In the gap between the landscape and the words we use to describe it, there are infinite surprising possibilities.

The speakers; Lauren Fuge, Samuel Cox and Maggie Slattery responded to Stephen Mueke’s prompt to ‘reimagine what the world we live in is like, or could be like, perhaps less like a ‘rectangular’ view and more like dwelling in place’
The studio was bathed in a warm glow, a blush from Australia’s hot, dry and dusty interior which featured prominently within the presentations. The landscape was the hero of the night, given an identity and complexity of narrative that is usually reserved for human-kind.

After Stephen’s immersive introduction to the event, we heard Maggie recite her poetry, transporting us to a landscape scene full of sensorial stimuli. In turn, Lauren Fuge provoked the audience with the power of eco-memoir and her time spent searching the land for memories, reminding us of the interconnection between human and non-human. Temporality and our perception of it is heightened in places like Ikara-Flinders Ranges where a time before time is revealed in the rugged terrain.

In Samuel Cox’s reimagining’s he celebrated the magnificence and magnitude of Australian dust and demonstrated the impact it has on literature and in turn our psyche and identity.