Abstract: This article explores the concept of the transcendent relational through the analysis of the encounter between the two main characters of Tim Winton's The Shepherd's Hut . The transcendent relational names a new understanding of transcendence characteristic of transmodernity, the sociocultural paradigm that has succeeded postmodernity. It draws on the synergies between caring individualism and immanent transcendence, both distinctive features of transmodern times (Rodríguez Magda). The study of Winton's novel proves that relationality of a higher order is needed for the experience of the dimension of reality that goes beyond the strictly human and the material. It is also symptomatic of a growing interest in transcendence that does not rule out institutionalized religion but, most characteristically, implies an intimate search outside creeds and dogmas.

Beyond the Marram Grass1966 Georgia Rose Phillips (bio) At dusk, the sand dunes are a sweeping panorama of curves, barely distinguishable. As Elke's eyes adjust to the failing light, she watches as the white creases lift and disappear into the grey sheet of ocean. The tufts of marram grass hunch protectively away from the northeasterly sea breeze that rolls in from the water, filling the beachside carpark, and then, cleansing the hollow cavern of her vehicle. She focuses on the point where the horizon melts into a smudge of indigo and begins to dream of home. Of returning. Not to where she lives but to childhood. To Strausberg, to the Straussee: a calmer body of water tucked behind the dense stretch of coniferous forest. To the needle shape of the scale-like pine leaves, falling. To the arillate fruit glowing the red of spilt blood against the leafy emerald. She is thinking of sitting by the water with Vati. She nervously plucked at the strands of grass as the ferry hummed past. It looked out of place with its pastel-yellow panels. Vati had delivered the news, monotonously. We are leaving, he said plainly. Then, he added the word indefinitely. His words hung like a stale air between them. She had felt small and insignificant beneath his gaze. Unsure how to carry herself in the brief and unexpected moments of his attention. She had wanted to ask of this place, Sydney, but the moment had passed as swiftly as it unfolded. Before she'd had time to process the news, she watched her boxer, Arlo. His head drooped in a confused tilt behind the neighbour's fence. He shrunk as they drove into the climb of morning that shed darkness like a second skin. She understood the hollowness of loss then, the way it fills you up with emptiness. _______ Elke hears the approach of a rickety engine. It is followed by a loud bang as a nearing vehicle backfires. The sound startles her and pulls her head instinctively towards the headlights dispersing into a fine, shimmering powder. A red, dilapidated Fiat glides across the carpark. Its soft outline hardens into firmer, more declarative angles, as it nears. As its golden light beams draw closer, she begins to hear the raucous laughter of the boys. Their deep chorus is muffled by the fogged glass. The car's brakes screech to a halt, propelling their vague outlines forward, and then, backwards. She hears the damp slapping of flesh against leather. The lagging gear stick crunch as something mechanical burps beneath the bonnet. [End Page 21] The sound makes her think of her husband, Norbert. The permanent shadow his life as a mechanic has cast over his fingertips. In the rear-vision mirror, she watches the boys park horizontally across three parallel white-lined car spaces. She watches their motions unfold in the hanging black frame of the mirror. They appear foreign and distant. Glowing translucent against the darkening surrounds as the day pulls away from them. The glassy quality of their reflection reminds her of Brigitte at the aquarium. The way her small, pink hands reached for the dugong floating despondently, beyond the glass. The moment had the same ethereal sheen. Brigitte had been asking if the dugong was sad about being imprisoned. Eyes stretched wide with concern. Her flock of dark hair still creased from her morning nap. Her aliveness exemplified by the glow of memory. She must have been almost four, then. Understanding nothing but also everything. Should we let them out, Mutti? she said, her voice hollow with concern.Should we get Vati to help us? The boys emerge as a collective from the Mary Poppins–handbag of a vehicle. They double in size as they unfold from the metal mouth of the doors. They straddle the uneasy threshold of adolescence and adulthood. Bearing vestiges of the uninterrupted tenderness of boy children. Elke recognises this in their shared and sudden jittery excitement to be free from the confines of the vehicle with its restrictive seatbelts. Its lack of leg space forcing them to press their knees together, demurely. She watches as their feet meet the pavement...

