Kindred | Kirli Saunders #Poetry

 

2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages:

It is through language that we communicate with the world, define our identity, express our history and culture, learn, defend our human rights and participate in all aspects of society, to name but a few.

Through language, people preserve their community’s history, customs and traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking, meaning and expression. They also use it to construct their future. Language is pivotal in the areas of human rights protection, good governance, peace building, reconciliation, and sustainable development.

A person’s right to use his or her chosen language is a prerequisite for freedom of thought, opinion and expression, access to education and information, employment, building inclusive societies, and other values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Many of us take it for granted that we can conduct our lives in our home languages without any constraints or prejudice. But this is not the case for everyone.

Part of the shameful role of colonial behaviour in Australia since 1788, is the conscious and unconscious effort to create a White Australia that only spoke English. This required new immigrants to forget their native language and assimilate by only speaking English, but more significantly, it completely denied Aboriginal Australians the dignity or right to speak their own languages. 

I grew up in an Australia that was almost empty of Aboriginal words.

Many rural towns and suburbs retained names derived from an Indigenous term to describe the local area and some of our plants and animals have a similar history. As a teenager, in particular, an Indigenous word would enter our language colloquially, but there was no systemic teaching, understanding or use of local languages.

Until recently.

Slowly, slowly, Indigenous languages are being revived, encouraged and celebrated. Dictionaries are being created, recordings are being made and Indigenous writers and artists are using their own words more often in their work.

Two of the poems in Saunders' collection, Kindred, caught my eye for this reason.

• My Apologies (written on Dharawal Country with Dharawal translations informed by Aunty Jodi Edwards) finishes with a list of English words, followed by their Dharawal counterparts.

as I recite a monologue | of apology | on behalf of anyone | that has ever branded you | with a name that isn't yours

• And Wirritjiribin: Lyrebird - The one who Remembers (written on Gundungurra Country with Gundungurra translations informed by Aunty Velma Mulcahy and Aunty Trish Levett) contains two stanzas that mirror each other. One is written in part English/part Gundungurra, the other is a full English translation.

arise wirritjiribin | tangara your truth

Saunders divides the book into three sections: Mother, Earth Child and Lover. Very delicately, she draws our attention to grief, loss and trauma new trees | old scars | there is trauma here

Nature and being on country is the healer. She reveals safe places, tender new growth and the journey back home. Home to country, home to culture, home to language.

Facts:

• Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman, born on Gundungurra Country with ties to the Yuin, Biripi and Gadigal people.
• Interview for Kindred in the National Indigenous Times 27th May 2019.
• Saunders was made Gunai Woman NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year 2020.
• She developed Poetry in First Languages project for Red Room Poetry.
• Inaugural winner Daisy Utemorrah Award 2019
• Winner University of Canberra ATSI Poetry prize 2019
• Shortlist ABIA Award Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year 2020

#AusReadingMonth2020

The Fifteen Sonnets of Petrarch #Classic

Sketch of Laura as Venus C1444

Early in chapter six of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the suitor, Pietro Crespi is wooing Amaranta. He 'would arrive at dusk, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, and he would translate Petrarch's sonnets for Amaranta. They would sit on the porch, suffocated by oregano and the roses, he reading and she sewing lace cuffs.'

It would seem that Petrarch wrote 366 sonnets. I'm not sure how the translator of The Fifteen Sonnets decided which 15 to chose for his collection but he seems to have created a truncated version of Petrarch's love for Laura, from the joyous start to her death. Although whether Laura was a real person or not, is another story entirely.

Given how things turned out for Pietro and Amaranta, the truncated version seemed most apt.

I
O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers!
’Mid which my pensive queen her footstep sets;
O plain, that hold’st her words for amulets
And keep’st her footsteps in thy leafy bowers!
O trees, with earliest green of springtime hours,
And all spring’s pale and tender violets!
O grove, so dark the proud sun only lets
His blithe rays gild the outskirts of thy towers!
O pleasant country-side! O limpid stream,
That mirrorest her sweet face, her eyes so clear,
And of their living light canst catch the beam!
I envy thee her presence pure and dear.
There is no rock so senseless but I deem
It burns with passion that to mine is near.




-5-
II
When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline,
And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh
With his own touch, and leads a minstrelsy
Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,—
He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine,
And to my thoughts brings transformation high,
So that I say, “My time has come to die,
If fate so blest a death for me design.”
But to my soul, thus steeped in joy, the sound
Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven,
It holds my spirit back to earth as well.
And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound
The thread of life which unto me was given
By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.




-7-
III
Sweet air, that circlest round those radiant tresses,
And floatest, mingled with them, fold on fold,
Deliciously, and scatterest that fine gold,
Then twinest it again, my heart’s dear jesses;
Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses
Stings in my heart that all its life exhaust,
Till I go wandering round my treasure lost,
Like some scared creature whom the night distresses.
I seem to find her now, and now perceive
How far away she is; now rise, now fall;
Now what I wish, now what is true, believe.
O happy air! since joys enrich thee all,
Rest thee; and thou, O stream too bright to grieve!
Why can I not float with thee at thy call?




-9-
IV
Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame
Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy?
Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy
Whom all the world doth as my lady name!
How honor grows, and pure devotion’s flame,
How truth is joined with graceful dignity,
There thou mayst learn, and what the path may be
To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim;
There learn that speech, beyond all poet’s skill,
And sacred silence, and those holy ways
Unutterable, untold by human heart.
But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill,
This none can learn! because its lovely rays
Are given by God’s pure grace, and not by art.




-11-
V
O wandering steps! O vague and busy dreams!
O changeless memory! O fierce desire!
O passion strong! heart weak with its own fire;
O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams;
O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems
The sole reward that glory’s deeds require!
O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire,
That all my days from slothful rest redeems;
O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well
His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move
At his least will; nor can it find relief.
O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell
Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of Love!
Linger, and see my passion and my grief.





-13-
VI
I once beheld on earth celestial graces
And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,
Whose memory yields nor joy nor grief alone,
But all things else in cloud and dreams effaces.
I saw how tears had left their weary traces
Within those eyes that once the sun outshone,
I heard those lips, in low and plaintive moan,
Breathe words to stir the mountains from their places.
Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth
Made in their mourning strains more high and dear
Than ever wove soft sounds for mortal ear;
And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth
The very leaves upon the bough to soothe,
Such sweetness filled the blissful atmosphere.




