Late Journals

The latest work by Antigone Kefala, renowned for both her poetry and her prose, one of the first writers to open Australian literature to a diversity of voices, and one of the most distinctive and powerful of those voices.

Late Journals completes a trilogy of works in which Kefala develops and expands her range as a memoirist, beginning with Summer Visit (2003), and followed by Sydney Journals (2008), both published by Giramondo. Kefala is not alone in writing in the journal form – Beverley Farmer and Helen Garner are notable contemporaries – but she is remarkable for the poetic resonance and intellectual significance she imparts to her observations. Feeling acutely her position as an outsider, because of her migrant background, she nevertheless expresses a strong sense of community with the writers, artists and thinkers who share her situation, or have influenced her work. The journals abound in portraits and tributes, reflections on art and life, and wonderful descriptions of places and landscapes, which give full reign to her imagination, and her ability to express the vitality and strangeness of the life around her.

In poetry as in prose, Antigone Kefala has made the fragment her form. It’s a form that embodies both salvage and destruction, and it’s wonderfully deployed in Late Journals to snatch moments from time while testifying to discontinuity and loss. I couldn’t stop reading this book. It bears moving witness to a distinctive, cosmopolitan vision and an unwavering faith in the power and integrity of art.Michelle de Kretser

Sydney Journals (2008) and Late Journals (2022) showcase Kefala’s distinctive, cosmopolitan vision. They are, among other things, wonderful Sydney documents, capturing the city’s changing moods and forms through charged, astute, visually rich observation…While the loss of community attendant on migration is felt in Kefala’s Late Journals, this work highlights a different, sustaining kinship: the artists and intellectuals Kefala engages with, their presence and their work serving to enrich her days. There is wonderful generosity in Kefala’s acknowledgment of the creative work that matters to her, and a sense of celebration in her intransigent faith in the value and power of art.
Judges’ citation, Patrick White Literary Award

Late Journals…affirms Kefala’s role as a poet and intellectual, with images and ideas cascading on each other in poetic abundance.
Mel Dixon