Poem in Memory of 'CPG'

Eradu

            in memory of ‘CPG’

 

1.

 

It’s not what’s written

on a sign to mark

 

where a town was.

And it’s not the railway

 

gleaming, or the bridge

that carries it over the river.

 

It’s not the vast acreage

under crop nor the twisted

 

metal uprights of a forgotten

tennis court. Nor, across

 

the line, the single mandarin

tree with its startling fruit

 

in a bed of dried mud

and herbicided grass.

 

Nor is there a space

within the space for litotes,

 

a trick of colonial expression.

It’s not this then that —

 

it’s not permission to walk

your own country,

 

your own birth. And this

is not the explanation

 

you don’t need, but a way

of remembering. It’s loss. Loss.

 

 

(ii)

 

We are before the explosive wattle

with rabbit diggings at its base.

 

We are descending the steep

gravel road towards the river crossing.

 

We hesitate. We walk under the railway

bridge with its sensors, its elevation.

 

Gambusia are darting in shallow,

algal waters and sand speaks imprint.

 

Saltbush and river redgum utter

their true names and the sun

 

questions photographs. This your

birthplace, this our presence.

 

Water over the road. Water fading.

Honeyeaters define renewal.

 

 

(iii)

 

Divided by the road of quadruple

trailered mineral-carrying trucks,

 

Eradu North and South, nature reserve

and broadacre farming, outcrops

 

and river bed, blue lupin flowers

wavering in bush enclave, on paddock edges.

 

Listen closely to vocalisations of insects

across the fringed lilies’ stereocilia.

 

I know the red-capped robin is angry

while excited, is hyped up on other matters

 

but also letting me know where I do

or don’t stand. In the biblical incursion,

 

it might be imitating a jeremiad. An

old campfire at the lookout, the river

 

working wet and dry towards

its ocean mouth, the sandbar.

 

Between ‘Greenough’ and Mullewa.

Not between country and ‘explorer’.

 

Out of time, I will stand before

the cathedral altar under stolen

 

sacred stone and silently ask,

‘Will you hear my friend’s call

 

for justice? Will you undo yourself

into the sacred, the ancient country?’

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

Curtin creative writing: Festival of Writing, and Library Illuminates: Storytellers of the West exhibition

 By Tracy

We were at Curtin University yesterday because I was reading poetry alongside a wonderful line-up of Western Australian writers all with a connection to Curtin, as part of the university's Festival of Writing to mark 50 years since the "first graduating class" of their Creative Writing course (the course actually started in 1972). The festival included workshops and panels all day and concluded with a session of readings from Chemutai Glasheen, Caitlin Kotula, Caitlin Maling, Khin Myint, myself, Kim Scott, and Thomas Simpson. 

I first went to Curtin (then called the WA Institute of Technology, or WAIT), as an undergraduate in 1983, majoring in Literature and minoring in Creative Writing, but after my first year I went off to do other things, returning to Curtin on & off until I graduated in 1990. 

In 1993 and 1994 I taught there on the Literature course (poetry units, the reading-of and analysing rather than the writing-of!), and then again to teach creative writing, both poetry and fiction, in 2000 and 2001. So my connection with Curtin not only began a long way back, but spanned quite a number of years. 

A highly memorable writing teacher I had there in the 1980s (and there were many such) was the late Julie Lewis, biographer and fiction writer, whose lessons were so intensely inspiring that groups of students would spill over into the café afterwards to continue conversations begun in her classes. I remember Julie as a phenomenon of energy and especially gifted at teaching as well as at writing.

The venue that hosted yesterday's events, the TL Robertson Library at Curtin, is also holding an exhibition this semester covering the history of Creative Writing at Curtin from its inception under the late Brian Dibble through to the present. Library Illuminates: Storytellers of the West also features displays about six of us alumni who have published books across a range of genres. In addition, they have gathered a collection of books by Curtin-connected writers to borrow and return — over 100 of them!

John Kinsella also features in the Curtin creative writing timeline as he spent some years as staff at Curtin where he is now an Emeritus Professor.

Especial thanks to Jayne Cleave, Caitlin Maling & Rachel Robertson.

Here are some photos from yesterday, mostly taken by John:

Khin Myint, John Kinsella & Reneé Pettitt-Schipp

Tracy Ryan beside alumni display in library exhibition

Tim Kinsella enjoying book corner featuring 100+ works by Curtin-related authors

Tracy Ryan with Curtin Creative writing timeline

The full exhibition display featuring 6 Curtin writer-alumni

Tracy Ryan reads poems as part of afternoon event "50 Years of Writing at Curtin"

Storytellers of Curtin "Read & Return", some of the shelves,
with wonderful bookmarks on top, featuring writers!

