Meanjin, Southerly and Westerly have held good parties four times a year for a long time; Overland used only to entertain three times but is now a quarterly. In writing here to these old friends I intend no ingratitude to newer hosts (like Contempa) or to those whose assemblies are more specialised (for instance, poetry magazines) or more frequent like the monthly, Quadrant.

Dear Meanjin, Overland, Southerly and Westerly,

I’ve been visiting your houses for many years now through changes of address, altered fashions in pictures and furnishings, experiments with foods, drinks and garnishes. The scatter rugs Meanjin introduced recently are probably less slippery than they look; but I do wonder whether Southerly’s old Axminster may actually repel young visitors at the door – a pity, and misleading too, because its food is usually very good and, on occasions, spicier than less experienced cooks dare risk.

Discoveries and surprises make your parties irresistible. Take Westerly. Number 2, 1978 is a particularly good issue; Rosemary Dobson and David Campbell deftly serve two of their translations (‘Indian Summer’ by Olga Berggolts and ‘Belyaevo­Bogordskoye’ by Natalia Gorbanevskaya) and there are other good, and one godawful, poems. There are good short stories by Victor Kelleher, Damien White, Andrea Streeton and Norma Wallace and an interesting variety of articles with Graeme Kinross Smith on Kenneth Slessor outstanding: this is a moving and illuminating essay, the more so because Douglas Stewart’s writings on Slessor are recent and, in their way, definitive. As each of Kinross Smith’s series about Australian writers appears the value of the whole compounds. The Slessor essay is one of the best so far.

Book reviews are one of Westerly’s ‘‘specialties”. Kirpal Singh discusses books by Singaporean poets Arthur Yap and Robert Yeo in a review which complements Edwin Thumboo’s article on ‘Singaporean Writing in English,’ (and Bruce Bennett’s Survey of Poetry from Singapore and Malaysia in Meanjin No 2, 1978).

Westerly’s surprise? Six photographs of the Israelite Bay telegraph station, a stone building in part ruin despite its National Trust classification. The photographer is Peter Cowan who is as assured in this medium as in prose. Like his stories the best of these pictures are splendidly composed to direct eye and imagination to masses and also to significant detail. Because the buildings are in a remote area it may not be possible to restore them but Cowan ‘s exquisite camera-work ensures their preservation in outline, bulk, light and shade and within their proper ambience of feeling and atmosphere.

Meanjin Number 2, 1978 has a different order of surprise: Michael Deakin’s article ‘Catastrophe and Chaos: Mathematical Views of the World’. My innumerateness [sic] is widely known, yet, in a particularly good issue packed with articles that happen to interest me greatly, and written by critics I admire and respect, Deakin’s lucid exposition teased my thoughts to new patterns.

There is some confusion about ‘courses’ in Meanjin which lists Finola Moorhead’s ‘Three Pieces from ‘Middle Class Novel’’, among articles and reviews, rather than fiction, along with Frank Moorhouse’s f.a.q. ‘The Illegality of the Imagination’ and Courtney Carpenter’s ‘Where Ya Been?’ I assume there is more of this work to come and fear it may cause either acute indigestion or an allergic itch. Which reminds me of my chronic sensitivity to poets who avoid plain language and never use words of one or two syllables if they can rape their dictionaries for words of six or seven meaning somewhat the same; apart from indicating woolly thought it’s terrible stuff to read. Westerly and Meanjin both serve verse from a woman who seems to be breaking out like a rash over the quarterlies and certainly gives me one.

Meanjin, though, has chiefly good poetry: Vicki Viidikas at her best and sparest; examples from three Italians: Adriano Spatola, Giulia Niccolai and Corrado Costa; an assured and economical ‘Solstice Poem’ by Margaret Attwood to accompany Jim Davidson’s long interview with her, and Norman Talbot’s ‘Message for Me to Have Found.’ Tim Thorne grows in wit, depth and power every time I read him and one of his poems, ‘Hobart Town’ nicely complements L.L. Robson’s ‘Personal Reflection’ of Tasmania which is excellent and deserves more space than I have here, as also do A. A. Phillips on Manning Clark’s contentious Lawson, R.W. Connell on Clark’s Volume 4, John McLaren’s ‘Rolf Boldrewood and the Mythologisation of Australia’; D.R. Burns discussing Canadian novels, Veronica Brady on Stead’s ‘The Man Who Loved Children’, Ian Reid on Moorhouse ‘s recent stories and Laurie Clancy with ‘Nabokov and his Critics’ – a fine piece this, abrasive, intelligent and fair.

