The History Of Empire Times

This year is the 50th edition of Empire Times. The first publication was in 1969. I know that 1969 plus 50 years doesn’t equal 2023, but we will get to that later. The Flinders newspaper/magazine is rumoured to have gotten its title from a Sydney publication, Empire, that ceased print in 1894. The first Editor of the newspaper, Martin Fabinyi, worked with a team of students to get the paper off the ground. Working with the Flinders Student Association, the student newspaper was very political and ran independently to the university. The introduction of voluntary student unionisation in 2006 halted the magazine’s publication due to lack of funding. When FUSA (Flinders University Students Association) was established to replace the old association, the magazine returned to print in 2013. The images contained on these pages are selected from the first year of publication. If you want to read more, all copies of past Empire Times magazines are in the Special Collections in the library.

Poem by Ez Knill

i don’t think i’ll love anyone the way i love you because in that dull continuous pulse beating between breaths rifling through long-forgotten contusions glancing over somewhat severed arteries ripping through my chest in a way that feels not out of place, but still an intrusion a dull blade skimming over tissue and muscle veins locked in ligature around your fingers pressing in tearing my heart from its cavity filling me up instead with red-hot desire.

it is all-consuming in the way that fire eats away at what it knows burning without remorse, without judgement it burns, because that is all it knows how to do. i love you, because that is all i know how to do. in my heart, wretched and ransacked, is a little hole; it was carved into me slowly spoonfuls of pulsing muscle stripped in chunks of blood-soaked blissful agony for you to create a home inside of me a concave dwelling just for you wrapped like a mole in a mountainous molehill deep-pressed to my chest so that i may keep you warm i washed the sheets, last night and in the breeze of early-morning biting at my skin i hung out the linen to dry for you but the home isn’t really there. i do not have a door inside of me nor a bedroom, or a kitchen the warmth from the hearth is figment but the hole in my heart is very much real and you live there at no cost the blood stains are normal now seeping from my chest, i barely notice as it spreads to my shirt, coating pearlescent buttons in a thick, shiny red leaving a splattered trail behind me reach down now, and undo my buttons open my shirt and bare my chest no pulse left to find there is no skin that can cover up what you have done. i stay put, in the hole you made of my heart, and wait for you you return from the cold outside “hello darling — are you in there? are you warm?” you say, as you climb past my fence of bone lined up as brittle as toothpicks for you to force your way in (though is it force if i took an axe to my rib cage so you could find passage?) wander up the garden path, soaked in hot red blood push open the front door, pay the toll with your lips greet me with a hand in my hair, pale palm warm against my scalp scarlet sky peeking through the wilting curtains sinew and ichor dripping and draping from the ceiling like forgotten streamers after your 16th birthday party when all the pretty people wished you a happy birthday, baby their poison lips pressed to your cheek air filled with clashing perfumes drowning out the true nature of the room if the lights turned on, would you still be happy? is this thing of ours (your home in my heart) something to care for? or should i begin to board up the doorway force the windows closed turn off the plumbing and the power an eviction notice tacked to the door sticky tape ripping layers off the paper and the paint as you wrench it free from its billboard it is not yours.