In the development of Australian literature over many years, whether the action has been in scholarship, teaching, publishing or patronage, there have been individuals like Webby who have dedicated their skills and experience to the recognition of Australian writing. The literary journals have been an essential element in attracting that recognition. In this regard, Southerly: The Journal of the English Association, Sydney has been the great survivor. Sadly, many such magazines, with enthusiastic editors and talented contributors, have survived only briefly. Others such as Westerly and Eureka Street are so transformed that they have almost disappeared from view. One hopes this will not be the fate of Meanjin.

The current issue of Antipodes: The Publication of the American Association of Australian Literary Studies can also claim to be a worthy survivor in this field. The founding editor, Robert Ross, and, more recently, Nicholas Birns have preserved the magazine for more than two decades.

On the front cover, Antipodes announces itself as ‘A North American Journal of Australian Literary Studies’. This may explain the strikingly different publishing format, design and layout, compared with the more dense and modest presentation of Southerly. Antipodes is more reader-friendly. The cover image, a painting entitled Of Mice and Goodman, 2007, by Hu Ming, demands attention. In contrast, the wry cover image for Southerly, created by Kay Orchison, features a photograph of Elizabeth Webby (without a hat) posed against a flat plain and wide sky, reminiscent of Russell Drysdale’s painting The Drover’s Wife (1945). It is an amusing and subtle design idea, but unlikely to prompt new readers to choose Southerly from bookshop shelves. This perhaps underlines a key factor in the marketing of most Australian literary journals: the bulk of sales depends on subscription rather than on competing with books and popular magazines in retail outlets.

In the two issues under review, there is little overlap with contributors, essay themes or book reviews. Antipodes presents the work of fifteen poets, including Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Ouyang Yu, Andrew Sant, John Foulcher and Suzanne Edgar. Jan Owen’s poem ‘Guest House’ I found particularly memorable. It evokes a specific sense of place, space and smells, with keenly observed detail and colour: ‘a holiday Matisse of flowers and patterned cloths / with a woman in a floral blouse looking out …’ Peter Rose’s briefly caught Colloquy speaks more than the words – ‘They know something / or shiver with a kind of knowing’ – which allowed me, as a reader, to enjoy a shared, tacit moment between friends.

In this celebratory issue of Southerly, Elizabeth Stead’s touching ‘I Give You a Day’ is addressed directly to Webby, but still speaks to the reader. So does Nicolette Stasko’s more disturbing poem ‘December 31’, which is likewise dedicated to Webby and which transcends the individual pain. Michael Brennan, the Tokyo-based Australian poet and publisher of the extraordinary Vagabond Press poetry series, is represented by four poems: ‘Ojizosan’, ‘Sky Was Sky’, ‘Old House’ and ‘A Broken Language’. In the latter, Brennan beautifully captures the feeling of cultural confusion when the daily speaking which surrounds us is foreign.

I listen carefully to idioms
of home in another language,
the gentle percussion of friends
long lost in conversation.
I run my finger along words,
as if each word was a prayer.

Poems by Judith Beveridge, Susan Hampton, MTC Cronin, Jill Jones, J.S. Harry, and David McCooey reinforce Southerly’s reputation for the high quality of its poetry. Here, special mention should be made of the contribution by the poet and co-editor Noel Rowe, who is represented with a poem, ‘Border Security’. Rowe died in July 2007. In 2006, with his colleague Vivian Smith, Rowe co-edited Windchimes: Asia in Australian Poetry, an anthology which was widely praised.

In the current issue of Antipodes, there are a number of unusual essays. Jean-François Vernay, of New Caledonia, maintains his interest in the work of the Australian writer Christopher Koch with a piece entitled ‘C.J. Koch’s Novels: From Fiction to Friction – Fictional Reality Strikes Back’. Per Henningsgaard, a Fulbright Scholar from the United States enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Western Australia, where he is studying the production and publication of Western Australia’s regional literature, contributes an essay titled ‘The Decline of Regionalism in Australian Literature and Culture’. In contrast, Paul Genoni, from Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, in his essay ‘Thea Astley Makes Something Out of Nothing’, explores the barren Australian landscape that Manning Clark refers to as ‘the kingdom of nothingness’. Genoni traces the way in which Astley’s fictional characters seek to ‘create a sanctuary that can protect them from the wider Australia space’.

Antipodes, like a number of Australian literary magazines, corrals book reviews in a distinct section. Interestingly, many of the books covered here come from small publishers such as Scribe, Central Queensland University Press, Pandanus Books, Five Island Press and Wakefield Press. The full list includes reviews of recent releases such as Alexis Wright’s award-winning Carpentaria (2006) and David Malouf’s Every Move You Make (2006). There are also reviews of new releases of previously published works, such as Nicholas Jose’s Paper Nautilus (1987, 2006). It is interesting to note the critical approach to these Australian texts by North American scholars.

The double issue of Southerly does not carry reviews of recent Australian titles. However, a number of essays cover the work of particular writers. These include Judith Barbour’s ‘The Comic Poetry of Suffering: Kate Grenville’s The Secret River’ and Vivian Smith’s fascinating ‘Nettie Palmer’s Fourteen Years: An Afterword’. Dennis Haskell, in ‘Kenneth Slessor in the Modernist Bush’, revisits a poet who has engrossed him for years. I also enjoyed Susan Lever’s ‘Surviving as a Writer: the Careers of the 1970s Generation’.  Poetry and fiction have always been Southerly’s strengths. Powerfully engaging short stories from Debra Adelaide, Jane Sloan, Sue Woolfe and Pat Skinner will give reader satisfaction.

Although these two journals are concerned with the publication of new work by Australian creative writers and scholars, the editors approach that task very differently. Although they may share a readership, to some extent their marketing strategies and publishing objectives do not match. In this double issue of Southerly, contributors have seized the opportunity to pay homage to a senior colleague, which colours the contents. But each of these publications is important in shaping the Australian cultural ethos. Continued support by funding authorities is not guaranteed, given the ever-changing fashion in patronage. In contemporary Australia, cultural artefacts, heritage buildings or significant landscapes, which have an underlying dollar value, are often saved from destruction. Unfortunately, this is not always the case with literary maps in the shape of journals.