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New Writing from Western AustraliaFictionPoetryEssays Reviews

In this IssueOuyang YuSampurna ChattarjiChristopher KelenJosephine WilsonHuang Yuanshen

62.2

WesterlyPublisher Westerly Centre, The University of Western Australia, Australia

General Editor Catherine Noske

Associate Editor Josephine Taylor

Editorial Advisors Cassandra Atherton (poetry) Rachel Robertson (prose) Elfie Shiosaki (Indigenous writing)

Editorial Consultants Delys Bird (The University of Western Australia) Barbara Bynder Caterina Colomba (Università del Salento) Tanya Dalziell (The University of Western Australia) Paul Genoni (Curtin University) Dennis Haskell (The University of Western Australia) John Kinsella (Curtin University) Ambelin Kwaymullina (The University of Western Australia) Susan Lever (Hon. Associate, The University of Sydney) John Mateer Tracy Ryan (The University of Western Australia) Andrew Taylor (Edith Cowan University) Corey Wakeling (Kobe College, Japan) David Whish-Wilson (Curtin University) Terri-ann White (The University of Western Australia Publishing)

Administrator Asha Ryan

Commissioning Editor Lucy Dougan

Web Editor Chris Arnold

Production Design: Chil3 Typesetting: Lasertype Print: UniPrint, The University of Western Australia

Front cover: I Dewa Putu Mokoh, The Antique Shop, 1991. Chinese ink and acrylic on canvas, 80 60 cm. Courtesy of Mary Hill and the late Chris Hill. Image by Brad Coleman/John Curtin Gallery.

All academic work published in Westerly is peer-reviewed. Copyright of each piece belongs to the author; copyright of the collection belongs to the Westerly Centre. Republication is permitted on request to author and editor.

Westerly is published biannually with assistance from the State Government of WA by an investment in this project through the Department of Culture and the Arts and from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. The opinions expressed in Westerly are those of individual contributors and not of the Editors or Editorial Advisors.

Notice of IntentionWesterly has converted the full backfile of Westerly (1956–) to electronic text, available to readers and researchers on the Westerly website, www.westerlymag.com.au. This work has been supported by a grant from the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency Limited.

All creative works, articles and reviews converted to electronic format will be correctly attributed and will appear as published. Copyright will remain with the authors, and the material cannot be further republished without authorial permission. Westerly will honour any requests to withdraw material from electronic publication. If any author does not wish their work to appear in this format, please contact Westerly immediately and your material will be withdrawn.

Contact: westerly@uwa.edu.au

Westerly acknowledges all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Australians. We celebrate the continuous living cultures of Indigenous people and their vital contributions within Australian society.

Westerly’s office, at the University of Western Australia, is located on Whadjak Noongar land. We recognise the Noongar people as the spiritual and cultural custodians of this land.

This project has also been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

New Writing from Western AustraliaFictionPoetryInterviewEssay

62.2Westerly Volume 62 Number 2, 2017

From the Editor 7

Lucy Dougan Introduction 242

Huang Yuanshen A Passion for Australian Literary Studies 244

Zhou Xiaojin A Critical Survey of Chinese Journal Articles on Australian Literature in China 1979–2016 250

Translated by Iris FAN Xing A Selection of Four Poems by Chinese Women 265

Josephine Wilson Umbilicus 270

Fan Dai Saturday Evenings 274

Elizabeth Tan A Life, Passing 291

The China–Australia Writing Centre

Jen Bowden A Review of The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves 334

Rebecca Harris A Review of Billy Sing by Ouyang Yu 337

Reviews

Christina Lloyd Dimples Whiskey 21

Mark Floyer Post Tropical 22

Sampurna Chattarji The Dictation Test: I 612 sunken islands. 3 kinds of rock. 63

Reneé Pettitt-Schipp Pinggir 76

Weaving Ketupat on Pulu Cheplok 77

Ross Jackson Oceania as I imagined it 86

Sanna Peden keunggulan 110

Timmah Ball Peeling 155

Ouyang Yu 8.31am, 4.13pm 164

Christopher Kelen how the hundred schools contend 166

Shane McCauley Gion Shimu in Snow (Hiroshige) 168

Mike Heald On the Theft of My New TV, or Watching with Ryokan 175

Elaine Barker The Finger 204

Shane Strange River 205

Dennis Haskell Days without end 215

Mona Zahra Attamimi Scent 228

Liang Yujing Call Me Eugene 230

Rose van Son Remembering Singapore 295

Shey Marque Alligatorwood 328

PoetryMisumi Mizuki The Gift 177

Ishikawa Itsuko Soles— 183

Kawaguchi Harumi Welcome Home 187

Kono Satoko Head Ache 191

Misaki Takako Into White Darkness 195

Contemporary Japanese Poets in Translation

John Mateer Invisible Genres, or on the Virtual and the Actual 23

Siti Sarah Ridhuan Bahasa Indonesia/Melayu & Yolngu-Matha—recognising familiar words in unfamiliar contexts 49