-15-
VII
Those eyes, ’neath which my passionate rapture rose,
The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile
Could my own soul from its own self beguile,
And in a separate world of dreams enclose,
The hair’s bright tresses, full of golden glows,
And the soft lightning of the angelic smile
That changed this earth to some celestial isle,—
Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.
And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,
Left dark without the light I loved in vain,
Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;
Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,
Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,
And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.




-17-
VIII
She ruled in beauty o’er this heart of mine,
A noble lady in a humble home,
And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,
’Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.
The soul that all its blessings must resign,
And love whose light no more on earth finds room
Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,
Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;
They weep within my heart; no ears they find
Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,
And naught remains to me save mournful breath.
Assuredly but dust and shade we are;
Assuredly desire is mad and blind;
Assuredly its hope but ends in death.




-19-
IX
Dreams bore my fancy to that region where
She dwells whom here I seek, but cannot see.
’Mid those who in the loftiest heaven be
I looked on her, less haughty and more fair.
She took my hand, she said, “Within this sphere,
If hope deceive not, thou shalt dwell with me:
I filled thy life with war’s wild agony;
Mine own day closed ere evening could appear.
My bliss no human thought can understand;
I wait for thee alone, and that fair veil
Of beauty thou dost love shall yet retain.”
Why was she silent then, why dropped my hand
Ere those delicious tones could quite avail
To bid my mortal soul in heaven remain?




-21-
X
Gentle severity, repulses mild,
Full of chaste love and pity sorrowing;
Graceful rebukes, that had the power to bring
Back to itself a heart by dreams beguiled;
A tender voice, whose accents undefiled
Held sweet restraints, all duty honoring;
The bloom of virtue; purity’s clear spring
To cleanse away base thoughts and passions wild;
Divinest eyes to make a lover’s bliss,
Whether to bridle in the wayward mind
Lest its wild wanderings should the pathway miss,
Or else its griefs to soothe, its wounds to bind;
This sweet completeness of thy life it is
Which saved my soul; no other peace I find.




-23-
XI
The holy angels and the spirits blest,
Celestial bands, upon that day serene
When first my love went by in heavenly sheen,
Came thronging, wondering at the gracious guest.
“What light is here, in what new beauty drest?”
They said among themselves; “for none has seen
Within this age arrive so fair a mien
From changing earth unto immortal rest.”
And she, contented with her new-found bliss,
Ranks with the perfect in that upper sphere,
Yet ever and anon looks back on this,
To watch for me, as if for me she stayed.
So strive my thoughts, lest that high heaven I miss.
I hear her call, and must not be delayed.




-25-
XII
Oft by my faithful mirror I am told,
And by my mind outworn and altered brow,
My earthly powers impaired and weakened now,—
“Deceive thyself no more, for thou art old!”
Who strives with Nature’s laws is over-bold,
And Time to his commandment bids us bow.
Like fire that waves have quenched, I calmly vow
In life’s long dream no more my sense to fold.
And while I think, our swift existence flies,
And none can live again earth’s brief career,—
Then in my deepest heart the voice replies
Of one who now has left this mortal sphere,
But walked alone through earthly destinies,
And of all women is to fame most dear.




-27-
XIII
Sweet wandering bird that singest on thy way,
Or mournest yet the time for ever past,
Watching night come and spring receding fast,
Day’s bliss behind thee and the seasons gay,—
If thou my griefs against thine own couldst weigh,
Thou couldst not guess how long my sorrows last;
Yet thou mightst hide thee from the wintry blast
Within my breast, and thus my pains allay.
Yet may not all thy woes be named with mine,
Since she whom thou dost mourn may live, yet live,
But death and heaven still hold my spirit’s bride;
And all those long past days of sad decline
With all the joys remembered years can give
Still bid me ask “Sweet bird! with me abide!”




-29-
XIV
Lust and dull slumber and the lazy hours
Have well nigh banished virtue from mankind.
Hence have man’s nature and his treacherous mind
Left their free course, enmeshed in sin’s soft bowers.
The very light of heaven hath lost its powers
Mid fading ways our loftiest dreams to find;
Men jeer at him whose footsteps are inclined
Where Helicon from dewy fountains showers.
Who seeks the laurel? who the myrtle twines?
“Wisdom, thou goest a beggar and unclad,”
So scoffs the crowd, intent on worthless gain.
Few are the hearts that prize the poet’s lines:
Yet, friend, the more I hail thy spirit glad!
Let not the glory of thy purpose wane!




-31-
XV
O ye who trace through scattered verse the sound
Of those long sighs wherewith I fed my heart
Amid youth’s errors, when in greater part
That man unlike this present man was found;
For the mixed strain which here I do compound
Of empty hopes and pains that vainly start,
Whatever soul hath truly felt love’s smart,
With pity and with pardon will abound.
But now I see full well how long I earned
All men’s reproof; and oftentimes my soul
Lies crushed by its own grief; and it doth seem
For such misdeed shame is the fruitage whole,
And wild repentance and the knowledge learned
That worldly joy is still a short, short dream.

Petrarch or Francesco Petrarca born 20th July 1304 - died 18th or 19th July 1374.
The Fifteen Sonnets selected and translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson 1900
A Poem For A Thursday
One Hundred Years of Solitude Readalong

Do not go gentle into that good night | Dylan Thomas #Dewithon

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash | Snowdon, Wales

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do not go gentle into that good night | Dylan Thomas | 1947

You can listen to Dylan Thomas read the poem himself.

#Dewithon2020

#APoemForAThursday

In Midland Where the Trains Go By | Dorothy Hewett #AWW

In Midland still the trains go by.
The black smoke thunders on the sky.
Still in the grass the lovers lie.
And cheek on cheek and sigh on sigh
They dream and weep as you and I,

In Midland where the trains go by. 

Across the bridge, across the town. 

The workers hurry up and down. 

The pub still stands, the publican 

Is still a gross, corrupted man. 

And bottles clinking in the park 

Make symphonies of summer dark. 

Across the bridge the stars go down, 

Our two ghosts meet across the town. 

