Smyth, Elizabeth (2022) Writing an Australian Farm Novel: Connecting Regions Via Magic Realism. In: [Presented at the Australasian Association of Writing Programs' 27th Annual Conference]. From: Australasian Association of Writing Programs’ (AAWP) 27th Annual Conference, 28-30 November 2022, Buderim, QLD, Australia.

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Abstract

Farming now, in some ways, offers little resemblance to farming before the 1960s. It involves far more machines, greater access to information, and responses to increasing public pressure to protect or regenerate non-human nature. Since the beginning of colonization, writers have depicted farming in poetry and prose. While many forms of farming literature continue to evolve and develop, the ‘farm novel’- which is set on a farm, casts farming people as the main characters, and addresses farming issues – often maintains an outdated worldview. Australia’s farm novels include Benjamin Cozens’ Princess of the Mallee (1903), John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962), Randolph Stow’s The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (1965), and Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005). Such novels frequently offer realist, pre-1960s, southern settings. In this paper, I argue for a major revision of the farm novel to disrupt the haunting mythology of masculinist settler-colonial literary histories. I use my own experience of writing a farm novel as a case study on navigating a specific regional literary heritage to create a narrative that connects to region and recent international literary discourse. In other words, I offer insight into a performance of John Kinsella’s notion of international regionalism through the writing of a farm novel set in far north Queensland. Through my use of a contemporary setting and magic realism, I challenge Australia’s dominant literary representation of farming, where an individual controls non-human nature, by casting sugarcane and machines as a colonial farming alliance and humans as their marginalized subjects.

Item ID:	82819
Item Type:	Conference Item (Presentation)
Keywords:	Regionalism, Farm Novel, Magic Realism
Related URLs:	Organisation
Date Deposited:	21 May 2024 00:13
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 100%
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