Rabbit Hole: Issue One

RABBIT HOLE Issue 01

A President’s Spiel

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Writer Profiles

4 CONTENTS

Contents

Poetry 6 Bare Feet 6 The Fallen King 7 Caesium Tears 8 My Mother’s Garden 10 Erosion 11 On the Nature of Death 12 Fiction 13 The Red Angel’s Wrath 13 Nothing if Not 15 An Ambitious Compact 20 Redhanded 23 Words About Words

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The Death of the Artist 25 Poetry and the Dread of Life 29 Some ‘White’ Stories: from my house of poetry 30 Considering Fanfiction 33 LitSoc Comments

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Write the Words that Matter 38 The ANU LitSoc Book Club 39 Acknowledgements

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A President’s Spiel

H

EDITORIAL

ello all. Thank you for reading Rabbit Hole and becoming part of the mosaic that is ANU Literature Society (LitSoc). You may not know it, but the collection of writing that follows – maybe on a mobile screen thanks to the Facebook algorithm, or perhaps in delicious hardcopy – is the culmination of nearly three years’ love and labour. This past ten months, we finally put pen to paper.

Today’s ANU LitSoc is almost unrecognizable from its 2017 conception. The friend of mine who cooked up the idea has long since graduated. The pub where we had our first meeting closed for good – vale Wig & Pen. The Brian Kenyon Student Space, where our Book Club found its feet, has been moved three times. A new university bookstore established itself in the heart of campus. The lecture theatre in which I first heard Dr Kate Flaherty speak about Shakespeare lies buried somewhere under an overpriced burger joint. And, interestingly, the relatively low cost of studying English literature survived the landmark federal government arts fee hike. Our particular degree price-tag is to remain largely unaffected while other humanities courses become as expensive as law and medicine.

In that pre-Covid19 world, English students seemed paradoxical to me: idealistic, compassionate and emotionally-literate in class, though surprisingly aloof and disconnected the moment they stepped out. I was told that a unique and supportive cohort of literature-adoring folks would form around me if I waited until English Honours. But I’m impatient. So, I read Woroni’s creative pieces and all the local zines. I frequented author Q&As, attended book launches, the School of Literature talks, and Smith’s poetry nights. Even then it felt as though I never saw the same face twice.

I do not often tell people that my grandad, Bob, was a lecturer and ‘Reader’ (sort of in between a researcher and a professor) in English at ANU for nearly forty years. If he hadn’t died when my dad was in his undergraduate phase of life, he probably would’ve been floating around the local literary joints to this day. Bob taught through the ‘60s to the ‘80s. Dad recalls parties in which undergraduates and researchers would be at their house drinking and debating together until the morning. It all sounds very Secret History. One gets the same feeling looking back on mid-century photos of ANU. There was time and space and money aplenty, arguably the necessary ingredients for accessible intellectualism.

Nowadays English students may well be racking up debt just for the hell of it. We can get degrees without ever talking to another human. Academia may be an underpaid and undervalued pursuit, and the good affordable bookstores may go out of business thanks to the internet. However, I still see no reason why we cannot have a genuinely active literary community which is welcoming of novice undergraduates at Australia’s leading university.

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Rabbit Hole Issue 1

EDITORIAL

In its three-year lifetime LitSoc has hosted one hundred literary events and helped two hundred individual members. We have shown that there can exist an inclusive and encouraging access point for ANU students who seek a reading and writing community that understands them. LitSoc has mostly gained the interest of people who want to yet cannot squeeze an English elective or two into their degrees. These days I like to think that those elusive English literature majors are quite content compiling essays and reading Ulysses as lone wolves. But that shouldn’t be their only option.

One of the main goals at the first LitSoc gathering was to eventually establish a creative writing publication, by students for students. Every Rabbit Hole contributor represents different experiences within our university and literature. Some come just wanting to write or wanting to learn how to write well, and some will leave maybe never writing again.

I hope all ten authors are incredibly proud of the end result. It brings me to tears if I think about how much work and vulnerability went into this. Our deepest thanks to Dr Lucy Neave of the English faculty for her editorial wisdom and encouragement of LitSoc right from the start.

For the reader’s information, the piece labelled Lucy’s Choice was chosen by Dr Neave as her favourite. The LitSoc editorial team selected Editor’s Choice based on the writer who embodied our values of community, courage and openness throughout the writing process.

Finally, the People’s Choice was decided by a society-wide vote.

May the reader enjoy their journey down the Rabbit Hole.

Sophie

Sophie Brissenden, President ANU Literature Society

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

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Writer Profiles

PROFILES

Jemima Brooker Jemima studies Asian Studies and Criminology at the ANU, which gives some context to her passion for crime literature. She has already published a fictional crime podcast through the 2019 NESA Showcase and will probably never figure out what medium she prefers best.

Assuming that all goes well, she hopes to travel the world and write about how crime is changing in a globalised society.

James Charlton After being triggered by lazy endings to several of his favourite series, James secretly began to try writing for himself (for revenge). Only thanks to the help of talented editors, he managed to produce his first story in barely adequate English for LitSoc. He hopes to one day publish a meaningful novel, and was thrilled by the opportunity offered by the Rabbit Hole project.

Aditi Dubey Aditi is a postgrad student who has a deep love for words and all the languages they come in. She has published multiple works in Woroni and other student media. Aditi writes because she feels she has too many thoughts and opinions and putting them to paper is how she lets them into the world.

Will Guo As an ANU student doing an arts degree, Will has no idea what he is doing with his life.

Similarly, he had no idea what to do with his written piece. With a lifetime of experience building imaginary worlds in high school science classes, this is his first foray into putting these worlds into words.

Phoebe Lupton Phoebe Lupton (she/her) is a writer, poet and soon-to-be arts graduate. She is a former Woroni Editor, and she has been published by Cordite Poetry Review (forthcoming), After Work Drinks and the Unveiled Institute. Phoebe hopes to delve into more personal topics in her future practice in order to instigate empathy with readers.

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PROFILES

Adi Menon Adi studies English literature at ANU and enjoys performing slam poetry in various cafes and bars across Canberra. He has now committed these ideas to paper with the wonderful help of all the editors at LitSoc. Adi hopes to one day make it big in poetry, which is a funny joke he tells himself often.

Abigail Moloney Abby has loved writing ever since she discovered a love for reading. She grew up devouring the fantasy novels her dad passed down to her. As a preteen she had a record-scratch moment, and realised that fantasy - especially high fantasy - is essentially a hovel, filled with misogyny and terribly-written, one-dimensional women characters. And so her new passion began: taking a feminist battering ram to fantasy.

Asha Naznin Asha Naznin is a Canberra based performance poet. In 2020, her poem ‘Excerpts from Marilyn Monroe’s Notebook’ was exhibited by the Tuggeranong Arts Centre, and the Australian Poetry Anthology published her ‘Midnight Lover’. She graduated from a double degree in International Security Studies and Science, and is about to commence her career as a Business Analyst in an international company.

Lisa Pond-Keter Lisa studies biology with a keen focus on genetics which is definitely a passion of hers, but even passions can become repetitive. To mix things up, this year she decided to try her hand at poetry. Honesty and humility is the goal of this autodidact who wishes to explore her Trans Identity through the medium of poetry. Lisa does wish to publish more in the future and you may see her publish under the name Mia Rei in future work, when she is more public with her identity and willing to use her last name.

Tony H. Wu Tony H. Wu writes criticism for the Koscuisco Review, amongst others, with occasional forays into fiction, incessantly trying – with diminishing returns – to find a passage to the Orient.

He is most interested in aesthetic philosophy, perhaps because a vicarious existence is safer.

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Bare Feet

POETRY

Phoebe Lupton

Ground beneath me hold my bare feet and I will hold

what is left of you

LUCY’S CHOICE

Tether me to you like string to a bow tie me up

Wash me with water from deepest seas as I dry your tears

never let go.

make me a part of you

I’ll give you a house, a home to rest forget the pain

I’ll nurse you back to health and wealth and you can live your life again.

Keep me safe

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and return to me

until the end.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

The Fallen King Asha Naznin

POETRY

I haven’t touched you in the past 6 months; you are no longer needed in my life, sorry, I didn’t mean to be harsh; trust me, I haven’t replaced you with a new one.

I haven’t put my eyes on someone else I might, though, if needed.

No, no, it’s not that you are old; you still glow like you used to and still stand so high anytime night n day.

I remember that summer evening the very first time I brought you home I put you on my bed stared at you your size was perfect.

For a while, I couldn’t resist myself, you lifted my legs, two straps on my two ankles I looked in the mirror, remember? last night, I went to the basement; these days, that’s where you’re staying since coronavirus hit our city.

You are fallen kings who lost glory overnight.

What can I do, honey? working from home, meetings are online nothing nothing nothing demands you.

You’re still so sexy, but you don’t serve any purposes.

Oh! oh! oh! dear corporate high heels! forgive me.

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Caesium Tears Lisa Pond-Keter

POETRY

Part I Silence was key to avoiding tragedy.

All I see is yellow so tell me you love me; I want clarity from all this abstraction, Call me when you find a cure for a fee.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

What do you even call a fear of mirrors?

The pitter patter of your own consciousness begging shocked silence and shallow breaths The machinations of your mind are madness.

Treating myself as some other person in the mirror, Staring and straining within that reflection.

There are so many minute things to hate, Of bone and skin, I remain in toxicity.

In this figure – this frame of mine – I feel trapped.

There is no reason to it, just solitude.

They will all treat me as they see me, A man who suffocates in his own presence.

Good sense forbids I try to be more me, Accept myself and move past fuming grey oceans In that shining sea, I envision myself free, And perhaps a fantastic woman I could be.

A seeping pool of caesium, crashing inside a hollow chest The beading tears pelt the surface and in glimmers of sunlight I take solace from violence There could not be a more perfect catharsis.

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Rabbit Hole Issue 1

POETRY

Part II Now, build yourself up from that piddling mess Stop calling yourself perverted in that dress It is the fabric that you caress: Remember its circumstance and finesse.

So with it you will calm yourself, plait your hair with little stress; And repeat kinder words, as that world in your head feels less and less.

Darling Dearest, now that pain is key, I can’t stand the way they look at me With paranoia in their minds.

You must give me something, please Sweetheart, Sweetie can’t you really see?

Wishing you were different won’t change reality So pull me, push me, see how we go for time.

May you comprehend your single life.

Ruminate, contemplate on catastrophe you sell yourself out blind as always, trust me.

Moving and clawing at impossible heights, this could only ever end in tragedy.

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My Mother’s Garden

POETRY

Phoebe Lupton

How does your mother tend to her garden? does she love it like a child feeding it with sweat from her body letting it grow letting it go

There is no place like my mother’s garden come and see the green of leaves the green of feathers left behind like needless worries

I have nowhere else to go they didn’t know it when they came and ripped out the flowers ripped out the roots

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as far as the earth can reach?

footprints melting on the beach

of trees as tall as the sky

They burned the garden to the ground throwing ashes like litter painting grass red declared it dead declared hope lost

making us beg for mercy

My mother returned to give life she worked for days she worked for us Does your mother tend to her garden?

Can you help her make it better?

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Erosion Lisa Pond-Keter

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POETRY

As in this world, I would be painted less than capable.

Exist but unseen, buried under their mountain of screams.

Vison of pure objectification, exotic sensation and prostitution eternal. Heirs to the throne of thorns I feel we bleed out other’s pity and scorn; they dreamt; we all have dreams.

Remember all of them, who bled and wheezed.

Imagined futures, find where my hiding respite is found, the dream has vanished, there comes the knock. I think about everything, and what gave me away. They will have me written down and bagged, roped, wound about – clocked, dragged out by tugs to hair, half-dressed and all to be humiliated, mocked and shot.

Blooming paranoia of whether they have a scrotum or vulva. Oh Goddess forbid their genitals do not match the white tuned noise of dogma.

The droning heads come, whispering a crazed judgmental cicada.

Oh fuck, still grasping a rifle with mum’s knitted balaclava.

Now Bambi in the head lights.

I look down at cracked nails, (Nail or Nails?)

Moscow red, polished and smooth, chipped and broken, the illusion, memories and redemption.

I found myself there, Eroded away; I am me a girl iced and sworn to self duress.

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On the Nature of Death Adi Menon

POETRY

I was sitting on a bench, bounded by trees, they leaned in to watch.

Branches released leaves, they were guided by the wind, onto the ground.

