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80.2 Winter 2021

Published 15 June 2021

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‘The world knows that the Australian immigration process is very tough.’ In the magazine’s cover feature Still Lives, five people now resident in Australia and New Zealand tell in vivid first-hand accounts the stories of lives stilled by statelessness or detention, and lives settled in a new home and a sense of belonging. Their stories are matched with luscious images by artist Sarah Walker.

Anna Spargo-Ryan looks at recent cases of sexual harassment and violence in and around the national parliament and concludes ‘This government cannot deliver action on sexual violence. They have told us to our faces: they simply do not understand how.

Mark Pesce considers the recent battles between the Australian Government and the world’s major players in social media and the online world, an epoch-defining clash, he argues, between state sovereignty and technological monopoly.

Historian James Curran has a long conversation with that legend of well-chosen Australian letters, Don Watson. In the first of two pieces looking at allegations of war crimes made against Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, Bobuq Sayed argues that ‘The war crimes detailed by the Brereton Report are endemic to a growing culture of white supremacy in Australia that has also clearly taken root in the ADF.’ Caroline Graham looks at the very long history of ‘regrettable incidents’ involving Australian soldiers, a story of ‘warriors, bad apples and blood lust’.

 

Meanjin Papers

STILL LIVES
Khan, Hafsar, Aziyah, Jasmin & Abbas

 


Up Front

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS
Anna Spargo-Ryan
THE DILEMMA OF FREE SPEECH AND DISCRIMINATION
Dennis Altman
YEAH, ELECTRICITY
Suzanne Hermanoczki
ON ROYAL COMMISSIONS
Kenneth Hayne
THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
Guido Melo
TRAVELS WITH MOTHER
Larry Schwartz
THE MAD THAT I FEEL
Clementine Ford

 

Essays

AUSTRALIA IN THREE BOOKS
Sara M. Saleh
OF WARRIORS, BAD APPLES AND BLOOD LUST
Caroline Graham
THE WAR OF TERROR
Bobuq Sayed
THE DEMOCRATISATION OF DISAGREEMENT
Alistair Kitchen
HOMING
Adele Dumont
AS WATER FLOWS I (SHOULD) FOLLOW
Camille Roulière
MONOPOLIES OF THE AUSTRALIAN MIND
Mark Pesce
THE PASSIONS OF THE BROKEN-HEARTED
Carolyn Strange
HISTORY AND OBAMA’S LEGACY
Antony Loewenstein
REDISCOVERING KYLIE TENNANT’S FOVEAUX
Ella Mudie
A RICH CROP FROM A LEAN YEAR
Martin Langford
BOHEMIA ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE
Ann-Marie Priest
WATSON ON KEATING
James Curran

 

Memoir

DEAR J
Isabelle Oderberg
THE BOULDER
Joshua Badge
ON WORK
Gay Lynch
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
Mark E. Dean
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD
John Chesterman

Fiction

PASSAGE
Bella Li
LAMENT
Shannon Burns
NO COCKATOOS
Bri Lee
MAN COMES HOME LATE, SHOWERS
Jocelyn Richardson

 

Reviews

INNOCENCE
Stephen Pham
DO CEPHALOPODS DREAM OF THE ANTHROPOCENE?
Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
I INSIST
Mindy Gill
MAPPING GRIEF
Raelee Lancaster
AGEING AND FRIENDSHIP THROUGH
THE POWER OF THE CHORUS
Gabriella Munoz

 

Poetry

What We Call Light
Derek Chan
Bird’s Nest
Graham Akhurst
Exact/Inexact
π.o.
I was born without a face
Helena Pantsis
Ox in Metal
Jennifer Maiden
Like a Russian Novel
Jane Downing
Cheap Trick
Liam Ferney
Virtual Conference in the Tropics
Aidan Coleman
Internal Forces
John Kinsella
I write poems when I wake at 1.30 am to pump
Caitlin Maling
His Funeral 
Geoff Page
Ghost Story
Tracy Ryan
deflated at dusk
Rebecca Jessen

 

 

Edition

84.4 Summer 2025
84.3 Spring 2025
84.2 Winter 2025
84.1 Autumn 2025

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  • In Print
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    • Latest Pieces
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  • Read
    • The Meanjin Papers
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    • Memoir
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    • Experiments
    • State of the Nation
    • The Year In…
  • Books
    • Reviews
    • Australia in Three Books
    • What I’m Reading
  • Writers
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  • Buy
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