THE GROUP online magazine

GROUP 7

2011-03-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

FUTURE-ISM

A few months after the turn of the millennium, in early 2000, comedian Bob Downe was doing a routine about the future, the crux of it being that just like the Y2K Bug, the future was already turning out to be a bit of a fizzer. After all, weren’t we all meant to be living in the contented lap of luxury by now, in a sort of hi-tech heaven, having all our meals lovingly prepared by gadgets and being flown to work in robot cars (only wasn’t work meant to be a thing of the past anyway, with our every need and whim attended to by machines?) Instead, the world of the 21st Century was much the same as it had always been... we drove cars along roads and sometimes still crashed and people got injured, and people still got sick and went hungry, and they pretty well all still hated their relatives, and everyone worked, in fact even longer hours than they had a few decades before. The future? Well, pretty much like the past. With gadgets.

Certainly the world of 2000 had not turned out to be quite the world envisioned by the Futurists, the artistic movement founded in Italy by Filippo Marinetti in the years before World War I. Similar to the Dadaists who would soon follow, they saw the old world of Europe as decadent, and wished to sweep it all away in a wave of the new. The Futurists were techophiles who welcomed the gleaming bright world of tomorrow with its huge cities, vehicles and aircraft, and were repelled by the stodgy world that still was. The movement spawned painting, sculpture, architectural plans, even music, but was largely bypassed by Modernism, while Marinetti and other members were absorbed into the Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini. Well, he liked big things too, largely statues of himself.

Artist's impression of future city

While much of what the Futurists might have dreamed of and wished for has come to pass, in our hi-tech world of today, they and the others who have traded in futures, the science fiction writers of the 20th century, might have been a tad disappointed by the world of now. Unless that is they see themed megamalltowns as the great leap forward.

Dubai

While we have had no wars of the worlds or invented no time machines, and starship cruisers remain the stuff of gung-ho space operas, Arthur C. Clarke’s dream of communications satellites orbiting the earth did come true. But in the real 2001, there was no manned journey far into the solar system: indeed, we don't know when we might reach out with manned space flight even as far as Mars. Instead, the year 2001 was indelibly marked by an act of an Old Testament kind, of cunning and ruthless brutality.

And while members of the online community might be able to create entire “second lives” for themselves, these bear little resemblance to that envisioned by Philip K. Dick in his classic story The Days of Perky Pat, in which offworlders sought escape from their miserable existence as miners marooned far from earth through a combination of toys and drugs that made them believe they were living perfect lives in the perfect 50s America of Eisenhower. (Trivia question: What is the name of Perky Pat's boyfriend? Answer at the end of the magazine.)

Fritz Lang, in his classic film Metropolis (1927) also foresaw something old in the new, a class struggle over the fruits of automation, climaxing in revolution. That we are yet to see, as well.

Perhaps one of the most acute of sci-fi authors was Olaf Satapledon, whose Last And First Men of 1930 did accurately predict not just the world war to come, but the "Americanised Planet" of the 21stC, and the rivalry between the US and China. But even Stapledon failed to imagine the impact of computers on our everyday life eight decades after his. Instead, many visions for the future concentrated on innovations which no-one has really bothered with, such as the "automated lunch room".

So what really has changed, then? What has actually come to pass in the future dimly glimpsed by the Futurists and three generations of sci-fi writers?

The world wide web is definitively changing the way we communicate, organise and agitate, spend time with friends, conduct business and commerce, and a host of other things. It may even be changing our consciousness in ways we are not yet aware of, as we all engage in an ever more consuming and intimate relationship with our arrays of increasingly intelligent machines.

There may even be, too, a convergence we cannot quite glimpse yet, between the global linkage of computers that the web allows, and the so-called artificial intelligence of computers, growing by the hour. The question is, how artificial? After all, machine intelligence is modelled on our own. And if you discount, as many do, any supernatural “soul” aspect of our being, what are we but autonomic intelligent machines made from carbon and other compounds, doing our daily reptititive routine procedures, and in the knowledge that all will be voided when our capacity to repair and renew ourselves is overwhelmed by our own little quotient of entropy, in what we know as “death”.

Besides the possibilities glimpsed through newtworked computer communication, the other glittering horizon, but one we look upon with a roughly equal amount of fear as of hope, is genetic modification. Through various gene technologies, humanity now possesses the ability to change the fundamental “operating systems” of living organisms, from plants through the animal world, right up to and including ourselves. And while at present we teeter on the brink of re-making ourselves, there can be little doubt that sooner or later we will begin the process. What changes will we make? What attributes will we see as worthy? Will our daughters all end up looking like the women from Baywatch, and our sons like Roger Ramjet? Or will we opt for ways to increase our brain size, and work out how to use it more efficiently than we do now? Both, and far more, probably. Will we find a way to increase our useful lifespan beyond the current three score and ten, after which nearly all of us are either dying or as good as dead? Certainly. And lastly, in search of turning ourselves into supermen and women, will we expose some fatal flaw in our own reasoning or fuctioning, and end up with a world of monsters such as the one created by Frankenstein? Possibly.

While all of these questions confront us with our newly acquired godlike capabilities, there are others of an old brain kind, to do with greed and killing over scarce resources, which will confront us at the very same time. Fossil fuels, food, water, minerals, all are expected to become in rapidly increasingly scarce supply in the coming years and decades, and so just at the moment when humanity possesses the means to remake itself and its world in a better way, it could just as easily destroy itself by inaction over global warming and climate destablisation, and in conflicts over resources. And as of the mid last century, we happen to possess the gun we aim at our own racial temple, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and our finger sweats.

The future? We might not even have one. But we may, and it may just be far better than the past for the mass of humanity. Or, as with our history to date, it may be a lot better for a few, and a little better, by degrees, for the rest. That, or the void, seem the options in these times that one must say at the least are nothing less than interesting. Whatever the case, the getting up in the morning, and the belief to go in with life another day, in pursuit of whatever it is that motivates us to do so, be that money, prestige, sex, or a holiday in the Maldives, makes all of us Future-ists of one kind or another: people who believe in life strongly enough to go forth, even boldly.

-Larry Buttrose, Editor, GROUP 7

IN THIS ISSUE

Mandy Salomon contemplates second lives

Jack Feldstein treats us to another of his wonderful neon animations, this one a view of the last days, Ex Oblivione, by H.P. Lovecraft

John Birmingham peers into the cloudy glass ball of the mainstream media

James Bradley considers the Hugos and introduces us to "steampunk retro-futurism" and reads William Gibson's Zero History

Angela Sidoti on present and future meat

Martin Kovan invites us in to his "briefly Borgesian neo-eco thought bubble", The Theatre of Returns

Kavita Jindal visits the London of 2021

Brendan Doyle picks at tea and raisin toast packing heat with an SS99

Rob Walker masticates and expectorates GM food

J.R. McRae meditates upon Changelings

and lastly, the eternal dangers of social media

Answer to trivia question: Perky Pat's boyfriend is Walt.

Food of the the Literary Gods.

2010-10-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, food, or rather thinking and writing about food, was considered not just unimportant, but rather shameful. In classical literature, food was a trivial thing, beneath the consideration of philosophers and historians. Plutarch, a founding member of the anti-fun brigade, disapproved severely of those who could recall their past meals too clearly. Such was not the mark of a freeborn man, he thundered, for whom pleasure was found in the perennially fresh feasts of philosophical argument.

Seutonius, in his life of the emperor Augusutus included his diet only as an afterthought. The emperor was 'frugal' in his dining habits. He liked small figs and second-class bread and usually turned up late to his own state dinners.

