Liminal —an anti-racist literary platform—is an online space for the exploration, interrogation and celebration of the Asian-Australian experience. Founded by Ling Jing McIntosh in late 2016 and perhaps best known for its focus on interviews with Australian arts practitioners, Liminal showcases creatives from a wide range of creative disciplines— literature, visual arts, music, dance, journalism, and more.
Month: August 2022
Red Room—Showcasing Tasmanian poetry and musicians. Mona, 27th August
Red Room Poetry Month features an afternoon of free entertainment at Mona in Hobart, Saturday 27th August at 1-2.15pm.
Come for the art, the architecture, the aesthetic, stay for the poetry. In partnership with MONA, come along to see/hear/feel some of Tasmania’s finest wordsmiths and spoken word artists including Esther Ottaway, Rebecca Young, Rohan King, Kathryn Lomer, Damon Young, Warren Mason and hosted by Bert Spinks plus live music by acclaimed troubadour Ben Salter and sets either side by legendary local jazz ensemble the Spike Mason Quartet.
Rebecca Young, performing at the 2020 Tasmanian Poetry Festival, Launceston. (March 2020)
Other work:
04 Sep 2003: Sarah Day’s launch of Kathryn Lomer’s ‘Extraction of Arrows’ (University of Queensland Press)
01 Dec 2003: Tim Thorne’s review of Kathryn Lomer’s ‘Extraction of Arrows’ (University of Queensland Press)
27 Feb 2014: Philomena Van Risjwick’s launch of Kathryn Lomer’s ‘Night Writing’ (University of Queensland Press)
27 May 2021: Jane Williams’ launch of Esther Ottaway’s ‘Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things’ (Puncher & Wattmann)
Kathryn Lomer, with Ray Liversidge and Nathan Curnow. (Queensland Poetry Festival, 2012)
Vale David Ireland
Saddened to learn of David Ireland’s death last month.
He was awarded the Miles Franklin Award on three occasions, for his novels ‘The Unknown Industrial Prisoner’ (1971), ‘The Glass Canoe’ (1976), and ‘For a Woman of the Future’ (1979).
Professor Van Ikin penned a farewell to Ireland at ‘The Conversation’, including his recall of an early meeting with Ireland:
As a young Sydney Uni postgrad in 1976, I met Ireland in his tiny Sydney writing pad and inadvertently opened a door to an empty low-lit room. The floor was carpeted with card-sized slips of paper, some of which fluttered up and relocated upon my entry.
“Sorry, not that door,” said Ireland, and proceeded to explain that his novels evolved from scenes and images, each jotted onto a card. (The Unknown Industrial Prisoner is composed of 330 of these.) He would arrange and rearrange them on the floor, mosaic-style, in a process that was allowed to take however long was needed.
Damon Young — Red Room Poetry
DAMON YOUNG — RED ROOM POETRY MONTH
Red Room Poetry features Hobart-based poet Damon Young this weekend as part of Poetry Month. And as I read his lines
‘… publisher / with a passion for bold voices / like his.’
… I wondered whether (interpreting the words ‘like his’) I might read myself into them, and decided — regrettably — I could. And found myself returning to fallout from the Peter FitzSimons / Jacinta Price interview (behind a paywall) in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ of a week or two ago. Is Price a conservative? Definitely. Do I feel on side with FitzSimons with his view that Aboriginal Australians have been wronged? Definitely. Have I sympathy for Price’s statement that she’s entitled to her views as a Black conservative woman? How can I not? As a result, I’m not at all sure where that leads me, or leaves me…. I’ve never particularly understood the attraction of being ‘politically conservative’, though I remember an experience back in 1982 handing out ‘How to vote’ cards for Labor’s John Cain in the Victorian state election, and offering one to a young, sharply dressed woman in the street. I distinctly recall the look of sheer displeasure that crossed her face—as if anything left of liberal was simply too painfully repulsive to contemplate.
Martin Flanagan reflects on current and future currency of the term ‘conservative’ in his book ‘The Art of Pollination’, relating an exchange with Malcolm Fraser. Flanagan writes,
‘I visited Fraser’s city office shortly after I wrote my essay against torture. It was on his desk when I entered his office. “Read your essay,” he said, in his clipped, patrician way. “It’s good, but I think you’re too late.” And on that subject, as on all subjects of public import that I discussed with him, his knowledge was encyclopaedic. To my mind, he was a conservative humanist. One of the political battles facing us in the immediate future is wresting the word conservative back off people who are actually reactionaries wishing for twentieth century certainties that no longer exist.’