Who dared so much must surely creep 

Between young lovers lips, asleep. 

Who dared so much much surely live 

In train-smoke off the Midland bridge. 

In Midland, in the railway yards, 

They shuffle time like packs of cards 

And kings and queens and jacks go down. 

But we come up in Midland town. 

O factory girls in cotton slips 

And men with grease across your lips. 

Let kings and queens and jacks go down 

But we'll still kiss in Midland town. 

An oath, a whisper and a laugh. 

Will make our better epitaph. 

We'll share a noggin in the park 

And whistle songs against the dark. 

There is no death that we can die 

In Midland, where the trains go by.

In Midland Where the Trains Go By | 1959 | Dorothy Hewett

Dorothy Hewett was born in Perth, in 1923 and grew up on a farm in the wheatbelt area until being sent to Perth to finish her schooling. She joined the Communist Party in 1946 and was active in their volunteering work. She moved to Sydney, with her second husband and young family, where she worked in a spinning mill and wrote under a pseudonym for the Communist Party paper.

When this marriage also ended she moved back to Perth in 1958 to take up a teaching post at the University of Western Australia.

In 1960, she married Merv Lilley and two daughters, Kate and Rose.

Hewett left the Communist Party after the 1968 uprising in Prague. She was an atheist all her life. She often challenged the social, sexual, religious and political norms of her time.

She died in 2002 in the Blue Mountains of NSW.

John Kinsella said in her obituary in the SMH, 26 August 2002;

Hewett's writing is about freedom and equality, linked with a deep respect for the vagaries of the individual.

I chose this Poem For a Thursday in preparation for Bill's Gen III Australian Women Writer's week from the 12th - 18th January.

I Am the Road | Claire G Coleman #AWW

The Peter Porter Prize is a literary prize for a new poem run by the Australian Book Review. It's an annual prize, running since 2005. It's worth a total of $9,000. This year, the judges – John Hawke, Bronwyn Lea, and Philip Mead – have shortlisted five poems. The winner will be announced on 16th January. For anyone living in Melbourne, the award night is a free night where the shortlisted poets will present their poems to the audience in the led up the announcement.

The Longlist and Shortlist:

• Lachlan Brown (NSW), 'Precision Signs' – Shortlisted
• Claire G. Coleman (Vic.), 'That Wadjela Tongue' – Shortlisted
• Diane Fahey (Vic.), 'The Yellow Room' – Longlisted
• S.J. Finn (Vic.), 'A Morning Shot' – Longlisted
• Ross Gillett (Vic.), 'South Coast Sonnets' – Shortlisted
• A. Frances Johnson (Vic.), 'My Father's Thesaurus' – Shortlisted
• Anthony Lawrence (QLD), 'Zoologistics' – Longlisted
• Kathryn Lyster (NSW), 'Diana' – Longlisted
• Julie Manning (QLD), 'Constellation of Bees' – Shortlisted
• Greg McLaren (NSW), 'Autumn mediations' – Longlisted
• Claire Potter (United Kingdom), 'Of Birds' Feet' – Longlisted
• Gig Ryan (Vic.), 'Fortune's Favours' – Longlisted
• Corey Wakeling (Japan), 'Drafts in Red' – Longlisted

All five shortlisted poems can be found here at the Australian Book Review.
I was particularly struck by Coleman's poem, That Wadjela Tongue, and I hope you take the time to duck over to read all five.
But for today, I will share one of Coleman's earlier poems.


I Am the Road | Claire G Coleman
              Highly commended for the 2018 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize.


My grandfather was the bush, the coast, salmon gums, hakeas, blue-grey banskias

Wind-whipped water, tea-black estuaries, sun on grey stone

My grandfather was born on Country, was buried on Country

His bones are Country

I am the road.


I was born off Country, in that city

I hear, less than two-weeks old I travelled Country

A bassinet on the back seat of the Kingswood

I remember travels more than I remember a home

I am the road.


My father is the beach, the peppermint tree, the city back when, before it was a city

My father is the ancient tall-tree country, between his father Country and that town

My father is World War II, his father was a soldier

My father wandered, worked on rail, drove trucks

I am the road


Campgrounds up and down that coast were the childhood home of my heart

Where my memories fled, where my happiness lived

Campgrounds in somebody else’s stolen country

I am the road


The road unrolls before me

My rusty old troopy wipes oily sweat from its underside on the asphalt

Says ‘I am here, I am here’

The engine breathes in, breathes out, pants faster than I can

Sings a wailing thundering song

Wraps its steel self around me and keeps me safe, a too large overcoat

I am the road


I slept, for a time, on the streets of Melbourne

No country, no home, as faceless as the pavement

I was dirt on the streets, as grey as the stone, as the concrete

I am the road


We showed explorers where the water was

They lay their road over our path, from water to water

Lay a highway over their road, tamed my country with their highway

I am the road


My Boodja has been stolen, raped, they dug it up, took some of it away

They killed our boorn, killed our yonga, our waitch, damar, kwoka

Put in wheat and sheep, no country for sheep my Boodja

My Country, most it is empty, the whitefellas have no use for it

Except to keep it from us

Because we want it back, need it back, because they can

I am the road.


People ask where I am from, I cannot, simply answer

To mob, I am Noongar, South Coast. I am Banksias, wind on waves on stone

To travellers, whitefella nomads, I am from where I live – that caravan over there

To whitefellas from Melbourne who see how I drink my coffee

I must be from Melbourne, I am not Melbourne

I am the road


One day wish to, hope to, dream, buy some of my grandfather’s country back

Pay the thieves for stolen goods

Theft is a crime, receiving stolen goods is a crime

Until one day

I am the road. 

Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral country is on the south coast of Western Australia. She has written two novels, Terra Nullius and The Old Lie.

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

A Poem for Thursday Moby-Dick

Earl Livings is a Melbourne based poet. His first book of poetry, Further Than Night (Bystander Press), was published in 2000.

An acrostic poem uses the first letter of each to line to spell out a message, or in this case, the title of a book and it's various characters.

It's a little bit of fun to get me back into blogging about Moby-Dick.


