By gathering together some of the best papers from two recent landmark conferences, the Christopher Brennan / Stéphane Mallarmé Double Exposures colloquium at the University of Sydney, and the AD Hope Centenary conference at the Australian National University, this invaluable issue offers a stimulating reconsideration of the work of two of the most important figures in Australian poetry, and an absorbing array of present and future directions in Australian literary criticism. Essays by leading Australian scholars and commentators are presented side-by-side with papers from scholars from France, England and the United States.
It contains the by now notorious exchange-of-papers between John Kinsella and Henry Weinfield concerning the reading of Hope's The Death of the Bird (an exchange already the subject an ABC radio documentary), and important new papers by Kevin Hart, GA Wilkes, Katherine Barnes, Didier Coste, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Santosh Sareen, Wallace Kirsop and many others. It also contains the winning entry from the 2008 Harold Tribe poetry award, Brian Castro's recent Blaiklock lecture on mourning, and much, much more.