But of course the Romans also left us the idea of the orgy and vomitorium, where dozens if not hundreds debauched themselves on the likes of boiled goose in anchovy sauce, dormouse and poppy pie, fricasseed snails and stuffed pigs stomach, all washed down with gigantic amphora of wine. The empire turned Rome into an emporium, where anything could be contained and consumed, but of course, only if one had the denarii. Many poets and writers, who did not, often wrote for patrons who fed them. Persius, one of the prettier Roman poets, who lived all his life with female relatives, thought a rumbling stomach was the real muse of most poetry.

Two thousand years later, the same chasm yawns between power and hunger. In Pablo Neruda's poem, The Great Tablecloth, tyrants come rushing to the table with their temporary ladies, all looking like wasps with big bosoms. Meanwhile the peasant in the field eats only 'his poor quota of bread,' alone, surrounded by wheat, he chews with grim teeth, looking at it with hard eyes.' For him:

Eating alone is a disappointment,
but not eating matters more,
is hollow and green, has thorns
like a child of fish-hooks
trailing from the heart,
clawing at your insides.

George Orwell understood that for the poor of England, poor food was a type of opium. A subsistence wage might just stretch to enough nutrients to keep a man alive if he stuck only to raw vegetables and wholemeal loaves. But as Orwell wrote in the Road to Wigan Pier, 'The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots.' Their diet, consisting of tinned peas and milk, stale white bread and rotten meat, was 'appalling' he noted a physical wasting away of the entire population of the working class.

He had discovered what it was to be down and out while in Paris, sharing his poverty with thousands of struggling artists and students.'

'You discover what it is like to be hungry. With bread and margarine in your belly, you go out and look into the shop windows. Everywhere there is food insulting you in huge, wasteful piles; whole dead pigs, baskets of hot loaves, great yellow blocks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of potatoes, vast Gruyere cheeses like grindstones. A snivelling self-pity comes over you at the sight of so much food. You plan to grab a loaf and run, swallowing it before they catch you; and you refrain, from pure funk.'

And, so, my little grouplets, let us away to the shop window, where we shall press our noses lightly, frosting the glass with our breath as we feast our eyes upon a link salad inspired by love of food.

A simple love, caught in Amanda Stewart’s

Ockham's Pasta

parmesan
pepper and parsley
add one primate and butter

And more complex love, like that between a father and son in Brendan Doyle’s

Lunch with my boy

I’d bought the best brie
and real French baguette
for lunch with my son.
I see him rarely these days.
He stood tall and smiling in the doorway,
orthodontically perfect
but otherwise with some of my imperfections.
We sat at the window in the winter sun
and he showed me his latest designs
proudly – he’d taken all the photos himself,
written the business plan
and wants to launch himself into the world.
He ate with relish and a man’s appetite
and asked if he could borrow the laptop.
I’d have gladly given him all I own.
Declined a wine.
Unlike me,
he doesn’t drink in the middle of the day.

But first to Thailand, with the blog Elephant Woman, named after ‘a great track by Blonde Redhead’. Here we find a rejoinder to Orwell’s opinion that most people would sooner starve than live on leaves and twigs, but also some evidence that perhaps George might have been right.

Staying with the travel, lets join Masako Fukui, as she attempts to plumb the meaning of food and her own need to ‘be consumed,’ all while putting to together a seven course haute cuisine Japanese feast.

It is inevitable, isn’t it, that a food ise will bring out the Group’s would be masterchefs, but if, after Masako’s efforts you’re feeling a little bloated and in need of a simpler, cleansing meal, perhaps start the day with Larry Buttrose’s ‘best breakfast’. (Although be aware there is no bacon to be had here). I had very much wanted to link to my old blog at this point, to a long entry I once composed on my yearly feast of cassoulet. Unfortunately that host has gone the way of all things and the article is lost.

No mind. We always have memory, as Proust reminds us. He is famous of course for dwelling on food at length and almost unbelievable depth, as a narrative mechanism for accessing the infinite reserves of memory. Some of these you can taste in jenjewelbrown’s

when the juice flows

these summer days keep ripening
into a lemon bleached strange-world like when you walk
out of a dark kitchen into the zenith blind as Daniel into the den
mice click and rustle under the boards against the fence

she reaches up to peg the shirts
cracks around the washing line
mynas yack and muscle from the desert ash
: the dacks
she’s thinking of the mango juiced-up
on the chopping board

the quickening streaks overhead
whipping her with cold wind up
beach of sky
clouds that tear and rumble
on radio women mutter
thunder a tin roof falling down a mine

smelling the rain
the girls will see a snake swimming the flood

Food does more than disappear from the plate in literature. It signifies. It dramatizes.
It becomes freighted with emotion. Just ask neilwrites. It lends imagery and metaphor to the author, accentuates action, creates spectacle, sets mood, provides ritual, builds a stage around the dinner table, denotes rank and relative status. It confirms ethnicity or suggest hidden meaning. It is sensuality made manifest.

For a man of action as well as letters, someone like Hemingway for instance, a meal on the page could be existentially empowering. In ‘A Moveable Feast’ he sits down
to eat, burdened by ennui. Sucking oysters from the shell, savouring their strong briny
tang, ‘that the cold wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent
texture,’ he is reborn. ‘I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and make plans.’

Hungry poets know only too well about this. PJ Ryan will tell you.

Most writing about food, however, is more utilitarian. Guides to finding the best muffins, or the most dunkable biscuit. In this category I happily include Billy Marshall Stoneking’s guide to best dives, gin joint greasy spoons. And Mark Mordue’s cautionary thoughts on the spread of food fetishmism.

THE GROUP - ISSUE #5

2010-06-04T18:04:00.000-07:00

the literature issue

(This photo was taken by overthemoon.)

Each year, after the annual book fair in the quiet Swiss town of Romainmôtier, the artist Jan Reymond, in a wondrous use of second-hand books, creates an installation in honour of literature. The book fair is held at the town cathedral, a Romanesque structure that dates back to the fifth century. Last year, Reymond situated his installation within one of the cathedral's deep arches, signifying the power books have in our lives. The image above captures the spirit of Reymond's intention: the books are suspended, half-open, and seem to surround those who pass through the arch. It's a perfect metaphor for the ways literature can affect our lives. It's always possible that a remarkable story, a vivid characterisation, a half-remembered poem, or a particular arrangement of words might—if we're lucky—accompany us as we walk through our day. Reymond reminds us that books are doors to other worlds that we may enter and re-enter at will.

In the essays, reviews, poems and stories that follow, the power of literature is shown in all kinds of ways. A writer discusses his new short story collection. A homesick poet remembers his country. A make-believe event in a literary life is energetically animated. In the face of tragedy, a promise to write becomes a call to action. Reading poetry is shown to be an invitation to participate in the act of creation. Words enthrall and tantalize. Books are plundered. We discover over and over that we read not only for pleasure but also to learn how to live. For many of us—the fortunate ones, in my opinion—we read because not to read is a kind of death.

This is the literature issue. I invite you to meander through the selection that follows. Take a moment to respond to what you read and reflect on the powerful ways books, stories, words affect you personally. Most of all, enjoy.

