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Hari Kunzru: Address to the European Writers Parliament

This is the first of what will become regular cross-posts from international writers or journals with similar political or aesthetic sensibilities to Overland.

Over the last few years, the Overland blog has built a small but flourishing community of writers debating politics and culture from a largely Australian perspective. The new cross-posts aim to build on those discussions, and forge some links with likeminded people overseas.

hari_kunzruHari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist (2002), Transmission (2004) and My Revolutions (2007), as well as a short story collection, Noise (2006). His work has been translated into twenty-one languages and won him prizes including the Somerset Maugham award, the Betty Trask prize of the Society of Authors and a British Book Award. In 2003 Granta named him one of its twenty best young British novelists. Lire magazine named him one of its 50 ‘écrivains pour demain’. He is Deputy President of English PEN, a patron of the Refugee Council and a member of the editorial board of Mute magazine. His short stories and journalism have appeared in diverse publications including The New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, Washington Post, Times of India, Wired and New Statesman. His fourth novel, Gods Without Men, will be published in August 2011. He lives in New York City. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 11-03-2011, 7 user comments

Non-fiction review: Monsoon

Monsoon

Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the battle for supremacy in the 21st century
Robert D Kaplan
Black Inc.

Robert D Kaplan, the author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the battle for supremacy in the 21st century, is a man on a mission. Since the 1990s, when President Clinton was seen clutching a copy of Kaplan’s book on the Balkans under his arm, Kaplan’s work has become a lightning rod for US public and political opinion in a similar vein to pop political scientists like Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington. And he has certainly been taken seriously by successive American administrations since his leap to fame under Clinton’s elbow: aside from his work as correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Kaplan sits on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and is a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security in Washington. ... read more

Written by Ruby J Murray on 10-03-2011, 3 user comments

My (not so) secret poetic shame

I’ve heard so many writers wax lyrical about their early poetic influences and, indeed, I've done it myself in interviews. Musicality plays a great part in my poetry and some time ago, a young writer asked me what the first album I bought was. They might have been expecting Tracey Chapman, or perhaps even Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets or Public Enemy – and indeed, they did come later. But here, ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, is my ultimate secret shame.

bobby-brown-my-prerogative-239516In 1989, I bought my first ever cassette tape album: Bobby Brown’s gem Every Little Step I Take. It played on loop on my sunflower yellow boombox till the tape got twisted and Bobby began to sound chipmunk-like. Whitney Houston and Brown hadn’t hooked up yet and I knew deep down that somehow, Bobby and I were gonna marry someday. Bel Biv Devoe and Arrested Development were soon to follow suit, though none of them would steal my heart anywhere close to the way that skinny-legged black-shoulder-padded-tux-with-bare-chest-underneath Bobby did. ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 9-03-2011, 6 user comments

Politics and Religion in the New Century

Politics and religionPolitics and Religion in the New Century
Philip Quadrio and Carrol Besseling (eds)
Sydney University Press

Any critical engagement with the politics of religious discourse that begins by acknowledging Al Swearangen and Joe Strummer has to be worth more than a second look. At least I’ve made the assumption that is the Joe Strummer and the Al Swearangen. It’s possible I’m reading too much into it and they are referring to Professors Strummer and Swearangen who are comfortably ensconced in chairs at Sydney Uni. I’ll go with my first assumption as it gives me a better springboard into Politics and Religion in the New Century, edited by Philip Quadrio and Carrol Besseling. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 9-03-2011, 4 user comments

What to do about the sex trade

sex-workers-rights

Last year a friend invited me to what I thought was going to be a lecture by the outspoken feminist Professor Sheila Jeffreys titled: ‘Prostitution in St. Kilda, How The Law Has Failed Sex Workers.’ Given I see many of these sex workers through my job at St Kilda Crisis Centre – not to mention my interest in the topic – I jumped at the chance to hear what I thought was going to be a dissertation on our inability to run a proper and tightly regulated sex industry; one that provides protection for women and men who work in it and offers pathways for them out of that work. What was delivered, however, by a PhD student (Professor Jeffreys sitting stolidly beside her) turned out to be in utter contradiction to that, and infuriated me to the point of explosion – not a great place to get to when a cool head is required to provide a counterargument. ... read more

Written by SJ Finn on 8-03-2011, 19 user comments

International Women’s Day: thoughts from the frontline

I’m a woman; here are some things I’m thinking about today:

