In this highly anticipated new issue, we encounter brilliant examples of what writing can do in a hypernormal time – whether that's Benjamin Gready on the absurdity of fieldwork on land under active occupation or Zahid Gamieldien's short story about a dancing rat who finds itself enmeshed in systems too shadowy to be true. But, as with the emotional cycles of resistance, hope and snark are features too. Dan Hogan considers the lawn as a class obsession, and π.ο. asks a question: why people hate poetry? We also read about a rakhasa family who passes on wisdom to their young kin, a story by Shefali Mathew. And you’ll find new poetry by Eli McLean, Fiona Hile and Sol Chan, among others, as well as a comic by Safdar Ahmed, plus heaps more. Co-editors Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk write in the editorial, "Writing always matters, but it matters most directly in the face of this kind of thuggish assault on language, our first and last commons. We can’t let the bastards have it.”
Ainslie Templeton is an artist and writer who has worked across mediums and often in collaboration. Her work has been shown at Autoitalia, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Verge, Incinerator and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. In 2019 she published a poetry book The Tower with Incendium Radical Library Press; her writing has also been published in Minority Report, un Magazine, The Dutch Journal of Gender Studies and Volupté. Ainslie was a founding member of the performance art vehicle Embittered Swish and has worked extensively with visionary Rafaela Pandolfini. Ongoing interests include the interplay between bodies and their representation, cracks in existing social forms, subliminal divisions of labour, transgender allegory, divination and smuggling.
