Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Notes On Contributors, Anne Collett

Kunapipi

Notes on Contributors

A Speculative Venture: Contemporary Art, History And Hill End, Amanda Lawson

Kunapipi

Writing in his diary on 2 January 1949, Australian artist, Donald Friend (1915– 1989), describes the events of the night before:

Last night there was an impromptu dance — I should say a drunken Breughel peasant romp — at the hall to celebrate the New Year. It was improvised suddenly on the spot by those who had not been invited, and were furious at being left out, to a dance in Sofala, to which the lucky ones went in a bus. Later they went round the village gate-stealing… . (Friend 633)

Confessions Of A Liminal Writer: An Interview With Kee Thuan Chye, Mohammada Quayum

Kunapipi

Kee Thuan Chye was born in Penang, Malaysia in 1954. He started writing poetry and drama in the early 1970s, while he was still an undergraduate student of Literature at Universiti Sains Malaysia, and had numerous radio plays broadcast on RTM (Radio Television Malaysia) during that period. He also wrote plays for the stage, including The Situation of the Man who Stabbed a Dummy or a Woman and was Disarmed by the Members of the Club for a Reason Yet Obscure, If There Was One (1974) and Eyeballs, Leper and a Very Dead Spider (1975).

Shifting Visions: Of English Language Usage In Kenya, David Mavia

Kunapipi

1 THE ROLE OF THE KENYAN WRITER The concept of a Kenyan writer has always been abstract but even so it seems there is a literary suit that categorises him or her. The mention of a writer in Kenya is almost swallowed by the shadow of the icon Ngugi. Recasting this image seems a monolithic feat, which might or might not be done; I don’t know whether that is good or bad.

Nyof Nyof, David Mavia

Kunapipi

Ati the makanga of the fifty-eight mathree was mbolox so Koi fuatad nyayo and placed herself in the admirable eyes of Waf (short for Wafula). Waf was the dere of Western Bull, the mathree known for its bullish horn that attracted the choosiest of the bunch in Buru. She had dissed Maish because he was not focused; he happened to be bila chums and needed also to improve on perso. Lately it was rumoured he was courting some kahigh school projo which made Koi feel old and intimidated. Koi was a typical Boma girl trying to organise her perso and …

A New Day Has Dawned: The Future Of Anglophone Kenyan Literature Belongs To Jambazi Fulanis, Doreen Strauhs

Kunapipi

Imperial discourse and literary works from the colonial centre, such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, nurtured the image of Africa as the ‘dark continent’ and espoused the idea that its inhabitants are ‘inarticulate dirty savages’ (Conrad 20). In concordance with the colonial idea of the muted and naïve native, Rudyard Kipling’s popular notion of the ‘white man’s burden’ became a synonym for the European imperial mission: the poor ‘blacks’ of Africa had to be lifted onto the stage of sophistication and civilisation and to be led into the light and blessings of Jesus Christ.

My Uncle Ezekiel, Helon Habila

Kunapipi

My uncle Ezekiel’s body was discovered in a ditch early on Christmas morning, three years ago. Beside him was an empty bottle of cheap whisky, I still remember the red and green label on the bottle, with the inscription: Christian Brothers. Because of the empty bottle, and because of his drinking history, people assumed he had drunk himself to death — but actually, it was the cold that killed him.

The Margins Or The Metropole? The Location Of Home In Odia Ofeimun’S London Letter And Other Poems, Oyeniyi Okunoye

Kunapipi

This essay locates London Letter and Other Poems, a work by the Nigerian poet, Odia Ofeimun, in the context of the growing tradition of postcolonial travel writing, underscoring its inevitable reconciliation of personal memory with colonial history. In arguing that the poet problematises the burden of self– definition, the paper suggests that Ofeimun’s elaborate exposition of his preference for the metropolitan identity that the urban space creates in his theoretical reflection is a metaphor for appropriating the hybrid constitution of postcolonial identity.

Palimpsest And Seduction: The Glass Palace And White Teeth, Melita Glasgow, Don Fletcher

Kunapipi

There is much critical commentary on the use of palimpsest as a metaphor in postcolonial writing for the violent imposition of colonial culture and indeed, this emphasis is warranted. Less noted, however, is the element of seduction involved in the concept of hegemonic control in colonial or imperial situations and in postcolonial fiction. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the use of these concepts in the popular and critically acclaimed postcolonial novels, Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000) and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000). While palimpsest — as metaphor and technique — is evident in both, this essay …

Terra Fluxus, Hal Pratt

Kunapipi

Although born in Sydney, Australia, my childhood was spent in country New South Wales. We moved to Wagga Wagga during World War II and then to Parkes in the Central West where I went to school. The only cameras I experienced at that age were Box Brownies which most families owned. Otherwise I occasionally saw a large view camera used by the school photographer, or the street photographer who saw us as easy game when we were on holidays.

