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events OVER
Events Forthcoming

Limits of the Human: Philosophical, Historical and Ecological Perspectives
2-4 September 2009
The Research School of Humanities, The Australian National University
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Watermark Literary Muster 2009
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Anne Elvery & Stuart Cooke	CA Cranston and John Boulton
Pete Hay and Chris Gallagher

21 OCTOBER 2006
ASLE-ANZ AGM 2006 and POETRY FORUM

POETRY FORUM: 4PM–7PM
"WHAT ARE POETS FOR (TODAY)? THE ART OF POETRY IN AN ERA OF ECOCRISIS"
Five Australian poets responding and reading their work:
Kevin Hart, Martin Harrison, Mike Heald, Peter Boyle and Anne Elvey
Rebecca Lucas
rlucas@trinity.unimelb.edu.au
ASLE-ANZ, PO Box 42 Parkville AUSTRALIA 3052

August 2 - 4, 2005
Language of the Land
The Pacific Writers' Connection

The Pacific Writers' Connection presents Language of the Land, a celebration giving voice to the living kinship of landscape, environment, humanity, culture, and the spirit of sacred places. Join them in August for readings and stimulating conversations with distinguished writers from Hawai'i, the Pacific and continental USA.

More Information: www.pacificwriters.org

Be True to the Earth
iNAUGURAL asle-anz cONFERENCE
March 31-April 1, 2005

At the opening plenary of the inaugural conference of ASLE-ANZ (Monash University, Melbourne, 31 March–2 April 2005) Richard Kerridge encouraged us to make ecocriticism sexy. In the two days that followed we did the best we could. If sex involves passionate engagement, something more than furious agreement, the odd energetic tussle, sustained attention, playfulness, generosity, seriousness, and—now and then—astonishment, I’d say we did pretty well.

Nietzsche’s phrase “Be true to the Earth” was our theme, and—from Levinas and Derrida to New Zealand dams and river dryads, from Tolkien to Pooh Sticks, from drought to Arctic ethnography, from Luke to singing stones, from the poetics of the beach to the consumption of the nation’s capital, from Gilgamesh to Kangaroo, from pan-psychism to eco-skepticism, from subjunctive apprehension of land to ordinary wilderness and the love of matter—there was a fair bit of truth and a whole lot of Earth about.

“Be true to the Earth” opened with a gentle but powerful welcome to country performed by Wirundjeri Elder Vicky Nicholson-Brown—the conference’s first and deepest enactment of its theme. Then we embarked on a mix of plenary sessions, panel discussions, papers presented in the traditional way, readings of poetry and prose and fieldtrips to the ash forests of the Dandenong and CERES, an inner-urban community environment park. And all this engendered an animated and ongoing conversation with and about the Earth.

Richard Kerridge and Greg Garrard came from the UK, and David Abram and Louise Westling came from the US to lead and provoke the conference with fine keynote addresses. Local and international eco-scholars from philosophy, cultural studies, literature, place studies, anthropology and the earth sciences joined writers, artists, and activists to make a brilliant local and global (and sometimes cacophonous) choir. There were many fine papers and a few innovative approaches. A generous and hopeful spirit and a fiercely engaged intelligence characterised our discussion and celebrations. And a hundred of us, give or take, were there to make this happen—a pretty good attendance for our first gig.

ASLE-ANZ is now in the world—a force of nature, of eros and ecos. My colleague Kate Rigby, our founding president, deserves the credit for this achievement, for she sang up the conference with very little help in a matter of six months. Nothing would have happened, though, had the journal Colloquy not taken an interest in ecocriticism and put their support behind the conference. Thanks to Peter Coleman and the team. My thanks, also, to Charles Dawson, Vice-President New Zealand, who presented a beautiful paper, who brought with him a strong Kiwi contingent and who is working hard to grow the business in the land of the long white cloud!
We hope to see all of you and many more—from all across the ASLE world—in two years’ time for our second conference. Watch this spot for news.

MARK TREDINNICK (Vice-President, Australia, ASLE–ANZ)