New Writing from In this Issue 65.1 Western Australia Felicity Plunkett Fiction Nardi Simpson Creative Non-Fiction Nicholas Jose Poetry Tracy Ryan Essays Kevin Brophy ‘Angel Buddha Temple’ It is never just an ordinary day. Brigid Lowry It is a never-before and never-again moment, a day of particles moving through space, arranging and rearranging themselves in ways mysterious, terrifying and miraculous. Westerly Volume 65 Number 1, 2020 New Writing from 65.1 Western Australia Notice of Intention Publisher Fiction Westerly has converted the full backfile of Westerly Centre, The University of Western Australia, Australia Creative Non-Fiction Westerly (1956–) to electronic text, available General Editor to readers and researchers on the Westerly Poetry Catherine Noske website, www.westerlymag.com.au. This Essays work has been supported by a grant from Associate Editor the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency Josephine Taylor Limited. Editorial Advisors All creative works, articles and reviews Susan Midalia (prose) converted to electronic format will be correctly Paul Munden (poetry) attributed and will appear as published. Elfie Shiosaki (Indigenous writing) Copyright will remain with the authors, and the Editorial Consultants material cannot be further republished without Delys Bird (The University of Western Australia) authorial permission. Westerly will honour any Barbara Bynder requests to withdraw material from electronic Westerly Caterina Colomba (Università del Salento) publication. If any author does not wish their Tanya Dalziell (The University of Western Australia) work to appear in this format, please contact Paul Genoni (Curtin University) Westerly immediately and your material will Dennis Haskell (The University of Western Australia) be withdrawn. John Kinsella (Curtin University) Contact: [email protected] Ambelin Kwaymullina (The University of Western Australia) Susan Lever (Hon. Associate, The University of Sydney) Westerly acknowledges all Aboriginal and John Mateer Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Tracy Ryan (The University of Western Australia) Australians. We celebrate the continuous Andrew Taylor (Edith Cowan University) living cultures of Indigenous people and their Corey Wakeling (Kobe College, Japan) vital contributions within Australian society. David Whish-Wilson (Curtin University) Terri-ann White (The University of Western Australia Publishing) Westerly’s office, at the University of Western Australia, is located on Whadjak Noongar Administrator land. We recognise the Noongar people as the Daniel Juckes spiritual and cultural custodians of this land. Commissioning Editors Cassandra Atherton Lucy Dougan Web Editor Chris Arnold Production Design: Chil3 Typesetting: Lasertype Print: UniPrint, The University of Western Australia Front cover: © Lorri Whiting, reproduced with the permission of her estate. Photograph © Kevin Brophy, 2019. All academic work published in Westerly is peer-reviewed. Copyright of each piece belongs to the author; copyright of the collection belongs to the Westerly Centre. Republication is permitted on request to author and editor. Westerly is published biannually with assistance from the State Government of WA by an investment in this project through the Culture and the Arts (WA) division of the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, and from the Australia Council for the Arts. The opinions expressed in Westerly are those of individual contributors and not of the Editors or Editorial Advisors. From the Editor 8 Fiction Nardi Simpson Song of the Crocodile 12 James Turvey Telepathy, Smoke and Violence 18 Donna Mazza The Last of Its Kind 62 Poetry Felicity Plunkett Ross Jackson Ben Mason One for sorrow 10 The Red Dingo 141 The Tyranny of Virginia Boudreau Julie Watts History 109 Oyster Shell 16 Waking at Night 148 Alex Philp Josephine Clarke Ella Fox-Martens Spectre 121 The Belt 21 Womanhood 150 Laurie Steed Nicholas Jose Brenda Saunders Chris Arnold The Crazy and the Essays The Story of the Echidna Chasm 58 love in the time of covid19 151 Brave 132 Moon-Bone 22 Gabriel Furshong Aileen Walsh Chris Fleming Jessica Stewart Winter Flight 59 White blankets 178 Lion 152 Exploring Attributes of Jackson Chloe Hosking Bryn Dodson a Successful Author– For perspective 60 midwest october 181 Whitby, August 215 Editor Relationship in Anna Jacobson Jazz Money Creative Writing 85 Row F Seat 10 61 False gods 182 Kevin Brophy Aidan Coleman Matt Hall and Sophie Finlay Waves, Mountains, Circuit, an Elegy 107 Mass death: murray cod, Wings and Sails: bream, golden perch 184 on Lorri Whiting, an Tamara Holmes expatriate woman artist ectopic 108 Isabel Prior (Part Two) 196 Eric Roy The Crayfish 194 Chequered Like a Flag Our Andrew Lansdown Past 118 Dip 195 Jen Webb Anne Elvey At the end of everything 120 hail 222 Marite Norris Jonathan Dunk Writers’ Kaya Ortiz Lattimore The Queen of Death 128 (f)or this 