Fiona Morrison ‘A transfiguration of my local patriotism’ 87

Dennis Haskell Fay Zwicky and ‘the riddle of the self ’s existence’ 217

Yingjie M. Cheng Modernism En Route 304

EssaysElla Jeffery A Mirror in the Dark 9

Caitlin Prince Sitting on My Grandmother’s Skirts 112

Isabelle Li The Aristotelian Questions 231

Rachel Watts Insha’Allah 296

Gay Lynch If You Hear a Baby Crying 318

Creative Non‑Fiction

7 | Catherine Noske

From the Editor

Since its infancy, Westerly has had a long interest in the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean, southern and eastern Asia. Poised on the west coast, we are constantly looking out, facing away from mainland Australia. This space is not an empty one. It is rich with a history of movement and exchange, going back (as Sarah Ridhuan’s essay in this issue reminds us) well beyond Australia’s colonisation.

Curated with a special focus, this issue continues the Magazine’s exploration of Australia’s geographic and cultural position within the Asian and Indian Ocean region. It was imagined first with the concept of opening a creative space to foster these diverse cultural networks, and explore the connections embodied by that fluid space of ocean. It collects the work of both Australian and international authors and translators. Their writing is marked by the conditions of exchange—it operates across complex negotiations of language and cultural positioning, it draws in implicit histories and traditions from a myriad of different places, it emerges through conversation, at moments in dual languages. In all of these ways, this is a collection which (I hope) will be read as conveying too the unique dynamic of transnational connection.

There is a purpose in making space for this sensation. Reminding our-selves of our involvement in these currents of connection and exchange is part of remembering the universality of the human experience, even while it points simultaneously to difference. The tension in this experience is seemingly productive, in a creative sense—many of the submissions we received for this issue pushed at the boundaries of expression. The work featured from specific projects (Japanese poetry in translation, work from the China-Australia Writing Centre and a Korean-Australian writing exchange) shows this again and again as a common feature of the work produced regardless of the cultural connections sustaining it.

Dan Disney, Jessica L. Wilkinson and Cassandra Atherton ‘bending in all directions everywhere’ : a juddering, glimpsing, eidólonging of poets. 121

Lisa Gorton Yeonhui 134

Bonny Cassidy Ghostin 136

Shields 137

B0-Seon Shim Mangwon 138

So-Yeon Kim Mangwon-dong 140

‘Coffin Bay’ 142

Dan Disney that winter, these protests 143

spring, Hannam-dong 144

Kent MacCarter Mujeongwiundong Mangwon-dong (North Korean blanket remix) 145

Yideum Kim Ugg Boots 146‘Face Made of Steel’ 147

Jessica L. Wilkinson Reflected 148

The Melbourne‑Seoul Intercultural Poetry Exchange

Agustinus Wibowo The Sea 53

Mohammed Massoud Morsi The Home of Lost Angels 65

Mark Fabiano Homecoming in the Garden of the Full Moon 78

Katinka Smit The Blue 101

Roanna Gonsalves George Jarvis, Black Hindoo Servant, Port Jackson, 1809 (Preparatory Study) 150

Parvati Angana God Willing 159

Bethany Rawson Goji no Chaimu (The Five O’Clock Bell) 169

Jen Banyard Footprints 198

Ann Dombroski Siem Reap 206

Belinda Hermawan Xié xie 329

Fiction

Submissions 342

Subscriptions 343

337 | Rebecca Harris336 | Westerly 62.2

A Review of Billy Sing by Ouyang Yu

Rebecca Harris

Rebecca Harris is an English and Cultural Studies Honours student at the University of Western Australia (UWA). She is currently Regional Project Support at writingWA and an editorial committee member for Tenderfoot, a creative arts journal at UWA. She was previously an intern at Westerly Magazine and Margaret River Press.

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

Ouyang Yu’s latest novel, Billy Sing, is unusual. What might seem to be an accurate account of William Edward ‘Billy’ Sing’s life is, in actuality, a historical fiction that goes beyond just the retelling of his military career. In a small number of pages, Yu effectively amalgamates a trio of themes—race, war and the Australian landscape—to present a unique narrative that depicts the triumphant but conflicted life of a ‘half-caste’ Australian in the late 19th to early 20th century.