One leaf let go, began to fall, (spiraling down, coming into life in the wind’s own music, it danced in an exhale with lifetimes of seasons, in no time nor timeless, at the end of a breath) coming to rest landing next to my shoe.

I was throwing some breadcrumbs for a flock of birds, one leapt closer.

Piercing eyes shone at mine, the beak feverishly picking up crumbs.

When I had no crumbs left, the piercing eyes walked in fire to reach mine.

I had none left to give.

The bird took flight.

Pouring out of its wings were the sighs of the trees, the cries of the leaves.

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Rabbit Hole Issue 1

The Red Angel’s Wrath

I

inherited a sick world.

I was born in 2020, forty-five years ago.

That was when we met the red angel. Rich white angel-mist made the hills inescapable, poisoning people in their sleep. Rumours buzzed that one breath of smoke could knock three minutes off a person’s life, but for the first month of my life, that air was all I breathed. When the angels left, their long fingerprints were seen in sun-scorched land and ash grey tree husks. Australia had always suffered bush fires, but not like this. A shift in the air and the warming of the cloud above caused what was always tragic and inevitable to become a new calamity. We were living in a new horrible normal. In the end, it was a year birthed in fire.

Then came the flu. It was relentless and left people panting, breathless. To spare Australia of even more dead, the country itself locked down. No one left home. The gears that oiled the economy cried to a halt. Everything shuttered.

And peculiar times cause peculiar reactions. Society failed to deal with the pressures of this more hostile earth, and as life became erratic, eccentric and unstable, we turned on each other.

In 2032, when I was twelve, I was meant to play my first game of rugby. The forecast said it was going to be a hot, dry day. I pictured it in my head: that first game. I was there with no more protection than a flimsy piece of plastic in my mouth, wrinkled with dehydration, and ahead of me was a pack of vicious beasts, all 6-foot tall and charging towards me. There I was, a tiny tree branch. I’d be picked up by these beasts and slammed back down onto the ground, again and again, until ultimately the branch snapped.

Normally being grounded isn’t a lot of fun, but mum was back with us for once. The three of us, my mum, father and me, huddled over the dinner table, rolling dice and moving counters as the light outside went from bright white to faded orange. It didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

So, I ventured all ten steps to the backyards, and gathered two long slender branches, fresh-fallen from the trees above. I sat one branch flat on the ground and held the other one in the palms of my two hands. But it was all noise and no spark. I tried again and again and again. I kept on chafing sticks together, swooshing sounds echoed throughout the backyard. The light from the sun turned a faint orange glow as the day waned by. No fire.

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As I woke up the next day I realised the time had come.

Game day. But there was something else… a faint chalky smoke smell introduced itself to the room. I looked outside the window and saw white angel’s smoke carpet our suburban hills, waiting quietly for people to open their windows.

Breathe in, breathe out. 3 minutes gone. And when you’re huffing and puffing in a rugby game, those minutes add up.

No one would trade a few hours for an hour of game-time.

Ding. That’s exactly what happened.

But just as I was about to take a victory lap, I felt the sting of smoke. I took a deep breath and realised I shouldn’t have done that. I sat with my P2 mask, clutching on to the hope that this flimsy piece of cloth would protect me from the poison around me. Breathing in foul air I counted my shallows breaths. The days it would cost.

It’s only gotten worse since.

It was just another hot 2045 morning. Another day of taking the hour-long train ride to the city, researching and brokering rain options for my new job, taking the train home, trying not to get heatstroke and doing it all over again tomorrow. We were little cogs pushing bigger cogs to twist a strained motor belt that could snap any moment.

Sounds depressing doesn’t it? Well, somehow, we were the ones that kept society chugging.

Except that morning, the train, like a busy parent too overworked to have time for their children, just wasn’t there. I made do and looked for alternatives. There were buses I could take.

The bus was sardined with people, and without air conditioning we breathed and sweated on each other, tasting salty plaque. The windows magnified the oppressive heat from outside, cooking us like ants under a magnifying glass.

It was a sauna experience that no one asked for. It was a while before the palpitations started. Every beat croaking through the body, until it reached the brain. Everything felt lighter, like a feather resting atop my body. My inner machine throbbed with dizzying, restless waves. dadum… dadum… dadum…

I could barely stand on my own two feet, leaning onto the railing on the bus, or maybe it was someone’s shoulder.

I’m not quite sure. I don’t think it even mattered.

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FICTOIN

William Guo

FICTION I got off at my transfer stop, stepping into the pleasant and warm embrace of bus-stop shade. I collapsed like a limp fish on the seashore, my senses in wild disarray as I wrestled back my bearings. Someone had given me a bottle of ice-cold water. Blurs. A pattern. Navy blue and a pinkish off-white. Next minute, I put the water bottle to my lip, and gulped down the water in little precious streams. When I could see again, shades of yellow and green were now the trees sheltering people from the angel above. Shit, I had to catch another bus.

A car sped down the roadside and stopped just in front of me. The windows rolled down a gush of cold crisp air hit me hard. “Old mate, it’s better that you’re not late for work on your second week. Get in.” As I opened the car the full rush of air conditioning hit. I got in the car, shivered, and sat down on the cool leather seats. The signs of heat stress were all exorcised by the magical power of air conditioning.

We rushed stop after stop, sprinting by trees, houses and roads of suburbia. I looked outside as an ambulance parked next to a bus. As someone was being loaded onto the ambulance. Then, one block down the line, another ambulance, two became three. The fourth carried someone with a navy-blue checked shirt.

I counted seven total on the way to work.

2056. You were quite young then. Food was scarce and anything fresh was impossible to find. The UN said everyone should have the right to thirty litres of water a day, our government said ten would suffice. Entire sectors of the economy were put out to dry, and the small building blocks collapsed like a bubble apartment.

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It was five years ago, when I got laid off from my raintrading job. Everyone was firing instead of hiring people. I woke up, started a futile search, received a bunch of thankyou-for-your-time emails, went to sleep and did it all again the next morning. Sometimes you didn’t even get thanked.

After a few months stress started to get to me. Anger.

Frustration. That feeling that you could do nothing. That you were nothing.

In some time, I found something. A five-year contract at the New Headland Antarctic Base sponsored by the WA mining guilds. It was a shiny place full of cashed up bogans.

Imagine the interior of a golden serial spaceship, pumping LEDs and hallways of clean steel. Little gardens lined the corridor to give it the ambience of petite Parisian boulevards. And just under the chic climate-controlled pod of Zen leafage were little bottles of opened Carltons and VBs, lying there before maintenance could pick them up.

I exchanged it for everything else, everything I missed… birthdays, sport games, your first goal. I know the quiet hours spent in your empty room. I know the disappointments, the false hope, the long time waiting. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But I–– no, we inherited a shadow. Those who made the choices and the people who felt the consequences for those choices are not the same.

I’ve arranged travel for all of you. The Antarctic base is safe, free from the red angels. It’s the new world, free from food price spikes and smoke and wrath and death. It’s always better to be in the car than in the bus. I worked hard since then to provide for my family, to provide for you, the choice of a better life.

Come to Antarctica.

Choose the car.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

Nothing if Not Abigail Moloney

T

he heavy drug of incense rolled over her. It dulled the sharp pain in her knees that marked her fourth hour of prayer. Once upon a time, the incense held far more sway over her during allotted moments of devotion, pulling her under into a sweet dreamlike state, the one that forced the obsequiousness of masses.

Although these days, after two years spent within the mountain temples, for her it was about as potent as it was for the templars.

She turned her focus from the drugs to the pain, rolling her knee against the smooth floor tiles. Even for her, the long hours were beginning to draw. Her brother’s absence aggravated her more than she was prepared to admit.

Drawing in breath, she rolled her knee once more, savoring a sudden thrill of pain.

No one else occupied the room, only she knelt before the candled base of the god of Kings - Vokk’rakec, her father’s tutelary deity. Though there were none, to an onlooker she would appear composed in dedication and piety. A King’s duty was to his image, to always appear more in command of a situation than those of lesser standing. He was to be a god among men. The tutor had drilled that knowledge into their heads since the moment the siblings were permitted to begin studies. The corners of her mouth were allowed to lift. She was nothing if not a King.

A gong sounded and rang through the mountains, eventually piercing the quiet lull of the temple. Her eyes fluttered open, and she was pulled from the dregs of memory.

Shifting off her aching knees, she stretched her legs and stared up at the mighty statue of Vokk’rakec looming over her. His foreboding presence was meant to send the subject into prostration at his stone feet (aided by the incense as it tampered with their reality).

Her bare feet padded across the tiles, making her way to the small ornately carved double doors at the back of the room. Slipping outside was like diving into cold water on a boiling summer day, a pleasant shock. She sucked in great gulping breaths, letting the cold sting wash away the hours of imbued air that had polluted her lungs.

“Cala!” a voice shrieked. She sighed. The view before her was stunning, so she focused on it, hoping the nuisance would disappear. The monastery was settled high up in the cliffs of the Paradis mountain range. Snow-capped peaks glistened in the distance as the mountains rolled away to either side. If one were to peer over the edge of a temple to Rabbit Hole Issue 1

the steep drop below, they would see fertile valleys of luminescent green spread out before them.

FICTOIN

Year 346

“Cala!” The shriek came once more, this time followed by a heavy body coming into collision with hers. Her twin brothers’ arms wrapped around her, squeezing tight.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” his voice rushed out in the exuberant, too-fast way he spoke when worked up about something he deemed fascinating.

“I was in prayer,” she said.

“Oh well, I wanted to show you these hoof prints I found in the snow.” He paused for dramatic effect, leaning in to whisper, “I think they’re from a Nuckelavee.”

She just stared at him.

“Don’t be dense. Why would a Nuckelavee be in the mountains, let alone traipsing through a holy place?”

“But one of the templars said he saw one once! What if it’s some subspecies that doesn’t need to reside near the sea,” his voice and eyes shining with delight, “I could have discovered something groundbreaking.”

“That’s ridiculous. You were meant to be in prayer with me, not gallivanting around the grounds chasing after temple myths,” she argued.

Her brother looked down at his feet, guiltily, as if it had only just occurred to him where he should have been for the past few hours. He fiddled with the hem of his tunic.

Smears of dirt marred the rich embroidery, hinting at his foray through gardens in pursuit of hair-brained schemes.

Calanthea swallowed down a sudden upwelling of affection for the stupid young future King before her.

“Well that’s why I have you isn’t it?” he whispered, his downtrodden expression poking holes in her righteous anger.

She reached up, tucking silvery white curls that had fallen into his eyes behind his ear. His lavender eyes flickered up to meet hers.

The King had called them ‘a woman’s eyes’. They were just one of the many things he saw as irreversible shortcomings of a future King. For these things he was always ready to tear Ceris down, given the opportunity. But no matter how much their father despised his son, the gift given to 15

FICTION Ceris at birth would never change. As twins they were physically identical in every way, yet she was the one with the determination. The perseverance Ceris lacked.

That was enough for their father. She was not enough, no matter how much she outshone her brother in their lessons, their training, even in the God-given traits a King should embody. It had never been enough just to ignore the role she was born into, the faults of her birth. If Ceris was too much like a girl, then what was she?

“What to be the King in your stead,” she said, unable to conceal malice in her voice.

“No--” he paused, “I mean I don’t know, I’m not very good at it.” He looked up at her hopefully. “But that’s why I’ll have you. You won’t let me make a fool of myself even if I can’t sit through prayer.”

In that moment she wished so terribly that she could hate him. It would have made everything so much easier. If she hadn’t wasted her whole life on caring about him, or protecting him from the slander and disdain of the court for being such a useless little prince with a head in the clouds. Protecting him from their tutors, who would have beat the childlike innocence out of him if they could. Protecting him from her father’s harsh words, that condemned her brother as weak and foolish yet managed to overlook the promise she showed in the very next breath. If she hated him then she could have left him to the wolves. Then perhaps she would be standing here the sole survivor, ready to take her father’s place, ready to be the heir he so desperately wanted.

She swallowed harshly, choking the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her; anger at the injustice of it all, hatred for a man who called himself her father, love for a brother who shouldn’t deserve it, and frustration that made her want to scream at the world until everyone finally took notice of her like they should have long ago.

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Her mother had failed her first. The thought brought with it forgotten memories from two summers ago.

