Verge 2025

The blue geometries of the seats of a departing train. Lightning striking twice out of the blue. The rhythm of faint blues.

Blue is the most mysterious and evocative of colours. It can signify the beginning of love and the end of life. It can evoke tranquillity or tension. For Ted Hughes, blue is a 'kindly spirit', an 'electrified', 'thoughtful...guardian'; for Joni Mitchell, it is a sigh-filled song, a 'foggy lullaby'. For Henry David Thoreau, the 'blue ground' is the source of 'new truth'. And Goethe writes: 'We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances us, but because it draws us after it.'

In the nineteenth edition of this creative anthology, writers from Monash University and beyond share pieces that span fiction, nonfiction, poetry and experimental forms. They explore shades of blue that ravish the senses, narratives saturated in melancholic hues, and poetry that hums with the electric charge of blue.

Jonathan Ricketson is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Monash University. His fiction and nonfiction writing has been published in Meanjin and Australian Book Review. He is the 2025 ABR Rising Star.

Shalom Grace Verghese is a scholar in children's and young-adult literary studies. She recently submitted her PhD thesis, 'Desiring Monstrous Heroes in YA Supernatural Romances', for examination at Monash University. Her research intersects with queer feminist theory, masculinity studies, and genre theory. Shalom has presented at international conferences and published poetry, and has been involved in academic editing roles.

Yong Li holds a bachelor's degree and a PhD from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. She is a lecturer in the School of Marxism at Shanghai Maritime University and a visiting scholar in Chinese Studies at Monash University. Her recent publications appear in Waste Management, Journal of Environmental Management and Environmental Research Communications, among others. Her research interests encompass pro-environmental psychology and behaviour, political trust and NPO management.

Cassie Kropp (they/she) is studying a Master of Research in Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. Their plays have been performed in the Anywhere Theatre Festival in Brisbane but now they focus more on academic writing.

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