Papers by Rosalind McFarlane
The ocean as a border in Australia has been gaining increased attention, not only with the arriva... more The ocean as a border in Australia has been gaining increased attention, not only with the arrival of asylum seekers by boat and the relentless government policies to prevent this, but also the connections with Asia that Australia's part of Oceania suggests. Recent scholarship by critics such as Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Suvendrini Perera, and Elizabeth McMahon explore the way representations of oceans can evoke, on the one hand, this doubled sense of insularity and threat, but on the other possibility and connection. However, while some of this analysis may be new and specifically addressing recent events, depictions of the sea that utilize such a doubled sense of intimacy and conflict have a significant history in Australian literature. One such example is Simone Lazaroo's The Australian Fiancé, a book that deals overtly with the White Australia Policy and the aftermath of WWII. Existing scholarship has tended to focus on the significant discussions around racism, exclusion, and gender in the novel, but as of yet there has been no sustained discussion of the representation of the sea and its relevance to such debates. Rather than being a simple backdrop, the depiction of the sea in Lazaroo's novel manifests the doubled threat and connection discussed by DeLoughrey, Perera, and McMahon.
Iss. 10 The Poetics of Collaboration, 2016
How do multiple poets speak at once, and what purpose can it serve? Poetry collaborations can inv... more How do multiple poets speak at once, and what purpose can it serve? Poetry collaborations can involve sophisticated layerings of voice and impositions of meaning, depending on the intentions of the poets involved. In this article, a theory of 'palimpsestuous' poetic voices will be substantiated in the case of poetry collections where these voices fluctuate and come together to selectively promote certain ideas or issues. Two poetry collaborations—Speedfactory by Bernard Cohen, John Kinsella, McKenzie Wark, and Terri-ann White, and Speaking Geographies, an ongoing poetry project by this article's authors Siobhan Hodge and Rosalind McFarlane—will be examined in detail. In the case of these two collections, environmentalist concerns are particularly highlighted by their engagements with poetic voices. As this article will demonstrate, collaborations offer poets unique opportunities to set up contrasts between the personal and the communal, coming together with great effect to promote or condemn issues or values.
Contemporary Asian Australian poets have recently begun to attract more attention, particularly w... more Contemporary Asian Australian poets have recently begun to attract more attention, particularly with the publication of the anthology, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill, Contemporary Asian Australian Poets. This essay engages with three of these poets: Debbie Lim, Shen and James Stuart, and reads their poems through a diasporic lens. Contrary to scholarship that investigates belonging using the more orthodox ideas of home and land, this reading engages with fluidity and mobility through the depictions of water to better represent the diasporic experience. Further, these poems employ desire and the desiring subject to engage with the way diasporic belonging is figured as contested and contingent. Each of these elements will be explored in the poems in order to investigate the link between diasporic belonging and depictions of water.
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Papers by Rosalind McFarlane