“One of Many Interpretations”
Thank you to our readers, contributors and community for all the support that has helped to bring Locative Magazine Issue 5 together. This is a larger issue than usual, and one which prompted me to reflect on questions of growth and progression as a publication. It’s a question driven by the sheer quantity and quality of Australian writing – even with our expanded offering of 19 authors, there were still so many outstanding submissions that we were unfortunately unable to accept, that we could easily have created a second full issue of Smoke and Mirrors.
I have said before, even in the wake of journal closures, political interference and a dearth of arts funding, that Australia in its current time and place remains a fantastic place to be a writer. Our current literary landscape features many incredibly talented and insightful authors, all working in diverse and exciting styles. We also enjoy an ecosystem where both long-running imprints and upstart publications are offering opportunities to authors all around the year. At any given time, there are multiple places open for new writing, and a diversity of voices and editorial sensibilities to ensure each deserving piece will find its home.
And we have not only the opportunity to write, but also the political impetus. Our words reckon with the scars and injustices of our colonial past and present, the social and economic inequalities of our cities and regions, and our nation’s complicity and participation in past and ongoing global conflicts. None of our writing starts from, or goes out to, a void. We are learning and sharing and being heard. We are growing wiser and more compassionate.
This is to say that the labour of editing remains for me both fun and meaningful. To all of our contributors, the privilege of engaging with your work grants me a tremendous amount of optimism and energy. I hope to communicate that to our readers with each subsequent issue.
I say this though I admit on the theme of Smoke and Mirrors, what began as a whimsical concept turned into a period of pessimism. After the initial announcement, I’ve spoken to many trusted friends and collaborators about my fear of a bad bushfire season in the summer of 2025/2026, one that would make a callout for writing on the theme of smoke seem callous and insensitive. I read the reports of the fires in Victoria with trepidation, and my heart goes out to the people and environments affected. And then, in New South Wales where I reside, the news cycles quickly turned to other things.
I was troubled by the thought of how some stories that are told in our cultural context serve to give value to one thing over another. This has been happening a lot, lately. So often a new global conflict will divert the public attention away from the unhealed wounds of a prior one. We find ourselves split in so many directions by the myriads of injustices, for fear that inattention will invite others to spin, manipulate, dissemble and obscure.
Many of the works featured in Issue 5 revolve around this question of interpretation. It’s a skill that I find being tested more and more often – to discern the intentions and motivations behind a choice of phrase, to make sense of seeming chaos and disorder, to judge whether something was written by a human or an algorithm. These thoughts draw me to stories about dreams and mysteries, to poems that are complex and multidimensional.
My hope is that these works in Issue 5 will remind us of the wonder and fun that comes from interpretation. That we practice and develop this skill because it is necessary for our survival, and yet it also helps us communicate with one another on a more intimate level. I would begin with the poems “Wheel of” by Riya Rajesh and “One Thousand and One” by Alice Wanderer – two works that reshape and transform themselves in their nonlinearity. They challenge readers to look beyond first assumptions, to respect their instincts, and to embrace open-endedness. This mindset extends to the core mysteries and uncertainties within fiction, whether it is about the possibility of alien visitation in Rozanna Lilley’s “Unexplained Phenomena”, the supernatural imprints of historical violence in Gabriela Evans’ “Silent Watchers”, or the return of a childhood fear in the form of an enormous frog in Howard McKenzie-Murray’s “A Friend in Need”. Though many of these works interpret the theme through their engagement with the surreal and extraordinary, they still draw us back to consider the human experiences that bind and connect us.
As a publication, Locative Magazine trends towards my fondness for the everyday and the mundane. Our callouts shy away from asking for work that is bold or disruptive or urgent – there are plenty of other publications which thrive on those virtues, and I have the utmost respect for them – but my own engagement with reading and writing draws me to appreciate being grounded. I adore connections to physical place, and the noticing and appreciation of the little details that make our experiences real. And in these pieces I find comfort in places where our interpretation turns concrete, as in the words of Nigel Featherstone in “Witness”:
“perhaps, just perhaps, in the trunk – as wide as the world &
coloured & scored like an ancient map – & in the branches
that might be a giant’s ageing arms, in the canoe
of dead wood, grey-black & cracking, in the glass-like cicada
carcass clinging on, in the sense of an ending
just around the corner, you saw yourself”
And from that vivid image of the one tree my mind expands and takes in all possibilities, just as the protagonist does in Chloe Paige’s heartfelt story “The Largest Herbivore of the Holocene”, parsing through a cloud of uncertainty and apprehension by remembering simply:
“There’s so much world out there.”
Thank you again for your support, and please enjoy Issue 5 of Locative Magazine.
Harvey Liu
Harvey Liu is the founder and editor of Locative Magazine. He lives and works on unceded Wangal and Darug land, tidying spreadsheets by day and composing fiction and poetry by night. He is currently working on a novel manuscript about migration, haunting and filial piety.
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