Staff and friends of RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing associate degree and certificate IV (RMIT PWE) are shocked and disappointed by MUP’s recent decision to close Meanjin, Australia’s second-longest-running literary journal. For 85 years, Meanjin has platformed Australian voices, both established and emerging, taking our national literature and delivering it to the world.

We write in support of the University of Melbourne Creative Writing program and call on the University of Melbourne to protect Meanjin and the incalculable cultural wealth that it offers us all. The university, which has as one of its legislated objectives the promotion of “critical and free enquiry, informed intellectual discourse and public debate”, not just within the university but in wider society, must intervene. We ask that the university either reinstate Meanjin’s funding or allow the journal to be shepherded on to a new home. If the University of Melbourne cannot find its way to meeting its cultural obligation to Meanjin, we call on the Vice Chancellor of RMIT University, Alec Cameron, to bring Meanjin into the publishing fold of RMIT’s Clover Press and Bowen Street Press.

The financial cost of keeping Meanjin alive is far outweighed by the essential contribution that the journal makes to our national literature and our national identity.

Meanjin has helped elevate and propel the careers of many of Australia’s most revered writers, some of whom have studied and taught within the PWE programs over the years. Many of us got our early breaks at Meanjin as contributing authors and poets, with two among us having worked as former Meanjin editors.

Meanjin is not only a teaching tool for creative writing; it is also a significant aspirational benchmark for our students. A place we can collectively point to and say, One day, you/I could be among those voices. Here is a journal where accessibility, political conscience and play have always met. A journal that successfully navigates the balance between readability and experimentation, nuance and decisiveness, serious thought and serious silliness, contributing time and again to how we conceive of our literary imaginary.

The loss of such a benchmark is a psychological and practical blow for the next generation of writers and editors, who are seeing far too often our literary and cultural institutions crumbling under the weight of financial pressure.

 In 2008, Melbourne became the second UNESCO City of Literature in the world, in part because of vibrant literary journals like Meanjin. At RMIT PWE, we teach our students the importance of being responsible ‘literary citizens’ in this City of Literature. In this spirit, we believe the University of Melbourne, arguably the most prestigious university in Australia, must rise to its civic responsibilities, which go far beyond dollars and cents.

Signed:

Tim Loveday
Clare Strahan
Louisa Syme
Dr Rachel Mathews
Dr Luke Horton
Dzintra Boyd
Susie Thatcher
Di Websdale-Morrissey
Mel Fulton
Sarah McKenzie
Sarah Vincent
Anna Snoekstra
Dr Simmone Howell
Dr Yannick Thoraval
John Reeves
Toni Jordan
Arthur Clover
Penny Johnson
Stephanie Holt
Astrid Edwards
April Chaplin
Anne-Marie Peard
Connor O’Brien
Melissa Cranenburgh
Dr Sian Prior
Ilka Tampke
Lucy Treloar
Trish Bolton
Ben Hickey
Fiona Scott-Norman
Ender Başkan
Kate Goldsworthy
Madeline Crehan
Andy Jackson
Peter Barrett
Liz Steele
Clare Renner
Danielle Binks

Image: Eli McLean