This on-line anthology has been a few years in the making. My task has been a comparatively pleasant one — reading as much Western Australian writing as I was able to. It was a matter of reading not only poetry, fiction, and drama, but scientific and political papers, historical and cultural texts. A literature of location and locality is a collective thing, made up of many genres.
The fundamental problem when collecting such material is deciding what constitutes Western Australia, or any other state within a federation anyway. Some of the writers included in this selection have loyalties to the land more than the colonial slicing-up of the land that gives us modern Western Australia; others spent a brief amount of time here but wrote convincingly on matters and places specifically identifiable as Western Australian; still others were migrants later in life, or spent their childhoods in Western Australia before heading off to other Australian states or other countries. Many have spent their lives here.
The idea of Western Australia has always been a little fragile from my point of view — it is vast and encompasses many landscapes and identities. In the 1930s there was a strong desire among many to secede from the rest of Australia, and some would argue that feeling is still there. It’s a long way from the centres of Australian power on the east coast. In more recent decades, Western Australians have overcome this perceived isolation and separation by envisaging themselves as a kind of West Coast, belonging, but with its own identities.
In selecting material good writing was not my sole criterion. Some of the work included here is not first-rate, though much of it is. I have also selected in order to illustrate dominant societal attitudes, especially among an often racist colonial press, and certainly a racist white leadership. We can’t pretend this wasn’t the case, and that such issues are not still a matter of concern. What passed as good or popular literature at the time deserves to be taken into consideration, even if, as I do, you choose as a reader to reject them. And despicable observations of pre-settlement/invasion “Western Australia” by figures like William Dampier need to be confronted — they are an indictment of the society we have become, as much as of the personal and communal bigotries of the world that William Dampier came out of. And he is only one example in a concerted attempt to disparage Aborigines, as a prelude to dispossessing them of the land. However, in the case of Dampier and many others, I’ve tried also to concentrate on other aspects of their “seeing”. Their confrontation with “new” and “bizarre” flora and fauna, their attempt to find and develop a language to describe these. There’s the genuine excitement and inspiration of the explorer’s vision, as well as the destructive side.
Many other pieces fight these bigotries, and these pieces are to be cherished for doing so. Some work has been included because it gives us a picture of what Western Australia is, as much as for its worth as literature. Having said this, I believe that there are many pieces that are as fine from a literary perspective as anything written in English anywhere in the world.
This anthology is a reflection of a diverse range of spaces — it is not about making identity, but about reflecting on the various identities people have constructed for themselves. There is certainly no literary cringe at work here, and no grounds for thinking there might be. The cringe only comes if we are defensive about the so-called isolation and small population or are afraid to face up to the fact that we owe — all of us — a massive debt of gratitude to the indigenous custodians of the land. Without their goodwill, such an anthology is meaningless. Indigenous literature is at the forefront of contemporary Western Australian writing, but this connects with a strong and brilliant oral tradition, and also a tradition of a literature that expressed itself in body-text and numerous other iconic forms (painting, dance etc).
English is not the only language of writing in Western Australia. There are many. I have collected English-language material, though I hope to include pieces in many languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Italian, as time goes on. What’s wonderful about an electronic on-line anthology is that it can continue to grow — and will. I am discovering material all the time, and some writers are under-represented because new books have come out recently. I have included translations in my selection, and will attempt to provide translations of original texts that will be included in the future.
One of the most exciting aspects of working on this anthology has been the rediscovery of some wonderful literature. Poets like Elizabeth Deborah Brockman and Henry Clay deserve to be known internationally, and I have been pleasantly surprised to find that where some people had assumed Western Australia lacking — say, in an earlier tradition of play-writing — there are many strong examples from the earlier part of the twentieth century, not to mention strong play-writing today. There are also interesting cases like the poet Charmaine Papertalk-Green who should be recognised as a major poet, but is under-published.
My one regret is that some material cannot be included for copyright reasons. There’s a regrettable suspicion of electronic publishing; yet it significantly increases the range of readership, and a web-page might well be consulted when a book will not be bought. We are very grateful, though, that a number of “big-selling” authors have been very supportive, and have persuaded their publishers to allow samples of their work to be displayed. They have behaved in the same spirit as authors just starting their career. There are no hierarchies intended here, and all are in the mix, wherever they are in their writing lives.
Finally, I must say that while I’ve had the easy job, the vision and hard work behind this have to do with Dr. Toby Burrows and his staff at the Scholars’ Centre at the University of Western Australia. This is Toby’s dream — he’s the one who has worked the controls of the machine. He has given me total editorial freedom, and I accept responsibility for any inadequacies or blindnesses the selection might have. Thanks must also go to the Landscape and Language Centre at Edith Cowan University, who supported me during the selection process, and who provide ongoing support. This anthology is dedicated to Bill Grono — critic, anthologist, teacher, and poet. Bill has been a mainstay of Western Australian writing, and many of us owe him a debt of gratitude for his support.
Enjoy!
John Kinsella