“At fourteen summers I was sent to live with my grandmother in preparation for an ascent into polite society. That the King is allowing you to benefit from your brother’s lessons and attend the monastery should be a privilege you readily acknowledge, and the expression of gratitude is through correct attire and proper decorum,” she said. She had been reprimanding her daughter in this way especially often since the King had overridden her weak protests about sending Calanthea off with her brother into the mountains for two summers. Calanthea knew her mother struggled with the demands of royal life. She had never expected to be plucked from obscurity amongst the minor nobility by the advisors, nor that the children she bore would become anything more than she was. That part was probably the hardest for her to accept.

Her daughter was expected to learn alongside her brother the lessons of a King, rather than preparing for her life as a sought-after eligible maiden at court. The distinction between her own womanly standing and that of higher nobility women was hard to grasp, and her husband did not care enough to help her understand.

The memory left a sour taste in her mouth and dispelled her rage. Her body felt heavy with exhaustion. Still, she mustered up a smile for her brother.

“Do you want to go down to the orchard? I hear the Glace Blossoms are especially beautiful this time of year,” she whispered.

Year 336 Her hand felt small inside her father’s larger one. She bounced up, grabbing his arm and swinging off it. Her father looked down and smiled, using her momentum to lift her up until they were eye-to-eye. She grinned, nestling into his arms.

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“I wanted to show you something very important,” he said.

“Very important,” she parroted.

He laughed. “Yes, very important.”

She peeked over his shoulder at the empty hallway behind them. A part of her was waiting for her mother to jump out and demand she return to lessons. Her parents were always arguing. Calanthea did not yet understand why, but she knew her mother disliked the long lengths of time her father spent with her.

She twisted her fingers nervously into his hair. His arms tightened around, hugging her close.

“Every child born into the royal family must learn their history someday. And for you that day is today,” he continued.

“Oh,” she replied.

The room they passed into was large. A cold draught drifted through the chamber, making her shiver. The walls were filled with giant portraits of stoic masculine faces gazing down in disapproval.

“When I was your age, my father took me to this very room and explained the history that I would uphold when I took the throne. It is time you learned of it too,” her father said.

“Is Ceris going too?” she asked.

“No, your brother isn’t ready,” he said. Darkness passed over his face, then he grinned and jokingly declared, “He still hides behind his mother’s skirts!”

She didn’t fully understand the fake turn of his humour and she wouldn’t for years to come, but her young ears sensed the insult. Only girls hid behind their mothers’ skirts, she knew that. But her brother was a boy and it wasn’t acceptable for a boy to behave like a girl. She knew that too, because their tutor had told them. She squirmed, uncomfortable in her father’s arms. She didn’t like it when he insulted Ceris. Ceris didn’t understand and they wouldn’t help him. They just got angry.

Her father set her down before kneeling in front of the first portrait.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

“Our history is one of greatness and you have that within you, Calanthea,” he said, tipping a finger under her chin, “No matter what your mother says, or how your brother turns out. You must uphold that legacy. You are my daughter and you are worthy of that title.”

Warmth filled her chest and she smiled. His eyes gazed down at her, deeply twinkling with a softness she wanted them to have always when he looked at her.

Year 346 The staircase had been carved into the cliff face. It wound down around the cliff top from one of the smaller temples, before letting out onto a greenery-soaked plateau. The orchard and its Glace Blossoms that bloomed from the montagne lychees did not grow naturally at this time of year. It was common knowledge that the templars hired a castle magician to keep them alive and flowering all year round.

A pond had been built underneath one of the larger trees, and generally was shaded by the cliff face. At this hour however the sun sparkled on the surface, having that ethereal effect only attainable during the golden hours.

Ceris skipped over the roots while humming and heading for the pond. He stumbled close to the water’s edge, slipping on one of the mossy rocks that bordered it.

Her heart stuttered. The water wasn’t particularly deep, but her brother might not be able to stand if he fell.

“Careful,” she called, “You can still drown in shallow water if you hit your head.”

He turned back to her and grinned. “You wouldn’t let me drown.”

She watched him in silence. He was right. Every time he fell she was there to pick him back up. The thought filled her with a dark sense of disquiet. It was always this way. Always protecting him. Always making sure he was oblivious to the hatred the world had for such a delicate little boy destined to be King. But it would always be this way, even if by shielding him she was left to face the hardships meant for her brother.

All the while she was forced to endure her father’s regret about her gender or her mother’s disappointment that she wouldn’t become a complete, proper young woman.

Year 342 Ceris had fallen. It didn’t matter of course, but then he had cried. And that had mattered. Calanthea pulled him up off 17

FICTOIN

“Where are we going?” she said. Her small fingers ventured out to grab his cheek.

FICTION

the ground and rushed him out of the pavilion before he could hear the nasty whispers of the court attendees or feel the weight of the King’s disapproving stare.

They sat on a marble bench under one of the perfectly cultivated dwarf oaks that were designed to turn the large grounds into a maze of secluded nooks. She offered him her handkerchief – the dainty one with yellow flowers, given to her by their mother after Calanthea destroyed the last cleaning Ceris’s bloody scratches. He had fallen down the river embankment, on one of those fortunate days when her father and his coterie of fawning followers were not present, so could not laugh and mock. Her mother had wiped Ceris’s tears and hugged him close until he’d stopped sobbing.

He was sobbing now as he wiped viciously at the tears spilling down his cheeks. She hesitated before pulling him into a hug, imitating her mother. Ceris buried his face in her neck, shudders wracking his little body as he tried to calm down. She tightened the embrace but wasn’t sure if it was as comforting as those from their mother. She could not be sure because no one ever hugged Calanthea. A hug was something foreign, intended for people who were loved, whose mothers did not shy away from copious affection, for daughters who did not disappoint their mothers.

“You’ll remember your lessons, Calanthea,” her whispery voice barely breaking the silence. Calanthea grimaced internally.

“Of course, mother,” she responded.

She hummed, attentively braiding the top layer of hair into an intricate plait running around the crown of her head and coiling into a twist at the back. The bottom layer was yet to be curled and bound away.

The hairstyle was excessive for a long ride up into the mountains, but her mother insisted on proper etiquette at all times. Calanthea noticed the riding habit laying on the double poster bed. It was ornate and frilly, a shade of white tinged with lavender and rimmed with pearls. Lavender to match her eyes.

Yet another thing meant to foreground her femininity. Her eyes met her mother’s in the mirror. Their disapproval meant she had guessed at Calanthea’s thoughts.

Biting her lips, she closed her eyes and let herself cry.

Silently, as not to disturb Ceris. By the time he had calmed down, her cheeks were dry.

“Are you hurt?” she whispered once the silence had dragged on too long for her comfort.

18

Ceris stopped fiddling with the hem of his tunic and lifted his leg up onto the bench.

“It hurts here,” he said, showing her the bruise forming on his knee, “But nowhere else.”

“Just here?” she asked.

She gently felt the area, trying to determine if anything was broken. She’d watched the physician do the same last summer after someone had fallen from a horse out hunting.

Her father had been impressed with her interest. The impression lasted but moments before he berated their mother for sending Ceris from the room for being squeamish.

“I think it’s fine,” she said.

Ceris hiccuped a sob as she accidentally pressed down on a particularly sensitive area. “Sorry,” she whispered.

He shook his head and breathed deep, “It’s alright,” he said.

There was a silent pause as they both stared at the bruise. “I think father was upset I started crying.”

She looked up. “Why do you think that?”

“Mother said something about it the other day, about him being disappointed sometimes. I know I can be overly emotional,” he whispered.

“The King holds us both to high standards and sometimes we fail to meet them. That’s all it is,” she said, “He does love you though.”

The lie fell so easily from her tongue, just as it always did. She smiled, and Ceris smiled tentatively back.

“You never fail to meet his standards. He’s always proud of you,” Ceris said, his smile growing. Her smile twitched but otherwise an upwelling of bitterness remained unnoticed by her brother.

“I am too, you know. I couldn’t ask for a better sister, at least not one who looks out for me the way you do.” He threw his arms around her neck at the proclamation and leaned up to kiss her forehead. Her smile fluttered and she pushed away the bitterness that threatened to spoil the moment.

She grabbed his hand pulling him up and off the bench.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

“Race you back?”

The words had barely left his lips before he tore off down the path to the pavilion. She laughed pulling up the hem of her skirts and then took off after him.

Year 346 Her hands trembled as she watched Ceris leap from one rock to the next. He seemed so carefree in that moment. The memory of this would stay with her forever. The sun bounced off his hair for a second before he slipped into the shadows. Her feet picked a path through the roots and her ears began to ring.

Everything felt slightly abnormal, like she wasn’t really here, wasn’t really inhabiting the body that took slow steps towards the oblivious boy playing by the pond. Her breath felt loud and shaky to her ears, to each inhale she was overly sensitive.

Ceris slipped just as she knew he would. Her concern stifled the breath from her lungs and she lunged across the mossy rocks, slipping and falling to her knees. Her hand plunged into the icy water, the one natural deception not orchestrated by the templars within this tiny grove. Fingers numb, her hand closed around the collar of his shirt poking out of his tunic. He struggled under the water trying to breach the surface, but he had always been a terrible swimmer. “Too weak,” her father had once commented. He was right. But not because their mother coddled him, and certainly not because he was too feminine. Ceris was weak because he was kind. He cried for the baby finches who starved to death after the gardeners removed the nest. He cried at the news of a stillborn babe or when the leaves began to fall from the trees and the flowers disappeared. He could not hold a sword for fear of hurting his opponent and hated talk of war.

And that’s why he would never be a good King.

The world seemed to narrow to the thrashing of Ceris’ limbs and her own arm, the muscles straining as she heaved. Her concern seemed to suddenly melt away and her breath got louder again, a numbness that had nothing to do with the icy temperature of the water spreading through her limbs. She could slip and fall into the pond alongside her brother or she might eventually pull his struggling body from the water.

But then he would fall again. It might not be here this day, or even in ten summers, but he would fall just like he always did and one day she might not be able to pull him out.

He’d pull her down with him. Her father was wrong, so very wrong about so many things. About her, about Ceris, about their mother, and even about himself. Ceris would pull her down but her father would let him.

Delicate fingers wrapped around the handle, seeming so small compared to the large hairbrush. It was a wonder her mother managed to wield the thing. Calanthea had always been fascinated by her mother’s hands. They were different from her own, in the sense that their owner did not notice their unlocked potential, what they were capable of versus what she actually used them for. Her mother parted a section of her hair, weighed it in contemplation, then set the brush to work once more, detangling the silvery white locks. A woman blissfully unaware of her wasted life.

Her fingers slid towards his nape. She couldn’t keep doing this. Not when she deserved so much more. It was finally time she started looking out for herself. Because she was right. Right for this kingdom, right for the throne, right in a way her brother and father could never be.

Her fingers tightened around his neck as his head started to breach the surface, finally having found his footing on the muddy bottom. And she pushed her brother back down.

As Ceris attempted to turn towards the surface she felt a sudden twist wrench at her arm. She cried out desperately, seeking purchase on the rocks as his movements threatened to pull her in after him. Her heart beat frantically in her chest.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

19

FICTOIN

“You’ll never need to either, because I am not going anywhere.” He reacted with a grin.

An Ambitious Compact

FICTION

James Charlton

“I

believe everything has been explored to your satisfaction,” the Seller said flatly. His words broke the oppressive hush that had settled upon the pair.

“Now, shall we sign?”

particularly dense clause on the crisp paper, causing her to flinch with alarm. His sharp nail pinned down the exact item perplexing the Buyer, and the precise blow triggered a bitter surge of adrenaline within her.

The Buyer flinched, knocking her handful plastic stationery out of a worn leather satchel. “Huh? Um, wait a moment…Ah, sorry.” A polished silver rosary swung out of her cheap suit as she hurriedly plucked rolling pens off the charcoal carpet. Neatly tucking the rosary back inside her collar, she shoved the stationary back inside, hoping to conceal her embarrassed flush.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said, inhaling a steady breath, absently stroking her tarnished wedding ring. “I’m demanding the world, and that’s definitely steep. But your price is… I feel I’m blind to the true cost of this deal.” Her tone quivered under the conversation’s treacherous flow, struggling to steer back towards amiable.

Dreary light bulbs lit the Seller’s beige office. Both parties were seated at opposing heads of a beautiful mahogany table. At the Buyer’s end, an unusual contract lay fanned before her, she clutched a single page in her hands. The Seller sat perfectly still and silent in the comfort of his office, once again allowing her additional time to review the deal.

