Join Editor Carody Culver for a conversation with Griffith Review 81 contributors David Ellison and Suneel Jethani as they discuss spare time – what we do with it, how we feel about it, and the processes by which technology has increasingly come to measure, quantify and intrude into its every aspect. The conversation will be followed by a reading from poet Damen O’Brien.

Leisure wear optional! 

About The Leisure Principle: 

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes spelt out a vision of the impending utopia. Work, he said, will become a thing of the past. ‘For the first time since creation,’ he predicted, ‘man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to occupy the leisure which science…will have won for him.’  

 So where did this vision of future past go? Griffith Review 81 examines the terms and conditions of our contemporary relationship with the leisure regime, its fallouts and limitations, and how we came to cede so much simply to amuse ourselves to death.  

David Ellison is a senior lecturer in literary studies and cultural history in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. He is also a member of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. His interest in leisure dates from a catalogue essay he wrote for photo-media artist Anne Zahalka’s series Leisureland.  

Suneel Jethani is a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. He is the author of The Politics and Possibilities of Self-Tracking Technology: Data, Bodies and Design (2020) and his work has been published in Continuum, Cultural Studies, Persona Studies and Communication Politics & Culture.  

Damen O’Brien is an Australian poet whose recent prizes include the 2021 Café Writers Poetry Prize, the 2021 Magma Judge’s Prize, the 2021 MPU International Poetry Competition and the 2020 Moth Poetry Prize. 

Carody Culver is the editor of Griffith Review. She has written for publications including Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow and Books+Publishing. Her chapbook, The Morgue I Think the Deader It Gets, was published by Cordite in 2022, and she’s been a featured Australian poet on the Best American Poetry blog.