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Southerly

SOUTHERLY: VOL. 73, NO. 2 edited by David Brooks and Elizabeth McMahon

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April 2014, no. 360

Each note of the nightingale’s song is sung in only one tenth of a second. For humans to be able to appreciate the nuances of those elaborate performances, the songs have to be recorded and slowed down for replay.’ So writes Teja B. Pribac, guest editor of the latest Southerly, subtitled Lyre/Liar. Pribac goes on to explain that her volume examines ‘emerging ethical implications of writing, with particular emphasis on representations of nonhuman animals’.

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Southerly, Vol. 70, No. 3: India India edited by Santosh K. Sareen and G.J.V. Prasad

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November 2011, no. 336

Special issues are difficult and delicate, given the burden of representation. Editor David Brooks confesses to providing only a glimpse of the rich field that might constitute Indian–Australian literary relations. He offers ‘that very Australian thing – a showbag, a sampler, full of enticements to explore further’. Given the slow but steady realisation in Australia that India should be a focus of attention for its scholars and students, this is a timely attempt.

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Southerly, Vol. 69, No. 2: Southerly At Seventy edited by David Brooks and Elizabeth McMahon

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March 2010, no. 319

It is time to raise our glasses: Australia’s oldest literary magazine is now a sprightly septuagenarian. The latest number of Southerly marks the occasion by encasing itself in what appears to be a reproduction of one of its covers from the middle of the last century, complete with foxing and a pencil notation of its pre-decimal price. This retro jacket should serve as a reminder of the journal’s longevity. It arrived on the scene at a time that was hardly auspicious for any new literary venture – Hitler invaded Poland the same month. Thankfully, Southerly outlasted the Third Reich (and a few other empires, too).

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I would now like to begin with a plea for small literary magazines. I now have a vested interest in their survival (well, one, in particular), but then, I always thought I did. Little magazines are essential to the vitality of Australian literary and political culture. They play an important role in nurturing new poets, critics, storytellers, and reviewers. In the current book-publishing climate, there are few other opportunities for publishing short stories, experimental fiction, or poetry. Small magazines instigate and foster cultural debate and present a diverse range of opinions. Many of the most important issues in Australian public life today were first raised and discussed in literary magazines, including the stolen generations and racial ‘genocide’, the perils of economic rationalism and globalisation, the politics of One Nation, and the implications of new media technologies.

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