Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Edited by Esther Anatolitis, Melbourne University Publishing, $24.99.
The autumn edition of the quarterly places emphasis on getting our house in order — and prepare for what comes next.
That’s the viewpoint of the new editor Esther Anatolitis, who is an influential advocate for arts and culture. With two decades in creative and media leadership, she is a respected champion of artists’ voices. She is respected as a cultural and intellectual leader of vision, passion and energy, with extensive literary sector experience.
Meanjin is looking to evolve and some thoughts are outlined in her editorial:
“Light, air and the autumn wind. Good drying weather. Ethics and history and peace and war and the laundry. Taking stock. Abandoned cities, lost children, political legacies emptied of all honour. How we commemorate, and what we forget. The cost of education, the cost of living, the costs of doing nothing. Insects, birds, bulls, deer, saplings, forests, the Great Barrier Reef. Ruin porn and inspiration porn. Ethical beekeeping, hydrogeology, the second person.”
“…. Solarpunk and Chengyu and the Argonauts. Housing and home, love and Metta, class and compassion. Understanding where it is that we exist when we’re gathering our forces.”
The contributions in Vol 82, No 1 are wide-ranging.
In one essay The Washing Line, Michael McGirr gives a personal history of laundry. “The invention of the clothes peg is attributed to Jérémie Opdebec. Little else is known about him…”
In another, Ruin Porn and Inspiration Porn, Lauren Poole says: “The word choice ‘porn’ in inspiration porn and ruin porn has been rightly critiqued as one that characterises sex work negatively. Stella Young explained…”
French-Australian writer, educator, and governance innovator Julien Leyre has an essay titled Who Should Die, and What Should We Do with the Bodies?
Entering the school system as a non-traditional family is what Kerry Greer outlines in Only Parent, Only Child.
In a memoir, Life of a Folk Devil Michael Mohammed Ahmad has this to say:
“The midwives are horrified when they see the size of my head on my way out of the birth canal…’
