Title

Migrating Ears.

Author

Wright, Tim.

Source

Prints, printmaking and philanthropy: A symposium celebrating 50 years of The Harold Wright and The Sarah and William Holmes Scholarships. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 30 September - 2 October 2019.

Publication date

29 September 2019

Type

Conference paper

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

Migrating Ears Dr Tim Wright, Independent writer. This paper introduces Kris and Retta Hemensley’s self-published poetry little mags of the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. The Hemensleys began publishing poetry little mags in Melbourne with the gestetnered newsletter Our Glass (1968–1969), followed by Earth Ship (1970–1972), and The Ear in a Wheatfield (1973–1977). By the end of the Ear in a Wheatfield period, Kris Hemensley had grown frustrated with what he called the ‘shopwindow’ approach to magazine-making and began to experiment with more open and ‘networked’ forms of serial publication. What followed was named both the ‘project/correspondence’ and an ‘active archive’, and came under the titles of The Merri Creek, Or, Nero, and, H/EAR. The three issues of The Merri Creek were formally experimental, each consisting of a loose collection of pages in an envelope, mailed to correspondents, and in both Merri Creek and H/EAR, correspondence itself – laboriously re-typed to stencil – began to take up a major part of each issue. One of several explanations of the project appeared in the 1980 issue of Merri Creek: ‘This is not a magazine, that is to say, it is not advertising for work, it is not interested in poems, or essays, or petitions, or letters per se. It is a project/correspondence … an attempt to give form, to realize the form of the contributions of my correspondents (you) to this place.’ Along with the rejection of ‘magazine’, the attempt was also made to elide the role of ‘editor’; issues of H/EAR were listed as ‘convened by Kris Hemensley’. The project/ correspondence ultimately sought to break down distance between reader and writer, to mould these into the third term, correspondents. It remains significant both for the model it provides of serial publication, and as a rich archive of a particular literary/artistic network of the period. [Conference Program]

Last Updated

02 Oct 2019