Moby Dick: Acrostic Sampling
By Earl Livings | 1 June 2013 | Cordite Poetry Review


1. Title

may, there stands the
of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door
bulwarks of ships from China; some
you?’ – he at last said – ‘you no speak-e,

do to take care of myself
interior door
charm wanting? – Water –
knots of human hair; and one was

open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough.
rise – yes, he’s the bird

turning flukes – it’s a nice
halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign
either in a physical or metaphysical

with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head – none to
Harpoons’ – but it looked too expensive and
about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is
leviathan himself?
ever heard of. On the contrary


2. Author

He wears a
ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company
remember that – and
meanings
a child, I well remember a somewhat similar
No one having previously heard

marble tablets, and
England traveller
lie buried beneath the green grass;
vain; the indignant gale howls
In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers
lies my
lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and
empty stomach, in the Negro heart of Africa, which was the


3. Ishmael

clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth
as seen in the
‘look you,’ roared the Captain, ‘I’ll kill-e you, you cannibal
lasso, caught it

matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes
eyes; for

I now complained
surprise and no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to
he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had
more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and
affectionate arm
eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of
long living arc of a leap


4. Queequeg

Humiliation, was
eluded him.
Another. This world pays dividends
deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven
poising his harpoon, cried out in some
egress to Bildad, who, I make no doubt, was
dost not
down for the three hundredth,’
last, and knew nothing
into an
Gayhead, said that the name would somehow

Peleg, to his partner, who, aghast at
upon this ragged old sailor; and
rig jury-masts – how to get into the
papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean
looking over the bedside, there
eagerness to vanish from before the awakened wrath of

rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent
a broad shad-bellied
soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon
content if the world is ready to
a ship-owner; Bildad, as I hinted before
look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his


5. Pequod

about his

talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his
harpooner, say; and if in emulation
invite to that town some score or two families
not a tame
graze the keel, would make her shudder

ocean to kill whales for my living, and not
fornication

the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and
ruddy, young fellow, very pugnacious
own father’s? Where in the bottomless deeps, could he find
permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not
honouring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our
island of Nantucket? Why did Britain
encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw;
since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman,


6. Ahab

or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I
lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a
devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled

than the whale-fleet
hands among the unspeakable
upon fixed wages, but upon their common
never
down to a point only.” But now comes the greatest joke of
Ere
request among jewellers and watchmakers.


7. Starbuck

soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by
this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, – as wild
against Tashego
identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for
distracted decks upon which they gaze; however,

sting, that sanity should ground
things are forced to feed – Oh, life! ’tis now that
everything
at every
descry what shoals and
from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fireside
as when an African elephant goes passenger
such a field! I think I see his impious end; but
the latent horror in thee! But ’tis not me! that


8. The Whale

A row! a row! a row!

comparatively, had knowingly seen him;
of their aspect. So that
lurking in him then, how soon would their
of the albatross: whence come those clouds
round our
life, – all this to
even at the present day has the original
strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American
storied structures, its neighbours – the

a row a’low, and a row aloft – Gods and men – both
leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound
Lords of the White Elephants

circumference, many
of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that
Latin
of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness
rising in a milk-white fog – Yea, while

only arises from the circumstances, that the irresponsible
few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to

A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row!
These two statements may perhaps
Hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested
enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale
in his frantic
sublimer
more obvious considerations touching

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

A Poem for Thursday Dub Leffler

Photo by Christoph von Gellhorn on Unsplash

Dub Leffler grew up in the small western NSW town of Quirindi. He is descended from the Bigambul and Mandandanji people of south-west Queensland. He is an illustrator of children's books, including one of my favourites from 2011 Once There was a Boy (which he also wrote) and Sorry Day (2018) with Coral Vass.

NSW is currently in the grip of the worst start to the bushfire season in living memory. Over two months of non-stop fires, that have now joined up to create a 'mega-fire' zone north of Sydney, with no end in sight. I understand that Leffler's reasons for crying in this poem run much deeper than the current environmental crisis, still, it seemed appropriate to visit this particular poem today.

I Cry for You, Country
By Dub Leffler | 1 February 2019 | Cordite Poetry Review


I cry about this country.
As I travel about in between the sliced stone mountains.
The train is a salt dipped saw.
Sawing back and forth in the wounds.

I watch the relentless invasion of lantana. We open the cuts and rip off
Bandaids
I cry for you country.

A tree’s single scream lasts years.

When I die, you will have my body.
You take my water, you take my bone.

When we have our dead days,
I will think on you.

The day we finally go, is the day, we finally return.


Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

A Poem for a Thursday by Ali Cobby Eckermann

N.B. I selected my AusReadingMonth poems over a month ago.

Given the horrendous bush fires around NSW and Queensland throughout November, I felt it was important to come back to say that this poem, and my choice to post it today in no way reflects the current state of emergency in many of our national parks and forests.

As Eckerman clearly states in her preface to her poem, it was written in response to a (stupid) political appointment a year ago and describes a feeling, not an action.

When I first read (Kuru Waru) Bushfires Eyes I was struck by the powerful imagery and the passion behind the words. Repeat readings have only reinforced its impact.


(Kuru Waru) Bushfires Eyes
By Ali Cobby Eckermann | 1 February 2019 | Cordite Poetry Review


A response to the appointment of Tony Abbott as Special Envoy of Indigenous Affairs by the newly self-elected Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison 29 August, 2018.

There are bushfires burning in my eyes
I am burning down the modern world
I am burning your invasion of me
I am burning the image of you
You are all burning on my pyre

I am burning your prejudice of me
I am burning your paternalism
I am burning your policies
I am burning your excuses
I am burning your greed

I am burning your lack of understanding
I am burning your refusal to acknowledge that
I am burning your insults and beratings
I am burning your reaction to this poem
There are bushfires burning in my eyes

My Mother the land is crying
My Mother is crying with beauty
My Mother is crying with sadness
I am crying for all my mothers
We are crying for our land

Our tears are embers unable to quell
There has been no lull in you
There will be no lull in me
I am burning down the modern world
There are bushfires burning in my eyes


Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country edited by Julianne Schultz & Ashley Hay

Image: James Tylor, Turralyendi Yerta (Womma) 2017 Photograph with ochre & charcoal.

Place. Land. Country. Home. These words frame the settings of our stories. Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country focuses on Australia’s vast raft of environments to investigate how these places are changing and what they might become; what is flourishing and what is at risk. 

