Vol. 36 No. 1 (2009): Pop Goes the Region

Last year was our fortieth anniversary issue of LiNQ and a timely reason to revisit the past, take stock, and look to the future, to our changing world where new media has morphed into our lives. It seemed to us time to supplement our paper-based issues, on the world wide web. “Pop Goes the Region” is the theme that best suited this stocktaking moment. As one of Australia’s longest running regional literary journals, we felt it was important to establish an online presence that remained local in focus but global in scope; regional in our commitments but not parochial in perspective; broad-based in our appeal but not pedestrian in approach; literary but not rarified; and expert but not specialised. Pop Goes the Region emerged in consideration of these priorities. Regional writing sometimes gets stamped with the stereotype of “parochial” just as other times it comes into vogue, and is taken up in a sort of precious way by expert critic-curators. Sometimes the fact that the local has a long history of engaging with the popular imagination is forgotten. Certainly with the advent of the internet, the confluence of the regional and the popular must no longer be overlooked. The ways in which popular and metropolitan ideas dominate internet communication can also challenge, and indeed sometimes threaten, ideas about the local and local production. In this global village where we live, technology unites and exposes our regional differences. Yu Xiao’s image “Never Grow Up” on the cover of this year’s edition of LiNQ transcends the local and global, connecting us with an emerging regional artist in China, whose image speaks of the synchronicities between pop and the region.