Ian Syson
The motleyness of the crew of good ship Offset 17 was apparent to us all from the start. Never was there such a bunch of misfits; never was there a more appropriate academic mentor, I guess. Looking like a team auto-selected by one of VicUni’s diversity bots, Lina Bujupi, Jeevan Jeganathan, Liam Richards and Pauline Sawyer have been anything but the shambles the terms motley and auto-selection invoke. They have been a fantastic skeleton crew for a ship whose service might well be coming to an end. They have all learnt something about themselves; they have each performed little miracles.
This is perhaps the greatest Offset yet, one that has returned to its origins, a low-budget student-driven literary magazine that captures the warts-and-all of that experience while riding the bow-wave of cultural capital generated by the previous 16 voyages. This issue’s cover is a direct (though inverted) homage to those origins.
It is heartbreaking for me to think that a ship I helped launch may be heading to the breaking yards. We are yet to know whether Offset 18 will embark. Do we have the funding? Do we have the institutional commitment to this glorious vessel? Do we have the students—motivated to train themselves and work like galley slaves in a thankless task—prepared to set sail once more? I hope so.