Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities

 Edited by Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas

Antigone Kefala is one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere; it would be difficult to overstate the significance of her life and work in the culture of this nation. Over the last half-century, her poetry and prose have reshaped and expanded Australian literature and prompted us to re-examine its premises and capacities. From the force of her poetic imagery and the cadences of her phrases and her sentences to the large philosophical and historical questions she poses and to which she responds, Kefala has generated in her writing new ways of living in time, place and language. Across six collections of poetry and five prose works, themselves comprising fiction, non-fiction, essays and diaries, she has mapped the experience of exile and alienation alongside the creativity of a relentless reconstitution of self. Kefala is also a cultural visionary. From her rapturous account of Sydney as the place of her arrival in 1959, to her role in developing diverse writing cultures at the Australia Council, to the account of her own writing life amongst a community of friends and artists in Sydney Journals (2008), she has reimagined the ways we live and write in Australia.

Contents

‘To find our measure, exactly, not the echo of other voices’: Antigone Kefala’s Ex-centric Australian Modernity. - Sneja Gunew
The Geography of Soul - Angelo Loukakis Worldly Interiors in the Fiction of Antigone Kefala - Elizabeth McMahon
‘Re-defining yourself in some other terms’: Kefala’s Self-referential Weavings  -Penelope Stavrou
Decentered Heterologies in the Poetic Journeys of Antigone Kefala - Vrasidas Karalis
Dreams in Kefala’s Prose Stories - Kate Livett
Antigone Kefala: ‘Clinical’ view over a shadowy conscience/consciousness - Michael Tsianikas
‘Before whom shall the drama be enacted?’ - Anna Couani
‘We Had Nowhere To Go’: Artist Friendships and Migrant Poetics in the Work of Jurgis and Jolanta Janavicius - Brigitta Olubas
Antigone Kefala: Of Journeys, Songs and Stories - Konstandina Dounis
In Between Lives: The Island and Alexia: A Tale of Two Cultures - Jane Gibian
Time for Antigone Kefala’s Fragments - Efi Hatzimanolis
Antigone Kefala and the Accented Voice in Australian Poetry - Ivor Indyk