223 Development On Wednesdays we play [ ] 70 Tracy Ryan Megan Kaminski Program Release 130 A thing we ask entirely too Riley Faulds Significant Tree Register 72 Paul Hetherington much of 224 Ship in a Bottle 140 Mia Kelly Thinking Banksias in Words 75 Thomas Simpson Rubbish in Waiting 84 Creative Linda Martin Non‑Fiction I Went Looking for Mr Facey, Dad 100 Carly Stone Touching as Feeling as Touching Again 142 Brigid Lowry Angel Buddha Temple 186 Indigenous Black Nellie Le Beau Summer Domestic Violence 154 Alan Fyfe Writing A Hill Outside Yanchep 155 Julieanne Lamond Fellowships Reading Crisis: the politics of fire in Amanda Lohrey’s The Reading Group and Vertigo 156 2021 Adele Aria V for Vulnerable 171 Submissions 226 Entries open late 2020 Subscriptions 227 slq.qld.gov.au/blackandwrite PATRICIA HACKETT PRIZE The editors have pleasure in announcing the winner of the annual Patricia Hackett Prize for the best contribution to Westerly in 2019, to CASSIE LYNCH black&write! is supported by the Copyright Agency For her poetry, Cultural Fund, The Lionel & Yvonne Spencer Trust and the Australian Government through the ‘Five Haiku’ Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. We are proud to work with Hachette Australia as Published in Westerly 64:1, 2019 the black&write! Fellowship publishing partner. From the Editor minimal. Anecdotally, many in the arts seem to find it difficult to meet the conditions for COVID-19 relief. The Australia Council for the Arts and other funding bodies should be commended for their efforts to support arts workers with relief funding, but they are woefully under-resourced in doing so. This devalues not only the importance of the arts to our daily lives, but also the importance of the industry to the economy at a moment of economic crisis. The scope and scale of the creative arts as an industry continues to be underestimated: for example, a recent survey from the Australian Institute showed that only seven per cent of respondents answered correctly that the arts employs greater numbers of people than coalmining, while sixty-eight per cent of respondents assumed that mining is the larger employer (‘Most Australians Want Government Scarborough, Perth Lifeline for the Creative Industries’, 23 May 2020). June 2020 Underestimating the arts comes with a risk to the richness of the cultural life of any society. Art offers clarity, sincerity, emotion. It calls out Dear all, facetiousness and turns us towards empathy. This is an experience which I hope you will find in the work herein. Much of the writing submitted to I am, somewhat ironically, not much of a letter writer. I tend to come this issue circled around the nature of the crisis we are facing, calling off as facetious (or self-conscious), and I am not diligent enough to make for feeling in response, or opening up new worlds for contemplation. We a good correspondent. It is hard, though, in this time of pandemic crisis, met with trauma and, in some works, the reclamation of self. In other not to feel the need to connect through small gestures. moments, we read warmth, curiosity and joy. So I am writing now in the hope that you will feel this as my reaching The world has been irrevocably altered by the events of the last six out to you, sincerely. I hope you, your family and loved ones are all well, months. In the midst of this chaos, I am hugely grateful to the energy and and that you have not lost anyone dear to you, though I am conscious effort of all the people who contributed to the production of this issue. many have. I hope that you have not lost your livelihood, though again Transitioning to working externally, the Westerly team (Josephine Taylor, I am conscious that many have. Whatever adverse effects you have Chris Arnold and Daniel Juckes, with interns Melissa Kruger and Tim suffered, I hope that you have support around you, and that you find a Brockhoff) have gone above and beyond in supporting this release. Our way through. I hope that you are coping, and that you are taking care external editors, our consultants, our production team have all offered of yourself. their time and labour at a moment when that comes dear. This dedication The sensation of facetiousness is one that frightens me. It seems to shows the passion of people in supporting the arts. I cannot say how sit alongside an ignorant form of privilege, making light of a situation or thankful I am to you all. circumstances in the assumption that it holds no sincere risk. There is a To everyone reading this, I hope you enjoy this issue, and that you touch of this in the current, common refrain of using time in isolation to stay safe. be creative: gain a new skill, take up a new hobby, produce a masterwork… This message assumes that this is possible—that we all have the time, the Sincerely yours, financial security, and the health (mental as well as physical) to dedicate Catherine Noske, editor ourselves to creative effort.