‘If You Hear a Baby Crying’
by Gay Lynch
Imagine, late one afternoon, you descend three steep, shade-filigreed staircases with your daughter to buy flowers and sandalwood chicken, the baby swaddled and cocooned in his silk sling, sleeping against her breast, to Hollywood Road, where you can find antique shops, galleries and arty coffee shops. Banyon trees with blackened trunks fan over the mossy steps, their roots insinuate fissures and sprawl over leafy stonewalls. You get caught up in the rush of people navigating the crowded pavements, finishing work or changing shift, picking up dinner from the American Groceries Supermarket or promenading in the cool evening air.
Volume 62 Number 2, November 2017
Cover: I Dewa Putu Mokoh, The Antique Shop, 1991, Chinese ink and acrylic on canvas, 80 x 60cm. Courtesy of Mary Hill and the late Chris Hill. Image by Brad Coleman/John Curtin Gallery. © I Dewa Putu Mokoh 1991.
62.2
November 22, 2017
$15.95
issue contents
With writing, translations and ideas from: The Melbourne-Seoul Poetry Exchange, the China-Australia Writing Centre, John Mateer, Rina Kikuchi, Dai Fan, Shane McCauley, Roanna Gonsalves, Elizabeth Tan, Dennis Haskell, Isabelle Li, Fiona Morrison, Agustinus Wibowo, Timmah Ball, Yujing Liang, Shane Strange, Ella Jeffery and many more.
Issue 62.2 continues Westerly‘s focus on writing and culture from the Indian Ocean and East Asian regions. Westerly 62.2 is a curated collection of work by more than 60 writers. It includes three special features of collaborative and cultural exchange writing between an exciting selection of Australian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese writers.
Contents:
Special Feature: The Melbourne-Seoul Intercultural Poetry Exchange
Dan Disney, Jessica L. Wilkinson and Cassandra Atherton
Introduction: ‘bending in all directions everywhere’: a juddering, glimpsing, eidólonging of poets.
Lisa Gorton
Yeonhui
Bonny Cassidy
Ghostin
Bonny Cassidy
Shields
Bo-Seon Shim
Mangwon
So-Yeon Kim
Mangwon-dong
So-Yeon Kim
‘Coffin Bay’
Dan Disney
that winter, these protests
Dan Disney
spring, Hannam-dong
Kent MacCarter
Mujeongwiundong Mangwon-dong (North Korean blanket remix)
Yideum Kim
Ugg Boots
Yideum Kim
‘Face Made of Steel’
Jessica L. Wilkinson
Reflected
Special Feature: Contemporary Japanese Poets in Translation
Misumi Mizuki
The Gift
Ishikawa Itsuko
Soles—
Kawaguchi Hiromi
Welcome Home
Kono Satoko
Head Ache
Misaki Takako
Into White Darkness
Special Feature: The China–Australia Writing Centre
Lucy Dougan
Introduction
Huang Yuanshen
A Passion for Australian Studies
Zhou Xiaojin
A Critical Survey of Chinese Journal Articles on Australian Literature in China 1979-2016
Translated by Iris FAN Xing
A Selection of Fou Chinese Women
Josephine Wilson
Umbilicus
Fan Dai
Saturday Evening
Elizabeth Tan
A life, passing
Poetry
Christina Lloyd
Dimples Whiskey
Mark Floyer
Post Tropical
Sampurna Chattarji
The Dictation Test: I
Sampurna Chattarji
2 sunken islands.
3 kinds of rock.
3 kinds of rock.
Reneé Pettitt-Schipp
Pinggir
Reneé Pettitt-Schipp
Weaving Ketupat on Pulu Cheplok
Ross Jackson
Oceania as I imagined it
Sanna Peden
keunggulan
Timmah Ball
Peeling
Ouyang Yu
Christopher Kelen
how the hundred schools contend
Shane McCauley
Gion Shimu in Snow (Hiroshige)
Mike Heald
On the Theft of My New TV, or Watching with Ryokan
Elaine Barker
The Finger
Shane Strange
River
Dennis Haskell
Days without end
Mona Zahra Attamimi
Scent
Liang Yujing
Call Me Eugene
Rose van Son
Remembering Singapore
Shey Marque
Alligatorwood
Fiction
Agustinus Wibowo
The Sea
Mohammed Massoud Morsi
The Home of Lost Angels
Mark Fabiano
Homecoming in the Garden of the Full Moon
Katinka Smit
The Blue
Roanna Gonsalves
George Jarvis, black hindoo servant, Port Jackson, 1809 (Preparatory Study)
Parvati Angana
God Willing
Bethany Rawson
Goji no Chaimu (The five o’clock bell)
Jennifer Banyard
Footprints
Ann Dombroski
Siem Reap
Belinda Hermawan
Xié xie
Creative Non-Fiction
Ella Jeffery
A mirror in the dark
Caitlin Prince
Sitting on my grandmother’s skirts
Isabelle Li
The Aristotelian Questions
Rachel Watts
Insha’Allah
Gay Lynch
If You Hear a Baby Crying
Essays
John Mateer
Invisible Genres, or on the Virtual and the Actual
Siti Sarah Ridhuan
Bahasa Indonesia/Melayu & Yolngu-Matha—recognising familiar words in unfamiliar contexts
Fiona Morrison
‘A transfiguration of my local patriotism’
Dennis Haskell
Fay Zwicky and ‘the riddle of the self’s existence’
Yingjie M. Cheng
Modernism En Route
Reviews
Jen Bowden
A review of The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves
Rebecca Harris
A Review of Billy Sing by Ouyang Yu
