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.”
Alex Selenitsch is a Melbourne-based poet and architect working across many disciplines including literature, graphics, sculpture and architecture, through publication and exhibitions. His most recent comprehensive solo exhibition was The Language Factory at the Melbourne School of Design, the University of Melbourne, in 2021–22; most recent solo exhibition of concrete poems was Emotionals: words & colours at wordXimage.art, Maitland, NSW in 2023. A selection of page-driven concretes was published as LOOK! by Cordite in 2021.
