A lot of good Australian writers have latched onto the Internet; I've already mentioned some of them in this column. A good place to look for others is the Australian Writers on Line site at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/home.htm with its many links to web journals and home pages. Another huge resource, which appears to list every Australian who's written anything at all, is Ozlit at http://www.ozlit.org This also has book announcements, competitions and many other resources.
Among the many sites maintained by individual poets, a few that stand out are Andrew Burke's at http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/, the surreal http://postbox.library.usyd.edu.au/~pbrown/ of Pam Brown, and Alison Croggon's excellent one at http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338/1. All these have admirably simple, fast-loading layouts. They're easy to read, and give enough samples of each poet's work to enable you to decide whether you want to buy the books.
Alison is also the editor of Masthead, an Australian print journal which archives its past issues complete at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/5662/2 Only the first edition (well worth a browse) is available as I write, though the second might also be there by the time you read this.
Its print roots anchor Masthead more firmly in Australia than is possible for entirely Web-based journals. Whether this is an advantage, a disadvantage, or just a difference depends on your point of view. Thus there's a strong internationalist flavour to the on-line Jacket at http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/3. In five editions, John Tranter has managed to establish an enviable reputation for it as one of the best literary journals of the genre. Another excellent journal has recently changed its location on the Web. The Animist can now be found at http://theanimist.netgazer.net.au/ and includes multimedia works using MIDI and RealAudio as well as more conventional poetry and articles.
Send any good links from any part of the planet to ...
Copyright © Peter Howard 1999-2004
1Alison Croggon's site is now at http://www.alisoncroggon.com/.
2Masthead is now at http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/.
3Jacket is now at http://jacketmagazine.com/.