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Pioneers in the Digital Snow
Story by Mark Mordue

On Saturday 22nd May 2010, it was announced that Mark Mordue was this year's winner of the Pascali Prize for Critical Writing. It is Australia's most prestigious award for critical expression and reflection on the arts, and carries with it a $15,000 prize. This piece is based on his speech at the Sydney Writers Festival where the award was announced.

http://www.markmordue.com/2010/06/pioneers-in-digital-snow.html

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The Atomic Adventures of Jack Kerouac
Story and animation by Jack Feldstein

Feldstein's rambling seemingly make-it-up-as-you-go-along, stream of consciousness narratives have been likened to Woody Allen and Spalding Gray, but with an Austrtalian twist. Feldstein was a scriptwriter for many years before—as he puts it—he woke up one morning and began making neon films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=764kIckkqPY

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Christopher Payne's Asylum
Review by Sue Bond

If my heart could speak,/I’m sure it would say, I wish I were/someplace else today./ Among these books, a great amount of knowledge there/must be,/but what good is knowledge where others carry the/keys.

These lines are from a poem written by an unnamed patient on the wall of a basement in Augusta State Hospital in Maine. Christopher Payne has placed a photograph of the poem at the end of the main section of his images in Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, in a highly fascinating example of urban exploration literature. Sue Bond reviews this compelling book about the power of words in the most desperate of lives.

http://thewordygecko.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/walking-in-our-shoes-asylum-by-christopher-payne/

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Gary Snyder & 'wasp-nest grammar: on poetic pilgrimage
Story by Martin Kovan

Gary Snyder’s work had been with Martin Kovan since his early youth, quietly mildewing in his hippie stepfather’s capacious bookshelf. In this piece, Kovan reflects on meeting and working with Snyder, on the poet's tough graciousness, and how the real man matched up against the demi-god he'd constructed in his imagination.

http://whisperedlineage.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/gary-snyder-wasp-nest-grammar-on-poetic-pilgrimage/

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My Country
Poem by Larry Buttrose

Two years ago in an interview with Janet Hawley in The Good Weekend, the author Geraldine Brooks recited lines from this poem. It turned out the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist knew the entire piece by heart, something the poet himself cannot profess.

http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-country.html

For listening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVRfoomXK9w

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Atlas Crouched: The Poetic Voice of Christina Conrad
Story by Billy Marshall Stoneking

What one finds in Conrad's poetry is not knowledge but inspiration. It is in what she leaves unsaid, what she deftly alludes to but seldom expresses and never explains, that her poetry and art are most clearly perceived. But the perception that is there is made by the reader/listener/viewer of Conrad's work, and in the way she fashions her verse, so that it continually invites the reader/audience to participate in the act of creation.

http://www.christinaconrad.webs.com/poems.htm

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Books in Our Lives
Story by Adair Jones

We read not only for pleasure but also to learn how to live. In this personal essay, Adair Jones meditates on the intersection between life and books.

http://adairjones.wordpress.com/on-reading/essays-about-reading/the-intersection-of-books-with-our-lives/

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Maquerel
Story by Belinda Jeffrey

This extract comes from the beginning of a novel in progress called, Maquerel, inspired by the true story of a Nazi naval officer who worked for the Jewish resistance preceding World War 2. He deserted his ship, S.S Leuna, in Sydney harbor in 1938 where he was hidden in a brothel until the Nazis discovered his whereabouts and attempted to assassinate him. For the last years of his life Walter lived with the author’s family, dying in 1975. Before his death, Belinda Jeffrey's grandmother gave Walter a birthday card with a picture of a silhouetted ship on the front. He said, 'I don't know how you managed to find me the black ship of death. My father always said that the Black Ship of Death waits on the horizon for seamen when they die. That's where my father waits for me.' Did he know of the poem of that name by D.H. Lawrence? It's something that will never be known.

http://belindajeffrey.com/?p=459

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The Fall: Reviewing Jordie Albiston

Story by Matt Heatherington

This piece was originally written in 2004 for Cordite Poetry Review, which is one of the best all-poetry-related sites based in Australia, publishing three times a year. Not precisely a 'book review', the piece is really a theoretical/emotional/fragmentary response to Albiston's work: an attempt at inhabiting a role Oscar Wilde called 'the critic as artist'. The Fall is one of Heatherington's favourite collections of poetry written by an Australian, one he hopes will one day receive more of the recognition it deserves.

http://www.cordite.org.au/reviews/matt-hetherington-reviews-jordie-albiston/

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Pride and Prejudice and Profit$

Review by Blazenka Brysha

In this review of Pride and Prejudice with Zombies by Seth Graheme-Smith (Quirk Classics, 2009), Blazenka Brysha takes a look at a best-selling publishing exercise in plundering the copyright-free vaults of classic literature.

http://blazenkabrysha.wordpress.com/pride-and-prejudice-and-profit/

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The Wild Orchid
Story by B.M. Buttrose

BM Buttrose shows us how a simple promise to write can take on transformational power in this touching short story about love, friendship and interconnected lives.

http://janesmithspiritualmistress.blogspot.com/2010/05/wild-orchid.html

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Bibliophobia

Poem by rob walker, vision by Ben Walker

This exquisite rendering of a poem by rob walker, in collaboration with his son Ben Walker, won the Newcastle Poetry Prize for New Media in 2009.

http://vimeo.com/7872488/

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Peter Goldsworthy on Gravel
Interview by Angela Meyer

Gravel is Peter Goldsworthy’s new collection of short stories – amusing and moving - covering a range of predominantly white middle-class characters in conflict with their own egos. Angela Meyer joins Goldworthy in conversation on this newest work.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/2010/03/09/peter-goldsworthy-on-gravel/

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Reading Like a Writer
Story by Nike Bourke

A good writer reads because not to read would be a kind of death. Because, as Susan Sontag once wrote: “Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.” Nike Bourke explains her theory on why good writers are first and foremost good readers.

http://www.perilousadventures.net/0901/reading.html

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There was a Turtle
Story by Kavita Jindal

In this nuanced short story, Kavita Jindal weaves together a rich tapestry of the ways superstition and psychology operate in modern life. On a trip to New Mexico, Jindal discovered Zuni fetishes (tiny carved ‘charms’); their beauty inspired the story.

http://kavitajindal.com/therewasaturtle.html

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Lit Prizes: Hiding in Plain Sight
Story by Sam Cooney

In this country, it's customary for a prize announcement to be coupled with a slickly worded collective argument outlining the decision, but rarely are we given any clue as to how this judgment was reached. Sam Cooney ponders the nature of the literary prize, the mystification of the decision-making process, and the real-world benefits of such awards.

http://meanjin.com.au/spike-the-meanjin-blog/post/lit-prizes-hiding-in-plain-sight/

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the contributors

Sue Bond is a writer, reviewer, and book reviews editor for M/C Reviews: Culture and the Media. A very long time ago, she got a medical degree, then quickly segued into literature, obtaining an MA in Creative Writing with the wonderful and much missed Jan McKemmish. She has had short stories, articles and reviews published and is (still) mulling over her memoir of living with her adoptive parents; additionally, she keeps an erratic blog called The Wordy Gecko.

Nike Bourke is a Queensland writer and the co-director of Olvar Wood Writers Retreat. She is the author of The Bone Flute, The True Green of Hope and What the Sky Knows.

Blazenka Brysha is a Melbourne writer, arts journalist and dance critic. Since 2003, she has been exploring the possibilities of writing for the cyber-space medium that was opened up by the internet. She began this, initially, as a way of extending her work beyond the space/time restrictions of traditional mainstream print/ radio media.

BM Buttrose is an artist and writer living in the Blue Mountains. Her alter-ego is Jane Smith, interior design guru and artiste, whose book Finding the Shelf Within: Spiritual Development Through Home Improvement was published last year by New Holland Publishers.

