The traditional Meanjin editorial combines a string of nostalgia-tinged observations on Queensland, poetry and 1940 in more or less that order. So there’s tradition served. Here in the summer of 2015 we should probably consider our present, but marvel too at the consistency and longevity of this magazine and the kind of conversation on Australian culture, literature and ideas it has sought to nurture and expand for 75 years. Like the shark, as once described by Woody Allen, the magazine must move through the water to survive. So, some changes here at Meanjin. A new editor, me (the eleventh in uninterrupted sequence), and a remodelling of the object you are now holding: a new typographic feel, a new size and hopefully enhanced readability.

Judith Beveridge has unflappingly edited Meanjin’s poetry for ten years. That is a contribution to this magazine and to Australian letters that should not be underestimated. This issue holds Judy’s last selection. She has decided to concentrate on her own writing and academic work. We owe her more than simple thanks. Stepping into this considerable breach will be Bronwyn Lea. Bronwyn is a poet and teaches writing at the University of Queensland. She was poetry editor at the University of Queensland Press, and inaugural editor of Australian Poetry Journal. There’s more: for the first time in some years Meanjin now has a fiction editor. He is Peter Pierce, a respected critic and editor of The Cambridge History of Australian Literature.