Guest reflection • Issue seven • ISSUE SEVEN CONTRIBUTOR
June 16, 2019
by Tom Meagher. A yearning for freedom from both physical and ineffable barriers re-emerges throughout this issue of Backstory. Visible and...
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Issue seven • Issue Seven Essays
by Anne Connor Picking up on the work of Jane Elliott, retired American teacher and racist educator, imagine the history of the...
Issue seven • Issue Seven Fiction
by Moya Roddy. Similimum, similimum. Like with like. Homeopathy works by releasing the body’s innate power to heal, a power...
Issue seven • Issue Seven Reviews
A kookaburra laughing carries me home through the clearing where the wattles are bursting their golden crowns dancing against a brooding...
Reviewed by Angela Wauchop “… Herta’s eyes were open to an army of haters spinning their sticky threads among the populace. Every...
Issue seven • Issue Seven Poetry
Port Arthur, Van Diemen’s Land, 1842 By Bill Cotter, I slunk from black to grey and black again. Smelt the gum leaves. Felt the...
by Eleanor Hooker. ...
by Sven Doedens Cameron slammed the door behind him. He didn’t slam it too hard because he knew he could damage the door, and then...
Reviewed by Brittney Alexander. “He had always been fond of knives. Each hilt sat warm and comfortable in the palm of his hand, as though...
by Moya Roddy I told myself you didn’t feel the cold, out and about in tee shirts in all weathers. When the rest of us were...
By Gareth Jenkins An earlier version of this poem was a finalist in the 2016 Newcastle Poetry Prize and published under the title...
Reviewed by Angela Wauchop “The war had left them idle. Each bomb and bullet and bayonet had torn the fabric of the village to ribbons,...
Issue seven • Issue Seven Nonfiction
by Wendy J. Dunn The nurse bends over Dad with her stethoscope and listens to his heartbeat. ‘Not long now,’ she mutters under her...
Reviewed by Brittney Alexander. Gareth Russell’s book, The Darksome Bounds of a Failing World, addresses the sinking of the...
By Bill Cotter, Between 1788 and 1840, twelve thousand women were transported, usually for minor offences, to New South Wales. Oh,...
By Stuart Barnes This poem was previously published in Glasshouses (UQP 2016)...
By Magi Gibson she was nine and half her milk teeth gone because she’d kissed the boys behind the shed And she listened in on big...
Translated by Melinda Smith V: From my sick bed Sulpicia 5 (Tibullus 3, 17) Cerinthus, will you keep faith with your girl now...
Reviewed by Michael Aiken Gareth Jenkins’ Recipes for the Disaster (Five Islands 2019) reads like a series of rituals or incantations,...
Issue seven • ISSUE SEVEN CONTRIBUTOR • Issue seven interviews
Interviewed by Samuel Elliott. Richard James Allen is an Australian born poet whose writinghas appeared widely in journals, anthologies,...
By Melinda Smith ‘Women only want to be shearers for the sex’ — Ernie Ecob, former Secretary, Australian Workers’ Union She...
By Philip Porter, She falls into her father’s arms from various heights: This was the light that held her darknesses from her....
By Gary McCartney Hush, Macushla, time to sleep The night is getting colder Pray the Lord your soul to keep For you’ll...
by Wendy Wicks She is standing in the doorway examining him. His eyes were still grey. She remembered when they first met. Those...
By Anita Patel (in memory of Maria Sibylla Merian – 1647 -1717) It is not natural for a young girl to gaze at insects night...
by Samuel Elliott About the author… Nigel Featherstone is an Australian writer who has been published widely. His works include...
By Nathanael O’Reilly Eat a counter lunch of lamb shanks, salad and chips at the Royal Mail Hotel in the room where the Kelly...
By Amanda Bell Look first for an open cockle shell, spreadeagled on the damp part of the strand, then, with your fingers, form a...
By Audrey Molloy And all this time, was anyone keeping account? Light from Light, true God from true God, Child-years lost...
By Ellen Shelley You watch as shadows wear you as ink dries hard up inside the stone. Tombs collapse with their dialect of...
