Volume 68 Number 4, 2009

Editorial

Meanjin would like to congratulate Jean Kent, the author of ‘The Polish Guitarist’s First Paris Concert’, on winning the inaugural Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize for 2009. The poem is published in this issue. We’d also like to congratulate the nine poets to have been included in Black Inc.’s Best Australian Poems 2009, edited by Robert Adamson (David Brooks, Adrienne Eberhard, Jane Gibian, Clive James, Michelle Leber, Rose Lucas, Π.O., Mark Tredinnick and Meredith Wattison) and the five poets to have been included in The Best Australian Poetry 2009 edited by Alan Wearne, Martin Duwell and Bronwyn Lea (Philip Hammial, Evan Jones, John Kinsella, Π.O. and Geoff Page). Our final congratulations are to two of our short-story writers, Brenda Walker and Georgia Blain, on their inclusion in Black Inc.’s Best Australian Short Stories 2009, edited by Delia Falconer.

In other announcements, throughout 2010 Meanjin and Overland will work together on a project called ‘Reading in an Age of Change’ (or, more informally, and inevitably, ‘Meanland’). This joint project aims to create a constructive dialogue on how we, and future generations, will read. It will explore the challenges and opportunities facing literary culture in the twenty-first century—from digital publishing to copyright, from globalisation to the changing nature of reading. We want to explore the new literary realities facing readers, writers and publishers and provide a reflection on and an intervention into the changing nature of reading, writing and publishing—circumstances that, naturally, also implicate both Meanjin and Overland. Collectively, Meanjin and Overland have a history of contributing to public debates. We are different but complementary—and we both want to drive, rather than react to, debate in this highly fluid new media landscape.

By engaging in a year-long dialogue across a range of platforms—in print, online and through public events—the project will itself be a practical demonstration of the issues being explored and the ongoing relevance of literary journals. Throughout 2010, four articles will be published in each journal, one in each issue. We’ll produce the Meanland website: a unifying platform that will pull this dialogue together, the website will include all articles, podcasts and possibly video, thus creating a free, virtual resource for present and future readers, writers and publishers. We’ll be holding a public events program in partnership with Melbourne’s Centre for Books and Ideas, which will kick off on 25 February.

Consequently, in 2010 we hope to produce content across the widest range of platforms in our seventy-year history. We’ll be launching the digitisation of our rich 69-year back-issue content and making it available to the public; we’ll be launching a flexible range of online subscriptions and purchases (for example subscriptions to the print journal, purchasing of digital content—both previous and current); and will enable our online content to be read on smart phones. Spike will expand to include reviews of books, films, theatre, music, exhibitions and other media (and to publish reader and reviewer responses) in a more timely manner than we manage to do in the print journal.

In 2010 Meanjin turns seventy. While we’ve come a long way from a small pamphlet produced in Brisbane in 1940 by four poets, there have been significant cultural challenges to the environment our literary journal operates in. We take nothing for granted. It is for this reason Meanjin hopes to celebrate the significance of this milestone by creating new ones.

Finally, you’ll notice that this is a bit of a bumper issue of Meanjin. We present it in the hope that you’ll find some extra reading and lounging time over summer. Enjoy.

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Contents

Editorial by Sophie Cunningham

Illustration

• Gone to the Ghost World by Oslo Davis

Newsreel

• With Jessica Au, Rachel Carbonell, Oslo Davis, Wendy James and Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Meanjin in Colour

• Looking at Thinking, Thinking about Looking by David Hansen

• The History of the Sea by Sarah Kanowski

Essays

• CAL/Meanjin: Is the carnival over? by Ben Eltham

• Their Restaurants Rule by Stephen Downes

• The Secret Life of Stories by Jane Gleeson-White

• Forgive me, forgive me: The Ethics of Using Other People’s Lives in Fiction by Charlotte Wood

• Shakespeare in Love? by Richard King

• A Tale of Two Legends by Charlie Ward

• Dressing Up in Books (and Other Art Forms) by Helen Barnes-Bulley

• Saying the Unsayable: The Non-Verbal Vocalisations of Michael Jackson by Mel Campbell

• On Marriage by Andrew Sant

• The Return of the Bones by Claire Scobie

• Shadow of a Game: Locating Soccer in Australian Cultural Life by Ian Syson

• On Wheels: The Art of Skateboarding by James Guida

• Their hooks find hold deep in our flesh: Part Seven by Kate Fielding and Mandy Ord

Interview

• Dog’s Eye View: Sophie Cunningham talks to Eva Hornung

Fiction

• Facades by Patrick Allington

• Laws of Affinity by Maya Linden

• A Shape in the Night by Clinton Caward

• Encounter at Kalayakapi, circa 1880 by Michael Giacometti

• Julia by Nicola Redhouse

• Tuition by Morris Lurie

• Tableau by N.K. Mara

• Stripped: Part Seven by Caroline Lee

Poetry

• The Polish Guitarist’s First Paris Concert by Jean Kent

• Weights & Measures by Craig Billingham

• Ode to Mumbai by Michelle Cahill

• The Proper Spirit by Barbara Fisher

• Bridal Falls by Phillip Hall

• Ancestors by Philip Hammial

• Perianthetical Apple, Cherry, Plum by Carol Jenkins

• Stolac Village, Bosnia by Vesna Leto

• A Shift in the Frame by Robyn Rowland

• Kooravale, 1959 by Todd Turner

• Understanding by Vivian Smith

• Cleanse by Andrew Slattery

Index