About the Cover Inclusion by Uncle Paul Constable Calcott About the Art Inclusion was inspired by the fossilized footprints found at a place called Lake Mungo, in Australia. The footprints, believed to be over fifty thousand years old, show a one-legged person using a walking stick to participate in a hunt with people who have both their legs. They are hunting emu and kangaroo, as these tracks are also visible. What this says to me is that thousands of years ago, the traditional inhabitants of this country had a culture of inclusion, when Europeans were just starting to walk upright. The fact that this person is using a walking stick also suggests perhaps the first example of a crude mobility aid. About the Artist Uncle Paul Constable Calcott is a proud descendant of the Wiradjuri peoples from central New South Wales. At the age of eighteen months, back in 1960, he contracted polio. Living with the resulting disability has driven him to be an advocate for his community around disability rights. He now lives on the Queensland Sunshine Coast on Karbi Karbi Country with his partner of twenty-five years, and as Paul says, he has the privilege, honor, and responsibility of being a recognized community Elder. Uncle Paul has been working in the disability sector for almost forty years, with the past fifteen years specifically devoted to First Peoples living with disability. In 2010, while working with a nongovernmental organization based on the Sunshine Coast, he started an artist group for local First Peoples living with disability. The group's purpose was to address issues such as social isolation and to create a culturally safe environment for people to connect and build resilience via art, cultural connection, and sharing stories. These activities started Uncle Paul on an incredible journey that helped him grow as an artist and grow as an Aboriginal man. It also gave him insight about his own personal life of living with a disability in a far more positive light. In supporting other members of the community, he gained a stronger sense of purpose by connecting to culture and community through their art and through sharing their stories of strength. In 2015, he began working with the First Peoples Disability Network Australia. He developed opportunities [End Page 7] to share art on a national and international platform to support community disability rights and culturally respectful models of support. He realizes that these projects helped others to have a voice and to be seen as valuable contributors to arts, culture, and community. Uncle Paul has had the opportunity to travel to regional and remote communities throughout Australia and share stories. He realized the ability of art to help us share stories of strength and connection to country and culture. He has learned about the different disability perspectives held in various communities and how art is the common denominator and link between us all. Uncle Paul has coordinated and facilitated at least fourteen art exhibitions over the past ten years, providing opportunities for First Nations artists living with disability to showcase their work and enhance their economic participation in their communities. With the First Peoples Disability Network Australia, in 2019 Uncle Paul coordinated and facilitated an art exhibition called Culture Is Inclusion at the United Nations in Geneva, which featured works by twelve individual artists living with disability. The exhibition moved to Parliament House Brisbane for the International Day for People Living with Disability. That same year, Uncle Paul was awarded a National Human Rights Award for Disability Leadership and Rights Activism. Through his role with First Peoples Disability Network, Uncle Paul facilitates the work of the NuunaRon Art Group for artists living with disability and of E.L.D.A., Elders Living with Disability Australia. He continues to advocate for people with disability to be seen and recognized as contributing members of a richly diverse society, making valuable, unique, and diverse contributions to their culture and the arts. Uncle Paul's work is displayed both nationally and internationally, including at the Australian embassy in Switzerland and the Queensland treasury, in government buildings in New Zealand and Canada, and in private collections in London, the United States...

Reviewed by: The Gang of One, Selected Poems by Robert Harris Carolyn Stice Robert Harris. The Gang of One, Selected Poems. Melbourne: Grand Paradise Poets, 2019. 224 pp. A $26.95. ISBN 9780994600226 An unsatisfying potpourri Robert Harris's The Gang of One, Selected Poems is divided into six sections and represents a lifetime of work. Five of the sections contain selections from specific collections, while the sixth section is a mash-up of uncollected poems. Unfortunately, because the sections are fairly unbalanced in length (some are quite short; others are very long in comparison), it is difficult to get a clear picture of the collections that each section represents. For longtime fans of Harris, this book might provide a way to look back on past favorites, but for those new to his work, the book has the feel of a tasting menu. Like other books of selected poems, it does not give us a clear picture of what the poet is hoping to accomplish. Another issue with the selected poems model is that Harris's many experiments with form and style, all of which are liberally displayed in the book, feel disjointed and somewhat random, the one exception to this being the selection from his collection JANE, Interlinear & Other Poems, which includes several multipart poems in which Harris has been clearly methodical in his choices to use form to represent various voices within these sections. This part succeeds because we are given enough context to understand what he is trying to achieve. Other parts of the book are less convincing. This failure could be either because readers are unable to see the larger picture of a specific collection or because at some stages in his career, Harris just was not as adept at using form to meet his purpose. For example, in the poem "Australian Rules," in The Cloud Passes Over, Harris establishes a pattern of playing with white space on the page and with indentation and line lengths, only to completely abandon that pattern for traditional stanzas on the second page of the poem. When such a choice is made with a clear intention to which the reader can relate, it can work, but in this instance Harris's method seems sloppy. This lack of unity is further amplified by the fact that Harris appears to have no one distinct style. While some themes repeat throughout, each of the sections is markedly different, presumably reflecting some of what the poet was trying to accomplish in the original anthologies. The trouble with such a setup is that the poems are presented out of context; thus, their individual failings become more magnified. Harris is undoubtedly talented and at times displays a keen eye for relaying details and setting a scene; he is also clearly a lover of adjectives and is not shy about using them to excess. A fair number of the poems are so verbally dense that a reader may struggle to find the heart of the work. For example, in "Old Sailors at the Memorial," he writes, I too hunt back, amcompelled to search out/the axis of repeated dreamsthough in my case the violencewas lesser,the sponson meant terror not horror/and blood preparations & and sea wraiths/ceased on my decision. There is nothing wrong with this language; it is, in fact, quite beautiful-sounding. However, because of the construction of this [End Page 160] stanza, as one long sentence, readers may find that meaning eludes them because of the wordy expression. In "Concerning Shearers Playing for the Bride" from the Localities section, the first page of the poem feels mostly cohesive (except for some fairly random rhyming in the fifth stanza). The poem concerns a painting by Arthur Boyd, and this first page does well in bringing it to life for the reader. However, the strength of the opening fades in the second and third page of the poem, when both the tone and the subject shift. We move from lovely lines like "the bride behind and the costly veil/while the lantern flutters, yaws and bends" to "And the cards say/and the mat says/'Play!' Play/craftily for the essences'/sweet...

