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The Best of New Writing in Australia

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Hating Trees

Bruce Pascoe

When did it start? When did men begin to think of trees as adornments to their pride or fortune?

It's Shit To Be White

Michael Mohammed Ahmad

'It’s exhausting constantly having to educate White people about a word that their own race invented to elevate themselves above the rest of us.'

Through A Mask, Breathing

Jack Latimore

'The roads were empty because of the virus and sailing by at 60 all I caught was a glimpse of the wall and it was difficult to say for certain, but I thought the flag was gone...'

Together Alone: Finding Words For COVID19

By Meanjin contributors

Recent Meanjin writings that have touched on these days of anxiety, isolation and pandemic.

What I'm Reading

A Crowd Favourite

This regular Meanjin online feature is more than 150 posts old ... and counting. Browse the collection.

Meanjin Turns 80

Subscribe to Meanjin

It's 80 years since the very first edition of Meanjin was published—a slim volume of poetry. Here are some of our favourite covers from over the years.

The Gift
Eileen Chong

One of the first ways people encounter poetry in some form is often through nursery rhymes. At this stage, poetry paves the way to language acquisition through word play, focusing on rhyme, repetition, and rhythm. As we grow, we leave these rhymes behind, learning to use direct, imperative language to communicate our needs and wants efficiently: I’m hungry. No. I’m leaving. The childish poems fall away with the vulnerability and play of the early years. If we do not grow up in households that read poetry, or households that read at all, often the next time we encounter poetry is […]

What I’ve Been Reading
Corey Wakeling

Perhaps thanks to Joyelle McSweeney’s Dead Youth, or, the Leaks: a play in 4 acts (2014), which is also a closet drama a la Goethe or Gertrude Stein and thus perfectly amenable to the theatrophobic—pertinent to our interrupted spectacle?—I have been excavating for leaks. It is hard to believe that this poem, or play, is pre-Trump-era, pre-Covid-19. Wait a second. That isn’t hard to believe at all. DEAD YOUTH 2: What a day at the races. DEAD YOUTH 1: It’s hard work, this afterlife (25). Everything accelerates in late capitalism. What oozes comes from what is; whatever is contained nonetheless transmits. […]

Searching For The Melody
Rachel Coghlan

My memory strains. My sister asks, ‘Remember that cake you made last Christmas?’ Nope. 2019 Christmas. I don’t remember a thing. She shows me a photo. ‘Oh, that cake.’ Vaguely. Not really. My words tangle. ‘Bussel spouts for dinner, looking for a par cark.’ I am dimmer. Christmas cracker jokes pass undeciphered over my purple paper crown. Hand the pork crackling. I’d fail a mini-mental test. Person, woman, television—how did it go again? 2020. What was the name of the Monty Python guy who died? And Black Panther, the famous basketballer? Reach for my phone. No small forgotten fact emerges […]

Armie Hammer and A Very Meaty Sexual Fantasy
Lauren Rosewarne

Elbowing its way through last week’s COVID/incursion/ COVID/impeachment news stream, was the completely outrageous ‘what in the weird’ story alleging that Armie Hammer is a cannibal. What? Indeed. But let’s rewind a bit. Armie Hammer is the heir to the Armand Hammer oil dynasty. Armie played Oliver in the lovely Call Me By Your Name and both Winklevoss twins in The Social Network. And in recent days women have branded him a cannibal based on their exchanges with him on social media. Not a cannibal in the emotional vampire way it should be noted, but an actual human flesh gnawer. […]

Essays
When We Talk About Time
Tara June Winch and Behrouz Boochani

Every now and then, perhaps every few weeks, I end up asking how you feel about time. It baffles you, this strange question—it baffles me too. Perhaps that’s why I keep asking you—maybe it’s not that I’m searching for an answer that I cannot find, it’s that I don’t want to be alone in my confusion. It feels as if the past decade, but particularly this year, time has receded in a tide, never to break back on land. I don’t know where I’ve been.

Fiction
Tempting the Pest
Ben Walter

‘Push!’ I yell even though it’s just me heaving the long claw of crowbar down into the sand and wedging up the fence from below. The mesh winces, creaks. ‘Push!’ I shout like a midwife birthing new life; here in the long hot flat with the afternoon swelling and the wires ruling long lines of fire. I press what is left of my weight into the bar, heaving as the fence clings on, its thin nails gripping at the soil.

Memoir
In The Beach
Mark Pesce

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT

Poetry
Patina on Glass
Philip Mead

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT

Essays
When We Talk About Time
Tara June Winch and Behrouz Boochani
More Than Opening the Door
Sam van Zweden
Is Domestic-Abuse Policing Fit For Purpose?
Jess Hill
National Accounts: Meanjin, By Its Editors
Meanjin Editors
It’s Shit to Be White
Michael Mohammed Ahmad
2100: After Neoliberalism
Toby Miller
Fiction
Tempting the Pest
Ben Walter
The Immortality Project
Tara Moss
The Secret Garden
Julie Koh
We were only ever visiting to begin with
Kasumi Borczyk
The Miserable Creep of COVID
Anson Cameron
Close the eyes of your conscience
Mardin Arvin
Memoir
In The Beach
Mark Pesce
Archive Ethics
Jennifer Mills
Live On
Eda Gunaydin
Again and Again Whom We Love
Fiona Wright
The Stargazer
Anna Thwaites
Lockdown
Kate Grenville
Poetry
Patina on Glass
Philip Mead
Farewell to the Long Sad Party
David Brooks
Futures Past
Jill Jones
Guard Duty 2091
Liam Ferney
You Have Been Unsubscribed
David McCooey
The Middle Distance
Kim Cheng Boey

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