‘Is Not Story, Is The Gospel Truth’: Fact And Fiction In Ian Strachan’S God’S Angry Babies, Joyce Johnson

Kunapipi

In God’s Angry Babies, Ian Strachan interweaves different types and styles of discourse as he examines the extent to which stories circulating at a popular level within a community colour people’s vision of reality and influence behaviour. Stories, as used in this discussion, include narratives describing events, and fictional stories as well as ‘ideologies, rationalizations and explanations’ (Faust 2). Type of discourse refers to the distinctions which are made, for example, between myth, legend, folktale, autobiographical writing, news report and letter. Differences in style are created by the mixture of language varieties, the use of figurative language, shifts between direct …

Poems, Lou Smith, John Haynes

Kunapipi

AS SEEDS BETWEEN TEETH SPLIT

FROM YOU

Development And Same-Sex Desire In Caribbean Allegorical Autobiography: Shani Mootoo’S Cereus Blooms At Night, And Jamaica Kincaid’S Annie John And Lucy, Roberto Strongman

Kunapipi

The representation of gay and lesbian sexualities in the Caribbean began receiving much attention in US popular culture when, on May 24, 1998, a New York Times article cited The Cayman Islands’ Minister of Tourism as having said he had denied docking rights to a Norwegian Cruise Line ship that was chartered as a gay cruise because ‘a ship chartered by gay tourists came to the Cayman Islands in 1987, and the visitors’ public displays of affection offended many residents’ (McDowell 3).

Savage Skins: The Freakish Subject Of Tattooed Beachcombers, Annie Werner

Kunapipi

When the first beachcombers started to return to Europe from the Pacific, their indigenously tattooed bodies were the subject of both fascination and horror. While some exhibited themselves in circuses, sideshows, museums and fairs, others published narratives of their experiences, and these narratives cumulatively came to constitute the genre of beachcomber narratives, which had been emerging steadily since the early 1800s. As William Cummings points out, the process of tattooing or being tattooed was often a ‘central trope’ (7) in the beachcomber narratives.

J.N Jeffares, Alastair Niven

Kunapipi

We have all experienced it. Someone we hugely admire because of their inexhaustible energy or their creative talent dies, and it is as though night had fallen in the afternoon. It is simply not possible that this person has gone. Yes, they were nearly 85, but they seemed so young, so positive, and they still had so much to give.

Kunapipi 27(1) 2005, Contents, Editorial, Anne Collett

Kunapipi

Kunapipi 27(1) 2005, Contents, Editorial

Kunapipi 27 (1) 2005 Full Version, Anne Collett

Kunapipi

Kunapipi 27 (1) 2005 Full Version

Notes On Contributors, Anne Collett

Kunapipi

Notes on Contributors

Interculturalism And Dance-Theatre. Interview With Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, (Oam) Choreographer-Dancer, Lycia Danielle Trouton

Kunapipi

Inspired by two of the female greats in early modern dance, Americans Loie Fuller (1862– 1928) and Doris Humphrey (1895–1958), Elizabeth Cameron Dalman has been at the forefront of transcultural modern dance collaborations in Australia since the late 1960s when she brought dance with a socio-political subtext to Australia through the work of her mentor-collaborator, the controversial Eleo Pomare.

Ocean Of Stars: Albert Wendt And Pacific Literature In English, Dieter Riemenschneider

Kunapipi

Paul Sharrad’s recently released book on Albert Wendt, the first monograph on the outstanding literary figure of the Pacific region, is not only an ambitious but a profoundly successful scholarly study that deserves our attention. It enters the critical discourse on the ‘new’ literatures in English as a timely reminder of the importance of a regional literature and of Wendt’s literary and critical contribution to this discourse, both widely neglected among critics from beyond the Pacific.

Interview With Albert Wendt, Christe Michel

Kunapipi

Albert Tuaopepe Wendt is the most acclaimed novelist, poet and short story writer from Samoa1 and the South Pacific literary region. Born in 1939 in Western Samoa, he is a member of the aiga (extended family) Sa-Tuaopepe, branch of the Sa-Tuala and he was brought up in Apia where he completed his primary school education. In 1952, he was granted a scholarship from the New Zealand administration and moved to the New Plymouth Boys’ High School in New Zealand from where he graduated in 1957.