The author of more than a dozen books, Larry Buttrose's current project is writing a new stage version of Don Quixote for the Bell Shakespeare Company.

Sam Cooney is a writer living in Melbourne. He recently completed a graduate writing degree with a second major in literature, and writes fiction, non-fiction, and journalistic pieces, some of which get published. Sam works with Express Media, and also reads fiction for journals and anthologies. You can find him in all the usual overcrowded dens on the internet or in Berlin next year.

Jack Feldstein is a Jewish animator from Sydney. His trademark style is the neonizing of a combination of live action video recording and public domain material, particularly cartoons. Neonizing is a complex computer-based technique that renders the lines of an image like a neon sign. Feldstein describes neon animation as a deconstructionist, post-modern animation filmmaking style that utilises appropriation and pop art techniques, in a Warhol meets Vegas look.

Matt Heatherington is a writer, musician, lover, father, humble self-promoter, sky-digger, vegetarian bludger, DJ, frustrated housewife, connoisseur of fine scents and dog-biscuits, twin brother, old school soccer nut, poverty stricken aristocrat, and Bodhisattva wannabe. His most recent poetry collection is I Think We Have.

Belinda Jeffrey is a Brisbane-based writer and the author of Brown Skin Blue (UQP 2009), her first novel. Her second novel is due out in September. She is currently hard at work on two other projects, a third young adult novel and her first adult novel.

Kavita Jindal was born in India and spent several years living and working in Hong Kong before settling into domestic ineptitude in London. She is the author of Raincheck Renewed, the poetry bestseller. Her most recent short story is the cult hit, ‘Preludes & Elusions’. Her novel, Phosphorus, is in the works. She writes regularly on the Arts for a variety of publications, including newspapers and literary websites. http://www.kavitajindal.com/

Adair Jones is a writer from New York now living in Brisbane. Her articles, reviews and short stories have been published widely, many of which may also be found on her literary blog WordSearch. She is exuberantly involved in the Australian literary world and dedicated to the writing life.

Martin Kovan studied music, English, philosophy, and Buddhism in his native Australia, in India, and the US, where he completed an English MA degree with beat poet Gary Snyder (described in this issue of The GROUP). He currently lives in Paris where he writes fiction and non-fiction, and researches a PHD in Buddhist ethics for a London university. When he is not in Europe, he is making tracks for South and South-East Asia, and when he is not there, he is fantasising a full-time return to Australia.

Angela Meyer's short stories, reviews, articles and interviews have been published widely. She is a former acting editor of Bookseller+Publishing magazine, chairs panels at various writers festivals, and is working on a novel through a Doctor of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney. She runs the popular literary blog LiteraryMinded.

Mark Mordue is an award winning writer, journalist, and editor working internationally. He currently teaches narrative writing and literary journalism at the University of Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), is in the process of completing a first novel for his MA in Writing (by Research) at UTS, and is also about to embark on a major biographical work. He won this year's Pascali Prize for Critical Writing.

(Photo: Ingvar Kenne)

Billy Marshall Stoneking is an Australian/American poet/playwright, filmmaker, script consultant, teacher and author of seven books, including the modern-day classic, Singing the Snake : Poems from the Western Desert. His poem, 'Seasons of Fire', was recently selected by Les Murray and re-printed in The Reader (University of Liverpool, UK) as one of the 10 best Australian poems ever written.

rob walker has three poetry collections: sparrow in an airport, micromacro (currently out of print), and phobiaphobia. Recently, he has also been writing short fiction. Try his website for more self-promotion.

THE GROUP - ISSUE #4

2010-02-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

the travel issue

"you wanna be there..."

a word from the Editor

It’s unfortunate that the word “journey” is such a debased term in popular culture, freely reserved for teary-eyed reality TV contestants and a be-your-own Frankenstein mojo that underlines the motivational me-spirituality retailed to us in books, television and song today. It seems everyone is running their mouths over the word ‘journey’ with nary a thought to its larger meaning or worth.

Maybe the media is too kind to us in that regard, making violence in Afghanistan seem as close to us as Paris Hilton’s hand-bag, deluding us we are familiar with the world entire – when really we hardly know it all. As the Australian singer Dave Graney once put it, the truth is this: “You wanna be there, but you don’t wanna travel.”

Given the second (hand) life we often lead, it’s nice to think travel writing and images can still have some vitality, and a deeper affect. The first thing any serious travel writer realizes, of course – and any traveller for that matter – is that you don’t just move through the world, the world also moves through you. It’s that combination of (observed) outer and (felt) inner life that constitutes the real power of great travel literature and indeed the way ‘travel’ as a genre nowadays melds with memoir and journeying tales of all kinds.

To my mind this liberates it as a form to embrace everything from personal stories of struggle and becoming to serious photo reportage, essays, profiles and indeed the old-fashioned story of a place and time evoked vividly and accurately. It seems to me some of the most exciting creative and reportorial work right now is happening under this loose umbrella or journeying mood, this catch-all term that online communication is freeing up and varying even more as a 'form'.

What follows is an aggregation of stories and images related to travel, journey and place. From a cabbie’s obsession with the street art he witnesses and documents to a guided tour of Auschwitz, from first hand reflections on female roller derby action in Sydney to a young woman coping with her mother’s fight against cancer, and Dave Graney’s own voyage into the secret world of hip hop. Family relationships, rock ‘n’ roll, poetry, photo-essays, animation… India, Russia, Columbia… it’s all here pulsing away. Have a scroll through the departure points below and hitch a ride or two. With luck you’ll really get somewhere.

- Mark Mordue

2010-02-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

WHAT WAS THERE – A CABBIE’S MANY VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Story and photos by Colin Hubert

The Group - Issue #4

Life in the city is more fun when you pay attention to the graffiti and street art. It cheers the anarchist soul to find evidence that people will go out of their way to do something that is not allowed, when there is nothing in it for them.

There is tagging, and writing pieces, that many people find ugly and confounding, even scary.There are also finely honed artisan skills, developed and passed on outside of art schools - a miracle of modern culture.

And there is play, and adventure, and much interest in plotting and documenting street art in the city.

Places in the city become defined by the traces that people have left. Some street art celebrates places by commenting on what is there, or what was there recently.

Link:
http://www.wallup.net/

2010-02-02T22:33:00.001-08:00

THE PURSUIT OF DERBYNESS
Story by Jacinta Walpole

The Group - Issue #4

One summer holiday in Sydney, a grown up girl puts on a pair of roller skates in an attempt to distract herself from her past. It is the anniversary of her step father’s passing. Fueled by beer, hurt, whiskey and anger, she discovers the hell-on-wheels world of roller derby.

Link:
http://www.jacintafleur.com/?p=284

2010-02-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

FOUR THREE EIGHT
Story by Jason Childs

The Group - Issue #4

In which a peaceful bus ride is interrupted; the author’s knowledge of World War Two revisionist literature is tested; personal space is violated; eggnog is suspected; feelings of misanthropy are triggered; some reflections on 21st century exhibitionism and individualism are expounded; J. Edgar Hoover is revealed for what he may well have been; silences grow increasingly awkward; and a cliff-hanger ending leaves us wondering whether the time a bus takes to make it up George St has anything to do with the trip’s duration.