The same Laurie Clancy’s long scarifying ‘Civilised People’ dominates Southerly’s fiction – just. (Number 3, 1978). Clancy’s contender is Dal Stivens with a genial SF-ish spoof on ‘The Demon Bowler’; for some tastes Stivens will, just, win from Clancy. John Colmer’s ‘Australian Cultural Analysis: Some Principles and Problems’ is a closely reasoned argument for more research, (and research funds), for studies in Australian culture, with a plea for attention to sociological aspects and popular culture in its many forms. One bad mark – Colmer does not mention Bernard Smith’s name, or refer to Smith’s Antipodean Manifesto and Documents on Art and Taste in Australia although despite limited length he notices most of the other important works in the field. There is an interview with Hal Colebatch by Andrew Landsdown, Helen Daniel on the ‘picaresque mode’ in recent (mostly Australian) fiction and Susan McKernan continuing current re-examinations of Martin Boyd.

Southerly’s poetry is particularly fine: seven ‘Poems from Paintings’ by Tom Shapcott (in the 2000s, when Boyd and White are long exhausted lodes for young academics, I foresee the quarterlies taking up ‘Multi-arts themes in Australian poetry 1950-2000’ with lo, Rosemary Dobson ‘s name leading all the rest and not forgetting those gentlemen who cast nostalgic eyes back to Ovid, Lucullus and all that;) a charming Susan Hampton and four lusty vintage David Campbells.

Southerly’s surprise, like love, must wait.

Host Overland often arranges unexpected happenings. Number 72 has another ‘find’ among cat stories, this time from Bolivia via Cuba; not quite as remarkable as Matthew Flinders’ Trim … wait though. Trim met a mysterious death on the South American continent, and I do wonder, whether this Purrrrevolutionary cat could be a remote descendant … his personality suggests it. Faye Zwicky’s exploration of Australian literary attitudes merits a close reading and so does Ian Turner. No puzzled, disillusioned politically-minded reader should miss his review of recent books by Don Aitkin, R.W. Connell and Tim Rowse. I recommend Phillip Edmonds’ article about poetry publishing because I agree with him so wholeheartedly! Overland prints good and varied poetry by a number of writers and a long, balanced poetry review (by Frank Kellaway).

In any other issue the surprise item might be Stefan Wilkanowicz’s account of post war Vietnam, a perceptive and moving essay which was not heard at the Sydney PEN Congress last December because, at the last minute, Wilkanowicz was unable to attend. One applauds its publication and feels remorse for not giving it fuller mention, but it has to be overshadowed by the surprise in these numbers of Overland and Southerly (and also Quadrant, August 1978) which add up to that shock of gladness that makes one breathe: ‘Thanks be to the Creator’. To the Creator for Douglas Stewart.

Stewart, in ‘Willows’ (Overland) recalls: ‘For though since then I’ve seen with wonder/Sixty winters flow like water’ now sings, yes sings, a collection of nature poems as pure, crystalline and apparently spontaneous as any he wrote in his New Zealand morning. (Quadrant, August 1978 prints other lyrics from this set.) But behind Stewart’s apparent, like-adolescence joy is a lifetime of art and wisdom and five decades of skill in brevity, beauty and absolute mastery of rhyme. I choose two of the shortest, though all are brief.

The Swans (from Southerly)

Crotchet by crotchet, quaver by quaver,

All the black swans sail together,

And as they ride the waves they make

A ripple of music over the lake.

Reumination [sic] (from Overland)

In paddocks where 1 wander

Winter’s pause from growth

Brings so much peace to the earth:

The swallows are over the dam,

The sky is asleep in the water.

And much to ponder upon

Have the black-and-white cows and I;

Content while the swallows fly

We sit on the hill together

And chew the winter sun.