How we speak of and to the world we live in requires us to make sense of where we are and where we’re going; it requires us to describe, interrogate and analyse our places from the smallest to the grandest of scales. In the second issue of Griffith Review, published fifteen years ago, Melissa Lucashenko wrote of ‘earthspeaking, talking about this place, my home’. All these years later, the need to hear all sorts of earthspeak has perhaps never been more urgent.

In the past, I would have gobbled up the stories, essays, poems and articles in a Griffith Review edition in one fell swoop. Leaving me with a general impression of the theme of the edition and a vague memory of some of the pieces. But this time, I decided to go slow.

Slow Reading is my new mantra. I want to read as thoughtfully, consciously and carefully as I can as often as I can. Obviously, not all books lend themselves to this approach. Some stories are lightly told, some favourite series are formulaic although lovable and comforting and some books are nothing more than a quick, easy holiday read. They all have their purpose, time and place.

But some books deserve more. And sometimes I deserve more!
Sometimes I want to devote more time to one book so that I can savour each moment, delve deeply and create a rich reading memory of my time with the book.

In recent times. Les Miserables was one such book, and I'm currently reading Moby-Dick with this slow reading approach. Back in February, when I acquired my copy of the Griffith Review 63, I decided to do the same. To slow read each essay and story. To let each one stand alone in my memory.

I confess, I didn't think I would still be reading it in November!

It also left me in a quandary about how best to record my slow reading experience. Giving each piece it's own post would be too laborious for me and rather dull for you, oh brave internet wanderer who landed on my page!

The passing of time has allowed the answer to present itself to me. Just like my Moby-Dick chapter posts, I will present each essay with a brief snapshot of the things that caught my eye or captured my imagination. Poems and stories I will leave for another time.

Introduction: On Suicide on Watch? The Enduring Power of Nature | Julianne Schultz (26th Nov 2018).

• societies and cultures evolve in response to the environment in which people find themselves.
• unforeseeable natural events have destroyed some civilisations...but others have been undone by over-exploitation. 
• Arnold J Toynbee quip - more civilisations die from suicide than murder.
• A classical historian and writer of comparative history.
• Hugely popular and influential in the 1940's and 50's.
• Now criticised for being more of a Christian moralist than an historian - ouch! (Encyclopedia Britannica).
• Schultz believes that we may be on 'suicide watch' but we can still feel optimistic with a 'sense of agency'.
• McLean Foundation and The Nature Conservancy commissioned writers for this edition.
• The McLean Foundation is a family foundation that has four areas of interest: protecting Australia’s biodiversity; supporting inter-city, rural and remote literacy programs for disadvantaged Australian children; rural tertiary education scholarships; and community development programs. 
• Their environmental funding to date has included establishing and supporting The Nature Conservancy Australia and their Nature Writing Prize. Robert McLean is the Chair of The Nature Conservancy Australia, a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Co, and a Board Member of Philanthropy Australia.
• I love that people like Robert McLean exist. Read his 2011 bio in the SMH here.

Essay: Crossing the Line | Ashley Hay

• or the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.
• There are mechanisms and consequences we can already see and understand (the known knowns).
• There are effects and impacts we can see happening without yet understanding why, or how they might impact each other (the known unknowns).
• And then there are the 'unknown unknowns', the layers of knowledge about our planet's natural systems, their requirements, their reactions and interactions that we don't know about yet. The Things that we cannot see coming.
• 30 yrs ago the CSIRO investigated what would happen if we doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. 
• 'Most of the consequences that science then predicted would occur by 2030 we've already seen.' Griffith University's Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe.
• Including Perth's rainfall declining by about a quarter in 30 years. But what wasn't predicted was the decline by two-thirds of the run-off rate. 
• 'it's hotter and drier when it rains, which means there's a more dramatic reduction in run-off' - which means there is less water available to be collected when it does rain.
• A road trip is a kind of mediation. Time and space stretch a little and you pay different attention to the landscapes you move through.
• biophilia - love of nature
• The Permian-Triassic extinction, 252 million years ago, wiped out more than nine-tenths of all species. It took the ecosystems effected about 5-8 million years to recover.
• The unknown unknowns in all of this are each and every one of us: what we purchase, what we vote for and what we insist on, as much as how we live.
• Hay's solution - pay attention, witness this moment, imagine the unknowns, imagine what's coming next.

Essay: Lost and Found in Translation | Kim Mahood

• Books in books - Kangaroo (D H Lawrence), Voss (Patrick White), To the Islands, Tourmaline, Midnite, Visitants and The Merry-go-round in the Sea (Randolph Stow), Animal Farm (George Orwell), Tracks (Robyn Davidson), The Songlines (Bruce Chatwin), Belomor (Nicholas Rothwell)
• what is consistent in all these books is the presence of Aboriginal people in various configurations.
• Ochre and Rust (Philip Jones) songlines are a 'kind of scripture, a framework for relating people to land, and to show that their relationship is inalienable.'
• The major songlines, such as the Seven Sisters, are like arteries that carry the life force of the culture through the body of the country.
• songlines are fixed in the landscape
• but they can be performed anywhere, with permission.
• the land is as conscious as the people who live in it.

Essay: Boodjar ngan djoorla: Country, my bones | Claire G Coleman

• My bones are in the soul of Country, and Country is in my bones.
• No matter where we go Country calls out to us.
• I wept when I realised Country had not forgotten me even when I did not know Country. My old-people, my ancestors, would care for me.
• Truth escapes in the end, lies cannot live forever.

Essay: A Fragile Civilisation: Collective living on Australian soil | Stephen Muecke

• Ancient Indigenous civilisations and/or modern Western civilisations.
• I would like to define civilisation as planned, sustainable collective living.
• Yolngu as Indigenous example.
• If the Yolgnu have flourished for up to 50 000 years, while the kind of civilisation based on large cities could self-destruct after only a few hundred, perhaps it is time to recalibrate what we mean by civilisations.