Link
http://thelorgnette.blogspot.com/2009/07/438.html

2010-02-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

BLESS THIS HOUSE
Story by Ben Rumble
The Group - Issue #4

This piece is about a living, breathing house. It’s also about the family who lived in it. As a kid who grew up on the Mid North Coast, I’ve always been a bit suspicious of Sydney’s suburban west. I’ve always felt an unease as I’ve driven through these suburbs, even though I’ve come to know them so well as the place where many of my great mates had grown up. When my best friend’s family house was ready for sale it heralded the end of an era, and prompted one last visit to a place I didn’t realise was so special until the drive back to the city later that evening. This place rocked.

Link:
http://spiritualized76.wordpress.com/

2010-02-02T22:23:00.000-08:00

WE WILL GO, BUT I CANNOT FOLLOW
Story by Bonnie Rando Leys

The Group - Issue #4

'We will go but I cannot follow' explores a daughter's emotional journey as she watches her mother battle cancer. A memoir detailing the exhaustion, grief and dark camaraderie of one family as they try to preserve and restore the one they love.

Link:

http://www.redthesea.blogspot.com/

2010-02-02T22:19:00.001-08:00

MUM’S NEW ROCKSTAR GENTLEMAN BOYFRIEND
Story by Shalie C. Sweetnam

The Group - Isssue #4

I began working on this novel as a means to explore my unorthodox childhood. Having had a serious relationship breakdown with my mother, I was interested in shedding light on my memories, and more importantly expressing my childhood voice. Drugs, alcohol, sex, Art and rock ‘n’ roll have always been a part of my life, which I don’t think really hindered my development, it accelerated it. Luckily my only form of rebellion was to run away from home to live with a normal family at 14.

I had close relationships with very charismatic adults growing up; this chapter describes my meeting my stepfather for the first time. I wrote it for his daughter, my half sister, who was born when I was 13. He passed away when she was 7 years old, succumbing to cirrhosis after years of alcoholism and heroin addiction. I’ve been working on these stories for over 20 years now, and like the mild forms of childhood abuse I experienced as a kid, I forget that they exist and have any value to anyone except myself. It feels good to share them again, to give my stepfather credit for guiding me through what could have been a painful and lonely time if he hadn’t treated me with such respect, and to show his daughter that there are many elements that make up a man, and that his kindness and generosity of spirit overshadows his many faults in my eyes.

Link:
http://shakerbaker.blogspot.com/

2010-02-02T22:14:00.001-08:00

SOME FACTS ABOUT MY SISTER
Story by Emma Brazil
The Group - Issue #4

A sister looks back with affection over her younger sister’s life, and struggles as she learns to let go – and honour – her sister’s own unique journey and choices.

Link:
http://emmabrazil.com/

2010-02-02T22:08:00.000-08:00

THE INEVITABLE DEATH OF AN ARTIST
Story by Nicholas Hopkins
Images by Karamula

The Group - Issue #4

‘The Inevitable Death of an Artist’ was originally written as exercise in creative non-fiction but has since turned into a work of complete fabrication. The story depicts the last moments of a self-concerned Australian artist before he dies of a heroin overdose on the country’s southeastern coast. It bares the thoughts and actions of a character who has resigned himself to death. The story uses descriptions of Australian landscape and iconography to evoke a particular sense of identity and place.

http://www.facebook.com/l/5b5ff;misterstankins.blogspot.com

2010-02-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

THE ECSTASY OF GARY GREEN
Animation by Jack Feldstein

The Group - Issue #4

Jack Feldstein's stream of consciousness neon animation about a man's existential crisis and search for happiness, "The Ecstasy of Gary Green" was shortlisted for the Tiger Award for Short Film at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2006. In Melbourne, "The Ecstasy of Gary Green" received an Honourable Mention at the Melbourne International Animation Festival at ACMI. It has since been screened in countless international and national film festivals and featured on cable TV in North America and Europe.

Link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5232130589393222104

2010-02-02T22:02:00.000-08:00

THE KETTLE
Story by Larry Buttrose

The Group - Issue #4

Larry Buttrose traverses the deep oceanic divide between the USA and the English-speaking world in this cautionary tale of two voltages.

Link:
http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com/2009/05/kettle.html

2010-02-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

THE POSSIBILITY OF WATER
Story by Chris Womersley

The Group - Issue #4

One hot summer night in inner-city Melbourne, a pair of young desperadoes have an unusual encounter that might just change their lives forever.

Link:
http://www.griffithreview.com/edition-20/68-fiction/59-womersley20.html

2010-02-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

DARK MATTER, BLACK TRUTH, BEYOND STARS
Story by Dave Graney

The Group - Issue #4

It’s a story of my interest and engagement a hidden yet massively popular form of music. Rap music, informed by the streams of black American music going back to before recorded technology yet treated mostly by the mainstream as a toxic and cheap aberration. For me, its got it all, the drama and the characters and the internal energy and dynamics and the regional variations and the political intrigue as it drifts, like a cloud , to occupy all the vacant space- the void - it has moved into, yet tries to approximate its initial shape and form.

http://davegraney.blogspot.com/2010/01/dark-matter-black-truth-beyond-stars.html

2010-02-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

THERE IS NO PARACETEMOL
Story by Daniel O’Connell

The Group - Issue #4

In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month. If last April was anything to go by, I'd have to agree. My ex-girlfriend had recently ripped my heart out of my balls. Life was a miasma of booze, confusion and loneliness. Welcoming any distraction, I accompanied a buck's party to the annual Irish Festival at Tullamore, a small town on the Central Western Plains of New South Wales. Never go there.

Link:
http://imeanfuck.posterous.com/there-is-no-paracetemol

2010-02-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

ABBALANCHE
Story by Jana Roose

The Group - Issue #4

He is the ordinary man. He takes a piss in the morning and a shit in the evening. Bob Wheatley has lived through enough to know that the vision you have for your life and your actual life are running on parallel paths. The two might occasionally curve in toward the centre and catch a whiff of the other in the breeze, but they don’t ever meet. And he’s okay with that. A principled musician who performs in an Abba tribute band, he’s taking the stigma away from the word ‘compromise’ and he’s doing it with a smile. He is the you and the me and our neighbour across the street, Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Wheatley...

Link:
http://janaroose.blogspot.com/2010/01/b-i-t-t-e-r-s-w-e-d-e.html

2010-02-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

LYRICS TO IMAGINARY SONGS
Essay by Mark Mordue

The Group - Issue #4

Poetry’s not dead – it’s more alive than ever in the breath and rhythm of modern rock ‘n’ roll and popular song.

Link:
http://www.markmordue.com/2009/08/lyrics-to-imaginary-songs.html

2010-02-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

WELCOME TO THE CRUZ
Story by Billy Marshall Stoneking

The Group - Issue #4

Poets are driven by images. In 1997, the image of the poet-in-exile had great appeal. It took over my life. Setting out from Australia, I had no way of knowing where my nose would ultimately take me; I didn't even know exactly what I was looking for. Salvation? Peace? All I knew for sure was that I was going on a very long journey, seeking - like some latter-day Ishmael - my own transcendental masthead. Halfway between the masthead and the deck I found myself in Santa Cruz, ensconced in an expandable trailer in the Blue & Gold Mobile Home Park, with my old, philosophy teacher and mentor, Edwin Field. Was this to be an adventure or the beginning of a nervous breakdown?

