Creative Writing Commons^™

From Real Life To Story – And Back Again: Using Autobiographical Fiction Writing To Understand Self, Others And Family Generations, Alberta N. Adji

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Writing autobiographically includes complicated responsibilities to the subjects involved: to family members, friends, colleagues, and even cultural communities. This article explores creative developments occurring during the process of writing an autobiographical novel called ‘The longing’, which is drawn from a recollection of intergenerational lived experiences of a middle-class Chinese Indonesian family from 1956 to 2018. I reflect on my strategies and approaches on tackling challenges that arose while using autobiographical material and autofictional techniques to write fiction and communicating cultural complexities for it allows agreeable distance between the author and her writing subject. In the article, I also argue that …

The Fragmentation Of The Writing Self: Using Dialogic Reflection To Explore The Writing Process Of An Autobiographical Novel, Alberta Natasia Adji

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In this article, the author-researcher presents three intertwined texts: excerpts from an autobiographical novel, extracts from a reflexive journal written during the writing of that novel, as well as a theorized account and analysis of the overarching creative process. These texts talk to each other as a form of intertextuality in the similar way that the three generations of a Chinese Indonesian family depicted in the novel interact with one another and present differing perspectives and fresh insights. The issues of the writer’s inner voices and multiplicity of the self feature prominently in this work, the result of a deep …

Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk, Patrick West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Short story

Mount Keira By Night, Frank Russo

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Poem: Mount Keira by night

Looking For Marianne North, John Charles Ryan

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This poem reflects on the life of peripatetic botanical illustrator Marianne North (1830-1890) who travelled to Southwest Australia in 1880.

Critically Imagining A Decolonised Vision In Australian Poetry, Cassandra Julie O'Loughlin

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Postmodern ecocriticism, given its broad range of perspectives, offers an agreeable platform for articulating a new, advanced and inclusive framework for a decolonising theorisation of literature and the environment. This article seeks to identify Australian Western decolonising poetry that sits in harmony with Indigenous aural and literary versions of communicative engagement with Country. The concept of human embeddedness in ecological relationships and biological processes as part of a complex matrix of interdependent things is embraced. In particular this article focuses on inclusivity and interconnectedness of all life forms to illustrate aesthetic and conceptual interfaces between Aboriginal Australia and Western poetics. …

The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …

Issue Introduction Volume 10, David Gray

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Issue Introduction and Editorial for Volume 10, Issue 1.

Complete Issue 1, Volume 10, David Gray

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Complete Issue 1, Volume 10

Bully Me, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

What price bullying? Is it as simple as saying: ‘hit back’ or, ‘toughen up’? Or, is it to be endured, because it won’t last forever? But what if it does last? What if the bullies finally go away, but you’re left with the worst bully of all: yourself? Your inner voice telling you you’re no good, you’re ugly, you’re the worst in the world and it would be better off without you?

How do you escape the bully that lives inside your head, all day, every day, every night?

This is the story of how I managed to escape that …

Leadbetter, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A satirical comic about the rogue, right-wing, gun-loving US Senator Leadbetter, who wins the presidency and installs a dictatorship, which solves all social problems with extreme prejudice.

Navigating The Wreck: Writing Women’S Experience Of The Japanese Occupation Of Singapore. Salvaged From The Wreck: A Novel -And- Diving Into The Wreck: A Critical Essay, Dawn Nora Crabb

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is in two parts. The first and major part consists of a historical novel followed, in part two, by an essay. The title of this thesis, “Navigating the Wreck”, refers metaphorically to the Fall of Singapore in 1942, the ensuing human tragedy unleashed on the people of Singapore and Malaya, and the literary and historical processes of exploring, interpreting and depicting the past. The Japanese occupation of Singapore has, to date, been described mostly by Western historians and former prisoners of war who have forged a predominant patriarchal narrative. In that narrative—despite the all-encompassing nature of the occupation …

Bully Me: A Graphic Novel; The Return: A Graphic Novel; Comakademix: A Comics Anthology; Leadbetter: A Comic; Laundry: A Minicomic -And- The Erotics Of Comics: An Exegesis, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Beholding a comic is ideally, a pleasure. The work informs, entertains and stimulates the mind in some way. There is no gainsaying which works will affect which beholders howsoever it does, yet the expecta­tion of pleasure from a work of comics makes behold­ers seek it. Making the comic is also a pleasure, even if the process can be long-winded, winding and dif­ficult. The maker wants to give others the same plea­sure they drew from beholding comics, but in their way, making their vision of Batman, Lieutenant Blue­berry or, their own story worlds. What this research seeks to explain are many …

A Father At 1.5 Metres: Poems Of Pandemic And Fatherhood, Edward J. Leeming

Theses : Honours

'A Father at 1.5 Metres: Poems of Pandemic and Fatherhood' is a 36 poem collection with a connecting theme of uncertainty informed by John Keats‟ concept of negative capability. Negative capability, a term introduced by Keats in 1817, suggests that a writer is benefitted by a refusal of the formation of concrete ideas, that being in uncertainty without needlessly chasing after truth allows for a better understanding of the world, and of more perspectives in their writing. The negatively capable writer is more open to possibilities and of exploring new ideas; this allows them to pursue what Keats calls “beauty”, …

