Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mullen's Choices, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Obituary/biographical note concerning Geoff Mullen (1947-2014), and his anti-conscription activities (1967-1972) in Australia during the Vietnam War.

Mighty Beast: A Critical Reflection, Neil Verma

RadioDoc Review

This review-essay considers Mighty Beast, a radio feature by Sean Borodale, Sara Davies and Elizabeth Purnell, exploring how it approaches vernacular speech using poems based on auctioneering, sounds of market places and interviews with farmers and other workers. Listening closely to key passages, I highlight the role of Borodale’s 'in the moment' process and the use of sound editing as a form of writing, while situating the work within a longer history of livestock poetry and auctioneering in the sound arts. In the end, I argue that Mighty Beast is an outstanding piece to help think through larger issues of …

Mighty Beast: Review 1, Mike Ladd

RadioDoc Review

MIGHTY BEAST: written by Sean Borodale, soundscape by Elizabeth Purnell, produced by Sara Davies, performed by Christopher Bianchi. BBC Radio 3, Between the Ears, 2013. 29mins10.

Mighty Beast is a ‘radio poem’ that takes us into the cattle saleyard, and the lives of the auctioneers, animal handlers and farmers that are its denizens. Radio poems operate through feeling as much as intellect, and give scope for different interpretations. They are not so much about imparting information or telling a story, as creating an experience. They are more associative than expository, often proceeding in a non-linear way. Often radio poems …

My Share Of The Sky: Review 2, Alan Hall

RadioDoc Review

This documentary by the celebrated Danish producer Rikke Houd, in collaboration with Iranian journalist Sheida Jahanbin, is a work of art. It is also a powerful piece of documentary journalism that measures the pulse of a young couple’s emigration from Iran and their attempts to settle in Norway. The narration by Sheida Jahanbin, our guide to establishing a new life as an asylum seeker, is lent a profound dimension by being choreographed in a sophisticated ‘hocketing’ with the voiced-over translation, which acts as Sheida’s Norwegian voice. This is an inspired device, which also serves as a metaphor in a story …

My Share Of The Sky: Review 1, Helene Thomas

RadioDoc Review

My Share of the Sky speaks like a poem. A poem of love, of life, and of loss. It is a story of finding refuge and freedom in a foreign land and reconciling with the longing for loved ones back home. Presented as an audio diary, Sheida Jahanbin invites listeners into her world as she and her husband Madyar make a new life for themselves in Oslo, Norway as political refugees from Iran. The program presents a stream of live happening moments which intimately capture Sheida's life as it is unfolding. Juxtaposing the mundane and the terrifying, the ordinary and …

The Left-To-Die Boat: Review 2, Peter Mares

RadioDoc Review

In March 2011 an inflatable boat carrying 72 asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa set out from the coast of Libya hoping to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa. As one Italian official commented, sailing from Libya towards Italy should have been ‘a bit like doing a slalom between military ships’. Yet as, out of fuel, supplies of food and water dwindled to nothing and the people on board began to get sick and die, the boat continued to drift and no help came. Eventually it floated all the way back to the Libyan coast. Of the 50 men, 20 women …

Enslaved, Katina Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

This performance art piece was delivered by Katina Michael at the Intelligence Squared (IQ2) debate at the City Recital Hall, Sydney, Australia. The topic of the debate was “Are we becoming enslaved by our technology?” Joining Katina on the affirmative side was Crikey’s correspondent for politics, media and economics Mr Bernard Keene, and Dimension Data’s general manager of security and internet safety Alastair McGibbon. On the negative side was Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, backed by journalist, filmmaker and blogger, Mr Antony Loewenstein, and Ms Asher Wolf, a self-described ‘information activist’. The debate was moderated by Dr …

A Different Kind Of Justice: Review 2, Claudia Taranto

RadioDoc Review

A Different Kind of Justice tells the story of two people who met across a table in a restorative justice (RJ) conference, facilitated by Karl James, an RJ professional. Margaret’s home is robbed; Ian, a burglar and heroin addict, took a few small items, including a laptop with all her family photos. Margaret reveals that her daughter Jessica died in a car accident a few months after the burglary and the missing photos now mean so much more to the family.

The program is essentially interviews with the two characters, intercut, as they each tell their version of their shared …

A Different Kind Of Justice: A Critical Reflection, Cassandra Sharp Dr

RadioDoc Review

Despite the accepted success of many restorative justice programs with youth and Indigenous offenders, debate still proliferates about the utility of adult restorative justice programs within the criminal justice system. Many important questions are raised about the efficacy and impact of such programs including: ‘What can restorative justice offer adult offenders and victims of crime? What are some of the challenges of using restorative justice in this context? And what can we learn from emerging developments in practice?’ (Bolitho et al, 2012). As will be discussed in this review, Russell Finch’s BBC Radio 4 production of A Different Kind of …

Will Kate Survive Kate: Review 2, Kate Montague

RadioDoc Review

Masako Fukui’s radio documentary Will Kate Survive Kate is a tender portrait of a young woman’s battle with an eating disorder. The use of conventional interviews, recorded conversations, audio diaries, and fly-on-the-wall style observational recordings, contribute to a rich and layered documentary work. The anonymity of radio provided Kate the opportunity to articulate her experience without the distraction of her visual representation. And the use of intimate audio diary recordings, and script from written diaries, allowed Kate a degree of co-authorship in the documentary. Fukui’s compassionate approach is reflected in the deeply personal quality of the storytelling that is shared. …

Will Kate Survive Kate? Review 1, Laura Starecheski

RadioDoc Review

To craft a narrative with a dramatic arc out of an onerous battle with illness, when no sure recovery is in sight: this was the task facing Will Kate Survive Kate? producer Masako Fukui when she set out to document a year in the life of 'Kate'—a 29-year-old Australian woman battling—and at times tightly holding on to—anorexia nervosa. Kate’s family wants her to eat—to triumph over her illness—and for complicated and frustrating reasons, she can’t bring herself to do it. For Kate, this is a matter of life and death. At the heart of Kate’s story is the acknowledgment that …

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.