Smyth, Elizabeth (2025) The Long Sentence. ROAM, Summer/Autumn (4).

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Abstract

[Extract] Record rainfall in northern Australia meant it rained in Cairns before I left, and every day while I was away, and continued raining on my return, so that now the towels my husband had washed remain sodden on the line, and black ants have amassed on a damp cloth in the kitchen ...

Research Statement

Research Background	Devastating human impacts on the environment have created an urgent need for research that investigates human relationships with non-human nature. Many argue that protecting nature can be viewed as a cultural rather than a scientific problem. Environmental philosopher Val Plumwood calls for developing an "environmental culture that values and fully acknowledges the non-human sphere" (2002: 3). Narratives that explore how people interact with nature are crucial to cultural change.
Research Contribution	This place-centred memoir, set in the Australian Wet Tropics, centres on a domestic ritual of cleaning and is positioned globally and temporally through engagement with podcasts on international politics and digital minimalism. The work reveals an anthropocentric attitude to nature through both the destruction and maintenance of the non-human (insects, mould, etc). The entire text of 1480 words comprises only 11 sentences, hence the title, which also echoes the extensive time and minutia involved in domestic work and evokes the house as a prison for domestic workers. Memoir was chosen to develop an intimate relationship with the reader through a seemingly reliable account. The piece may also be read as gendered writing due to a woman cleaning and men uninvolved.
Research Significance	This short memoir offers a new way of understanding domestic life in the tropics. In ROAM Summer/Autumn 2025, it contributes to a collection of texts that contemplate emotional, cultural, geographic, and political habitats. The work introduces an original voice from the Australian Wet Tropics to an international readership of creative writing dedicated to representations of home.
Item ID:	88751
Item Type:	Article (Creative Work)
Media of Output:	Digital
Keywords:	memoir, North Queensland literature, women's writing, life writing
Additional Information:	This item was read at the IABA Asia Pacific x ASAL 2025 Conference, 30 June - 4 July 2025, Flinders University, Adelaide (ASAL: Association for the Study of Australian Literature). It is accessible via the publisher's website: https://www.rhome.letras.ulisboa.pt/en/roam/-101/roam-4/the-long-sentence
Date Deposited:	31 Oct 2025 06:16
FoR Codes:	36 CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 3602 Creative and professional writing > 360201 Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1301 Arts > 130103 The creative arts @ 100%
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