Standing on a wobbling esky, the speaker apologises for being late to his own protest.
He’s met with laughs. It’s 9:30 but the crowd has been gathered for some time. Freelancers, students, and retirees alike, there’s not many things this crowd would fare commuter peak hour for.
But saving Meanjin is one of them. On 4 September, Melbourne University Publishing announced that it’s 85-year-old literary publication would cease publication. The University’s statement two days later cited “economic viability.”
The crowd outside MUP’s offices on Tuesday morning however, clap as Evelyn Araluen, Stella Prize winner and co-editor of Overland, talks about the “value of literary work.”
“I know people who have paid rent and childcare fees from the invoices [from Meanjin],” Araluen said.
Trams continue to rattle past, and trucks constantly drown Araluen’s speech. She is holding the megaphone with both hands and it’s the first time I’ve ever considered how heavy they must be.
Yet each time she yells ‘shame’ it’s with strength. And it’s answered.
Two part-time staff members have been made redundant as part of the decision. Araluen says there is nowhere for them to turn, other “interesting and comfortable literary jobs don’t exist.”
These staff members lost their jobs without warning, without being asked to come up with ways to increase the financial viability of the magazine, “no opportunity to pivot to slightly cheaper paper,” Araluen said.
As she speaks, pushbikes pull up. It’s Carlton after all. The scene looks like an Oslo cartoon. There’s a lot of white hair in the crowd.
Meanjin is Australia’s second oldest literary magazine. It has published Helen Garner, David Malouf, Alexis Wright. Some of the only Australians who sit on bookshelves worldwide.
As Araluen hands the megaphone over, she calls the University of Melbourne “problematic” in it’s decision. She says as an Indigenous woman, she has the right to do so.
Writing for the ABC, Alexander Howard highlights Meanjin as a crucial space for First Nations writers. Tony Birch, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Ellen van Neerven have had their careers aided by the magazine.
Declan Fry is a writer, but today he speaks as a reader. He tells the crowd, which is growing, that MUP has assured Meanjin’s archive will remain online, “to read at your leisure.”
“I can finally read things at my own leisure,” Fry says.
“There can be no archive without material,” he goes on. According to Fry, the University of Melbourne had the honour of publishing one of the country’s most respected magazines and has squandered it.
Ben Eltham is the organiser of the protest; of course he is. He has long, grey hair, he looks as if he is constantly windswept. He wears a blazer and a tie, but not in the way other Thursday morning commuters do. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had pencils and poems in his pockets.
Eltham has a piece in the upcoming edition of Meanjin. Unknowingly, he was writing for the penultimate edition.
His essay is about Gough Whitlam’s legacy 50 years on, specifically his establishment of the Australian Council of the Arts.
Whitlam put forward unprecedented funding to Aboriginal Art, theatre, literature, craft, and media. Of it, Double J and Triple J were born. Australia’s film industry was rebooted.
The Public Lending Rights scheme meant authors were compensated when their work was shared in libraries.
At the mention of Whitlam’s name, the crowd cheers. Many of them were there. Perhaps they wish for a Labor government which resembles the one they voted for in 1972.
Eltham makes clear his calls: firstly, MUP is to hand over the journal. Whether that’s to another willing publisher, or it grants Meanjin independence, “Melbourne University is not fit to continue, and that’s on them.”
Secondly, they are to give up the back catalogue. If the University “aren’t able to understand the value of the thing they’re letting go,” Eltham says, then they must let it go completely.
This echoes Araluen’s sentiment at the beginning. For the entire archive to be uploaded to the internet, freely, is to “chuck it online for AI bots.”
Eltham’s organising is precise, his next speaker a powerful example of the arts we have gathered to preserve.
He introduces Pi O (πo), a Greek-Australian poet. Pi O is 74. When Eltham gently hands him the megaphone, he mumbles “I might just use my voice.”
And what a voice it is. The working-class, anarchist poet roars into Swanston Street. The crowd can’t believe how lucky they are.
Pi O has been a magazine editor himself, including 925 and Unusual Work, and a publisher at Collective Effort Press. He is an example of what is born out of independent publishing, on how Australian creativity relies on it.
Declan Furber Gillick gets up to speak last. He wasn’t on the original running order, rather, he is seemingly emboldended by the turn out.
Gillick is an Aboriginal playwright and performer from Mparntwe/Alice Springs. He shares his own experience with the Melbourne Theatre Company, another artistic department of the University of Melbourne.
Gillick’s own production JACKY was “making money,” for the University during its successful 2024 run.
When Gillick attempted to add an author’s note acknowledging Palestine, he was pulled out of rehearsals. “We both know that isn’t going to happen,” Gillick said of the institution’s response.
Gillick’s point is this: The University made a healthy amount of money from a play about a racist genocide, while not allowing its author to talk about another racist genocide.
This catch-22 is at the core of Meanjin’s close. While Universities profit off the exchange of ideas, they can simultaneously kill the publication of them.
“Why should they be trusted?” Araluen says.
As 9am turns into 9:45, the yells of ‘shame,’ have more gusto. The group’s Lygon Street coffees have kicked in and the rain has stayed away. Maybe Mother Nature recognises the cultural death occurring down below.
The crowd disbands, and I’m wondering if anyone in the offices above heard the calls, the poetry, the anger.
Maybe they didn’t but something tells me, looking at the group of writers, readers, performers, young people, academics (some of who are holding notepads) that they’re not the sort to keep quiet for long.
