A GUEST EDITORIAL
By Judith Rodriguez
Thylacinus cynocephalus - "The pouched dog with the wolf's head".
Welcome to the second issue of Thylazine; The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature.
At the Melbourne Writers' Festival which is still in full swing, I chaired a session on "Poetry: Genteel Art or Cut-Throat Business". While aware that I had been asked at the last minute, perhaps as the woman-most-pliant to dilute the all-male panel of John Kinsella, Jack Hibberd and John Tranter, I accepted because at such sessions I hope for the thrill of feeling re-charged by the lightning energy of poets inspired, or, less spectacularly, by the consciousness of the mingling of eager audience and speakers in the search for poetic nourishment and growth.
I knew what some of the panel wanted to talk about, so I mentioned that one of them edited an on-line poetry magazine and the other ran an email poetry discussion list, that I was about to write this Editorial, and - joke! - that Jack Hibberd uses an electric typewriter.
Bad mistake. Though I was able to speak of the unique commitment of THYLAZINE, I felt the discussion inexorably move to technology, rather like once watching people round a table of drinks turn out their pockets to find who carried the largest number of plastic cards (it was a tie, with two guys carrying 35 each). Jack Hibberd alone read any poetry - some eight lines. There were no visuals.
That was selling the media short - all of them.
This issue of THYLAZINE's electronic journal is a fabulous vehicle of poetry, of photography and painting, of understandings of land and its inhabitants.
A few years ago, Coral Hull proposed an anthology of animals to several publishers; all of them judged that such a book could not succeed. THYLAZINE carries a thematic anthology of ten writers as well as selections of animal poetry by Alan Gould and Dorothy Porter. Where else is such publishing possible? Who else is putting in the work?
Here are powerful and highly individual assessments of the elder poets who have just left us: Gig Ryan moving through the poetry of Judith Wright, Jenni Mitchell marking her farewell after a personal and artistic friendship with Alec Hope.
What other publisher is following the poetic link to PLACE, with profusely illustrated talk of landscape and living in it - here, with essays on Brewarrina, Aboriginal communities, and Ireland? Or planning what amounts to a library of illustrated, international publications?
The work I most treasure in this superb issue is Andrew Knight's "Refusing to Quit: Murdoch University". Perhaps you are a wishy-washy person like me, who shrinks from expending energy on a cause that does not seem likely to carry its points. That's exactly how I've felt over some of the aims of animal ethics. This article speaks to the better, principled me.
Andrew Knight dug in his heels, researched alternatives to hurting and killing animals in the course of veterinary training, and took a reasoned stand on requirements made of him as a student. He won! What a majority of United States veterinary colleges do to avoid needless slaughter, Murdoch is now pledged to do. This, in the Australia of Howard and Ruddock, of
hidebound mandatory sentencing, of tightening provision for social welfare. People and even institutions need not be cruel - they need leaders.
Reader, perhaps you too will feel intellectually vindicated and motivated, and you too will savour, now and in anticipation, the less blame such changes bring about. Join me, too, in feeling ravished by the beauty of the landscape photography here, and challenged by the genre of cause-oriented travel writing, with its universality, its tale of small things and
its visionary insistence that everything matters.
Judith Rodriguez (Guest Editorial)
A special thanks to the contributors; Lisa Bellear and her ongoing photographic documentation of indigenous communities in Victoria, Michael Crane, Louise Crisp, Geoff Goodfellow, Alan Gould, Jennifer Harrison, Coral Hull, Andrew Knight and his invalueable work on behalf of animals, Anthony Lawrence, Justine Lees, Emma Lew, Jenni Mitchell, Dorothy Porter, Judith Rodriguez, Brendan Ryan, Gig Ryan, Amanda Shillabeer, John Stokes, Terry Whitebeach, Warrick Wynne and the many artists and photographers whose work is included in this issue.
And others; Iain Fraser, Alec Hope, Kindi and Binda who renew my dreams on a daily basis, Mike Ladd at ABC Radio National (PoeticA) for the bringing the Broken Land experience to a national audience, the black angus cows from Rylstone for being who they are, John Tranter, Judith Wright, and Charlie Rosenberg and Josh and Marla at The EnviroLink Network (San Francisco, USA) without whose assistance this website would not be possible.
About the Writer Judith Rodriguez
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Judith Rodriguez was born in Perth and brought up in Brisbane. Nine collections of her poetry have been published. Judith has had a number of exhibitions of her linocuts in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Paris. In the early 1990s she was commissioned by the Australian Opera to write a libretto for Sydney composer Moya Henderson, on the subject of the death of baby Azaria Chamberlain and the trial of Lindy Chamberlain. This opera, Lindy, will be produced in 2002. A past Poetry Editor of Meanjin Quarterly, Judith was for eight years in the 1990s the Series Editor of modern Australian poetry at Penguin Books Australia. She has been awarded three Australia Council fellowships. She works on the Committees of the Australian Society of Authors and the Melbourne PEN Centre, and also as a literary judge and critic. She was awarded the F.A.W. Christopher Brennan Award for Poetry and the AM. |
[Above] Photo of Judith Rodriguez by Jenni Mitchell, 1998.
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Thylazine No.2 (September, 2000) |