Despite scheduling the signing as their final meeting, the Buyer still fervently searched the exhaustively negotiated paragraphs with unease.

Her eyes swung back and forth across the terms like maniacal pendulums, quaking fingertips fervently traced every monochrome condition as she struggled to piece the words together. His pitiless gaze settled firmly on her mutable expression, never sparing a glance for the delicate fine print tormenting the Buyer.

Each time she believed she was finished, the Buyer would unconsciously take up the next page, neatly replacing the previous before repeating.

“I need some answers, please,” she finally said, gathering the contract’s pages into a neat bundle. “The terms might be precise but this all still feels abstract. Before I sign, I really must know. Am I really selling my…”

“Why would I want your soul?” asked the Seller with lifeless displeasure. His head of the table remained bare, needing only one tool of the trade for this maudlin task. An exquisite, gilded pen nestled inside the crimson pocket square of his tailored suit. “Our contract is exacting, a fair deal made between those with clarity of mind and purpose. My compensation, like the service offered, is explicitly drafted.”

The Seller’s gaunt frame tugged on his tailored finery as he adjusted his posture to peer down upon the hesitant Buyer. “Or have you misplaced it?” he added with icy mockery. Leisurely, his manicured hand stretched across the table, until it hung over the document. He loudly struck a 20

The Seller’s intimidating figure scrutinised her from across the table, pursing his lips distastefully at the Buyer’s manoeuvre. It was no innovative strategy, one the Seller heard periodically during the course of business. The beggar before them wielded frailty in their bid for a more favourable deal, a strategy founded on cultivating sympathy. Or, perhaps, she hoped the display of cunning would intrigue the veteran broker. His disdainful retort swiftly quashed that tactic.

“Granting wishes requires unearthly means, and this,” he said, pausing to wave dismissively at the document in her hands, “goes far beyond the acquisition of mere wealth.

The cost to fill that terrible maw inside you must be equally aberrant, even demonic, in nature. You would presume my practices are unjust, merely because I can satiate your desires? Such tepid, human, egomania.”

The frigid office air bit into her discount haberdashery, conveying tremors along her restless fingers. Beneath the severe scrutiny of the Seller, she barely managed to shake her head in denial. His stiff expression masked his further disenchantment with the prattling debate, and he continued the reprisal in a murky tone.

“Why,” he continued, “must one party be motivated with fidelity and the other deceit? What precisely have you achieved to embody such a fallacy?”

“Maybe I’m at fault,” the Buyer said, “Perhaps my request is too strange.” She kneaded her brow uncomfortably, trying to brush off the surreal atmosphere. She had recognised the divide between their skills during their first meeting and sought any advantage to face this adversary. But even with all her preparation, he was still leading her around. “I’ve just never dealt with these kinds of…commodities.”

A single grubby window permitted little sunlight into the sub-level office, while outside polished sets of dress shoes and professional attire intermittently scurried by. Atop a sunlit concrete sidewalk, the preoccupied traffic had always Rabbit Hole Issue 1

“Do you believe mundane agreements distribute uniform dividends between parties? A deal with the devil is an equivalent deal, but the terror of his price is rooted in ignorance. This cost is misunderstood as malicious intent; an accidental debt incurred by those unfamiliar with ephemeral currency. Neglecting to comprehend your payment is not a valid reason to renege.”

“Sure,” the Buyer said steadily, “no deal is truly equal, and I’m sorry I mistook you so wrongly before.” She clenched her aching jaw stiffly, set against the Seller’s listless expression. “But I still don’t see what I’m compensating your generosity with. A small concession is all we need to create value, not claim it.”

“I am a purveyor of wishes,” the Seller answered. “It’s you who devised them. By contrast, your ordinary labour was compensated with fair wages, each instance a panel in the patchwork tapestry of your career. Truthfully, this too is a blood pact. A stranger kind, daily harvests of time eagerly peddled for the idea of money. They take your disciplined submission and channel it into efficacious production lines just because it makes ‘economic sense’. One party is always turned subservient, who unwittingly gifts fragments of themselves in service of conscious desires.”

“I just need a little reassurance, that’s all,” the Buyer sat pensive, mulling over the pervasive ideas. His leading words wormed through her mind towards begrudged understanding, but to accept them here without challenge was to yield the negotiation. “Surely, it’s a small grant for you?”

“Foolish.” The Seller snapped; his façade crinkled by sparks of frustration. “You insinuate that I buried hidden costs within our terms, then consequently seek to tilt the exchange in favour of your petty desires. What exactly are you demanding, with this vague appeal? An instant refund clause? One structured so that I must shoulder the cost of your uncertainty, paid in full the moment your fragile heart tastes regret?

Only a fool would offer such an excessive bargain.”

The Buyer gave in to her anger, forcefully gesturing at the ignorant pedestrians outside. “If your transactions are as fair as you claim, then why am I your only customer? I know your competitors can offer a more valuable deal, yours is just my first offer.”

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

“You petitioned me.” The Seller spoke with rhythmic authority. “After weeks of pleading for an audience, I might add. I will not be your villain, nor permit you to avoid the consequences of your decisions.”

The Buyer’s downcast eyes rested on her golden ring to escape his piercing gaze, acrid bile on her parched tongue.

Robbing her of the ability to contest the terms, he was guiding the Buyer to her last option. The swollen door behind her, an ominous exit. She slumped backwards in her rickety chair, stinging from his callous indifference. Leaving through the looming door would exact a costly toll.

“Of course,” he said, “you may walk from our affair free and clear, but I think you understand. It matters not whether we sign, this day or any other. Certainly for me. Soon enough, when your denial has crumbled, that ravenous obsession inside will betray you to a deal far less benign. This will be easier for you to just confess it.”

The Seller’s utterance had anchored heavily in the Buyer’s slumped frame, cruelly dredging that tumorous thought from her mind. You. Must. Sign.

“Okay,” she said defeated, “I guess I have to settle.”

The Buyer grasped her finest plastic pen, and sourly brought it upon the signing line. She was disappointed that she’d been unable to move him past his resistance point, instead she’d successfully prevented him from escaping the pact. It was an equitable arrangement, after all, now that she couldn’t demand a refund neither could he.

Once signed, their services were guaranteed, most importantly the Seller would be unable to retract his endowment. The Buyer had her needs drafted into the contract weeks ago, everything else she acquired was a delicious bonus. Stuffing her stationary back into her satchel, she grasped the contract and carried it over to the smirking Seller. He removed his elegant pen from his dapper suit pocket, nodding appreciatively.

But the Buyer did not sign.

His haunted smile vanished, raising a quizzical eyebrow to the Buyer he tapped his pen firmly against the perplexing clause. She knew exactly what he meant. For the last time, the Buyer spun her stained wedding ring, and promptly heaved it off her finger. With a polite grimace, she dropped it on her signature. The Seller nodded again, casually picking the golden ring up and inspecting it.

21

FICTION

marched by without noticing the lowly office, and today was no exception. The murky shafts of sunlight peeking inside cast deep shadows over the Seller’s austere posture, yet a gentle warmth flickered in his eyes as he considered the poised woman facing him.

FICTION

She had to bite down her trembling lips, a reaction not overlooked by the stoic Seller. But its cause was a joyful rush, a thrilling tingle shooting up her spine. For the Buyer had paid with nothing worth grieving over.

Instead, the burden chafing her hand was finally gone. Still seated, the Seller removed the pen cap and lifted the tip above the line, but again did not sign. Without looking, his outreached palm drifted towards her expectantly. For a moment, the Buyer paused, trying to ascertain what he was waiting for.

At last, slowly, carefully, she removed her rosary with both hands from under her collar. With the icon gently placed in his grasp, the Seller gave one last cautionary nod.

22

“Know this, for the time when it is you that bequeaths: It is neither the price unspoken, unwritten or unnoticed, that bears the deadliest consequences. It is the one avoided, unloved and dismissed by waking thought. It stalks those who flee from it out of petulant dismissal. Inevitably those who snub that obscurity become the lesser, and it is they who pay most dearly. Today, I wonder, to whom this will apply?”

After he intoned this warning his signature was complete, the creaseless papers remained unbowed by their burden; two irrevocable seals hewn in heavy ink. The colour was uncertain under the ambiguous lighting, shifting between darker hues as the names dried, a pair of viscous wounds staining bleached bone pages.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

Redhanded Jemima Brooker

A

FICTOIN FICTION

liyah placed her phone on the table, sitting up straight as she adjusted her fingerless gloves. The restaurant still felt slightly too warm, despite her having already shed her coat, but Aliyah did not take off the gloves. She never did and she was known for it. The Gloved Investigator of Circular Quay.

Her phone lit up.

I’m fine, Aliyah responded. She stared at the screen, but the recipient didn’t even bother reading her text. She never did. When their mother had kicked Aliyah out, she’d given Sana, her half-sister, a new phone as a parting gift with her number already programmed into it. As expected, all Sana had said was don’t expect a call before shutting her bedroom door in Aliyah’s face.

They had never been the closest of siblings.

Aliyah slipped her phone back into her pocket, wondering if that would ever change. She looked past her own reflection in the window, peering skyward. Light pollution blotted out most of the stars, but the Harbour Bridge glittered in their place. This was Sydney at its finest: the infamous peak hour, traffic chugging across its many lanes as the harbour’s waves sloshed against the pylons. In moments such as these, Aliyah found it too easy to let the city’s motion lull her into a thoughtless space, losing much of her precious time staring at small frothing crests as ferries ploughed through the water.

“Ms Zaman,” came a familiar voice, reigning Aliyah’s thoughts back in. A couple approached her, the restaurant’s warm chandelier light catching the diamonds hanging from the woman’s ears and the crystal surface of her husband’s watch. Aliyah had chosen this restaurant, knowing that her newest client would be happy to foot the bill.

To be a detective and to not know Deirdre Scott’s name was ludicrous: even during the brief walk from the train station to the restaurant, Aliyah had seen a stack of papers with her most recent bulletins splashed across the front page. Deirdre, under the name Didi Marshal, always published exemplary work. Whilst preparing for their meeting, this week’s Sunday Telegraph had caught Aliyah’s eye.

The woman had reported Heather Marshal’s gruesome murder in professional detail, down to every scrape and bruised knuckle. The piece itself was more of a commentary on the police’s failure: a mislabelled evidence bag and a Rabbit Hole Issue 1

PEOPLE’S CHOICE

Call momo back, the text read. She’s worried.

breach of the crime scene was more than enough to draw reporters in for a sniff. Deirdre being the victim’s sister meant Didi was ruthless.

Aliyah admired that tenacity but was even more intrigued by the case’s eccentric details: the corpse, tucked back into bed after her skin was cleaned. Her hair brushed, the doors and windows locked after her murderer had taken his leave. Thus, when the journalist asked her to work the case, Aliyah readily agreed. Whether unsolvable or too publicised, Aliyah never turned down an unattractive case. She liked proving to everyone that she was better than them.

“We’re sorry we’re late,” Deirdre continued, casting her husband a fondly admonishing smile as he took her coat and pulled out her chair. He was mildly distracted, looking at Aliyah’s hijab. He probably wasn’t expecting the infamous Gloved Investigator to be a Muslim—or a woman.

Aliyah waved off Didi’s concern. “There’s a bottle of Merlot and three glasses on the way.” Not to mention a non-alcoholic white and three of the restaurant’s most expensive canapés. It was on their dime, after all. As she reached over the table to shake the husband’s hand, she nearly froze.

Not because her mother would have been disgraced by her willingness to shake anonymous men’s hands. No, not that.

She very nearly paused because there, nestled into Mr Ferguson Scott’s palm was a splotch of red, a vivid stain upon his skin.

For once, Aliyah was relieved that it was more difficult for her to express emotion than it was to hide it, lest she 23

FICTION

risked giving herself away. She retracted her hand and watched as the man sat down at his wife’s side, an easy smile playing on his lips.

His body language was relaxed, calm. He was a successful man with a successful wife, wearing a tailored suit and glossy leather shoes to match. It made the stain glaringly obvious, stark against his pale skin and bleached button down.

Deirdre was perusing the menu, blissfully unaware. This was Aliyah’s fate: only she could see the truth, and only she knew what it meant.

Red-handed meant murderer. The more blood they’d spilled, the more blood they carried on their skin. Aliyah had never heard of anyone else experiencing something similar.

As for how it had developed, she hadn’t a clue.

All she knew was that it began on the palms, and that Mr Ferguson Scott, in all his unassuming glory, displayed those familiar stains on both of his hands.