Paying Attention To Water Relations: Poetic Inquiry And Pedagogical Documentation As Curious Practices, Claire O’Callaghan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This project explores climate pedagogies with particular interest in Western Australia’s current water crisis. Human and more-than-human relations are explored with young children and educators from an early learning centre in Perth, Western Australia, with a view to reimagining education in the context of rapid environmental change. The project is grounded in feminist new materialist knowledge and is framed by an attentive focus to amplify the non-binary nature of both human and more-than-human counterparts. The research focuses on challenging colonial ways of knowing water, by decentring the child, unsettling norms, and reinstating reciprocity between human and more-than-human others (Nxumalo & …

The Weave Of Youth Writing: Refiguring Authorship And Self-Representation In Michaela Deprince’S Collaborative Archive Of Life Narrative Texts, Alberta Natasia Adji

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Young people have to struggle in navigating the complex cultural and socio-political frameworks of production if they would like to reclaim agency and legitimacy to voice their aspirations. This article focuses on questions of authorship and self-representation in both the traditional and digital life writing texts created by and produced for Sierra-Leonean-American ballet dancer Michaela DePrince, which turns out to be highly mediated by her Jewish Caucasian adoptive mother Elaine DePrince. I argue that the manners of Michaela’s collaborative archive of life narrative projects–which bring about issues of authorship–have conformed her self-representation to particular identity frames in terms of race, …

The Return, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

1943: Robert Wells has returned home from the war, having spent months in hospitals recovering from combat wounds. While being rehabilitated at Heidelberg Military Hospital, a series of visitors come to see him and, in the process, old wounds open, some close. What does seeing and doing the worst acts a human being can do to one another, do to a person?

Thirteen years after The Sacrifice, the follow-up story of Robert Wells concludes in this elegiac story of how the impact of war is felt, even far from the front lines.

Aletheia: The Orphic Ouroboros, Glen Mcknight

Theses : Honours

This thesis shows how The Orphic Hymns function as a katábasis, a descent to the underworld, representing a process of becoming and psychological rebirth. I begin with the Greek concept of sparagmόs, a dismemberment or deconstruction, as a necessary precursor in that it emphasises at once both primordial unity and yet also the incipient tensions within the Orphic initiates on this path to katabasis. The argument herein extends beyond literary explication to consider how the Orphics sought to enact this process in Greek society itself.

The thesis then establishes the connections between the Hymns and the thinking of …

Youth Matters: Shedding Light On Displacement In Syrian Girls' Memoirs, Alberta Natasia Adji

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the face of war and political crisis, fleeing a country seems to be the best choice to get on with life. Among many refugee memoirs, so far young adult refugee texts have received little attention. This article analyses two young Syrian girls’ memoirs by Nujeen Mustafa and Yusra Mardini to investigate their experience of displacement. I argue that both Nujeen and Butterfly are prime specimens of young displacement memoir phenomena which act as a venue for identity negotiation. This point has much to do with their navigating the tensions between personal and collective selves to disclose their trauma and …

Shadow Over Mount Barren, Bronwyne J. Thomason Dr

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

A short story that captures scenery of the Fitzgerald National Park and relates it to life-affirming principles of the natural Australian Bush.

Fortunates Part 1, Lawrence Upton

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

A poem. With corrections listed in an email of today's date

Zemlja And Pioneer Day, Natalie D-Napoleon

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Poems: Zemlja and Pioneer Day by West Australia born author Natalie D-Napoleon.

North Sea Poems: Birds Of The North Sea, Caa'in, Summer Ferry, Lesley Harrison

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

These poems reflect the practical, human, immersive processes of self-orientation and self-location within the coastal and island landscapes round the North Sea. In both recording and bringing about this process, the poet maps herself onto her surroundings and brings her surroundings to bear on herself. The interplay of graphic, linguistic and other forms of description are destabilised by the contingency of their usefulness, and by their meaningless to each other. In the end, the generative poetic voice is the principle by which the 'map' is made.

Snorkel Virgin, Emma J. Young

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Snorkel Virgin

Plunging Down Under, Ian Smith

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Plunging Down Under

The Junk That 8 K-Town (View-Master Haiku Series 1, 2 & 3), Brenton M. Rossow

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

THE JUNK THAT 8 K-TOWN (View-Master Haiku Series 1, 2 & 3)

My first session taking photos of bush junk near the K-Town train station led to an addiction. I started to see things within images that aroused deeper contemplation. The miniature Eiffel Tower within one landscape seemed to expertly align with a gasping car belly that paid homage to Peter Dam’s The Dogs That 7 Sparrows.

Absent past owners became unconscious artists. Objects in their adopted environments became creatures with lives beyond previous incarnations. I saw things as representations, serendipitous alignments, but more importantly, a culture addicted to …

“‘The Strata Of My History’: Reading The Ecological Chronotope In Wendell Berry’S That Distant Land”, Ellen M. Bayer

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article examines Wendell Berry’s short story collection, That Distant Land (2004) through the lens of the ecological chronotope. Berry’s characters cultivate an intimate relationship with their physical environment, and the land, in turn, inscribes their history within it. Furthermore, it is through a shared sense of responsibility to the land that the characters foster a sense of community, shared history, and timeless connection with each other. My analysis of Berry’s fiction employs the notion of the ecological chronotope as a lens for understanding the environmental implications encountered at the intersection between time and place in That Distant Land. …

Solastalgia, Nostalgia, Exhilarating, Immersive: Landscapes: Heritage Ii, David F. Gray

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Landscape: Heritage II presents the scholarly and creative contributions to Landscapes, Volume 9, Issue 1.

Issue Introduction By Icll Director Glen Phillips, Glen Phillips

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

General Introduction by ICLL Director Glen Phillips

Complete Issue 1, Volume 9

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 9, Landscapes Journal.