The Practise of Care

Editorial Four by Robert Wood

Our final issue of Portside Review for the year is one of eddies and flows, twist and turns, and anchors that make sense while the world floats by. There is a wide selection of prose, many poems of redolent quality, and interviews that give insight on writing and people. As we reflect on the year that has been, we are so grateful to bring you the best writing from the Indian Ocean. By thinking of this ecological, geographic and political reality, we can understand different relations than those that are common. Like a fishing net repaired for thousands of years so it resembles an infinite archive and a brand new buoy at the same time, we have found that people matter to culture more than anything else. In a journal like this, we have always thought that writing and publishing is an act of care - to care for each other as though we are bodies of water. In a world that is hurting, care is how we would like to end the year.

Our sound feature on refugees comes from JN Joniad, who was based in transit in Indonesia  for many years and reports from lived experience there. In the course of working together for this piece, JN secured a visa to Canada and is now living freely. It was a pleasure for Portside Review to help him buy a winter coat. We wish him good strength and happiness in his new home while also sharing this piece on daily life in Jakarta and the politics of migration. The piece connects to other pieces from Indonesia, namely four prose works from JN’s Archipelago comrades, a group of refugee writers who are more than their identities, who are growing in their craft, who have presented us with insight on monsoons, markets, border crossings and injustice. Thanks to Warsan Weedhsan and to Kieren Kresevic Salazar for their administrative labour. The pieces when taken together suggest something of people in transit, the here and there of movement, of migration both forced and chosen, of how people continue to long for home and hope for the future, of what it is to belong and go on. They are studded with intimate detail, with the smell of durian and the feel of the raindrops, of the boiled egg and half-loaf of bread in cells. They are related to an essay by regular contributor - Abhimanyu Kumar - on refugees coming into India from west and south, particularly from Rohingya backgrounds, which suggests that this is a global and regional issue, that nations struggle with the demands of individuals, that the Indian Ocean has much to think of and about when it comes to diasporas and strife.

Beyond that and braided with history, four of our prose pieces are concerned with geopolitical events that extend our frame of the Indian Ocean, opening a dialogue with America especially. Here, war plays an outsize role as we are haunted by other legacies and moments. By including these prose pieces here, we want to recenter our geographies, to argue that currents and swells thread through us all, while also respecting a balance that foregrounds an Asian and Australian experience beyond the nation. Sharlene Allsopp weaves together family and history, connecting places through pacifist critique of the routes of war, of how we return home in our bodies and selves. Maki Morita has a playful way with form that invites the reader into questions of identity and belonging, of how we associate with our past, of what it means to persist, of the way archives connect to our presents. Julia Faragher reflects on the cinematic representations and repressions of the Vietnam War and the era as a whole, of how memorialisation functions in today’s Australia, of how we act and perform within systems that must be critiqued. Nadia Rhook engages with the solace of water while the ghosts and thoughts of moments and massacres chase us and hover, the responsibilities of form, and the way we hold on and let go.

The other prose pieces, include Shaan Anoushka Saggar on food and the domestic, of relationships and television, of how we connect and think about performance while tending to our bellies. In a similar vein, Yu-Ying Chuang represents the nostalgia of food and roots, of family in the comforting reality of sharing during summer, of respite in recipes and how we relate through taste. Catherine Huang gives us the intimacy of beer and baths, the reality of dreams and arrival, the foreignness of tongues, and the play that comes with travel and trust, wrapped in moments we share with others, both reluctant and heartfelt. Finally, Lesh Karan speaks of corporeality and hair, of personal and historic threads that weave into reflections on politics and pop culture, of how we are habituated to gaze and tend. All of our prose, from Jakarta to London to Naarm, is a way of sharing through expression, of writing into being, all that connects us across a region as diverse as the Indian Ocean itself. It is made with quality and hope, a way of moving dialogue forward and never alone.

Our poetry selection shares that love of language to consider related themes. Jenni Mazaraki considers the unsaid and domestic, how what we feel keeps us apart binds us together in a way that is unacknowledged unless we are prescient, remembering our togetherness. Zar Kuri reflects on the ironies and functions of conquest, of the bleak paradoxes and failures of explorers, the way we must refuse the violent tendencies of inheritance. William Huang gives us a view on dreams, if not nightmares, which alone can console or cajole or consort with us on our relationship with land and each other, a surreal image of life that takes it cues from what comes after. Glen Hunting considers the complexities of settling and unsettling; the shame, guilt, responsibility that comes with invasion and occupation, the problematic actions and daily betrayals of quotidian minor players. And, S. Niroshini provides to us the salty songs of reminiscence, and the taste of tropics in the dreams of silence, and ribbons of seagrass, a way of connecting to other islands beyond our own. All of this poetry has been curated with an eye on the waves, the lull of emotion, and the threats that come when we are searching in rock-pools as well.

Finally for Issue Four of Portside Review, there are two bookends to our interviews this edition - we start with an early career editor and publisher, Anna Degenaar in conversation with Lauren Pratt. This focuses on Everyday Journal, which is based in Cape Town, and a way to think about younger writers, their concerns, and what happens when we examine the future of labour, honesty, and short fiction itself. At the other end of the shelf is Edmund Wee, a venerable voice of Singaporean literature, whose many accolades speak of his reputation in the Indian Ocean region. In this piece, he shares  how we stumble into careers, of the role Singapore plays in world literature, of how no experience is lost especially when one looks back on a long career. Between them are two conversations, an intimate back and forth between Abhimanyu Kumar and Hoshang Merchant, about poetry in India. It is richly people, referential, elusive even as it invites readers towards understanding the complexity of a localised world. And, our final piece is one that demands respect, being with Yohann Devezy in conversation with Magabala Books’ Rachel Bin Salleh, who is the most important small press publisher in Australia, and writing to you from Rubibi on Yawuru Country. Her is a voice that demands to be heard, and, it is also a voice that brings us full circle, back to our hope for this issue - care. We know that you care, that we care, that we look after each other and towards our future, all with a sense of optimism and energy about what comes next no matter where we are or what we stand for. Take care, and we will see you out there, until next year. Stay safe and enjoy the Indian Ocean. Thanks for reading.

Robert Wood is the Creative Director of Centre for Stories and the Principal at Anjengo. In 2021, he was awarded a Westpac Social Change Fellowship and named as a 40 Under 40 Asian Australian of the Year. Robert is the author of five books and holds five degrees.