Link:
http://www.facebook.com/l/f4d32;billystoneking.blogspot.com/2009/11/welcome-to-cruz.html

2010-02-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

THE OUTSIDER

Essay by Adair Jones

The Group - Issue #4

Reading books about the place you live, no matter how entertaining or amusing, is kind of like listening to your own voice on tape or viewing a picture of yourself from an angle that you don’t normally see—strange, unfamiliar, a trick of sound waves and light. But there is value in the outsider’s view. It gives us a new position from which to respond.

http://adairjones.wordpress.com/on-reading/essays-about-reading/wayward-ho-journeying-in-travel-writing/

2010-02-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

GOING BACK TO THE NATION
Photo-essay by Gerald Jenkins
The Group - Issue #4

Everyone was looking away wondering what the world thought of us – so I decided to look in and see who we really should be listening to. From my naïve beginnings photographing ‘traditional’ landscapes to being the official photographer of Indigenous participation at the 2000 Olympic Opening Ceremony in Sydney, Australia, I had the pleasure of losing my belief system in order to understand the true emotional range of humanity in its purest form.

Link
http://geraldjenkins.net/project/australian-aboriginal/#

2010-02-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

GREAT WHITE TALE

Story and photos by James Bradley

The Group - Issue #4

Author James Bradley takes a dive in a shark cage and remembers what it feels like to truly be alive

Link:
http://cityoftongues.com/writing/great-white-tale/

2010-02-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

LOOKING WEST – Australia and the Indian Ocean
Essay by John Birmingham

The Group - Issue #4

John Birmingham looks at the role of the ‘forgotten’ Indian Ocean in our historical and cultural imagination. "Like wow, wipeout..."

Link
http://www.facebook.com/l/51ece;www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-john-birmingham-looking-west-australia-and-indian-ocean-1852

2010-02-02T20:36:00.000-08:00

1000 Camels
Story by Sinead Roarty

The Group - Issue #4

In 2005, Sinead Roarty travelled to India to be alone in a country with over a billion people. From encounters with children at Varanasi's burning ghats to dancing girls at a bollywood bordello, wherever she goes people aid her in making a life changing decision.

Link:
http://sineadroarty.com/

2010-02-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

THE CAMBODIAN SPACE PROJECT

Video by Julian Poulson

The Group - Issue #4

For years Srey Thy has eked out a living singing in the Karaoke clubs of Phnom Penh, she supports her entire family on her income of less than $100 a month. In a twist of fate, Thy met Australian musician Julien Poulson who heard Thy sing and suggested she try something very different, together they formed The Cambodian Space Project. Srey Thy, has always loved songs of Ros Sereysothea – the great Cambodian diva, once known as The Golden Voice of Phnom Penh, who tragically disappeared in the Killing Fields, so choosing a Sereysothea classic Dop Pram Moi sits well as the band’s first video.

Thy was born into poverty around the time the Khmer Rouge was finally driven from power. Thy’s father, then a tank driver, lives today in the same impoverished village in Prey Veng where he proudly points to a faded photo hanging from the flimsy wall of the family’s thatched hut. The photo is a black and white image of a handsome young officer in 70’s flares and sunglasses, standing next to a baby girl, both attentively listening to a transistor radio… perhaps even listening to the psychedelic Cambodian Rock of the late 60’s and early 70’s.

Link:
www.youtube.com/bushtuckerfilms

2010-02-02T20:26:00.000-08:00

KARAOKE

Photo-essay by Ingvar Kenne

The Group - Issue #4

I am documenting KARAOKE. Its an ongoing project in its third year and spans several countries in Asia. Karaoke bars are casual entertainment up front and likely façades for brothels, drug dens and massage parlours with happy ending out the back. Even though they play a very important social role and are relevant to the positive makeup of the neighbourhood, they also act like places of despair, loneliness, and injustice. The images try to move within the space where the two opposite emotions meet.

Link:
www.ingvarkenne.com

(click on “Karaoke”)

2010-02-02T20:10:00.000-08:00

THE UPROOTING

Photo-essay by Ben Ball

The Group - Issue #4

The Uprooting is an interactive photo-essay about forced displacement in Colombia, a humanitarian crisis that is arguably the most chronic and least visible in the Americas. Combining still photographs with ambient sounds, music, audio testimonies and interviews, The Uprooting attempts to give voice to ‘the displaced’, and context to their situation. The work is equally an essay in visual communication on the net, an attempt to relate a complex story in a meaningful and engaging way in the face of information overload, and in a way that responds to the unique interactivity of the Internet to curate a conversation about an issue, rather than simply tell another story.

Link:
http://www.theuprooting.com/

2010-02-02T20:06:00.000-08:00

“HELL” – an excerpt from MY COLOMBIAN DEATH
Story by Matthew Thompson

The Group - Issue #4
Wherein our Colombian correspondent meets a shaman, takes yage, hallucinates and dies.

Link:
http://www.skivemagazine.com/issues/2009/06_June_2009/My_Colombian_Death_Skive_09.pdf

2010-02-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

EAST OF THE SUN
Photo-essay by Seamus Murphy
The Group - Issue #4

East of the Sun is a road/rail trip through the Russian Far East and a dip across the Amur River into China that I undertook in September/October 2008.

I was denied access to the regions treasure-trove of energy assets and resources by suspicious, perhaps guilty authorities. But would a guided tour by an oil or mining company’s public relations team have gotten me any closer to the truth? I doubt it. I felt a wry touch would yield better results and explain the region and its people equally well. Unencumbered with any knowledge of the Russian language, my blundering itinerary brought me to places I would never have found the official way. I began to enjoy my role as a sort of reverse-Borat.

A bit like an uncontrollable giggling fit at a funeral, I find serious people funny. And very serious people even funnier. And Russians have a reputation for being very very serious.

So this is what I saw.

Link:
http://www.viiphoto.com/showstory.php?nID=961

2010-02-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

MOUNTAIN OF DEATH AND LIFE
Story by Sheryl Gwyther
The Group - Issue #4

Travelling in the U.S. with an ex-earthquake scientist has its hazards ... but visiting active volcano, Mount St Helens was worth it. 2010 is the 30th anniversary of its eruption – this travel blog reveals some of the events leading up to that catastrophic event, its impact upon those who visit this still-active volcano, and a small tribute to earth scientists who risk their lives studying volcanoes.

Link:
http://sherylgwyther.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/mountain-of-death-and-life/

2010-02-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

GREY
Story by Alberto Trillo Barca

The Group - Issue #4

Grey is a memoir that explores the emotions the author and his companions experience whilst on a guided tour of the former Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, in Poland.

Link:

http://contosareviravolta.blogspot.com/2009/10/memoir.html

GROUP 3

2009-10-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

TRIBES SPEAKING TO TRIBES
A note from the Editor

=

I love the poet, Muriel Rukeyser, because she understood that “the world is made of stories, not atoms”.You don’t have to be a poet to understand this, but it helps. Have a look around. Stories are a force of nature. We didn’t evolve from apes; we sprang into life, full-blooded and thoroughly anxious, embodied by "tales of the tribe".

Story is our essence, the source and expression of every dream, dread, vision, death, birth and discovery. Our humanity and inhumanity is rooted in it, tangled in the mystery of “how come?” and the suspense of “what next?”

When James Joyce was asked where he came up with the stories that inhabited his books, he gestured round the pub: “from that couple over there, and those men by the door, and that woman washing up behind the bar…”

Story is Nature’s way of becoming conscious of itself, and as storytellers we work with it in order to become conscious of ourselves. One writes a story to find out why one is writing it, and in the process discovers that the story is writing us as much as we are writing it.

This issue of THE GROUP was meant to be an exploration of screen storytelling, but alas - it has taken on a life of its own. What is common to all the contributors in this issue is their willingness and ability to "enter the drama", and through that courage to offer their audience a chance to enter it as well.