“I have heard about your work, Ms Zaman,” Deirdre said, voice hoarse. “By now you must have heard that the police have reached a dead-end.”

“You want someone competent,” Aliyah returned. The more she looked, the more clues she saw, like the way that Mr Scott fiddled with his wedding ring. What an embarrassingly obvious tell. His hair was combed back but quickly receding, stress turning his hair silver and wrinkling the skin around his eyes. Before he could notice her keen gaze she looked back to Deirdre. “You’ve come to the right place.”

“They’re saying it was our father,” she whispered. “But it couldn’t have been…he wouldn’t have dared touch a hair on Heather’s head—” The wine arrived, her non-alcoholic beverage prepoured. Aliyah swirled it around her glass as Deirdre trapped the tears at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, taking a deep breath. Mr Scott was silently studying the tablecloth.

Deirdre curled her hands into fists. “She was my best friend. You’ll find who did this, won’t you? Lord knows the police won’t do more than what’ll please the paperwork.”

Aliyah glanced towards the window, wondering if the starless sky had any good ideas. She only saw herself, her fingerless gloves and her silk headscarf, sitting in front of a looming shadow. If she closed her eyes she would see a young 24

family, fractured glass, shaking hands. Death and destruction across strangers’ palms, their loved ones unaware.

She had made mistakes before and it had torn her life apart. Her vision was true but there was always a cost.

Here sat a harrowed woman, clutching the wrist of the man she loved to steady her. How could Aliyah tell her that he had killed someone? That, if statistics rang true, he was the most likely suspect in Heather Marshal’s murder?

She had never lacked faith in herself before. Decisiveness defined her as a woman and as a successful detective. But ever since— No. She couldn’t afford to think like that.

She looked away from the window, observing the careful swoop of Deirdre’s hair, the tear that had escaped in spite of her best efforts at remaining impartial, the bone-deep need for retribution lurking in her hooded gaze. It was, in some ways, like turning from one mirror to another.

“I’ll find him,” Aliyah said, knowing that she had most likely already found the murderer. A married man with too much to lose: it was practically gift-wrapped for her. The difficult part was always convincing everyone else of the truth: working backwards, picking apart a puzzle till the pieces could be scrutinised and made sense of individually.

And then?

Well. Then she would decimate Ferguson Scott’s life, brick by brick. And, in that horrible way that family worked, she’d be taking Deirdre down with him.

She excused herself to the bathroom, pulling the phone out of her pocket.

I’ll pick you up from school tomorrow, she sent, knowing that Sana would ignore her.

She’d never been very intuitive about personal connections—it was hard to trust when walking down the street meant spotting a mother with blood-red hands as she pushed a stroller and a man flashing crimson palms when he handed Aliyah her coffee—but she was trying.

For her sister, her mother, Deirdre, Heather—she was trying.

And if that didn’t count for anything, she didn’t know what did.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

The Death of the Artist

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

— W. B. Yeats, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’

C

1

louds pass over the Emerald Isle. What was once a resplendent land, the light of whose sunlit uplands found its way into every hearth, is now covered in shadow; unctuous and viscous, it pours down the narrow streets of Dublin, congealing in damp corners and the hearts of men. They are made leaden and frigid, the hearts, cold to the touch, and unfit for the habitation of spirit. At this end of the century, pullulating, huddled masses cry out for warmth, for golden and silver light; and the empyrean promises of heaven are shrouded by storm, whose wind and rain sweeps the land. What Colossus can rise again, out of these drenched mires, what Zarathustra may deign to come down to us, from those uplands; what Spiritus Mundi may inhabit the world, again?

The massacre of the innocents is ongoing. Having been born this late in history, being still young, Stephen Dedalus cannot hope to escape in time. Sin, both of the original and ingenious type, eclipses his youthful vigour. And what precocious vim and vigour it is, marinating in the company of prostitutes at the age of sixteen; yet, even at this young age, Stephen can taste the sickliness in the sweetness; when, without volition, ‘his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note keenly all that wounded or shamed them’, his eyes drawn, at once, to ‘a ring of porter froth’, then, ‘a gaudy playbill’, in desperate search of anything but the nauseous – of an object of respite, upon which he could safely lay them – where the evidence of his own putrescence was not so prodigal, strewn across the floor (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce 109). What is this evidence but proof of original sin, the downfallen state of man? Of his carnal appetite: when the meal was over and the greasestrewn plates lay abandoned on the table, he rose and went to the window, clearing the thick scum from his mouth with his tongue and licking it from his lips. So he had sunk to the state of a beast that licks his chaps after meat. This was the end; and a faint glimmer of fear began to pierce the fog of his mind. (119)

The taste of his own desire, congealing upon his lips and pervading his viscera, heightens his repugnancy: at his own flesh; at himself. His body becomes noisome, and, like a medieval dung-collector after smelling his first whiff of perfume, his own execrable existence becomes intolerable.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

And what is this perfume that he smells? The passing ‘laughter of a girl’ is redolent of halcyon days of ‘boyish love’ and the touch of his beloved, Emma Cleary, her soft, hesitant fingers upon his palm, where, now, hairs have grown; ‘Shame rose from his smitten heart’ before the ‘image of Emma’, conjured above his eyes (124, 87). His ‘brutelike lust’ threatens to ravage her – her, the last figment of purity within his heart – and she would be pliant, too, to his wicked wishes – but, ‘Was that chivalry?’ (124) Her indiscriminate love, willingly given over to the undeserving Stephen who cannot accept it, places her next to the Madonna, in his eyes: God and the Blessed Virgin were too far from him: God was too great and stern and the Blessed Virgin too pure and holy. But he imagined that he stood near Emma in a wide land and, humbly and in tears, bent and kissed the elbow of her sleeve. (124-5)

In the wide, desolate expanse of his soul, there is but one light that still shines through the clouds, one final hope of redemption from this twilight kingdom. The matriarch offers ministration and solicitude, with only one demand: that you submit to her love.

And so, Stephen, a prefect in the Sodality of Our Lady, now dedicates himself to her and her Father. He reminds himself of his own noisomeness by mortifying his sense of smell, his preferred source being ‘longstanding urine’ (163), reinterpreting his ‘animal instincts themselves as a form of guilt before God’ (Nietzsche, ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’, second essay, sec. 22). His bad conscience serves as the tool of massacre of an Edenic innocence, now bloodied and long lost. Yet, once his initial, fervent ‘joy in persecuting’ himself wears off, a certain miasma suffuses his thoughts (Nietzsche sec. 16). Strangely, having ‘heard the names of the passions of love and hate pronounced solemnly … in the pulpit’, Stephen finds his ‘soul was unable to harbour them for any time or … with conviction’; indeed, it ‘traversed a period of desolation in which the sacraments themselves seemed to have turned into dried up sources’ (Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 161 & 164).

Christianity flails about, fearing suspended disbelief.

Perhaps, he was just not mature enough – ‘at some future stage of his spiritual progress this difficulty would be removed’ – or, perhaps, these were what are termed ‘the trials of the saints’, to be faced, year upon year, until the grave (160, 165). ‘Fruitlessly’, Stephen realises, he repents (166).

The murder of God appears to have been done with sangfroid, more bathetic than dramatic, the supercilious laughter of the murderers ringing in our ears: ‘Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another,’ (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 125). Offered the priest25

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

Tony H. Wu

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

hood, Stephen’s ‘soul was not there to hear and greet it’, for the strictures had worn, not painful, but, merely, tiresome (Joyce 175). It is ‘freedom’ he desires, ‘elusive of social or religious orders’, wandering about the ‘snares of the world’, ‘unfallen but about to fall’, ‘dancing even near abysses’ (Nietzsche sec. 347).

In a reverie, Stephen walks along Dollymount Strand.

Suddenly, what life that was extinguished in the cloister came rushing back, as the lambent light of the day slowly dies in the bay; ‘and the scene harmonised in a chord’ (180). Every part of the panorama resonated before him, perfectly, the strings plucked by some ‘primordial artist of the world’ (Nietzsche, ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, sec. 5).

Below, the ‘dim fabric of the city lay prone in haze’, and, above, there were slowdrifting clouds, dappled and seaborne. They were voyaging across the deserts of the sky, a host of nomads on the march, voyaging high over Ireland, westward bound. The Europe they had come from lay out there beyond the Irish Sea, Europe of strange tongues and valleyed and woodbegirt and citadelled and of entrenched and marshalled races. He heard a confused music within him as of memories and names which he was almost conscious of but could not capture even for an instant; then the music seemed to recede, to recede, to recede, and from each receding trail of nebulous music there fell always one longdrawn calling note, piercing like a star the dusk of silence. Again! Again! Again! A voice from beyond the world was calling. (181–2)

A vast image out of Spiritus Mundi vivifies the seascape, and a thousand ecstasies marshal themselves across the land, awakened out of stasis, all imposing their coruscating forms upon our Stephen, surrounding him like a speck in the sand. The magnanimity of the universe demands no debt from the artist, and the strange peoples of forested Europe have no hold upon him; and it is sublime, to have a free and light heart, whose love can be lavished upon any and all, free from the extortions of the mother and Father.

Unburdened, thus, his namesake takes flight: ‘at the name of the famous artificer, he seemed … to see a winged form flying above the waves … forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being’ (183). A touch of tedium here, and a touch of modernity here; and, all of a sudden, the Nietzschean tension is overcome, and seen for what it is: artifice, constructed, beautifully, by the artificer, himself, only the most recent pastiche of works of Dedaluses past.

And, womanhood –

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A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. … But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. (185-6)

– no longer a divine creature who demanded loyalty and faith, and sufferance of the soul, who offered the purity of femininity contrasted to the deviance of mankind; but a beauty like any other creature upon God’s earth, living like one, enjoyed like one, and dying like one. Dedalus was smitten by God no longer, having fallen in love with the aesthetic, instead.

2 The life of the aesthete at University College Dublin is one belonging to another age. Impromptu battles of wit, held after lectures, eagerly spectated; and, both, Latinate badinage, and whistled tunes from Siegfried, filling the air.

An aesthetic theory is cultivated, and pontificated; to not unwilling listeners. One of them, the Dean of Studies: —For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas. (202)

The Dean replies, later: —To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can hold. (203)

Absorbed by his pity for the Dean and his perfunctory mind – being unable to embrace the beauty of the aesthetic – Stephen heeds not his (Joyce’s) warning: the lamp of the aesthete, with which he illuminates his most precious limnings, must not be overfilled. The gift of sight in a land of shadow must be guarded most covetously; yet, the more covetous he is, the more reliant the artist is, upon his enlightenment; the more the artist owes his life to the source of light that has rescued him from his damp squalor; the more the minatory darkness asserts itself, once more, as the default condition. One must be careful not to worship the aesthetic.

But, once a Catholic, always a Catholic; and Stephen still does worship, still does worship his dear Emma. In art, as in life: Rabbit Hole Issue 1

An irresistible allusion is made to W. B. Yeats’s ‘No Second Troy’, whose Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, …

Was there another Troy for her to burn? (101)

tells of the betrayal of a goddess, of Romantic Ireland, and of Yeats, himself, ‘[f]or just as there was no other Troy for a Helen to burn, so was there no other Troy for a would-be Homer to write about’ (‘Classicism and Colonial Retrenchment in W. B. Yeats’s “No Second Troy”’, McKinsey 182). In the midst of the artist’s most ardent panegyric, his muse leaves him, too saturated with his unctuous praise; and he is left bereft.

Stephen’s desolation, however, is even more holistic than Yeats’s. Whereas Yeats lost only his ‘Romantic Ireland’, ‘dead and gone’ (‘September 1913’ 121), Stephen loses his existence: the whole purpose of the artist, is, in one instant, snuffed out; indeed, as Stephen, himself, once predicted, ‘he knew it was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept’ (Joyce 111). A reverie of the past is, at once, estopped: While he sang and she listened, or feigned to listen, his heart was at rest but when the quaint old songs had ended and he heard again the voices in the room he remembered his own sarcasm: the house where young men are called by their christian names a little too soon. (238)

The voices in the room, thought to be banished with the passing of boyhood, return with redoubled fervour, their excited mumbling directed at the new pride of the artist in his aesthetic invulnerability – his immortality – hounding him with cries of schadenfreude: ‘memento mori! memento mori!’ The vengeance of modernity is sans merci, leaving the artist alone on the cold side of this century. Ireland returns with a violence: as Stephen’s friend, Lynch, remarks, —What do you mean, Lynch asked surlily, by prating about beauty and the imagination in this miserable Godforsaken island? No wonder the artist retired within or behind his handiwork after having perpetrated this country. (233)

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

History is a nightmare from which one cannot wake.

