Review of Southerly: The Political Imagination: Ali Alizadeh and Ann Vickery, eds, 'The Political Imagination: Postcolonialism and Diaspora in Contemporary Australian Poetry'. 'Southerly' vol. 73, no. 1, 2013

Abstract

In her essay entitled "(Un)Belonging in Australia: Poetry and Nation" - one of several fine pieces in this issue of 'Southerly' arranged under the title 'The Political Imagination'- the scholar Lyn McCredden quotes at length from a poem by Ken Bolton, aptly named "Horizon", in which he refers, by way of sardonic aside, to "history's ironies, reversals/sarcasms so de rigeur" (47). Bolton's rueful observation (from his 2006 collection At the Flash and at the Baci) gains a topical edge with regard to current political developments in the rapidly shifting realm of global geopolitics in 2014. According to recent reports, the beleaguered Portuguese government, struggling to contain further economic decline amidst mounting instability in Europe, has found itself dependent on its former colony, Angola, for financial security. The "ironies" and "reversals" in this instance point up the immediate political uncertainties (and, for many patriotic Portuguese, the confounding perversities) of the globalised economy in the twenty-first century, and, with a sharper emphasis, the wider and deeper complexities attending the constantly shifting notions of, claims to and ideals informing national identity in the present time.