Essay: The Planet is Alive: Radical histories for uncanny times | Tom Griffiths

• Amitav Ghosh - The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016)
• we are knowingly killing the planetary systems that support survival of our species.
• we half aware of this predicament yet also paralysed by it, caught between horror and hubris.
• Anthropocene - a new geological epoch that recognises the power of humans in changing the nature of the planet, its atmosphere, oceans, climate, biodiversity, even its rocks and stratigraphy.
• The Great Acceleration - from the 1950's when the human enterprise suddenly exploded in population and energy use.
• Or the Sixth Extinction - humans have wiped out about two-thirds of the world's wildlife in just the last half century.
• Big History - David Christian - history of the universe - global storytellers.

Reportage: A Change in the Political Weather? Forecasting the future of climate policy | Paul Daley

• Carl Feilberg - late 1800's Queensland - human rights activist & environmentalist.
• Bio coming soon by Robert Ørsted-Jensen.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Daley wrote this piece Nov 2018 and talked about politicians being out of step with public opinion about climate change and that this would be evident in the federal election in 2019. Instead it showed that journalists were out of step with the broader public opinion about climate change. They were (I am) living in an inner city bubble and we all made the mistake in thinking that the rest of Australia (rural, suburban and city fringes) felt the same as us or had the same priorities and concerns.

Essay: We All Took a Stand: Margaret River versus the coal industry | David Ritter

• Loved this piece.
• I had no idea that this even happened - there is power in our stories if we choose to tell them.
• The community of the Margaret River took on the coal industry and won.
• Australia's approval systems for fossil fuel mining are antiquated and loaded towards the interests of developers.
•  In this case, the political and business elite decided, emphatically, that some things are more important than the extraction of fossil fuels.

Essay: Life and Death on Dyarubbin: Reports from the Hawkesbury River | Grace Karskens

• The Real Secret River: Dyarubbin | 2017

Essay: Rebuilding Reefs, Restoring Memory: At work in the waters of history | Anna Clark

• Clifton Springs shellfish reef restoration project, near Geelong.
• R H Tawney - doing history well meant contemplating the processes of how (and where) the past relates to people in the present.
• over 95% of native flat oyster & blue mussel reefs have disappeared across southern Australia.
• each generation remembers what fisheries were like at the beginning of their own lifetimes, so that the baseline of that ecosystem subtly changes over time...an ever-lower bar is set as the 'new normal'.

Reportage: The Butterfly Effect: Stalking a giant in PNG | Jo Chandler

• 1906 | Albert Stewart Meek
• Ornithoptera alexandrae | Queen Alexandra's birdwing - largest butterfly in the world.
• rural people do not always understand the outsider notion of 'conservation', and outsiders do not always understand what villagers think of when they imagine 'development'.

Memoir: The Suburbsm the 60's: What use a scrap of bush? | Kate Veitch

• Growing up in Vermont and Nunawading.
• An outdoor life, playing in the nearby bush.
• Naturally, we never talked about our adventures to our parents. Nor did they ask. This was an era when parents had better things to do than hover over their children, monitoring their every move.
• Healesville Freeway Reserve | 2012
• The importance of place & childhood spaces.

Reportage: Eating Turtle: Changing narratives of the normal | Suzy Freeman-Greene

• Heron Island
• the heroes of the story are scientists.

Memoir: It's Scary but Nobody Cares: Challenging Australia's reputation for deadliness | Ashley Kalagian Blunt

• A Canadian view of Australia, drop bears and other deadly creatures.

Essay: Valuing Country: Let me count three ways | Jane Gleeson-White

• In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognise the rights of nature.
• Rights-of-nature laws also now in Bolivia, New Zealand, India and Colombia.
• three ways of thinking about the natural world - country, natural capital, rights of nature.
• 2016 Fitzroy River Declaration recognises the river as a living ancestral being with its own life force.
• 2017 Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron).
• 2018 petition to protect the legal rights of the Great Barrier Reef.
• Capitalism is fundamentally opposed to preserving nature.
• ecological economics.
• protecting the environment is a good thing for humanity | Carl Obst

Reportage: Ghost Species and Shadow Places: Seabirds and plastic pollution on Lord Howe Island | Cameron Muir

• Runner-Up Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing 2019
• Shortlisted for the Eureka Prize for Science Communication
• flesh-footed shearwaters | mutton birds
• they vomit plastic. The parent shearwaters here are slowly feeding their chicks to death with plastic.
• the plastic blocks their digestive tracts and can pierce internal organs.
• A torrent of plastic is coming. More plastic was produced in the last fifteen years than in the previous fifty. 

Essay: The Cost of Consumption: Dispatches from a planet in decline | James Bradley

•  2018 Living Planet Report
• The sheer scale of the problem makes it difficult to think about.
• As creatures disappear, we forget them, as baselines shift we adjust, and the world as it was is lost.
• The Great Acceleration
• For while population growth has played a part, the rise in GDP and energy far outstrips the rise in population. In fact it is humanity's booming middle classes...who are the problem. The ecological footprint of an average Australian or American is three times that of a Costa Rican, and almost eight or nine times that of the average Indian or African. It is also, significantly, double that of many Europeans.
• The real problem is the insatiable consumption of the world's wealthy.
• We already possess the technologies to deal with the problem - renewable energy, sustainable farming practices...better education and literacy, especially for women...basic income...progressive taxation and economic reform...better governance....
• Environmental justice is also social justice and intergenerational justice. But it is also interspecies justice.

Essay: Climate Change, Science and Country: A never-ending story | Brendan Mackey

• the climate norm will be there is no norm.
• scientists are not catastrophists - they project rather than predict.
• Climate change may be a scientific discovery, but it is the humanities and creative arts that speak to what this means.

Reportage: Remaking Nature: Novel strategies in modified landscapes | Andrew Stafford

• Bitterns in Rice project
• Yandina Creek Wetlands

Image Source

Essay: Transforming Landscapes: Regenerating country in the Anthropocene | Charles Massey

• regenerative farming
• Many of the world's desertifying environments are the result of human activity. In Australia - as in the Middle East...
• in mismanaged landscapes the small water cycles are destroyed.
• capitalist market economy believes in continual growth. Nature is viewed as a raw material for wealth and property creation.
• to become landscape literate.
• Paul Hawken | human brain is not wired to deal with future existential threats.
• Project Drawdown
• This is not a liberal agenda, nor is it a conservative agenda...this is a human agenda.

