It arrived on the scene at a time that was hardly auspicious for any new literary venture – Hitler invaded Poland the same month. Thankfully, Southerly outlasted the Third Reich (and a few other empires, too).

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Southerly edited by David Brooks and Noel Rowe & Griffith Review 13 edited by Julianne Schultz (with Marni Cordell)

by Kate McFadyen •

December 2006–January 2007, no. 287

Kate McFadyen reviews 'Southerly, Vol. 66, No. 1, Health Lines' edited by David Brooks and Noel Rowe and 'Griffith Review 13: The next best thing' edited by Julianne Schultz with Marni Cordell

One of the best essays in the excellent spring issue of Griffith Review: The Next Big Thing, is a sustained attack by Griffith University academic Mark Bahnisch on the lazy clichés of ‘generation-journalism’. In an issue devoted to an examination of generational similarities and conflicts, Bahnisch calmly reminds us that not everyone living in the 1960s was a hell-raising radical, just as not all young people today fit the conservative–materialist stereotype the media is so fond of.

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Preserves and Presences

by Robyn Tucker •

May 2004, no. 261

‘The best preserve of our humanity’, Ian Britain writes in his editorial to this edition of Meanjin (Only Human, 63:1, edited by Ian Britain $19.95 pb, 236 pp), remains words. Whatever ‘our humanity’ is, it is protected, kept alive, maintained, conserved – in language. ‘[C]ertainly’, he clarifies, in the ‘honed, considered words of the good … literary artist’, but perhaps even in ‘verbiage’.

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Australian Literary Studies edited by Leigh Dale & Meanjin edited by Ian Britain

by James Ley •

September 2005, no. 274

In his Structure of Complex Words (1951), William Empson counted fifty-two uses of the words ‘honest’ and ‘honesty’ in Othello. Nikki Gemmell, the publicity-shy cover star of the latest edition of Meanjin, manages to cram ten references to honesty (her own) into five lachrymose pages of her essay ‘The Identity Trap’, in which she explains that she refused to publish The Bride Stripped Bare (2003) under an assumed name because ‘a pseudonym is a lie’. How comforting it is to know that a writer of fiction should be possessed of such integrity, even if she does say so herself. Gemmell’s revelation does, however, constitute a severe blow to the reputations of George Orwell, Henry Handel Richardson and those lying Brontë sisters.

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Four Journals

by Aviva Tuffield •

July 2001, no. 232

I would now like to begin with a plea for small literary magazines. I now have a vested interest in their survival (well, one, in particular), but then, I always thought I did. Little magazines are essential to the vitality of Australian literary and political culture. They play an important role in nurturing new poets, critics, storytellers, and reviewers. In the current book-publishing climate, there are few other opportunities for publishing short stories, experimental fiction, or poetry. Small magazines instigate and foster cultural debate and present a diverse range of opinions. Many of the most important issues in Australian public life today were first raised and discussed in literary magazines, including the stolen generations and racial ‘genocide’, the perils of economic rationalism and globalisation, the politics of One Nation, and the implications of new media technologies.

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