In this moment, Nietzsche is of no help – for him, the aesthetic was, almost, always self-evident – and one must defer to a stratagem of Derrida’s, writing sous rature, ‘under erasure’. For Stephen, the aesthetic has become his redemption from an overburdened history, whose lineage of debt, passed down millennia after millennia, mother to father to son, has accumulated in such a critical mass upon this precise fin de siècle, that this long eschatology is snapped in two. The aesthetic was the escape promised by Nietzsche; yet, ineluctably, modernity has gotten its hands on that, too. Latterly, Stephen observes, ‘Darkness falls from the air’ – a portentous misquote – falling like the condensation of shadows, the liquefaction of historical miasma, drowning any budding existence that lies in its path (253).

There are no ‘golden smithies of the Emperor’, to ‘break the flood’ – this second flood of God, sent down from the heavens to irrigate this moribund earth – and the storm clouds are gathering, rumbling, and pummelling (‘Byzantium’, Yeats 281). The artist, ‘heedless of the rain’, rages against the dying of the light (253).

It was The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake, (‘November’, Collected Poems, Hughes 81)

and, gradually, it was filling up, too. One must do as forefathers have done, in times of (palin)genesis, and build an ark to sail upon this flood; to sail, eastwards, to Byzantium. The taint of modernity must be washed off, and an escape from history, secured, before beauty can be reconsecrated. Emma snubs him for a close friend of his, and, reflecting on her beauty (and that of the Renaissance): Eyes, opening from the darkness of desire, eyes that dimmed the breaking east. What was their languid grace but the softness of chambering? And what was their shimmer but the shimmer of the scum that mantled the cesspool of the court of a slobbering Stuart. And he tasted in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in Covent Garden wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths and the poxfouled wenches of the taverns and young wives that, gaily yielding to their ravishers, clipped and clipped again. (Joyce 253) His goddess – that of the aesthetic, the muse – defiles herself in front of all to see. Her nectar is sickly sweet; and the beautiful has decamped for the bathetic. In the face of modernity, all aesthetic beauty becomes camp; or, at least, only the 27

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim?

Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? (242)

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

beauty that is fashioned out of the Ireland whence the artist, Stephen, works. Suddenly, one wants to wander lonely as a cloud, returning thither, like that cloud of strange Europe, to where the heart’s core could unburden itself, once more.

In his penultimate portrait, Stephen prepares to set sail. His ties to his mother, and his motherland, have never seemed more tenuous; nor those to his friends. He converses with Cranly – to whom Emma appears to have given herself – and, upon hearing a rendition of ‘Rosie O’Grady’ floating out of a window, they remark: —There’s real poetry for you, he said. There’s real love.

He glanced sideways at Stephen with a strange smile and said: —Do you consider that poetry? Or do you know what the words mean?

—I want to see Rosie first, said Stephen.

—She’s easy to find, Cranly said. (266)

Innocence lost: Cranly desperately temporises, and clings tightly to his suspended disbelief, in spite of the fact that an irony cuts through it; and Stephen – Stephen – he, cannot be mollified, not with Cranly’s cowardice, not with the ersatz beauty that can be found on any street corner, not with Emma, even, whose image will, inevitably, be spoilt – Stephen is condemned to wandering above the sea of fog: Away then: it is time to go. A voice spoke softly to Stephen’s lonely heart, bidding him go and telling him that his friendship was coming to an end. Yes; he would go. He could not strive against another. He knew his part. (267)

Like an orientalist, Stephen sets sail for Eurasia, and, like an orientalist, the risks are clear: ‘I am a traveller of our own day, hastening in search of a vanished reality’ (Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss 45). Modernity erodes, and beauty rapidly decays, and the artist soon loses his footing and falls into the abyss. Byzantium is the product of a fever dream, whose dreamers shiver in the storm: it exists only in ‘the artifice of eternity’, and ‘out of nature’, beyond the reach of mere mortals who are condemned to a beginning and an end (‘Sailing to Byzantium’, Yeats 218). Yet, it is exactly this that Stephen reaches for; to drink from the ‘fountain of pleasure’, the libation of the gods, and like one, too; for it is only the immortal that have no concern for history, who are not placed upon the painful rack of linear existence, stretching man head from foot (‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, Nietzsche pt. 2 sec. ‘On the Rabble’). He calls upon Daedalus, ‘Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead’, in the hope that, like Daedalus, an escape from the labyrinth can be found; and that, unlike his son, Icarus, the artist does not fly too close to the light (Joyce 276).

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References Hughes, Ted. Collected Poems. Edited by Paul Keegan. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Edited

by Seamus Deane. Penguin Classics. London, UK: Penguin, 2000.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Translated by John Russell. New York, NY: Criterion, 1961.

McKinsey, Martin. ‘Classicism and Colonial Retrenchment in W. B. Yeats’s “No Second Troy”’. Twentieth Century Literature 48, no. 2 (2002): 174. https://doi.org/10.2307/3176016.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, 437–600. New York, NY: Modern Library, 2000.

‘The Birth of Tragedy’. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, 1–144. New York, NY: Modern Library, 2000.

The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: Vintage, 1974.

‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’. In The Portable Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, 103–439. London, UK: Penguin, 1988.

Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. 2nd ed. London, UK: Macmillan, 1963.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

Poetry and the Dread of Life Lisa Pond-Keter

H

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

ave you ever asked yourself what makes a poet? Or even this: how do people process words into fantastical scripts filled with the rhythms of soul and life? I struggle with these questions. I started this year in the worst of states, I dreaded getting up to go outdoors and I dreaded staying in. My mind just raced away with every horrid scenario that it could waste its precious time on. There were the fires, the pandemic, and studying for a future that felt faux and full of holes. Waking up one day I just needed to do something. I think the first thing that makes a poet is motivation. It is the fire in us.

Desperate, I joined a literary project. I study biology and chemistry, so am by no means a lover of literature. In fact, it was only this year that I started to read for fun. Now as part of this group I had to pluck something creative and original out of my mind. The only writing I had been doing was for scientific reports; a form that can be beyond tedious. This project was new, and I had no clue where to start. Through labour and force I found the energy to create. Piece by piece, sentence by paragraph, my short story became something in which I could take solace. It was, however, draining – like trudging ever harder through mental mud.

I had heard poetry could be a way to bring about new creative bursts. For the first time in a while I possessed the motivation to push on through the struggles of a new endeavour; the desire to try and improve. I wanted to bring things to life and give it everything. In the past, I discounted my abilities and always compared myself to others, but this was mine, personal and unfettered. So, I sat in my bedroom with words revolving, only writing what came to mind. Then an interesting thing started to occur. The more I wrote random, haphazard stanzas and rhymes, the more it became personal. Sometimes it was bitter and loaded with contempt; other times, reflective and emotional. The more I let myself just be open to scribing my mind, the more it all flowed. I had found strange honey.

The next thing that makes a poet is their willingness to explore; to conduct fine-toothed investigation of our earthly experience, the lives of others, and to consider what of them we want to bring to the surface. I filtered ideas and contemplated of how to stack the words.

Motivation is fantastic because it is what we discover and give life to and drag our souls over that really brings joy. By searching through the bleakest and darkest things we find completion. We have put the monsters of our mind into words which we can use to help ourselves, even if just a little. Poetry becomes elation and revelation. I realised that in fact all of this time that I had poured into writing these poems was not to break my writers block, but to work through complex emotionality and poke fun at the dread of life.

I do not consider myself a poet by most means, even if I am publishing poetry. At first I always thought it would feel so noble and refined. Only then I realised that a lot of art, poetry, engineering and creativity comes out of those bleak stares, down at shower tiles and along florescent lit corridors, in which every door is a slightly different shade of beige. What can you find on the other side, if you’re willing to open them up?

Even writing this I felt like I was going to struggle again with finding that rare alloy we call imagination. I have needed to tell myself many times over this year that it is OK, it is OK to be stuck sometimes, it is OK to be depressed, it is OK to feel dread. We can find our way through it all and in those moments, we fend off our worries, push ourselves to breathe fire, race through dreamscapes on mental voyages and work with the passion of craftsmen. Sometimes we find something unexpected to unveil.

Till the next year, Lisa Pond-Keter Rabbit Hole Issue 1

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Some ‘White’ Stories: from my house of poetry WORDS ABOUT WORDS

Asha Naznin

B

orn on an island a small-town girl I was good at drawing nature.

The first time I drew a house there was a plane on the family bed. My teacher said, ‘this looks abnormal.’ I ended up drawing another picture. This time it was a house full of different people––white, black and yellow, and blue.

Now my teacher said, ‘This doesn’t make sense, there aren’t any blue people on Earth.’ I thought it entirely possible that aliens could be blue, why couldn’t people? My teacher said, ‘Take the blue out and make three houses where these colour people live with their own.’ I became tired.

Why I started writing I don’t know. But how it happened though, that’s a story.

Every week in my tiny island town, my parents received a phone call from the local newspaper. It was the same call each week, ‘We want a poem.’ Somehow, an eighth-grade schoolgirl was literary front-page news. One can imagine how important and powerful I became in my own shut off world, the household star pupil. It started with chance as all things do.

My Dad’s friend visited our house. He was an arts editor for the local newspaper. Noting a poem sticky-taped to our wall, he asked ‘Where did you get this?’ It was mine. Some measure of small talk later, I shared some more writing with him and he seemed happier for it.

Before then, my parents had never cared much for literature. Our house was a fortress built on reams of law textbooks, and walls papered by political science. There wasn’t space for art. I set about changing that, and with time, there grew an inventory of creative stories, poems and literature prizes stacked high. Slow but steady our house took on some colour.

At night when power was cut fireflies lit our backyard.

During daytime, coconut trees kowtowed dirt road streets.

If there wasn’t a village wedding booked in, I spent the afternoon with my grandparents book reading, music listening and pitha eating. Sometimes, I’d perform in the local Child Academy’s cultural events, and at least once a month, I’d visit the riverside with Dad. Teashops offered milk cream shor to hear me rhyme. In a very conservative society, a female poet, let alone an eighth grader, performing to men was not ordinary.

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Coming from a small town taught me to nourish and enjoy every little thing. I learned pride, the primordial sense I could do anything and win. I could do just about anything at home with people I know but they already knew me. Take that away, were my words any good?

Australia is my home now. I learnt fast there are many things native English speakers don’t get a chance to experience, and perhaps more importantly, that literary success is frustratingly difficult. Then, God laughed. I’d have to buy a bigger suit.

I couldn’t often speak my native Bengali. I had enrolled in an Indonesian anthropological field school. I forced myself into another language, Bahasa, as I slept above livestock animals and walked miles for my daily shower. Shoestring Bahasa and second-hand English became the lingua franca of life. I wrote fragmented poems on a keypad mobile, those things you probably only remember from primary school these days. I hadn’t realised it at the time, but sure enough. I was even writing poetry in English too.

Back in Canberra, I had a catch up with local performance poet Ellie Malbon. She had tutored me for an ANU course. After Ellie read a couple of these poems, she invited me to read at the Front Art Gallery and Café which was close to my place back then.

If I hadn’t made that visit, I would have never known me.

The Naked Eyes was my first English performance poem.

The audience kept laughing and I kept reading. I had that weird mosaic accent that no one can really place, and it followed me like a bad spell. Perks of speaking too many languages, I guess. Surprisingly, they liked the poem. Tearing away from my reading paper, they started clapping, a couple even threw kisses to me! I did my best to finish, somewhat more out of breath than I’d like to admit.

I would later meet my lucky charm: Jacqui Malins. She invited me to the Mother-Tongue Multilingual Poetry event at Smith’s Alternative. There, I read a poem partly in Bengali and partly in English. Afterwards I was invited to rhyme at the National Multicultural Festival.

In 2018, Shane Strange and Hazel Hall invited me to perform at the Manning Clark House. I said yes before I Rabbit Hole Issue 1

ternational Women’s Day showcase and Smith’s Alternative.

Just this year, I was re-invited to perform at the Manning Clark House.

I kept in touch with Shane too. He approached me and several other poets to write about the trees in Haig Park.

The winners would be paid for their time, and the poem displayed in the park. I penned A Tree, Two Frogs and Me: Whisper me some truths.