Essay: Encounters with Amnesia: Confronting the ghosts of Australian landscape | Inga Simpson

• Judith Wright | The love of the land we have invaded, and the guilt of invasion - have become a part of me. It is a haunted country.
• Louisa Atkinson | 1853 | The Illustrated Sydney News | Nature Notes

• Eric Rolls | A Million Wild Acres | 1981
• Mark Tredinnick | The Blue Plateau | 2009
• One of the most obvious characteristics of Australian nature writingnis the tension, for non-Indigenous Australians, around how to write about our connection to the places we love, knowing that those places were stolen from others, and possibly sites of violence.
• Although thinking of ourselves as a bush nation, we are, in fact, urban and suburban - and increasingly illiterate in nature.
• Nature writing...is...about wanting to belong, a yearning for connection with the natural world and the places in which we live. To be at home....Instead of trying to write ourselves all over the landscape, it is time to hear what it is saying and write it deeper into our selves.

This is the very first Griffith Review I have read from cover to cover. 

Previously I have enjoyed the occasional essay or story when an online prompt led me to the one free monthly read I am allowed as a non-subscriber. I was, however, particularly drawn to the topic of this edition. I figured it would have lots to say about the environment, climate change, Indigenous perspectives and landscape. It did. 

My Goodreads wishlist has exploded as I pour over the individual the bibliographies and I have found new authors to explore. I have discovered new-to-me websites and environmental projects that not only provide the scientific facts about climate but also give us all hope that we can really look after this planet we live on, if we really want to.

I won't be able to devote as much time as I have for this edition to all future editions, or even to catching up on the back list editions. It will be a case of cherry-picking the topics and authors that interest me or challenge me the most.

The various essays, stories and poems in this edition, helped me to complete several squares on my AusReadingMonth Bingo card - NSW, VIC, QLD, TAS and WA. As a bonus, I also ticked off a few nearby islands - Heron Island, Lord Howe Island and PNG.

#AusReadingMonth
#NonFictionNovember

A Poem for a Thursday by Melissa Lucashenko

Image source

Sydney has once again woken up shrouded in bush fire smoke. Air quality is very poor and people are being asked to avoid exercising outdoors. It's hot one day, cold and blustery the next. It's hard to breath freely and it's not even summer yet.

Two weeks ago it was the smoke from the fires in northern NSW. This week, fires are blazing to the west of Sydney in the Hawkesbury area.
Sydney will be moving onto level 2 water restrictions in the next week or so (although many areas in western areas have been on level 4 or higher restrictions for months).

The rain forests in Queensland have been burning and catastrophic fire warnings are in place again today for South Australia. Victoria is on high alert as well. It's going to be a long day for the firies.

Perhaps if we thought about the trees as people, with a gender and personality, like the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, we would have found a better way to live with them and take care of them.
I'm trying not to think about the koalas and wombats and possums. The news coming in is just too distressing.

Melissa Lucashenko is an Aboriginal writer of Goorie and European heritage.

She was the winner of the 2019 Miles Franklin Award and the Queensland Premier’s award for a work of state significance for Too Much Lip.

As well as the winner of the 2013 Deloitte Queensland Literary Award for Fiction and the Victorian Premiers Prize for Indigenous Writing for Mullumbimby.

She won the 2013 Walkely Award for Long Form Journalism with her Griffith Review essay, “Sinking Below Sight: Down and Out in Brisbane and Logan”. Lucashenko also writes poems.

This poem caught my eye because my father grew up in the area of Crystal Creek, near the small town of Numinbah. Going for drives to the Natural Bridge and through the valley are part of my childhood memories. It's a beautiful area with a long history.
Small fires went through this area two months ago.

Numinbah Valley in Spring
By Melissa Lucashenko | 1 February 2016 | Cordite Poetry Review


In the Yugambeh there exist three genders: male, female, and a gender used specifically to refer to trees.


Twenty thousand moons shone here upon the People
and twenty thousand more before that
showed themselves crystal in the rushing streams
flanked with green lichened giants, beloved brothers
our other selves who have endured so much

Now the People are few here, and pale
white men came six seconds ago with their bibles and noise
the People left, bleeding
we left, torn from our mother’s arms to be made white

Our tallest selves on this mountain remain, strong and beautiful
Our tallest selves use the wind to speak, asking
Why are we lonely?
Where have our families gone?

Here, I answer, singing them a new song
jarjum yanbelillah mobo
the children of the People will return
goorie jinungilellah numinbah jagan mobo
your other selves will be standing alongside you again tomorrow
we will not cry long; we will not salt the earth of our grandmothers
be happy in your waiting Tall Ones
we are coming
we are coming
we are coming

Natural Bridge or the Nature Arch as we knew it back in the 1970's

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

A Poem for a Thursday - Venus and Mars

Whilst trawling the interweb for possible AusReadingMonth poetry choices recently, I was thrilled to discover the Cordite Poetry Review. It has an abundance of local poets, some known to me already (like Ellen Van Neervan, Eileen Chong, Kim Mahood, John Kinsella, Kirli Saunders just to name a few), but many more new-to-me poets.

I still feel very tentative about poetry, but I'm keen to learn. It's exciting to find an online place that allows me to explore and experiment. To discover what I like and what I don't. A place I can revisit at my leisure.

During my recent exploration I also discovered someone I know. Alison, is the sister-in-law of my new boss. And I'm delighted that I can feature one of her poems during AusReadingMonth.

Venus and Mars
By Alison Gorman | 1 May 2017 | Cordite Poetry Review


Sandro Boticelli, c1485

Awake now. Remember our love
in the shade of a wild myrtle forest.
Your red, silk pallium softens our bed
of bracken and leaf. The air is cool here,
broken by swallow song and the hum
of wasps that swarm and crown
your abundant hair. I study your ecstatic
slumber-a sole crease of brow, an easy
parting of lips, your brave span of chest.
I want the burn of your eyes, the brine
of your skin. Far from bloodshed
and the din of battle, you abandon it all:
your lance, cuirass and beloved blue helmet.
Naked and fearless you surrender to me.
A little death that strands you oblivious
to lewd taunts of drunken satyrs. Fat bellied
with goat leg and horn they thieve, thrust
and sound a conch but still you do not stir.
This is no time for sleep. Gather your strength.
For I am your bright star and when you wake

I will ruin you again.


Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

A Poem on Thursday - Sorry's Essence

In preparation for AusReadingMonth, starting tomorrow, I thought we should explore poems that reflect Australian life in all it's facets. This week we have poet, Mark Mahemoff. According to wikipedia, Mahemoff’s poetry is 'chiefly concerned with framing, reimagining and memorialising commonplace moments, primarily in an urban setting.'

Sorry’s Essence
By Mark Mahemoff | 1 May 2012 | Cordite Poetry Review


This poem is constructed using words and phrases directly from Kevin Rudd’s ‘Sorry’ speech
as reprinted in The Sydney Morning Herald (online version) on February 13, 2008.

I move today we honour, we reflect
on mistreatment of the oldest history, indigenous people
who were stolen, blemished in our nation
the time has now come to turn Australia’s history
by righting the future
we apologise for profound grief and suffering and loss
and pain and indignity and degradation and sheer brutality and hurt
of mothers and fathers and brothers
and sisters and families and communities
breaking up inflicted on a proud people and the spirit
healing, heart, embraces
never, never again
solutions, respect, resolve, responsibility
origins are truly equal
remove a great stain
do so early
an elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman
has travelled a long way to be with us
she remembers the love and the warmth
and the kinship of those days long ago
she remembers she insisted on dancing
rather than just sitting and watching
she remembers the coming of the welfare men
tears flowing, clinging
complex questions
it was as crude as that
Tennant Creek and Goulburn Island
and Croker Island and Darwin and Torres Strait
She was 16
a broken woman fretting
ripped away from her
it’s a good thing that you are surrounded by love
Sorry
And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him
there is something terribly primal about these
a deep assault
stony, stubborn and deafening
leave it languishing
human decency, universal human decency
deliberate, calculated, explicit, and notorious
Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation
all native characteristics are eradicated
they are profoundly disturbing, well motivated, justified.
an apology well within the adult memory span
a point in remote antiquity
it is well within the adult memory span of many of us
therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well
the darkest chapters
with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public
we are also wrestling with our own soul
cold, confronting, uncomfortable
there will always be a shadow hanging over us
I am sorry
I am sorry
I am sorry
without qualification
Yuendumu, Yabara, Pitjantjatjara
there is nothing I can say today
I cannot undo that
grief is a very personal thing
imagine the crippling effect
it is little more than a clanging gong
a thinly veiled contempt
the gap will set concrete
the truth is a business
halve the appalling gap
back the obscenity
beyond our infantile bickering
Dreamtime

Parliament House, Canberra. Photo by Michael on Unsplash

On his website, Mark discusses how,

his writing primarily involves memorializing and eulogizing the overlooked and forgotten. Not only people but places and objects. He is driven by the weight of his forebears’ historical loss. Loss of family, of identity, of homeland. This loss has been handed down like an heirloom. It is the classic experience of holocaust survivors. But secreted amongst the loss is humour. He sees his task as shaping all these elements, to the best of his ability, into poetry.

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

AusReadingMonth Bingo

It's that time of year again.
Time to start thinking about how many Australian books we can read before the end of November.

Given how many of my favourite reading events now seem to be congregating around this time of year, I will make joining in AusReadingMonth as easy as possible.

So let's pack our bags and travel this big, beautiful land by book.

Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, travel guides, short stories, audio and children's book can transport us to every state, city and major town in Australia.

Our AusReadingMonth BINGO card will help us plan our journey around Australia. You can use the card throughout November or apply it retrospectively to your reading year. Whatever works best for you.

Flyby Night

If time is of the essence, one book from the BINGO card may be the prefect option for you.

A quick getaway is better than none!

Backpacker

With their compact swags, backpackers need to travel light.

If this is you, simply select one line (horizontal, vertical of even diagonal) on the BINGO card and read three books about our country.

Grey Nomad

If you have more time up your sleeve join the grey nomads in their self-contained campervans as you travel around this big, brown land of ours. 

With every crossroad on the map, there's a choice to be made; you cannot do it all, so select two lines on the BINGO card to be eligible for Grey Nomad status.

The Whole Hog

If you're feeling a little touched by the sun, then the Whole Hog may be for you.

Read NINE books this November from all of the 8 states and territories plus one freebie.

The FREEBIE can be any book by an Australian author or a book written by an overseas author but set entirely in Australia.

Uluru, Nov 2010

Time is of the essence for most of us, yet how many times do we find ourselves combining multiple reading events! If this is you, perhaps the following AusReadingMonth reading suggestions will help.

Many of the books below are essay collections or memoirs, perfect for your Non-Fiction November or Novellas in November lists.

Short Story Collections 

• Ellen Van Neerven (Heat and Light) Indigenous author
• Robert Dessaix (Twilight of Love, (and so forth), As I Was Saying) has some fabulous short stories collections featuring fiction, essays and articles. He has also studied and taught Russian Studies throughout his career. Some of his work could help you complete AusReadingMonth, Non Fiction November and Russian Lit Month.
• Helen Garner (Stories: The Collected Short Fiction, Everywhere I Look, True Stories: The Collected Short Non-Fiction)
• Robert Drewe (The Bodysurfers, The Bay of Contented Men, The Rip, The True Colour of the Sea)
• Cate Kennedy (Like A House on Fire)
• Tim Winton (Island Home, The Boy Behind the Curtain)
• Henry Lawson
• Lily Brett
• David Malouf
• Tara June Winch (After the Carnage)
• Bruce Pascoe (Salt: Selected Stories and Essays)
• The Best Australian Science Writing 2019
• Quarterly Essay
• Griffith Review
• Meanjin
• Overland
• The Monthly

Poetry

• Omar Sakr
• Alison Whitaker
• Les Murray
• Judith Wright
• John Kinsella
• Dorothy Porter
• David Malouf
• Oodgeroo Noonuccal (aka as Kath Walker)
• Clive James
• Kate Lilley
• Omar Musa
• Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann & Robert Gray
• Australian Poetry Review
• Australian Poetry Journal

There are OODLES more to chose from, but I've focused on the authors and/or journals I've read, for now. For my fellow Aussie bloggers - can you recommend any other collections of essays, short stories or poets for our overseas friends?

What will you be reading during this year's AusReading Month?