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Island Magazine

Walt Whitman’s famous line ‘I sing the body electric’ could well serve as the epilogue to Etchings 2, whose dynamic offerings are gathered under the theme of connectivity and the generation of energy. indeed, being ‘wired’ has become a predominant feature of modern existence. This is obviously true of our relationship to the internet and of our addiction to instantaneous transactions and connections. Yet we are wired in other ways as well. To be wired is also to be anxious and edgy; it implies a disconnection, a nervous distance. The pieces showcased in Etchings 2 examine the multifariousness of this experience.

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It may be the global unease of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that is causing Australian writers and thinkers to focus more and more on ‘place’: on the fractures and fissures between the homogenising impulse of the nationalist project, on the one hand, and on the other, the impossibility of constructing Australia as a sociological monolith. The current issues of these two journals explore the profound differences between one ‘place’ and another: between Australia and Elsewhere, mainland and island, the mansions of the haves and the degraded housing estates of the have-nots; between state and state, city and city, city and bush, inner-city homelessness and outer-suburban sprawl. And if you expand the concept of ‘place’ into its metaphorical dimensions, there’s almost nothing you can’t discuss, from the buzz-phrase ‘the space of memory’ through the class-bound notion of ‘knowing one’s place’ to L.P. Hartley’s classic ‘The past is another country; they do things differently there’.

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Literature aspires to be read twice; journalism demands to be read once, Cyril Connolly declared. Between the book and the newspaper lies the journal, juggler of both, simply wanting to be read. In its quest for a readership over the past three hundred years – diligent or dilettantish, it hasn’t been fussy – the journal has banked on the perenniality of the literary and the urgency of the journalistic, according to fashion. The best measure of a journal’s contemporary allegiance is the type of essay it prints. The essay is the journal’s raison d’être, a chameleon form that can turn its attention to everything from the sorrows of war to the pleasures of whist. The latest issues of Griffith Review, Overland and Island make one thing clear – this is no time for fun and games. When even the newspapers are easing us into supine postures with their summer supplements, these journals have chosen to shake us from our slumber. Roused by the banning of two books – Defence of the Muslim Lands and Join the Caravan – last July, Julianne Schultz’s Griffith Review sets itself the task of interrogating the West’s easy claims to freedom. The issue’s theme is ‘The Trouble with Paradise’, and three of the issue’s eight essays – by Allan Gyngell, John Kane and Chalmers Johnson – attempt to make sense of America’s paradoxical status as ‘New World’ and ‘New World Empire.’ There are also essays on failed Edens: Paul Hetherington looks at Donald Friend’s pursuit of sensual and sexual satisfaction in Bali, and Will Robb offers us a rare photo-essay from the streets of the world’s newest democracy, Iraq. But the emphasis is clearly on the two lead essays by Frank Moorhouse and Martin Amis, which, together, take up more than a third of the issue.

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Island 159 edited by Vern Field

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August 2020, no. 423

First published as The Tasmanian Review in 1979 (soon after the Franklin River Dam project was announced) and renamed Island Magazine in 1981 (the year of the Tasmanian Power Referendum), Island emerged as one of Australia’s leading literary magazines, yet always grounded in a fragile environment. True to its ecological roots, this fortieth anniversary edition, put together by the new editorial team of Anna Spargo Ryan (non-fiction), Ben Walter (fiction), Lisa Gorton (poetry), and Judith Abell (art features), maintains a distinctly local focus while exploring new creative directions.

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Island 135 edited by Matthew Lamb

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February 2014, no. 358

Editor Matthew Lamb stands by his decision to end themed issues of Island. ‘General issues,’ he explains in his latest editorial, ‘allow for more serendipitous encounters with new ideas.’ Cohesion in any literary journal can be tricky, and Island 135 offers a mostly complementary mix of new and old ideas.

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Island 132 edited by Rachel Edwards and Matthew Lamb

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July–August 2013, no. 353

The Kantian epigraph to this issue of Island points to an exploration of the island as ‘the land of truth’, with the ocean around it as ‘the native home of illusion’. In this way, the translation of experience, both real and imagined, is navigated in clever and topical ways. The emphasis on ‘island’ as a micro-metonym for Tasmania demonstrates that while there are changes afoot at Island, the new editors, Matthew Lamb and Rachel Edwards, have remained steadfastly loyal to its ‘Tasmanian-ness’. Issue 132 showcases the new A4 format. The content is as rigorous and engaging as ever, but the design and layout have more in common with the sinking Cartela on its cover. While the larger format has increased the content, it is at the cost of a rather gauche and cheap-looking publication. (Indeed, pages are falling out of my copy.) Tom O’Hern’s artwork adorns whole pages, and though his huge black-and-white illustrations of skulls and decomposition are repetitive and predictable, his double-paged industrial ‘Behemoth’ demonstrates his flair.

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Island 129: Women edited by Dale Campisi

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October 2012, no. 345

Editing a ‘women’s edition’ of a literary journal is bound to be fraught with semantic problems. What is women’s writing? By women? About women? As Island ’s fiction editor, Rachel Edwards, editorialises, ‘there is nothing that defines women’s fiction apart from the sex of the author. Nothing!’ The politics of contriving a women’s edition of a literary journal, then, is simple: women’s voices are under-represented in the domain, a disparity which can be addressed by providing platforms for them.

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In her editorial, Gina Mercer observes that this ‘is a decidedly poetic edition of Island’. Mercer bids farewell to poetry editor James Charlton, and announces the 2008 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Also, the journal showcases the work of writers who are committed to what Mercer refers to as ‘the joyous and endangered art of poetry’.

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The latest issue of Meanjin is excellent. Ian Britain and his co-editor, Jennifer Digby, have assembled a group of learned contributors to address the theme of ‘Crime and Law’. The interaction between their wide range of experiences and orientations – professional, personal, poetic – makes the journal a fascinating read. The essays are strong, diverse and engaging.

Justice Michael Kirby’s affecting meditation on the significance of the 1957 Wolfenden report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution is both an erudite professional opinion and a personal account of how devastatingly the law can impinge on individual liberty in the name of religious morality. Despite the forceful recommendations of the report, widespread law reform on the decriminalisation of homosexuality was slow to occur. Australia only began to see legislative change on this issue as a part of Don Dunstan’s reforms in South Australia, in 1975. Drawing upon the work of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, Kirby argues that ‘criminal law, with its heavy-handed punishments, stigma and shame, [is] not to be deployed on the basis only of scriptural texts and private sensibilities’.

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Space edited by Anthony Lynch and David McCooey & Island 105 edited by Gina Mercer

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October 2006, no. 285

The American poet William Carlos Williams often admitted how much he owed to the ‘little magazines’ that first published him. As they lapsed in and out of existence, he regarded them all as essentially the one publication and was grateful for the lifeblood they gave his (at first unpopular) writing. It is to be hoped that Australian literary magazines of various political shades and aesthetic proclivities, from Quadrant to Overland, are doing something similar. Indeed, when so much else is in flux in the publishing world, it is amazing how enduring Australia’s top literary magazines have been, despite their often small subscription lists. Even Island magazine, which is something of a junior compared to Meanjin, Southerly, and Westerly, has been around for twenty-seven years. Space: New Writing, on the other hand, has just appeared in its third number. To judge from the best material in the current issues of both magazines, Australian literary culture is not being ill-served here. If not everything is of equal interest (how could it be?), there is plenty of satisfaction to be had in both.

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