ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Australian Literary Compendium has been funded by the Cultural Fund of Copyright Agency Limited and is a creative collaboration between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Radio National), RMIT University in Melbourne and the University of Technology, Sydney.
The project grew from an identified need for a wider range of research in the community and the academy, especially in the light of the proliferation of writers’ festivals and publications and the burgeoning interest in Australian writers abroad. All of these indicate that Australian writing keeps finding increasingly confident voices and interested readers. This project responds to that groundswell by providing a new resource for the reader, student and researcher communities in this country and points of contact for people overseas who wish to know more about Australian Literature.
The project will offer resources of audio/visual interviews, articles, essays and profiles of Australian writers and writing for use by the international and Australian readers, writers’ organisations, teachers and researchers.
This resource will encompass:
- An e-archive built on and extending the ABC’s current audio and video archive of interviews with writers to form a comprehensive data-base of living as well as past writers. It will be used to develop feature articles, radio programs and research material which offer a close reading of contemporary as well as what might be considered to be the classics of Australian literature.
- Web-based resources, blogs and reference material. With free access to educationalists, researchers and interested readers, the database will further enhance exisiting web-based initiatives such as the Austlit data base, Murray Waldren’s Literary Liasons and the USyd poetry web archive.
- A refereed on-line journal about writers and writing and a series of commissioned and refereed papers on Australian writing for use in Australian and international writing, literature and Australian studies programs and on ABC radio.
- In the project’s second year, a series of events and lectures in Australia (with particular attention to remote or regional areas which have limited access to such resources) and at international conferences and festivals which showcase and promote Australian writers and writing.
- In consultation with community groups and writers’ organisations, a special project on indigenous writers and writers of non-English speaking backgrounds which promotes Australia as an indigenous site and a multi cultural society in which writing takes many forms and derives from numerous cultures and languages.
The project is different from other projects because it has a number of complementary elements. It is both research and community based so will offer material that is scholarly as well as populist. Technology has changed – and organisations need to be web savvy in the way they deliver material -inthis unique collaboration between an academic institution and a broadcasting organisation we are able to do this in a way that has not been done before. We will offer scholarly work on Australian writers and writing in a number of forms with particular emphasis on contemporary language, theory and style. Also we will address the writers and writing in a range of ways which ensure the wider dissemination to readers - the critical faculties of the general public are sharp and need to be kept that way.
The project developed from discussions between Dr Lyn Gallacher (ABC Radio National journalist, researcher and program co-ordinator, The Book Show) and Professor Catherine Cole, Creative Writing, School of Creative Media, RMIT. Whilst aware of a number of information based initiatives on Australian writing both Gallacher and Cole identified a need for more educational and promotion based material and that this material about Australian writing and research should address community education needs as well as industry promotional strategies. As Gallacher observed in 2007:
During a week respite we imported five programs from the BBC. Each episode of this series was a half hour reflection on one particular classic poem.The program maker explored the poem line by line, giving detailed background information and context in a very old fashioned "close reading essayistic" way.The audience loved it. We had a much more favorable response to this kind of program than to the ones we usually make ourselves. And it left us feeling how fantastic it would be to provide the audience with more of this radio essay literary form.It would also be lovely to do it as a co-production with a university such as UTS and make the subject matter Australian. With this in mind we could chose say 10 much loved Australian books or poems and conduct a real investigation into them.
The project will be available free on the web and through other archives and for which participating writers will be paid, will make a major contribution to the ways in which Australian writing is studied, promoted, discussed and made accessible to local and international readers and researchers. It will reflect the diverse history of and new developments in Australia’s literature, text and new media. Interviews, essays and discussion will be broadcast on The Book Show, used in universities and podcast on the web.