1. Mary Poppins and that feminist sub-plot:

 

2. The war being waged on women and their reproductive rights (which, in many countries, like the vote, were won long ago):

• In ‘Lucky girl’, Bridget Potter recounts what she went through to get an abortion in 1962:

Michael and I checked around for remedies … One night I sat in an extremely hot bath in my walk-up on Waverly Place while Michael fed me a whole quart of gin, jelly jar glass by jelly jar glass. In between my gulps, he refreshed the bath with boiling water from a sauce pan on the crusty old gas stove. I got beet red and nauseous. We waited. I threw up. Nothing more …

When my period was a month late I gave up hoping for a false alarm and went to visit Emily Perl’s gynecologist. His ground floor office in a brownstone on a side street on the Upper East Side was genteel but faded. So was he, a short, stern old man with glasses perched on the top of his head and dandruff flakes on his gray suit-jacket. As I explained my problem, he shook his head from side to side in obvious disapproval of the loose behavior that was the cause of my visit. He instructed me to pee in a jar. The test results, he said, would take two weeks.

At that time pregnancy testing involved injecting a lab rabbit with human urine and watching for its effects. I waited to hear if the rabbit died. I learned much later that all lab rabbits used for pregnancy tests died, autopsied to see the results. It was code.

My rabbit died.

• All the proposed laws encroaching on women’s bodies:

... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 8-03-2011, 15 user comments

Domesticated wages

HRW2For over 60 years, the International Labour Organization has been trying to set an international standard for domestic workers. Overwhelmingly female, often migratory, and typically racialised, these are the workers who raise the children of wealthy families, look after the disabled and the elderly in their homes, work as drivers, gardeners and live-in cleaners. And at the moment, there is no international standard setting minimum conditions for these vulnerable and hardworking people. ... read more

Written by Isy Burns on 7-03-2011, 7 user comments

So you think you can write poetry: noetry and constructive criticism

So you want to be a poet. When you desperately want something, it’s difficult to get past the wanting, and look into the mechanics of achieving that thing. It’s not enough to want to be a poet, just like it’s not enough to want to be a dancer. Dancing requires grace, agility, athleticism, rhythm and unwavering dedication. The tall, gawky kid with two left feet hiding out at the back of gym class might have early fantasies of being discovered on So You Think You Can Dance, but those fantasies probably disappear in their late teens when reality kicks in.

Unfortunately, in the case of poetry, the requisite talents are not so clear-cut. If only there were an equivalent So You Think You Can Write; we could all just turn up at the cattle call audition and have our hopeful hearts broken by a Simon Cowell-esque judge wielding a quill and a dictionary. Even then though, there’d be those few tragics left staring forlornly but defiantly into the camera whining: ‘What would he know? He wouldn’t know a decent poet if they smacked him in the face with their next manuscript. My MUM and all my mates LOVE my writing, and they should know, they’ve read it ALL.’ ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 4-03-2011, 7 user comments

Fiction review: This Too Shall Pass

Finn-smallIn exciting news, last night, Melbourne writer SJ Finn and Sleepers Publishing launched Finn’s second novel, This Too Shall Pass.

A writer with a diverse oeuvre, Finn is a well-known poet and her first novel, Fine Salt, was published in 2002. Finn’s short stories have been produced for radio and published in such notables as Going Down Swinging and Sleepers Almanac and in 2010 her short story ‘Angus’s Playground’ was a runner-up in the Australian Book Review short story competition. Last, but certainly not least, Finn writes commentary and review here at Overland. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 4-03-2011, 3 user comments

Islamophobia revives anti-Semitism

Progressive Jewish Australians, such as academic Ned Curthoys and journalist Antony Loewenstein, both published in Overland, along with Michael Brull, one of Overland’s regular bloggers, have written a statement appealing to Australia’s major political parties to publicly and unequivocally denounce Islamophobia:

As progressive Jewish Australians we are deeply disturbed by the recent outbreak of politically motivated attacks on asylum seeks and Muslims. As Jews we know that most of the criticisms being directed at Islam, that it is a ‘totalitarian’ religion incompatible with Australian civic norms, that its practitioners are obdurate and backward, and that the religion itself is too atavistic to be incorporated within the modern West, are simply anti-Semitic stereotypes now applied to a softer target. For example the argument that Jews are incapable of being truly loyal to the modern state was a perennial argument against full Jewish emancipation in Europe. We call on all major parties to unequivocally denounce Islamophobia and to recognize that rhetorically disenfranchising and othering any section of the Australian community will have appalling long term consequences for Australian democracy.