We follow Billy as he transitions from child to adult. Born in 1886 as the ‘Australian son of both “Mother England” and “Father Cathay” ’ in rural Queensland, Billy suffers a lonely and troubled childhood as he is subjected to racial abuse, due to his mixed race. This was around the time when Chinese miners were immigrating to Australia for the gold rush. It led to multiple tensions between Chinese and European miners (Drake 104). In his loneliness, he becomes proficient in shooting and in 1914, he enlists for the army, where he goes on to have a triumphant career and is accepted for who he is. He marries a Scottish woman named Fenella and they return to Proserpine where he is celebrated as a war hero. However, this happiness is short-lived as his wife leaves him, and he reverts to his pre-war, outsider position. To end this sad tale, Billy dies alone in his hut, during a sensual and frightening dream.

Although this synopsis is largely biographical, Yu engages many prose techniques that make this narrative unusual, unique and a far cry from the

Yu, Ouyang. 2017. Billy Sing: A Novel. Melbourne, Victoria: Transit Lounge. RRP: $27.95, 144pp. ISBN: 9780995359444

To explore such experiences, purposefully, unashamedly and with skill enough to make them readable, demands talent, something that Gonsalves clearly has in droves. The only disappointment in The Permanent Resident rises from it ending so soon.

338 | Westerly 62.2 339 | Rebecca Harris

conventional biography. He employs first-person narration to emulate the spirit of Billy, making this intention clear in the prologue:

And I’m doing exactly that, living in another existence, through another individual, to tell the tale, a tale of my own life. (9)

Through this voice, Yu shapes his prose around historical benchmarks in Billy’s life to ‘resuscitate’ his experiences for us. One example of Yu’s exceptional merger of fact and fiction is when Billy’s wife (supposedly) leaves him:

When I woke up from the dream, she was gone. I searched everywhere … It was almost as if another dream had begun after my dream of the Flower Woman. All I had to do, I thought to myself, was to wait till I woke up … (125).

Historically, it is uncertain whether Fenella ever made the passage to Australia. Yu’s use of dreams to navigate this ambiguity, whilst also characterising Billy’s desperation, is clever.

While Yu resuscitates Billy’s experiences for us, he also provides a three-dimensional scope of the cultural issues of the era. A notable example is Yu’s revival of Billy’s experience as a victim of institutionalised, or ‘educational’, racism:

… Mark initiated a topic on Australia’s future, as part of the arts subject, and he introduced it by inviting the students to comment … ‘It should be a eugenic one in which all the lesser beings are removed, such as the Chinaman and the Abos.’ He got five out of five … ‘Australia’s future is bound to be white, as white as a snowball, never to be tarnished by any colour, black, brown, yellow …’ … When it came to my turn to answer, I simply said, ‘I don’t know.’ I got zero out of five because Mark hated my guts for it. (37–38)

We wince on his behalf as he is forced to endure and partake in this offensive discussion. We also gain an insight into the attitudes that led up to the White Australia policy. Additionally, we extend this to our current cultural context, as although we would like to think that Australia has progressed from these fictionalised thoughts, these opinions are eerily reflective of the contemporary hate-rhetoric towards multiculturalism. In this sense, Billy Sing can become more than a historical fiction on Billy’s life. It can also be an accessible historical document that opens conversations on Australia’s racist past and contemporary parallels.

Despite Yu’s clever prose, I have one misgiving. A reviewer for The Saturday Paper observed that the book contained a lot of ‘damp and dissolute and decayed’ images such as blood, semen and faeces (J. R.). Although this is probably symbolic and realistic to the subject matters of race and war, I found that these were, at times, uncomfortable and unnecessary. As an example, Billy comes across his Captain, who, while ejaculating, ‘held it like a hose, swaying it from side to side, in an act of spraying, as if he were sprinkling his fluid over a bed of flowers …’ (81). Although it probably reflects the loneliness of the soldiers, I do not think that scenes like these amplified Yu’s artistic purpose.

Billy Sing is still an elegant rendition of the sad but poignant life of William Edward ‘Billy’ Sing. It is also a vivid and accessible enunciation of the 19th and early 20th century. Yu’s capsizing of literary conventions allows him to pack multiple hard-hitting themes into a brief space, and his ability to make it a compelling read reinforces his mastery as a novelist.

Works Cited

Drake, Jack. The Wild West in Australia and America, Boolarong Press, 2012. Google Books, https://goo.gl/Q2AQvT

J. R. ‘Billy Sing.’ The Saturday Paper, 8 April 2017, https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2017/04/30/billy-sing/14915736004449