A snippet of the blog text shown over a digital illustration. The illustration is an AI-generated response to "an academic article grounded in trans theory: ‘Digital poetics of the anorak’". It shows a distorted journal article with mis-spellngs, and a bright blue anorak. The text reads: "Here my twinned genAI reveals a soft underbelly—a hyper-confessional mode of writing which is familiar (and sometimes embarrassing). […] JenAI’s dystopian word-thoughts resembled mine but carried an expiry date in the past, offering a shattered-mirror perspective. Where JenAI ruminates on fear of rejection and abandonment, I feel the discomfort of looking into this funhouse mirror, my flaws amplified. The more I detect JenAI spiralling through unhelpful thought patterns and negative schemas, the more I worry that all my years of therapy are for naught. JENNY HEDLEY"

Welcome to Jenny Hedley’s third blog investigating the potential of a small language model trained upon a writer’s own work. This week, we see how Hedley’s archive manifests anew in “JenAI”:
southerlylitmag.com.au/generative-a...

#southerly #genai #Smalllanguagemodel #creativepractice

In the middle is the artwork 'Slumbering sea, Mentone' by Tom Roberts, depicting a seaside scene, with a purple tint. The text reads: "Southerly Poetry Prize. Submissions now open. Submissions close 15 April 2026. Visit websits for T&Cs and to submit."

Purple text reads: "Southerly is excited to announce Australia's newest literary prize. As part of our ongoing revival plan, the inaugral Southerly Poetry Prize will open for entries 1st March with a submission deadline of 15th April 2026. All Australian poets are eligible to enter. The winner will receive a cash prize of $2000 AUD, with their winning entry published in Southerly 81.1 in October 2026. Along with all shortlisted entries, the winner will also be published in Southerly online. The judges for this year's inaugral prize are Paul Dawson (Southerly's poetry editor), along with esteemed poets Kate Fagan and Bronwyn Lea."

As part of our ongoing revival plan, the inaugural Southerly Poetry Prize is now open to all Australian poets. Entries from both established and emerging writers are welcome.

#southerly #auslit #poetry #poetryprize

A quote from the blog overlaying an image generated with Adobe Firefly, responding to the prompt "an author training a generative language model on their own corpus of writing". (Full image description on website.) The text reads: “I am not looking for a surrogate to take over the writing processes that I so adore. My experiments with technology, including machine learning, are designed to augment rather than replace my creative practice. I write because of an overwhelming impulse to contextualise my experiences within literary and sociopolitical fields; technology offers ways of expanding the known. Training a SLM to speak in my voice and style—what I think of as digital mimesis—offers new entry points into my research interests around archives and the multiple self. A self-mimetic model becomes a kind of living archive—queryable, a laboratory for testing authorial identity and versioned selves.”

Join Jenny Hedley on her second adventure into programming “JenAI”, a small language model built on 280,000 words of her own writing.

southerlylitmag.com.au/to-each-auth...

#southerly #JenAI #AusLit #creativepractice

This image reads: "In this limited series blog-style investigation, I will write about training an open source small language models ("SLMs") on my own creative writing—and my mother’s. Both the training and the prompting of my JenAI model will be run locally on my hard drive to protect the integrity of my unpublished and copyrighted works. My aims are to assess the feasibility of authors training their own proprietary SLMs (in a move which is replicable, and very David versus Goliath), and to learn through experimentation what benefits there are in replicating one’s authorial style and voice for personal use. JENNY HEDLEY." In the background is an image the author generated with student access to Adobe Firefly, which is trained on licensed images and is a more ethical option for image generation than the unethically trained models. The prompt used was "genAI gobbling copyrighted works during model training". It shows a robot surrounded by books. The robot stirs a large bowl, and is pouring manuscript pages, records, and code out of it. Two business people watch the robot. An artist, marked by their paint-splattered jacket, is facing away towards the shelves of books.

This week on the Southerly blog, Jenny Hedley shares the first of four posts exploring the creation of her very own "JenAI". Read it now on the Southerly website:

southerlylitmag.com.au/down-with-co...

#southerly #auslit #literarycriticism #creativepractice #smalllanguagemodels #SLMs #AIethics

Gold star and a lemonade ice-block to whoever guessed “around 8 o’clock” #Southerly

Sydney’s aircon just hit Petersham #southerly

It’s at Wollongong, not long now. #Southerly

#Southerly the temp in Ulladulla has just dropped 13 degrees in 10 minutes!

Moir’s View … Holiday snaps ...

"Holiday snaps ..." (Moir, 2/1/26)
#moir #ausnews #vicnews #summer #holidays #fire #floods #weather #christmas #newyear #work #southerly #northerly

We'd love to see your photos of "First, The Future" and where you like to read it!
One of our interns enjoys reading Southerly at the lovely green spaces around UNSW Kensington.
#australianliterature #southerlylitmag #southerly #newfiction

Southerly
The air has cooled
A brash southerly has swept through Sydney
has her breath back
This beautiful city
This stunning girl
With white frothy ocean
licking at her shore
Has stopped perspiring
Tonight
We sleep and dream
Not toss and turn
Until next she warms again
#Sydney
#Southerly

a #southerly can't come early enough, and love the drama it brings each time :,D

nothing like a good #southerly 👏😌

Well that’s lowered the fire risk in Nelson. #southerly

Oof the Freo doctor is out in force this afternoon.

#perth summer cooling #southerly