Jim Davidson’s essay/memoir reveals that what we consider as ‘humanity’ is exclusive, and historically and culturally particular. Davidson writes about a period in Australia in which the idea of artistic value was being questioned. In his role as the second editor of Meanjin, during the 1970s and early 1980s, Davidson faced numerous challenges: as well as those office politics, there was that question of verbiage. With the ethnic, cultural and sexual ‘revolutions’ had come a plethora of new writers who were ‘demanding to be heard, and needed to be’. But these ‘voices’ were different from the established ones; they didn’t produce the traditional honed, considered words of good literary artists. As Davidson ac-knowledges, today we expect ‘very different things from the old, confident, unilateralist “quality”‘, but at the time these different texts read to some like affronts to good taste. For an editor, the question was pressing: if words were the preserve of our humanity, which words to publish? And whose?

In this edition of Meanjin, there are varied pieces paying tribute to the varied features of ‘The Public Life’ of Clem Christesen, the founding editor. Like other recent issues, the edition is broadly concerned with identity, largely through the forms of biography and memoir, but also including essays and poetry. Whether or not the best is indeed words, language is certainly not the only preserve we use today, and it is a shame that images within the text are kept to a minimum, particularly when there are several mentions throughout of Christesen’s (initial) inclusion of the visual in Meanjin.

In contrast, the use of photographs, paintings and graphics in the Griffith Review (Webs of Power, 2004:3, edited by Julianne Schultz $16.50 pb, 268 pp) is lively and refreshing; yes, some did prod me into thinking about issues of quality, but this seems fitting with a journal that aims to provoke discussion, rather than maintaining a set standard. As this indicates, the Griffith Review is a mixed bag, pitched at a wide, non-specialised audience. Working with words and images, its content embraces a variety of forms: fiction, essays, poetry, autobiography, satire and analysis. This issue is subtitled ‘Webs of Power’, and ‘power’ here is practically synonymous with politics. There are pieces on Australian media, and state and federal politics; board members in Brisbane; the public service; educational background and the notion of privilege in Australia; Murdoch and nepotism; cricket; and a small, finely tuned essay on an art collectors’ collective. Surprisingly, given the diversity of the writers’ work and the broad, inclusive nature of the journal, the edition is consistently engaging: I had expected to skip through a few articles, but found that, if not always wildly original, they were each astute, with a well-considered point of view. The editor, Julianne Schultz, has put together a solid body of work.

The Cultural Studies Review (Charlatans, 9:2, edited by Chris Healy and Stephen Muecke $29.95 pb, 228 pp) is an interdisciplinary academic journal, showcasing essays, new writing and review essays. Its strength lies in its publication of non-geographically specific articles that are written from within an Australian lineage of cultural studies. Many of the articles in this edition – ‘Charlatans’ – engage with experimental histories, and there is an excellent consideration of the history wars debate by Klaus Neumann. The CSR is consistently innovative and always worth pursuing.

Southerly’s ‘Face to Face’ (edited by David Brooks, $21.95pb, 218pp) edition revolves almost exclusively around Australian poetry. (The exceptions are an interview with Chinua Achebe, five short stories, an essay on Aboriginal art and a few reviews.) This may not be your cup of tea, but, if it is, you’ll find it rich in its variety. Alongside poems by Bruce Beaver, J.S. Harry, Les Murray, Bruce Dawe, as well as a few poets unknown to me, there are critical essays, reviews, interviews with poets and a transcript of a discussion held in Canberra in 1988, with the ‘Generation of ‘68’. There are also obituaries for Dorothy Hewett by Gig Ryan and Merv Lilley (playful and moving). These are followed by the transcript of an interview that Hewett recorded with John Tranter in 1987, where she is speaking about her negotiations with communism. When she recalls a trip to East Germany, you catch a sense of her presence again, as sharp and wickedly entertaining as ever:

There were spies in the garden listening to every word that we said, young university students, paid off as informers, under the guise of being translators, which nobody needed. We all spoke English … The whole garden was full of American left-wing writers … and some Australians, like Frank Hardy, John Morrison and Alan Marshall. And this guy sort of hung around in the shrubbery, making a terribly clumsy, pathetic job [of] spying with his tape recorder on everything we said. Of course we were saying the most outrageous things we could think of.

In Australia’s recent past, there have been many events in which language has been used for obfuscation. Words do have power, and they can preserve as well as negate. Hewett’s words here are not finely crafted: just the transcript of a conversation; reading them, rather than seeing words on the page, you hear her voice. Whatever other claims you want to make for it, this remains, I believe, language’s possibility: to make present something of the presence of another.