Many of the writers, artists, filmmakers and poets that appear in this issue work as "mediums". To work as a medium is not so much a matter of what an artist does, as what he/she doesn’t do; it is akin to the Chinese idea of wu-wei (non-action), a concept that denotes effortlessness, spontaneity, or what Chuang Tzu refers to as “flowing”. It is the ability of getting out of the way and letting the event, emotion, experience express itself-as-itself.

Every well-told story and poem flows, as does the act of every artist when he/she operates "mediumistically". The art of flowing, requires that the artist/writer get out of the way. A dramatist must become “empty”, unobtrusive, so that the characters can become whatever the characters are, so that that which is yet-to-be can come into being, allowed to birth itself through the agency of the storyteller-made-medium.

Indeed, one might say that unless a story - or any work of art - is birthed in this manner it can have no lasting raison d’être, and as such, cannot endure.

Billy Marshall Stoneking, Editor, GROUP 3
November, 2009

_______________________

F E A T U R E S

Earlier this year, Sanaz Fotouhi travelled to Afghanistan with filmmaker, Amin Palangi, to work on a documentary film for the Afghan-Australian charity organization, Mahboba's Promise. This was her third trip to Afghanistan since 2006. Because of the way she traveled and lived during this time, and the intimacy of some of the relationships she formed, she decided to chronicle her odyssey into "the place of sorrow" . This is an early draft of what might be the introductory chapter of that tale…

http://sanazfotouhi.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/glimpses-of-my-journey-into-afghanistan/

A LITTLE VIOLENCE IN YOUR LIFE

Andrew Dominik is the director of Chopper and The Asssassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. His concerns with violence, mortality and what might be described as negative forms of celebrity - or, more simply, notoriety - distinguish his work along with a deeply poetic style of filmmaking. Mark Mordue speaks with Andrew Dominik here about the making of Jesse James, one of the truly great Westerns in modern cinema, which was recently released to the DVD market.

http://www.markmordue.com/2008/01/ia-little-violence-in-your-life.html

CHANNELLING WRITING

Writers speak of those moments when their work takes on a life of its own, appearing to write itself or reveal its true meaning. Others claim someone else has taken over the pen or the keyboard to provide more than a little direction. Lisa Sweeney talks about learning the mediumistic practice of automatic writing, making new friends and discovering new talents in the process.

http://thegroupchannellingwriting.blogspot.com/

THE HAND OF FATIMA

The Hand of Fatima is an ancient theme in Islamic art, and an integral part of social and religious life in Iran, Morocco and all Maghreb and Middle Eastern countries. The original sculpture "The Hand of Fatima" holds the unifying influence of the Islamic and Persian culture. Many designs and motifs carry a written verse from the Quran. Such verses are believe to have protective power. One of the most powerful reasons for the use of the "Hands" is as a charm against spirits. Such meaning is common to Muslims, Christians, Jews and their family members against clamaties beyond beyond anyone's control. As Professor Sasha Grishin of the Australian National University writes, 'The human hand is one of the most poignant images known to humankind. A fully extended hand is the universal symbol to stop. A hand shown from above, from a cloud or the arc of heaven, is a symbol of divine presence, while a hand outstretched towards heaven is a symbol beseeching divine intervention. as in the words of the Bible "Stretch out thine hand towards heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt." (Exodus 12:8)'

Farideh Zariv, has been collecting examples of the Hand of Fatima for 10 years. Her original artwork has been partly inspired by these collections. I have Brought together images of the Hand of Fatima, geometric patterns from Persia and Persian and Arabic calligraphy covered with talismanic Writings.

http://www.faridehzariv.com/Hands.html

MEMOIR : MEETING ROBERT GRAVES

I remember at the time (mid-70s) hearing Larry Buttrose speak about his adventures in Mallorca and his time visiting poet and author of The White Goddess, Robert Graves. I think I was even aware of this article, though never had a chance to read it. For myself and those others who missed it the first time around, here it is, along with an update from 1997.

http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com/2009/07/memoir-meeting-robert-graves.html

COLLAGES

Nasser Palangi is an Iranian/Australian artist who has gained widespread recognition and respect within Iran for his courageous recording of events at "the front" during the Iran/Iraq War. His murals and sketches of martyrs and women - among many other mediums - are celebrated around the world.

The centerpiece of Nasser’s art is a series of collages that use photographs and artifacts of Iranian history to evoke memories of the past. Viewing the past through the lens of modernity, the works of Nasser show a continuation of ancient traditions and themes in contemporary media. GROUP 3 is proud to present this selection of work by Nasser Palangi from 1999-2005 which have been exhibited in CANADA, CHINA, USA, Australia, Dubai and Iran.

http://nasserpalangi.com/Collage/Collage.html

ONCE A HOME

George Smilovici presents his haunting film memoir of another time and place; a photographic journey conceived and written with original music composed and played by the filmmaker. He writes: "All these photos of my family where taken before 1959 in pre-revolution Cuba. We lived in Havana. My parents were from Romania and they'd arrived in Cuba ('The Sexiest Country in The World') in 1947, just after the War. Once Fidel and Che (his Poster Boy) had started making waves, my father, Dan. a pianist and nightclub owner, decided it was time to leave Paradise. So we escaped Cuba's Revolution and moved to El Salvador. We left El Salvador just before the Revolution and moved to Guatemala. We then left Guatemala just before the Revolution. My father said "George, we have to find a place where they are too lazy to have a Revolution".

NEAR MUMBAI - November 2008

Martin Kovan presents a poetic tour de force, masquerading as journal 'reportage', that offers an unusual glimpse of an upside-down world from the edge of Mumbai's terror-attack last year. All the significant details are true. It seems that when the stakes are high - higher than they are in fiction, at least - real experience offers up stories uncanny enough to be more than true...

http://whisperedlineage.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/near-mumbai-november-2008/

POETRY : Ravi Shankar

Novelist and poet, Djelloul Marbrook, reviews Ravi Shankar's latest collection of poems, Instrumentality.

http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/2009/10/06/the-elegant-poetry-of-ravi-shankar/

Further reading/listening: http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/ravi_shankar/

Listen to interview with Del Marbrook at

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1576963

_________________________________________________

JUNGLE BLUES

"At Nublu, in New York City last September, I was totally blown away at a performance (pre-war blues and hokem) by a man from Australia named C.W. Stoneking. As a blues fan, I have always been concerned that all the true greats are not among the living. Well, I am very excited to say that we have amongst us probably the most talented blues musician alive today...and over time he could end up as one of the all time greats. He is a great singer, storyteller and picker. He will make you laugh and cry....and you will be blown away by the singing. This is not hype. If you have a chance to see his live show.or you can get him to come to your town....Do it." - Larry, New York City

____________________________________________

CONFRONTING THE WALL
an ecology of dramatic screen storytelling
an essay by Billy Marshall Stoneking

The empirical investigation and extrapolation of an organism’s relationship with its physical environment is preminently the domain of the science of ecology. The identification of ecological fields are expressible as sets of dynamic, vital relationships occuring as natural processes that affect the sustainability of all members operating within that system. While the value and scientific usefulness of such investigations is undeniable, the application of an ecological model to areas of human endeavour not previously interpreted in ecological terms is also capable of producing a number rather unusual and useful insights that are both surprising and illuminating. This is particularly the case when it comes to dramatic, screen storytelling as experienced by the storyteller in the act of finding “the drama”.

http://billystoneking.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

JELLY'S PLACENTA - The Film

Leith - an obsessive transvestite in her mid-30s - has been involved in a ten-year relationship with her lover, Jelly, and Jelly's dead mother, whose spirit inhabits the fig tree in the garden beneath which Jelly'splacenta is buried. Consumed by jealousy for the mother, and by a primordial urge to possess Jelly - a slippery and seemingly passive drama lecturer - Leith's world is cracked wide open by the arrival of Jelly's student - the exotic Chinese beauty, Hart Sommerstein. When Jelly arrives home, Leith accuses him of having an affair, and, in ashattering confrontation, they spill the horror of their relationship. In her frenzy to destroy the mother's dominance, Leith slays chops the tree down, unexpectedly freeing Jelly.