On the Construct of ‘Whiteness’ and its Inherent Racism: Against the Anti-Immigration Marches in ‘Australia’

John Kinsella

‘Whiteness’ is essentially a pseudo-scientific imperial-colonial construct and an ideology. Or, given the ideology-driven nature of much of the science of hate/privilege/exclusion and self-validation via arrangements of ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’, one might just say ‘scientific’ construct with ‘scientific’ inside quote marks. 

Whether drawn out of the Blumenbachian ‘Caucasian’ racialism (such as there being a so-called ‘white race’) or any other categorisation of separateness and uniqueness, there is no such thing as ‘whiteness’. People have many origins, many forms of being in the world, and for ‘whiteness’ to be separated off is a political move to create a power base against other ‘categories’. So-called ‘white people’ are not actually ‘white’ in a way that makes them somehow separate and definitely not ‘special’ — it’s a false category. For those who have experienced the toxicity and imposition of ‘whiteness’, it is understandable they might set it up as an antithetical force, something to be wary of and ‘resisted’, but ‘whiteness’ as ideology thrives on being perceived as separate. So it needs to be non-violently resisted, of course, but not valorised in that resistance. Such a disturbing slippage happens more easily than is sometimes realised.

Those who identify as ‘white’ in order to valorise themselves, to make themselves ideally separate, are using the construct as a device for control and suppression of ‘others’. We can’t let this happen. Even within poverty, ‘whiteness’ potentially becomes a means of differentiating forms of poverty in a desperate search for validation and empowerment when the real causes of poverty are being ignored, or feel beyond rectification. The grotesquely unfair distribution of ‘wealth’ across the globe and within different communities (and between different communities) and hierarchical movements of capital are the cause, and so much of that wealth-accumulation is at the hands of and controlled by those who encourage and enforce a ‘white ideology’ as an idealism and reality. ‘Whiteness’ is a meaningless word given horrendous power by capitalism and colonialism, by greed and false and specious ‘belief’. 

I believe in the rights of people to be who they are and I celebrate multiculturalism and pluralism. When I say that I think ‘whiteness needs to end’, I mean that the thinking that whiteness is somehow something separate, exclusive, significant in itself and ‘special’ needs to end. It is damaging and corrosive thinking and harms the world’s wellbeing. I personally found the recent anti-immigration marches in ‘Australia’ threatening, frightening, disgusting and worrying. And extremely wrong on every level. The disgust many anti-immigration ‘citizens’ expressed about the presence of overt self-labelling neo-Nazis in these marches reeked of hypocrisy — the very values that are being espoused around anti-migration and the covalent ‘re-migration’ are fascist ideologies that connect with core values of neo-Nazi ideology. Make no mistake, theirs is a racist, ‘white-ist’ ideology wishing to reify (to force, in fact) a new White Australia Policy. The ideals of 1901 Federation were born out of white supremacy ideology, economic control, and a religiously-underpinned ‘secularism’ of theft of Indigenous country.

I feel we need to be many people and many persons in ourselves. I feel that we all have a right to live fairly and justly and equitably. And I know that in ‘Australia’ (a name that perpetuates Indigenous dispossession) all people live on Indigenous country and that needs to be respected in itself in all ways. 

‘Australia’ is not a ‘white country’ and never was. ‘Whiteness’ is an ideology of divisiveness. Too often, surveys for demographic stats — designed to ensure fairness and pluralism across identity difference — risk forcing an unintentional categorisation and sadly in turn actually reinforce a pernicious ideology of ‘whiteness’. This is one of the processes of rectifying injustice and supporting minorities that can potentially reinforce the control of the majority. As someone who feels that ‘majorities are by their nature oppressive of minorities, I feel it essential that any sense of a ‘white’ majority is deconstructed conceptually and dismantled as a reality. 

So, I argue for all of us to be different as we are in ourselves, and for ideas of a ‘white’ majority to be seen for the falsehood it is. There is no ‘whiteness’ outside the toxic construct of racists and bigots. The very same racists who opposed Black Lives Matters protests, which arose out of systemic violence in not only the USA but across ideologically ‘white’ colonial political structures around the world, who questioned the veracity of a united position against systemic racism, also claim a systemic plot against their ‘whiteness’ due to open and inclusive immigration policies. As always, the ideology of ‘whiteness’ adapts to suit its own needs, to push its own agendas of oppression, exclusion, exploitation and ‘uniqueness’.

A Poem for All Those Who Cannot be at Public Pro-Palestinian Protests but Support Them

This is a poem for those who cannot be at the protests

This is a walking poem,

not a marching poem.