Who do you secretly fancy in the night: fireflies or bees?

Do you exhale when two rosy-faced lovebirds sit on your arms, doing a poo-poo game and spreading it over your body?

At sunset, after the wind, your leaves float serenely on the lake.

Do you mourn for your fallen leaves? Have you ever wished to be a boat and follow their whereabouts? Do they go to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Tell me your birthday and any wish you are longing for.

Do you want a rain shower? In India, two frogs were married to appease the rain God. I can arrange two frogs and set them to marriage, and bring the Sky with its raining buckets down for you. But, where do I get the Priest who will agree to this?

And who will be wedding guests?

Would it be alright if I am the only one?

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WORDS ABOUT WORDS

knew what I had signed up for. Jacqui guided me along that dark, dripping rabbit hole. First, she picked a few poems, and then listened along to my practise run-throughs. There are some words I pronounce with British pomp, others with American twang, and the occasional accent that only some people understand clearly. The amount of support, time, energy Jacqui spent on me is priceless. Since then, I’ve been the 2019 featured poet for the Tuggeranong Arts Centre’s In-

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

The money came through the bank, and two brown eyes saw the signage on 14 February 2020 in the Haig Park. Somehow, it is still there after nine months.

I later met the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award recipient Melinda Louise Smith, who remains one of the sweetest people I’ve met anywhere. Melinda is the word ‘empathy’ if such things could be given face. She was kind enough to read over some of my pieces, and after some large edits, it hit me like a freight-train. I’d gotten somewhere with something. This year, 2020, has been a strange year for many known and probably to-be-known reasons.

I am now a published poet. You’ll find me somewhere tucked inside this year’s Australian Poetry Anthology’s July edition. The winning piece was Midnight-Lover.

To say I’m appreciative of all the luck and time spent on me would be an understatement. There are, after all, some things that even words choke at describing. Like those mentioned before, Faye Brinsmead, Sarah Vincent, Jen Webb, Sue Donnelly, Zoe Anderson, my friends Samantha and Imogen are just some of the people to have helped me along the way. I imagine time will see this list grow longer and more detailed. That’s fine. I’ve always got the paper.

But let’s not play fool. The support I received due to my ethnic, language and cultural background is pretty much crystal clear now. I have met many white people who wouldn’t give other white people the same attention. It's cliché but talent only takes you so far. There are a lot of people with talent that never play at their level. What matters

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is nourishment. Who feeds you, who lets the ramble turn diamond, who strains their ear to listen?

I don’t accept the idea that criticism is racist, or that criticism comes from racism. It limits your potential, starves you, restricts your mind and the words in your head. But it’s important to be realistic. On my tiny island, what was missing beyond love? Why would I move to Australia to leave everything behind for a fresh start?

One has to cherish the Australia they step into. Australians relate to immigrants more than we like to think.

Australians face unemployment, wage insecurity and poor access to health and education services like we do. There are white people who will work harder to help you than their citizenry. Sometimes, coming from a different background can be an advantage.

It’s all about mindset. You cross the road and see two houses, one looks familiar to you, the other looks abnormal and alien. Maybe there are blue people in that strange house, and maybe their differences scare you into tearing the house down, or you get tired of them. In our home countries there are prisoners, criminals, anti-social people, weirdos. But guess what. We have been attracted to Australia, which was founded by these people. They made it a better place, a lucrative place of living, a safe and secure country. If you think you are better than them, show us, do your thing, the country is yours!

So, go outside. Be colour-blind. It’ll help inspire you in so many ways. Live your dream.

Rabbit Hole Issue 1

Considering Fanfiction

Sometimes, I just want some nice warm fluff, something soft and tooth-rotting. Maybe a short Florist AU or a good old coffee shop AU. Any kind of FWP one-shot actually. On some nights, I want a good long, juicy 70k word slowburn, mutual pining, angst (with a happy ending, of course, I’m not a monster).

No idea what I’m talking about? Looks like someone’s never been on AO3. If this is the case, you’re really missing out on some great works of literature. I mean that with no hint of sarcasm. Fanfics include some of the best stories I have ever read, some of the most cleverly constructed plots and beautiful styles of writing I have ever come across.

Fanfiction is not just interesting because it is good to read. It is decidedly different. Reading fanfiction is in many ways like reading a book, but in many ways, it is not. It has its own genres and conventions. In a certain way, it could be considered a unique literary form. So, even if you do not fancy reading about a pre-existing favourite character living in a different universe and falling in love at a coffee shop, fanfiction as a form of literature is worth paying attention to. Let me explain why.

The premise of fanfiction has existed for ages. Stripped down to its barest form, fanfiction consists of stories that are, to some large or small degree, based on stories that already exist. This practice certainly is not exclusive to modern day internet fandoms. From Ancient Greece to the Renaissance to now, we see storytellers borrowing elements or ideas from other mythologies, stories and texts. As many fans annoyed by literary snobbism often declare – “Shakespeare wrote fanfic too!”

Albeit difficult to picture Shakespeare as a fanfiction writer, in his own time and place, that is what he was. Shakepseare scholars today, such as Jill Levenson, agree that Romeo and Juliet was based on the 1562 poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke. Shakespeare took the characters and basic storyline of the poem and adapted them into a play, making several changes to the plot and adding his own dramatic flair. This is exactly what twenty-first century fanfiction writers do. Even his history plays were not ‘original’.

Here, Shakespeare constructed plays around popular figures, as in Julius Caesar, Henry V and Richard III. A large section of today’s fanfiction incorporates famous individuals, usually boyband members, popular actors or YouTube stars. The reRabbit Hole Issue 1

naissance did not have boybands or YouTube, their celebrities were royals and aristocrats, and these were the people that stories were written about.

Virgil, the ancient Roman poet, has also been considered a fanfiction writer, particularly for his epic poem Aeneid which many argue is essentially a fanfiction of Homer’s Iliad (Keen 1.2; Basu 3.2). Aeneas is a somewhat minor hero in the vast Iliad, but Virgil rewrites his story as a legendary epic, thus creating one of the greatest works of Latin literature, and at the same time, perhaps one of the earliest works of fanfiction.

If the above-mentioned examples are seen as fanfiction, then the natural conclusion to be drawn is that fanfiction has been present alongside the growth of literature, from the very beginning. While I agree with this perspective and see how it plays an important role in broadening our understanding of both fanfiction and literature itself, I believe it can be limiting when applied to modern internet fanfiction. Fanfiction is much more than just stories based on other stories; it is a new way of writing that has emerged at a certain time, through a certain kind of people, featuring certain character-

Some fanfic terminology Fluff: warm and fuzzy elements showing closeness and intimacy between characters.

FWP: Fluff Without Plot.

Angst: unhappiness, strong negative emotions. Can be further characterized as ‘light’ or ‘heavy’ angst to specify the degree of emotional pain.

AU: Alternate Universe, where characters and elements of the original story are placed in an environment, setting or situation that differs from the canonical universe they are originally a part of.

Mutual pining: a fanfic in which both characters pine and yearn for each other.

Slow burn: where the build-up to the actual comingtogether of the characters is very long, probably because they spend too much time in mutual pining and uncertainty, without taking action.

Smut: sexual elements.

PWP: Porn Without Plot.

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PEOPLE’S CHOICE

L

ike a lot of people, I like to read before bed. All warm and tucked in, eyes heavy as they glaze over the words, mind in a different world, slowly drifting off – I think that is the best way to fall asleep. Honestly, I cannot sleep if I do not read. It can be hard to pick what to read though.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

Aditi Dubey

WORDS ABOUT WORDS istics and conventions that distinguish it from other kinds of writing. In theory, Virgil writing Aeneid in ancient Rome is akin to a teenager writing Harry Potter fanfiction in 2017. However they both are engaging in vastly different writing practices.

To begin with, Virgil wrote during an age when authors were conceptualised differently. There was nothing unusual about writing stories using pre-existing figures (in his case, the Trojan Aeneas). Stories were seen as part of a larger canon of mythology, not as distinct, individual works that belonged to particular authors. Myths had different versions created by different people, but there was no single authoritative source work (Keen 3.4). The youth, however, writes in an age where there are set notions about authorship, bolstered by legal frameworks of intellectual property (see FanFiction and Copyright by Aaron Schwabach). There is, thus, a hierarchical relationship between the source text and the fanfiction. The fanfiction author writes while completely conscious of the fact that they are writing fanfiction, and they write as part of a community, one that makes a subversive counterculture to mainstream media. The author of the original may be important, yet they (the fanfic author) are not. Their readers choose their work explicitly because they want to see the characters of Harry Potter in a different plotline, or in a different setting.

In fanfic, l’auteur is truly mort. What makes fanfic unique is the disregard for the author and yet a self-aware, intentional connection with the source work.

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However, this is only part of what sets fanfiction apart.

There are more recent works of literature that are often cited as examples of fanfiction, such as Jean Rhys’s 1996 Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys was evidently writing in the modern era, where notions of the author had been established, and she was responding to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. However, there are still notable differences between this and contemporary fanfiction. Rhys’ work is different from fanfiction because it does not exist on the internet like modern fanfiction does, and thus, is not written in the same manner, with the same unconventional elements, that modern fanfiction is.

So, what are these unconventional elements? Fanfic is exciting to me because of its flexible form, which has been influenced by and emerges directly from the context, culture, and technology of the internet. The internet, as a platform, allows fanfic to incorporate various kinds of mixed media.

I have seen fics that begin with moodboards, and fics that have links to pictures embedded into the story so that the author can show the reader exactly what they are imagining.

Sometimes, fanartists make art inspired by the fic that subsequently finds its way back into the text. Authors frequently use musical accompaniments, linking playlists to go with the reading experience or even adding music into the story.

Not only does the internet serve as a platform where fanfic is published but, in a wonderful, self-reflexive sense, it is also the medium through which stories are told.

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WORDS ABOUT WORDS (amsch(calendulae), 2019)

(SuperWhoLocked_Fangirl, 2013)

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WORDS ABOUT WORDS

Social Media AUs (alternate universes) are very popular, consisting of characters communicating via social media channels (see below). This means the text appears like instant messages sent between people or, in the case of fics uploaded to Twitter or Tumblr, screenshots of fabricated messages, DMs (direct messages) and tweets. It is not uncommon to see multiple types of social media used within one fic. For example, the fic could be primarily Twitter-based, but also include Instagram posts and maybe even pepper in a couple of Snaps.

In one sense, these fics resemble epistolary novels. Yet, there are key differences. The language of online communication is a completely different beast. It is multimodal and immediate.

Its spontaneous nature has a direct impact on the way the story progresses. This is different from diary entries or letters, which record multivocal perspectives of a series of events. The internet also presents the opportunity for fics to be infinitely interactive. Many authors hold twitter polls or ask questions in the comments on AO3, letting their readers make plot decisions. The internet provides a whole new world for innovative storytelling, and fanfic authors are exploring its full potential.

Fanfiction’s literary value is clear, however it is also important to take note of fanfiction’s social value. People often ask why people read and write fanfiction. The question has no definite answer, but can be (at least partly) explained by

Suggested reading list ‘Why we’re terrified of fanfiction’ by Constance Grady from Vox: https://www.vox. com/2016/6/2/11531406/why-were-terrifiedfanfiction-teen-girls.

Transformative Works and Cultures is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on fanworks and fan practises: https://journal. transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc.

‘Wisteria’ by butterflychansan: https:// archiveofourown.org/works/1082182/ chapters/2175557.

‘A Gilded World’ by smiles: https:// archiveofourown.org/works/8416441/ chapters/19285816.

‘Performance In a Leading Role’ by Mad_Lori: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225563/ chapters/341590.

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the predominantly female, queer nature of fandom. Women and queer people are the oppressed, the disadvantaged in society, and their status as ‘minority’ extends to media and literature as well. Most media is created by and for those that hold a dominant position, i.e, the straight cis-gendered men of the world, and the representation of ‘others’ has always been woefully lacking and problematic. Though times have been changing, women still suffer from poor representation in mainstream media and literature, and queer people suffer further. Fanfiction gives these groups of people a space to write their own narratives. While fanfic does use conventional media as a source, it undercuts the media’s hegemony.