Signed:
Ned Curthoys
John Docker
Michael Brull
Eva Cox AO
Sara Dowse
Antony Loewenstein
Peter Slezak
Susan Varga

... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 4-03-2011, 9 user comments

Poetry review: Memory: video poetry

SynGraWall5Memory: video poetry (DVD)
Synaptic Graffiti Collective

A light bulb smashes in slow motion. More recently, and more regrettably, furry animal suits prance to emo.

Wider possibilities for music videos remain. Daft Punk’s ‘Around the World’ combines dance with camera angles to take on the shallow representation of globalisation. Cold Chisel and even Eskimo Joe had to reshoot clips on the grounds the originals were too confronting. Here we find the limitations of the genre as advertisement.

Memory by Synaptic Graffiti Collective is a DVD collection of poetry as music videos. It remains a series of advertisements for writers (Chris Mansell’s contribution to Memory, ‘Gerald and Gulio’, trades cleverly on this). Poetry also tinkers with expressive structure. So as a collection Memory manages to challenge the limits of music video. ... read more

Written by Gerald Keaney on 3-03-2011, No comments

Fiction review: So this is life

So this is lifeSo this is life
Anne Manne
Melbourne University Press

When I came to the last page of Anne Manne’s memoir So This is Life, I wept. By that time I was her closest friend and had cried and laughed my way through seventeen stories of her early life. Manne has the fundamental quality of a good writer – the ability to connect with the reader.

Better known as an essayist, Manne is a consummate storyteller. The memoir is subtitled ‘scenes from a country childhood’ and each standalone chapter works like a short story to describe a pivotal episode, many of them moments of epiphany in the young girl’s life. As the book progresses, it becomes a series of shorter vignettes, told with panache and delicious humour. ... read more

Written by Carol Middleton on 3-03-2011, 3 user comments

Meanland: In the future, they’ll be called ‘book deletings’

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come.

borroiwng books 2Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used to be taken out when you borrowed? Or the pages of date stamps glued one on top of the other, dating back to 1984, 1973 or beyond? Well, those days of sharing ageing library books are gone, and not merely because the printed text is being outshone by its digital sibling. HarperCollins announced to libraries last week, via the digital distributor OverDrive, that they were limiting the lifespan of their ebooks to 26 checkouts. OverDrive informed US libraries: ... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 2-03-2011, 4 user comments

Literary launch: SJ Finn’s new novel, ‘This Too Shall Pass’

Finn's launch

You are invited to the launch of writer – and Overland blogger – SJ Finn’s new novel, This Too Shall Pass (Sleepers). To be launched by (and we quote) ‘writer, editor and sophisticate, Sophie Cunningham’.

When: Thursday 3 March (tomorrow!)
Time: 6pm for 6.30 start
Place: St Kilda Bowling Club: 66 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda

Hope to see you there.

... read more

Written by Editorial team on 2-03-2011, No comments

Metal ghosts

I’m sitting in a small roadside tent in Phonsavan, Laos. The sounds of dusk traffic and cooking fill the air. In front of me there is a small TV. The wall behind it is decorated with bombshells, grenades and articles. Some of the bombs are rusted, the others polished; all in all it makes for an interesting tour office. I lean forward so I can better hear the words from the TV. It’s playing The CIA’s Secret War, a documentary about the nine-year war (1964–1973) that America waged in Laos.

Through a mixture of archival footage, interviews with journalists and leading CIA figures in charge of the war, I’m learning that Laos is the most bombed country in the world. That over 2 million bombs have been dropped on it, 30% of which are unexploded, lying on the ground even now, waiting for the slightest touch. How at one stage there were 400 flights a day leaving from America’s secret air base in Laos making it the busiest airstrip in the world. How these flights were run by a private company – Air America – that was, in fact, owned by the CIA. How ‘soft rice’ meant actual rice and ‘hard rice’ meant ammunition. How Air America was helping with the export of heroin to Vietnam. As I watch all this, I can’t help but think of the drones flying overhead in Pakistan and the bombing going on there. My mind also drifts to Iraq and the involvement of corporations there. ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 1-03-2011, 2 user comments