From France Temiti Lehartel (bio) An Indigenous Australian Oeuvre on the French Agrégation d'anglais Curriculum The Agrégation d'anglais takes on Alexis Wright, or is it the other way around? Carpentaria accepted for the Agrégation d'anglais 2022–2023 Click for larger view View full resolution France is a place where in the public and private sector, teaching positions ranging from middle school to university are regimented by strict national exams with select reading programs and with limited positions available to pass them. Among those national competitive exams stands the renowned Agrégation. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Claude Lévi Strauss, Marie Curie, Paul Sabatier—all are known for having taken this national teaching exam in their respective fields before going on to accomplish great things in their lives. Dating from 1815 and created by Napoleon Bonaparte and his government, the competitive selection process is composed of an admissible written series of examination and an admission series of oral examination. Sought by many French secondary and university teachers, the exam enables teachers to prove their proficiency and gain status and prestige in the subject they want to teach and in the field they want to commit to as an academic. Agrégation d'anglais holders are allowed to teach ESL and contemporary Anglophone studies at a high school level (years 9 to 12) and classes préparatoires level (year 13). They may also apply for lecturing positions in Anglophone literature, linguistics, and history at university and then move to competing for maître de conference positions—the next academic rank. For the next two years, whether the Agrégation competitors realize it or not, their experience with "literature in English" will be forever changed because they will [End Page 285] be reading Carpentaria, by Waanyi elder Alexis Wright of Australia. Standing among a Shakespeare play and other canonical works of English and US literature, Carpentaria was added to the competition syllabus thanks to the hard work of a small group of industrious academics in France: Marylin Brun, Estelle Castro-Koshy, and Fiona McCann. Representing past, present, and ongoing issues tied to settler colonialism, the novel is not a settler story about exploring the outback but an Indigenous story of resilience and persistent existence. Wright's novel creatively criticizes the ongoing effects of British invasion and also points to environmental destruction tied to political and corporate corruption in Australia. The novel presents the importance of Law of Country for Waanyi people. Carpentaria is the first Anglophone work by an Indigenous person from any country to be included on the Agrégation. Prior to this, Australian literature has only made it to the Agrégation once, some forty years ago, in 1977, with Patrick White's novel Voss. The inclusion of Carpentaria is particularly important for the teachers who are "mis à disposition" of the "outre-mer," that is to say, sent by the French Education Nationale authorities to its "former colonies" (New Caledonia and French Polynesia, for example). The petitioners for this book to be on the program for the Agrégation argued that reading this novel would challenge aspiring teachers and academics to understand the effects of colonialism differently, as well as to acknowledge the existence of different knowledge systems at play in Indigenous environments. Teaching this book in the French curriculum will revolutionize the students' understanding of what it means to be an Indigenous person, an Aboriginal Australian living in this neocolonial day and age. It will question their views about Australian Aboriginal people and hopefully bring them to navigate new self-reflexive perspectives and intercultural understandings. Speaking from my perspective as a mā'ohi vahine working with her community, I endorse the petitioners' argument. This Indigenous Australian perspective will be invaluable to French teachers assigned to Mā'ohi Nui (Tahiti) to teach our "Kevin Phantoms." It will also greatly help teachers and scholars in France who face a wide array of students from many different backgrounds in their classrooms as the world globalizes and nearby conflicts force people to move to France for safety. Wright says Carpentaria "is not suited to a tourist reader" (225) and teaches...

Ribbon Kelp Audrey Molloy (bio) after H.D. Bronze stem ochre crowned whip-haired siren lit with sapphire leafless stipe where otters glide what gravity buoys you to the ceiling of the sea? Saline bathed satin blade scent of iodine— what anodyne land tree holds as fast as you? [End Page 257] Audrey Molloy Audrey Molloy is an Irish-Australian poet based in Sydney. Her first collection, The Important Things, was published by The Gallery Press (2021). Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Cordite, Southerly, Verity La, Rabbit, and Australian Poetry Journal. In 2019, she was awarded a Varuna Residential Fellowship. She is currently undertaking a master's in creative writing (poetry) at Manchester Metropolitan University. Copyright © 2022 Wayne State University Press