There exists in fanfiction what I like to call the ‘everyone is gay’ mindset. It is very common for many, or indeed, all the characters in a given fic to be queer. While many fics address homophobia and heterosexism in both direct and subtle ways, there are also many fics that exist in worlds where these social realities simply do not seem to exist (see for example: bloodyhalefire 2020; pointnclickbait 2020). This is not really a defined genre in fic, just a common practice of writing queer narratives with all queer characters, no questions asked, like how straight narratives are written in conventional media (Floegel 785-805).

This subversion is also an important aspect of its most infamous component: smut. Sex is treated in an absolutely unabashed, unapologetic, absolutely no-holds-barred manner within fanfic. You can find everything from soft, gentle porn with feelings to hardcore BDSM, to monster tentacle intercourse. I believe one of the reasons fanfic is erotica-heavy is that for both women and queer people, fanfiction provides content that is created outside of the mainstream, fostering for them a greater sense of sexual agency. While pornography is available in abundance on the internet, it is produced with the straight man in mind, and his freedom to be an openly sexual being. For those who cannot express themselves as such, fanfic gives opportunities for exploration and representation.

This is why fanfiction warrants our attention. It is unique and here to stay, as a supportive space for women and queer people, and as a distinct literary form that lives in the internet age. Many lament that the internet has brought the downfall of literature, that fewer and fewer people read these days (Twenge, Martin & Spitzberg 330; Chu). Yet, tens upon thousands of people regularly read long, detailed multi-chapter stories. They just do not find these words in books. Romanticism was borne of industrialisation, then anti-Enlightenment and post-war chaos brought about modernism. Both were driven by the development of print technology and publishing culture. The advent of the internet and its significance as both a platform for communities and discourse, as well as a medium for language and storytelling, has given us fanfiction.

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amsch (calendulae). Mio Amico, Amore Mio, Archive of Our Own, published online 14th Feb 2019, https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736008, accessed 29th Nov 2020.

Basu, Balaka. “Virgilian Fandom in the Renaissance.” The Classical Canon and/as Transformative Work, special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 21, 2016. bloodyhalefire. the pretty (pining) setters squad, Archive of Our Own, published online 1st May 2020, https://archiveofourown.org/works/23937685/chapters/57565726, accessed 29th Nov 2020.

Chu, Charles. “In the time you spend on social media each year, you could read 200 books.” Quartz, 30th Jan 2017, https://qz.com/895101/in-the-time-you-spend-on-socialmedia-each-year-you-could-read-200-books/, accessed 29th Nov 2020.

Floegel, Diana. “Write the story you want to read: world-queering through slash fanfiction creation.” Journal of documentation, vol. 76, no. 4, 2020, pp. 785-805.

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Keen, Tony. “Are Fan Fiction and Mythology Really the Same?”

Transformative Works and Cultures, special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 21, 2016. pointnclickbait. Come In For A Coffee But Stay For The Staff, Archive of Our Own, published online 7th Feb 2020, https:// archiveofourown.org/works/22592737/chapters/53991814, accessed 29th Nov 2020.

Schwabach, Aaron. Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection. Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet, edited by Jill Levenson, Oxford UP, 2008. superwholocked_fangirl. Fall For You a Songfic, Archive of Our Own, published online 2nd May 2013, https://archiveofourown.org/works/781740, accessed 29th Nov 2020.

Twenge, Jean; Martin, Gabrielle and Brian Spitzberg, “Trends in U.S. Adolescents’ Media Use, 1976 –2016: The Rise of Digital Media, the Decline of TV, and the (Near) Demise of Print.”

Psychology of Popular Media Culture, vol. 8, no. 4, 2018.

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WORDS ABOUT WORDS

References

Write the Words that Matter

LITSOC COMMENTS

Oskah Dunnin

T

here are plenty of philosophies on how to write. Neil Gaiman says your first draft doesn’t count. Stephen King says you have to read more than you write. Mike Pondsmith says you’ve got to eat a bunch of ingredients and hope you throw up a pizza.

The one truth about writing is rather clean-cut. It’s bloody difficult.

Anyone can be a writer, and chances are what you want to write has already been explored by someone much more eloquent than yourself. This is, in my mind at least, what makes it so fun. There are rules to be respected, cliches to be embraced, and relief to be had when you finally hit that climactic scene running like a kid on the way back home from school.

I’ve met very few university students who study literature, and even fewer who write. Truth is, most people I come across at university have never made it past the dabbling stage. The initial high school fan-fic, a cool fight scene or two, but very rarely a fleshed out piece that stands tall.

Now, I freely admit I have not cleared that stage myself, I’m still peddling the same idea from my college days. Even after more than a few years of it rattling around my head, I’ve only penned fifty pages of the first draft. Sure, the ideas are cool and I like the characters.

There’s never existed an author who didn’t fall in love with themselves at least a little.

The problem is time, commitment, an overall lack of courage to stick into the damn thing. For writers like me without meaningful training or experience, it can feel very daunting indeed.

We’ve all heard the same lines. Show, don’t tell; be short, sharp, direct; cut the fat! These are all fantastic rules, and all important to remember as a young, know-nothing writer. The rule that stays with me is one I learnt a couple years back: respect the audience.

At some stage, you’re going to share your work with people. Friends or family to start, but when you get more confi-

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dent, the audience will always cut you back down to size bit by bit. Rejection is nothing particularly special nor should it be painful. The greatest authors were all crucified by their beta-readers and rejected numerous times before landing their first gig. It took them even longer to gain popularity.

The only worthwhile response to failure is optimism.

So regardless of your background or how serious you take your writing, all you need to do as a university writer is to start pulling in the hours. Get that pen onto paper already.

The first draft will forever be painful. You might have an idea about how things will go before realising you never had any real idea to begin with. The characters you’ve loved up until this point seem dumb like goldfish, and nothing works right. These are universal quandaries for all writers to experience. Don’t waste time languishing in that moat of self-pity. Have a think. Ask yourself the important questions. Why is this scene important to the text? What does my reader need to know? How can I be more creative?

These are a couple of the hard questions you’ll encounter early on in the writing process, but I promise, the more questions you answer the faster you’ll cross the finishing line. Anyone can be a writer, but not everyone sticks around long enough to become an author who is worth an audience’s time.

Perhaps these words are lost on you as a reader. Who knows, you could already have a million-dollar idea spanking your mind, and maybe you clean paper better than even the most polished diamond. This publication has taught me that there are quality writers all around me. Very few of our published authors had prior writing experience. There are writers here who continually impress me. For some, this was their first time writing anything creative.

All that said, it is their dedication to story-telling as an art that has made their stories worth reading. Like true writers they began with that initial spike of courage.

To take a line from Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame, “You fail only if you stop writing.”

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The ANU LitSoc Book Club

I

t has been an interesting year for our university, especially for Literature Society’s Book Club. There are so many book clubs in Canberra – and even quite a few at ANU – so we tried to set ourselves apart. Our book club aims to be a non-intellectual-but-still-literary riot that is open to all. Each month we take a theme and democratically vote on titles that have been suggested by members.

From dystopia and coming-of-age to erotica and our most loathed characters, LitSoc readers always got to choose what they wanted to read, and we just followed their lead.

We tried to make sure there was always a copy of the book available, either to buy from Harry Hartog or to borrow from other members.

got killed (sorry, spoilers), and the book was very enjoyable, even though it took a few chapters to get into.

We started the year with coming-of-age. The voting became a close battle between Call Me by Your Name (André Aciman, 2007) and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Benjamin Alire Sáenz, 2012). Aciman’s controversial novel won, and sparked a passionate debate at our first book club of 2020. Some hated it, others loved it. We concluded that the whole novel hinged on the taboo and exploration of illicit desires (not just sexual). Aciman certainly gave us plenty of material for thinking about that, but someone called into question the morality of power dynamics and everyone had a different opinion.

Though Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945) was also a dystopia, book club read it as a ‘creature feature’. It was one of the many classics we got through this year, even though classics was never specifically set as a monthly theme. In May, the club read The Waves by Virgina Woolf (1931). Everyone was convinced that it is an underrated classic. A slow burn that anticipates so much of today’s popular comingof-age genre.

There was also an intense argument at our June book club. By request, the theme was erotic fiction, but because there were so many suggestions, a collection of shorter extracts were provided. These included snippets from Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D. H. Lawrence, 1928), My Secret Garden (Nancy Friday, 1973), and even the smutty highlights of top fanfics. Each gave a very different take on erotica. Lawrence explored human nature and materiality, while Friday sought the truth of female desire, and much of the fanfiction delved into sexual characterisation and different forms of the erotic. Meeting attendees debated the line between erotica and porn. How do we define the two and how do they fit with our morals?

Murky morals became a common theme in the 2020 book club chit chats. Though we all agreed to disagree with the morality on display in The Secret History (Donna Tartt, 1992). The theme for December was most-hated characters, and everyone who read Tartt’s novel admitted that the book delivered on that front, containing some very dislikeable characters. It was a challenging text upon which to finish the year, but there had already been so many other characters we fell in love with throughout 2020. For example, the club read The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin, 1969) as an ‘armchair pilgrimage’ in April. We all agreed that it was emotionally awful when one of our most beloved characters Rabbit Hole Issue 1

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005) and The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967) were read in October and November, respectively. Attendees of both months concurred that the books were fun and easy to read despite the nature of their stories. The Master and Margarita was voted in for our banned book theme and was surprisingly straightforward to read, considering it was written and re-written multiple times in Russian between 1928 and 1967. In fact, Never Let Me Go was also considered disturbing because it was so easy to read; a stand-out amongst dystopian fiction.

2020 was a full year for the Literature Society book club.

Mid-year, as all clubs did, we had to move events online rapidly. So, our book club has been conducted through Zoom since the April. The participants and facilitators have all found this fairly successful. We received positive feedback, with people able to attend from inside quarantine, from different states and even some other countries. Overall, book club is one of the highlights of LitSoc and even a worldwide pandemic isn’t going to stop that!

We are looking forward to 2021, which brings a whole range of new themes to vote on and books to explore. This year we are trying to keep exploring unique themes and new books, so we are introducing some new processes to reflect this. For those who had been in the Literature Society since our beginning in 2018, we noticed that some books repeated. In 2021, we will not be reading any books that have been previously selected in the last year. Whether we dismiss this period or extend it to two years will be reviewed at the end of 2021. You will still be able to read books by the same author but as always, it will be chosen through popular votes.

Thank you for everyone who attended book club this year. We had many regular attendees and also people who just popped in to talk about their favourites. Shout out to Kaila Minotti who attended almost every single book club this year! And remember- if there is a specific book you want to read with the book club, suggest it for voting or contact the Literature Society to run a session yourself!

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LITSOC COMMENTS

Gabrielle Karov

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

O

n behalf of the whole society, the LitSoc team would like to reiterate our gratitude to Dr Neave.

Special mention must also go to the individual members of the LitSoc Rabbit Hole team. Throughout the process Gabrielle Karov, Khushi Singh and Oskah Dunnin have proven themselves to be valuable members of the university literary scene.

Gabrielle joined the LitSoc team in early 2020 as Treasurer. She studies a Double Degree in International Communication and Visual Arts. Gabrielle enjoyed working as an editor on Rabbit Hole. Her favourite part of the process was getting to see the work proposals and how the writers realised their ideas. Gabrielle also provided the illustrations for the Rabbit Hole.

Khushi has been part of LitSoc since it’s first meeting in 2018, serving as Secretary in 2019.

She helped edit several pieces in this edition. Khushi is also a keen photographer, with her work being featured heavily in this edition of Rabbit Hole.

Oskah is a published writer who has written for numerous national and student mastheads.

He considers writing to be an art in itself, and takes particular interest in studying the various rules of his trade. Between 2019 and 2020, he co-managed fortnightly Write Nights with Gen Pullin. Oskah provided editorial and design insight throughout the Rabbit Hole process.

We would also like to thank all of those writers who were with us for the journey but did not quite make it to print. Student life is not straightforward, and we want to recognise that.

A word of thanks too to the ANUSA and Clubs Council funding team for their assistance in organising the financing of Rabbit Hole.

Lastly, we are indebted to those individuals who assisted with design. To this day, we adore Lydia L’Ons’ original LitSoc Logo. And special mention must go to Rainmaker Information Pty Ltd, particularly the fabulous Samantha Sherry who designed this simply fantastic edition, and the generous Alex Dunnin who funded the design process. We thank you for bringing all our work together with such style.

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Jemima Brooker James Charlton Aditi Dubey Will Guo Phoebe Lupton Adi Menon Abigail Moloney Asha Naznin Lisa Pond-Keter Tony H. Wu

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