Trees, Rainbows And Stars: The Recent Work Of Albert Wendt, Paul Sharrad

Kunapipi

Albert Wendt is the leading literary figure of the Pacific — that is, Oceania (not the Asian and American rim that the media usually mean by ‘Pacific’). Born in Samoa in 1939, Wendt has worked as a student, teacher and writer in Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand, and currently holds the chair of New Zealand literature at the University of Auckland. He has written stories, novels, poetry and essays over the last thirty years, all to do with the effects of colonial incursions on Island cultures and the possibilities of imagining a new complex future that will accord respect to …

Dymphna Cusack As A Precursor Of Commonwealth Literature, Ken Goodwin

Kunapipi

Although imperial and colonial discourse has existed in English since at least the sixteenth century, reaching extensive proportions in the United States both before and after Independence and in India during the nineteenth century,2 the forms of twentieth-century debate, often called postcolonialism (or, less plausibly, postcolonial theory) have altered in the direction of trying to displace the imperial power, perfidious Albion, from the centre of the discussion and to treat it contumeliously while concentrating on supposed similarities of culture among the colonies and former colonies. An early text for the first of these twentiethcentury trends might be found in the …

Two Dreamtimes: Representation Of Indigeneity In The Work Of Australian Poet Judith Wright And Canadian Artist Emily Carr, Anne Collett, Dorothy Jones

Kunapipi

A child of the nineteenth century, Emily Carr was born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in 1871 and painted her last works in the early 1940s, dying in 1945. Judith Wright was born on the New England tableland, New South Wales, in 1915, became a published poet in the early 1940s, and continued to publish poetry, essays, fiction and biography until her death in the first year of the twenty-first century.

Art And Advocacy: Mary Alice Evatt In The 1930s And ’40s, Melissa Boyde

Kunapipi

On her return to Australia from Europe in 1939, Mary Alice Evatt remarked in an interview for the Australian Women’s Weekly that paintings devoted to gum trees, sheep, koalas and misty seascapes were the only Australian works selected to hang in World Fair Art Exhibitions. In addition she derided the decision makers who overlooked Australia’s modernist, experimental artists, many of whom were women: ‘if only those in authority were to select the paintings of Australian artists who prefer creation to photography, and were less overawed by official selection bodies, Australia might find a worthy place on the art map of …

‘Out Here To Be Pleasant’: Mister Johnson And The Rhetoric Of Niceness, John O'Leary

Kunapipi

Early in the twentieth century, a Governor of the Gold Coast colony in West Africa circulated a minute to his staff. Such minutes were not unusual, and could cover any subject. This one, however, is memorable, for it dealt not with the minutiae of imperial administration but with a more difficult question: namely, how the agent of empire was to behave towards the subjects he ruled:

Black Fishnet Stockings, Ken Kamoche

Kunapipi

Otieno loved the car like his own child. He could sit for hours while he waited for Mzee, the old man, just admiring the sleek, shiny bodywork. He knew the car very well. When he heard the engine purr, he understood its language in a way Mzee never could. He heard what it was telling him. It spoke in gentle tones, as only a new Mercedes could.

No Beginning, No End: The Legacy Of Absence In Jamaica Kincaid’S The Autobiography Of My Mother, Alan Shima

Kunapipi

A sea is large. If placed in the middle of it, you will feel the pull and tug of waves, each mounting swell adding volume to what is before and beneath you. Jamaica Kincaid’s writing can be a sea. Her narratives unfurl in the heave and thrust of thought curling back upon itself. Incidental descriptions may have the simple surface of account; but think twice because the emotional undertow of her work will take you elsewhere.

‘It Was Like Singing In The Wilderness’: An Interview With Unity Dow, M.J Daymond, Margaret Lenta

Kunapipi

Unity Dow has published three novels in rapid succession: Far and Beyon’ (2000), The Screaming of the Innocent (2002) and Juggling Truths (2003). She is also the first woman to be appointed a judge of the High Court in Botswana; before her appointment she was an attorney and a prominent human rights activist, and she won some landmark cases in Botswana.

Poems, Alamgir Hashmi, Syd Harrex, Beverley Farmer

Kunapipi

Birds in a tree

The precious thing

Fruits instead of flowers

Burial

Late afternoon

Granite island

Knowing Anna