View excerpts from the film at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRcxYyoPU5k and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq4lIVbDRPA

Read Christina Conrad Interview re: JELLY'S PLACENTA
http://christinaconrad.webs.com/films.htm

ARE WE SICK OF SERIAL KILLERS?

US screenwriter Paul Schrader thinks the film industry has reached a state of "narrative exhaustion" because every possible plot line has been done to death. Lynden Barber has his doubts.

http://newmatilda.com/2009/09/18/sick-of-serial-killers

LITERARY PRIZES: How To Judge A Brilliant Career?

From the Miles Franklin to the Man Booker, literary prizes can raise the ire of many. Sam Cooney peeks behind the curtain of judging panels to discuss how and why we choose to canonise our authors with such pomp and circumstance.

http://samuelcooney.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/literary-prizes-how-to-judge-a-brilliant-career/

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C O N T R I B U T O R S

LISA SWEENEY

Lisa Sweeney has been a journalist and manager of news programs since the early 80s. After a beginning in newspapers, she spent almost two decades at the ABC as a radio producer, editor newsreader and executive producer before moving into management. She spent many years running all of the ABC’s radio, TV and online news output including the 7pm TV news, managing more than 500 journalists in 50 locations.

She left the ABC two years ago to live in a small ski town in Canada where she worked as a freelance writer and spent time skiing and hiking with her family.

She’s returned to Australia and continues to write fiction from her home in Sydney. She’s working primarily on her first novel, a literary mystery set in the Australian Snowy Mountains.

Larry Buttrose

Larry Buttrose is the author of more than a dozen books, the most recent being the nonfiction work Speeches of War and Peace. His current project is writing a new stage adaptation of Don Quixote for the Bell Shakespeare Company. http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com/

Martin Kovan

"I live in Paris, study at Goldsmiths in London for a PhD. in Buddhist ethics, and write fiction and non-fiction in whatever time that leaves me. I've spent substantial periods living in the U.S., France and over two years in India. I've taught English language and literature in Paris and India for the last five years, including a period at Krishnamurti's 'Rishi Valley School'. The interface between Pacific Rim poetics, Buddhist thought, neo-fictional genres and ethical enquiry informs much of my work. And Australia as it manifests interlinearly, escaping so many of the traditionalisms of a global materialism."

www.whisperedlineage.wordpress.com

Christina Conrad

"I have always been one of the obsessed. From birth. I could stare at the head of a pin for a million years. I am subject to crushes, obsessions, fetishes. Each time I fell madly in love, the object of my passion was never available. Delay was my closest lover. Yet Lucidity came to me. I learnt to work with suffering, ruthlessly applying it. I worked with the bloody tangle, unwinding the cords that threatened to strangle, working like a mad silk worm, year after year... In darkness, in blinding light light, I studied the somber jewel of sorrow. Stumbling upon secret seams of joy, I found a type of balance. Working like a medium, I called up many influences, sorting them blindly, perceptively. This is the way with creative people - they are born with an excess of mental energy. If not used properly it rots. In this way one must be careful with obsession. One must work with it... the energy must be conducted... and one must learn how to do this, otherwise it turns back on the creator causing stagnation and torment..."

http://www.christinaconrad.webs.com/

Djelloul Marbrook

Djelloul Marbrook’s book of poems, Far from Algiers (Kent State University Press, 2008) won the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. His story “Artists' Hill,” from an unpublished novel, won the Literal Latté fiction prize in 2008. Recent poems have been accepted by American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Oberon, Reed, The Same, The Ledge, Istanbul Literary Review, Arabesques Literary and Cultural Journal, Damazine, Attic and Perpetuum Mobile. He worked for many years as a reporter and editor for newspapers including the Providence Journal, Elmira Star-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal, Washington Star, and others. He lives in New York’s mid-Hudson Valley with his wife, Marilyn.

http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/

Farideh Zariv

Farideh Zariv, a Canberra-based Iranian-Australian artist, was the first ever Muslim woman to exhibit in Iziko Bo-kaap Museum in Cape Town, South Africa. Farideh arrived in Australia with her husband and children in 2001 on a distinguished talent visa, which is a rare sub-class of visa issued to highly achieved artists and sportsmen. Farideh has had formal training in the Arts with a degree in Fine Arts and one in Graphics. Currently she is continuing her education at the Australian National University doing a Master of Arts in Fine Arts focusing on Persian traditional patterns. She has been a practicing artist for nearly twenty years and has exhibited globally in America, Asia, Europe, Australia and recently Africa.

http://www.faridehzariv.com/

Nasser Palangi

Nasser Palangi graduated in visual arts from the Tehran University in 1984. While lecturing at different universities, he pursued his research in painting and art education in Tehran until 1998.

At the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), he spent three years working as a war artist close to the front line, creating series of drawings, paintings and photographs. In addition, he created a series of mural paintings entitled My Memory of the War for the congregational mosque of Khorramshahr, Iran, 1981.

Nasser’s works are exhibited in art galleries, public spaces, festivals, and is represented in Iranian and Australian public collections. He has been taken artist residencies in the USA, UAE, Australia and China, and has been the recipient of the local and international commissions, including an Arts ACT commission grant in 2005.

His photo media collage work has been collected by the British Museum's Middle East collection and is published in ‘Word into the Art’ book.

http://www.nasserpalangi.com/

Sanaz Fotouhi

Sanaz Fotouhi is a writer and researcher with extensive writing and editing experience. She is interested in Middle Eastern women’s issues as well diasporic literatures. Sanaz has recently finished teaching part the syllabus of the postgraduate diploma of creative writing at the University of Hong Kong.Sanaz has also been involved in various film projects including as a producer for Hidden Generation (2006). In Journey of Hope Sanaz will be a co-writer and will bring her expertise and interest in Middle Eastern women’s issues and writing to contribute to the project.

http://www.sanazfotouhi.com/

Sam Cooney

Sam Cooney is an avid writer, contributor and learner living in Melbourne. He has just finished an undergrad degree, and will be writing throughout the summer.

http://samuelcooney.wordpress.com/

http://these-three-things.blogspot.com/

Lynden Barber

Lynden Barber is a Sydney-based journalist specialising in film and music, a feature film script assessor, and a curator for the National Film and Sound Archive.

Visit Lynden's BLOG at http://eyeswiredopen.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-screenwriting-billy-marshall.html

Billy Marshall Stoneking

Poet, playwright, filmmaker, teacher
EDITOR, Group 3

WEBSITES
http://www.stonekingpages.webs.com/

http://www.scripttools.webs.com/

http://www.billystoneking.blogspot.com/

In November, Stoneking will be running workshops in Sydney and in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. To participate in an exciting and revolutionary approach to screen and dramatic storytelling, visit his website at

http://www.scripttools.webs.com/

Click on WORKSHOPS. ENTER THE DRAMA!

*NOTE: Mask at top, courtesy of Christina Conrad

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