Meet the Fellows: Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship 2014, Round Three

Susie Anderson, After the Pelican, (Poetry)

After the Pelican refers to our family’s totem animal, I am a descendent of Wergaia/Wemba Wemba people from north-western Victoria. Generally in my writing I explore distance in both physical and emotional senses, with an emphasis on nature and how this impacts understanding of our selves and worlds. Using a copy of a 1969 survey of the Victorian Aboriginal languages in north-western Victoria, I intend to write prose poems about rural Victoria and these ideas of cultural and emotional displacement.

Louis Bravos, Kyoko’s House (Translation)

A translation of Kyoko’s House, one of only two novels by Yukio Mishima which have not been translated into English. It tells the interconnected story of four young men who represent different facets of the author’s personality. It is, I believe, Mishima’s most international novel, and among his most modern, despite being from early in his career.

André Dao, Revolution and Other Love Stories: A Novel (Fiction)

Following the death of his grandfather, André tries to piece together his grandparents’ love story. Married for 60 years, separated for 20 through war and prison, their story is also the history of modern Viet Nam. But as André shuttles between Paris and Hanoi – and finally, home, to Melbourne – he re-opens old wounds and wakes old ghosts.

Eli Glasman, Untitled, (Fiction)

This novel features a young man with Crohn’s disease, who is hiding the severity of his illness as he is afraid to get a colostomy bag, while at the same time attempting to build a relationship with his mother who suffers from Bipolar. The novel will explore the way in which the illness of both the mother and the son isolate each one from the other.

Emily Stewart, Today and Avatar Poet, (Poetry)

These are two distinct writing projects that I have been developing in tandem over the past year. ‘Today’ is a list-poem which explores the idea of an endless present, drawing on the work of modernist authors such as Gertude Stein as well as the performative texts of contemporary artists such as Tim Etchells. Avatar Poet is a collection of assemblage poems that I have been writing over the past year. Each poem is constructed using only the words from a given page, and the page numbers increase – for example, the first poem in the series comes from page 1 of Chris Kraus’s Summer of Hate, and the second poem comes from page 2 of Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip.

Claire Rosslyn Wilson, In Pursuit (poetry)

In Pursuit will be a collection of poems inspired by Australian-based visual artists who look at themes of movement and migration. Visual art has enabled me to see cross-cultural communication from different, and sometimes unexpected, points of view. This collection will reinterpret these viewpoints through my poems.

Join us at The Moat on Monday 1 December for a special edition of The Next Big Thing –where our third round of Hot Desk Fellows will read from some of the work they’ve completed during their fellowships.