It is a poem for all those

who cannot be there in person

to walk alongside others

to show support for those suffering

in Gaza, and it’s a poem

for all those people

who find it overwhelming

to be in public, especially

in large groups of people

even if they’d like to show

kinship and participate

in a mass public display

of empathy, in a protest

against the military

state, against the arms trade

and the occupation

of Palestinian lands.

It is for those who would

be there if they could,

but are unwell, or can’t get there,

or have others relying

on them to stay close.

This is a walking poem.

This is not a marching poem

because marching can take

on rhythms that are martial,

though such marching

peaceful marching

counters the martial.

So these marches

have their own poems.

Walking together creates

a circuit of collective

energy that illuminates

and draws others to its

aura without burning them.

Light that is atmospheric

and earthed. That resonates.

It is resolved and committed

and sensitised to the pain

of those on whose behalf

the walking together

is being conducted.

This poem is for those

who can’t be there,

and its lines walk together

and as one, even if it’s

to its own step and to the steps

of all those there on the ground.

This poem is for those

who can’t walk

together on the day

but want to have it known

that they care as deeply.

 

 

            John Kinsella

The Genocide in Gaza Must Stop Now!

It is unconscionable for any person who cares about others' wellbeing not to spend every minute of their waking lives resisting the grotesque murder and starvation of the people of Gaza. Israel has proved itself one of the most brutal, dehumanising and violent states in modern history, ruled by genocidal tyrants. Of course there are many who live in Israel who do not support this psychotic act of state vengeance, and who would have sought a peaceful route through the horror. To constantly cite the violence of Hamas, its long-term militarism and cruelty, in order to excuse attacks on the Palestinian people, is part of an act of collective abuse that finds its roots in colonialism and underpins genocide. Hamas is not Palestine. What's more, the psychology of killing because others have killed (and killing in return on such a vast scale that extends back as well as forward on the timeline) is the destruction of humanity itself. Collective 'punishment' is overtly unjust by any measure, but to use vengeance as the basis for centralised actions is so far away from any sense of human rights as to be grotesque. The murder of people trying to reach food supplies, the inducing of mass famine to reduce a people to inability to act on any level, and then to see them perish, is genocide. It's such a severe situation that making analogies between the behaviour of the Israeli State/IDF and any other 'similar' crimes of history is pointless. This act of genocide will become in modern memory the basis for analogies of horror and wrongdoing for decades. And as for the vileness of the 'doing' or 'not doing' deals over what is so obscenely an unequal situation, it fits the endgame of capitalist over-reach in which capitalism becomes a question of whether an entire people mean value to the world marketplace rather than whether they are people. Everyone of us is obliged to act to save the people of Gaza — they are people, not representations on screens, not statistics, and not objects whose absence or presence is ultimately summed up in terms of the market place, in terms of what they are 'worth' to 'players' and vested interests. It must stop. Israel must withdraw. Israel must step back and let more humane agencies enter Gaza to bring some hope and physical and spiritual restoration to the people and land it has tried to destroy and steal. Israel must face up to what it is, end apartheid and share country with those whose country it is.

    John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan

Poem in Support of Those Who Refuse Conscription

Conscientious Objection

 

Praise to those who refuse conscription.

Praise to ‘draft dodgers’ and objectors to war.

May the only thing they are ever induced to burn

be their draft cards. Let them stand against

the vast sways of their deluded societies

which crave and justify war as if it’s the answer

to their crisis, crises, situations, conditions.

Praise to the ones who stand against the claims

of ‘no alternative’, ‘responsibility to your country’,

and other epithets of manipulation and destruction.

Praise to the conscience that understands killing

leads to more killing and that military ‘camaraderie’

is the ultimate ganging up, bullying behaviour.

Praise to those who know cowardice is operating

in armies is facilitating starvation and the deaths

of children. To refuse conscription, to refuse to fight,

is not cowardice, and ‘bravery’ is not even a word

with an adequate range or an adequate history

to apply to such resolution, inner strength, morality.

 

 

            John Kinsella

The Mass-murder of Starving People in Gaza

Blue Light: Wealth and Power as Murder

 

To highlight an individual case

of starvation or to discuss the dozens,

 

hundreds, thousands killed trying

to reach food supplies in choke-

 

points overlooked by soldiers

who are impartial as nationalistic poets

 

is to metastasise metaphors

or fall into similes that never

 

wear down because of their brutal

effectiveness and disposability.

 

When we are dealing with the statistics

of war-induced famine — starvation

 

as a lure to wipe out an opposition —

we shift from one death to many

 

as readily as AI takes over morality.

And scrolling down to reports

 

of those who would vandalise trees

to defend their million-dollar views

 

having completely lost sight

of the avalanche of cause into effect

 

is ensuring that personal lines of supply

have been kept open even when

 

the ground has been flattened

and trees completely removed

 

from the blue-light picture.

 

 

            John Kinsella