The Melbourne School of Literature

Since everyone loves a paradox, let me start off with this now-familiar one: the mainstream of American poetry, the part by which it has been & will be known, has long been in the margins, nurtured in the margins, carried forward, vibrant, in the margins.

So writes Jerome Rothenberg in A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980, an ‘almost talismanic’ compendium of small press poetry in New York. What is true of America is doubly so of Australia: our best poets have slipped the net of the national anthology, and to understand Australian literary history demands new approaches—browsing, surveying, sampling, grazing, rooting around—within a vibrant but hitherto understudied archive of little magazines and small press publications.

Leaving the official highways of canon for the hedgerows and by-roads of small press, classes will be hands-on in approach, inviting students to examine original archival documents. Behind what one poet calls the ‘Potemkin village of the mainstream’, we discover that little magazine editors acted not only as gatekeepers and tastemakers but also as community facilitators and aesthetic visionaries.

The loosely chronological structure of the course moves according to thematic, stylistic and social rhythms. In week one, we discuss recent methodologies in ‘periodical studies’ for ways to approach Australia’s complex and multivalent little magazine network(s). Week two uses Eric Bulson’s dictum—‘No little magazines, no modernism’—to examine modernist magazines, which were at once belated but also trailblazers in their approach. Week three describes how a counterculture of Australian poetry grew out of cheaper and more accessible printing technologies in the late-1960s. In week four, Ryan Higginson guest lectures, and we discuss the politics of little magazine publishing and the politics that little magazines allow poets to express.

Finally in week five, we end by examining experimental approaches to the little magazine format: Kris Hemensley’s Earth Ship series, which developed into a mail-art ‘active anthology’; Jas H. Duke’s anti-Guttenberg rejection of publishing and printing, which led him to produce each edition of Archduke—Special Atlantis issue by hand; and Javant Biarujia’s taboo jadoo, a ‘journal for multilinguistics amphigory interlinguistics écriture d’ombres langue close lettrisme zaum kubofuturizm jasyan [&] kachathatapagajadhadaba’, that is, a journal for the development and promulgation of private languages. We will also discuss how little magazines have fared in the age of the internet, examining the case studies of Jacket and Cordite Poetry Review.

COURSE SCHEDULE

WK 1: How to read a magazine

Preparatory readings:

‘How to Read a Magazine’, Modernist Journals Project.

Michael Leong, Teaching Little Magazines, Among the Neighbors 10, 2019.

Bonus reading:

Nick Sturm (ed.),cluster on Little Magazines, Post 45 Contemporaries, June 2023.

WK 2: Modernist Little Magazines in the 1930s, 40s and 50s

Preparatory reading:

Ezra Pound, ‘Small Magazines’, The English Journal 19.9, November 1930.

Texts examined in class include:

Stream, eds. Cyril Pearl and Bertram Higgins, issues 1–3, July–September 1931.

aCOMMENT, ed. Cecily Crozier, issues 1–26, 1940–1947.

Angry Penguins, 1944 Autumn Number to Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern Malley,eds. Max Harris and John Reed, issue 6, June 1944.

21st Century, ed. Harry Hooton, issues 1–2, September 1955–August 1957.

WK 3: The Mimeograph Revolution and the Generation of ‘68

Preparatory reading:

Selections from Australian Literary Studies, New Writing in Australia, 8.2, October 1977, a special issue in which little magazine editors responded to a questionnaire.

Texts examined in class include:

Mok, eds. Richard Tipping and Rob Tillett, 1–4, 1968–70

The Great Auk, ed. Charles Buckmaster, 1–11, 1968–70

Surfers Paradise, eds. John Forbes and Laurie Duggan, 1–4, 1974–86

Your Friendly Fascist, ed. Rae Desmond Jones, 1–24, 1970–84

Fitzrot, ed. π.o., 1–6, 1973–4.

Magic Sam, ed.Ken Bolton, 1–6, 1975–82

WK 4: Political Little Magazines and the Politics of Magazine Editing

Guest Lecture:

Ryan Higginson: poetry in Australian Communist Party newspapers

Other texts examined in class include:

925, eds. π.o., Jas. H. Duke, thalia, Peter Murphy, Lindsay Clements, et al., issues 1–20, 1978-1983.

Migrant 7, ed. Jeltje Fanoy, issues 1–8, 1983–7.

WK 5: Limits and Possibilities in the Little Magazine Form

Preparatory reading:

Tim Wright, Migrating Ears: Kris Hemensley’s The Merri Creek, Or, Nero and H/EAR, with some brief comments on the earlier publications Our Glass, Earth Ship, and The Ear in a Wheatfield. Among the Neighbors, no. 7 (2019).

Texts examined in class will include:

A selection of magazines edited by Kris Hemensley, Jas H. Duke and Javant Biarujia, as well as digital magazines, such as, Jacket and Cordite Poetry Review.