Author: mascara

The Kool Aid Dispenser 

by David Musgrave

ISBN ‎ 978-1763670150

Recent Works Press

&

Selected Poems, (Black Spring Press Group, 2021)                                

Reviewed by MARGARET BRADSTOCK

Having known David Musgrave and his award-winning poetry since 2005 (when he became Treasurer for Poets Union Inc.), having read with him at a number of Writers’ Festivals over the years, I was delighted to revisit the best of his early work in Selected Poems, compiled and published during the somewhat silent era of Covid.

The first of a number of poems for Musgrave’s father appears here, his early death a recurrent and disturbing preoccupation:

         He has come back.
         He has come from outside himself to assume
         the proportions of dream, in a city of symbols falling
         from deliverance, offered up to speech.                     

(“The Dead”, p.19)

When not in elegiac mood (and sometimes even there), Musgrave displays a quirky sense of humour, language play and inventive wit. These come to the fore in his 2005 collection, On Reflection, a portrait of the poet as a young flaneur, from which eleven representative pieces are selected:

         Transient flesh and the buds of death
         bloom on Mercator window-panes, rippled
         in convex heat, off on the dark road
         of the shivering heart of ugliness                                 

         ……………………………………………

         If it isn’t one thing it’s another,
         laughter without end, enough to make a cat speak.
         And, if the door does not stay shut, it opens
         on an inside that has shrunk and an
         outside that cannot be admitted:
         gnocchi clouds float in a blue soup,
         white noise in the television sky;

(pp. 23-33)

This extended poem deserves to be read in its entirety. Also included are the satiric “Minneapolis”, the wonderful “Lagoon” (which, from memory, won the Poets Union Prize, before David was persuaded to join us) and the full version of “To Thalia”, one of my all-time favourites. These poems are from To Thalia (New Poets 10, Five Islands Press). A small sample of its easy, but subtle and evocative conversational style concludes:

         So here I am on an Erskineville verandah
           under the airborne moss of a jacaranda
         floating above my head at night – and still
           I keep returning to the harbour, jagged

             wet caiman snouting the humid plain
         of Sydney because I can’t be anywhere else.
             Thalia, I’m snookered in this dumb city
         of brilliant hazards, and dull comparisons

         ……………………………………………

                                         But one of these days
         you’ll come waltzing in through the heads
                of my imagination (Krishnamurtri)
         and that will suffice to slay them in the aisles
                and flay the cured hide of this city,
         unearthing at last its pink nascent laughter.      

         (pp.49-50)

Another significant poem from this era is “Watermark” (from Watermark, 2006):

          Never judge a book by its reader
          unless it’s the kind that’s read by touch
          fingers skimming down the columns
          as if shutting dead eyes…………….

          ……………………..In another’s hands,
         the book is something else. Hold up to the light
          the note, the stamp and it will bear witness.       

        (p.63)                        

Moving on to the recent collection, The Kool Aid Dispenser, we find many of the same pre-occupations, similar laid-back satiric approaches, but up-to-date perceptions, especially in the poems including Musgrave’s son, Jingxi:

         Whenever I look at your grandson,
         I see dad’s face, but you’re the one
         or several parts of one, who animates his rage
         and cheek ……….How you would have loved
         to see him, even in your last unravelling,
         the way he pushes away my hand
        if I turn the page too soon, or how
         he will stare blankly ahead, ignoring anything
         I say before slyly looking sideways at me,
         then laughing. It’s hard to believe
         that part of me can go on being, let alone
         this tenacious chain that links to you, here

(“Letter to a Dead Parent”, p.5)

This is followed up, in a later section, with the moving poem “Walking with my young son I remember I am only a year shy of the age my father was when he had his fatal stroke”, a memory that appears to resolve itself in the shared involvement of the energetic afternoon.

Other Central Coast poems follow, punctuated with fine description and environmental awareness. In “Kooranga Dawn”:

          The cool might of morning
          deposes the night casually, like a government
          that falls at a by-election as a trawler returns,
          darkness dropping from its nets.
          ……………… Soon the mass
          of water rhymes with the sky, then veers
          into its own fractured thrall
          as a brahminy kite thermals the gathering sun.         

          (p.55)

In “Warabrook Wetlands”:

          It’s August, cold at the temples.
          I walk home indirectly
                       over the footbridge traversing wetlands and railway
                       each railing like a tyre-iron
          and under each path light
                       a loosening gyre of midges                           

           (p.56)

“Koels to Newcastle,” a delightful Musgrave pun, revisits

                 the trees that come alive at four a.m
          with plangent call after call. The koels come home
          to call the summer in,
          just like the coal which leaves here
          to arc up oceans, dial up the globe.

A neighbour’s house opposite, “rippling upside-down” in the shallows of “a little inland sea/ covering half the road”, calls forth the comment: “It usually costs a bundle for a waterfront view.” (p.60)  

Finally, “How I love thunderstorms” celebrates

                                                              the thrill
          of the cosmic on a domestic scale:
          snipes and spars that rend and boom.
          sheets of light that leap into the night sky
          illuminating our snug insignificance.                  

          (p.62)

For those who’ve been aficionados of David Musgrave’s poetry over several decades, or those wanting to discover where he’s ‘come from’ poetically: 

                                                       if it’s true
          to say I come from somewhere not just
          anywhere south of the imagination

          ……………………………………

          It’s Lagoon with wind-tussocked, wrinkled
          hills worn down to a murmur
          that claims me.                                                    

          (p.36)            

these two recent collections will be a welcome addition to their bookshelves.

MARGARET BRADSTOCK is a Sydney poet, critic and editor. She has been a Senior Lecturer at UNSW, Asialink writer-in-residence at Beijing University, co-editor of Five Bells, and on the Board of Directors for Australian Poetry. Her poetry is widely published and has won awards, including the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for The Pomelo Tree and the Woollahra Festival Award for Barnacle Rock. Alchemy of the Sun (Puncher &Wattmann, 2024) is her ninth collection.

Plastic Budgie

by Olivia de Zilva

Pink Shorts Press

ISBN: 9781763554146

Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM

Olivia de Zilva’s debut is a memoir told in three strikingly different parts. First, de Zilva takes the reader through her memories of a Chinese Australian childhood, where impressionistic description is juxtaposed with nuggets of heavy-handed familial wisdom, as she navigates the milestones of childhood and adolescence. She then shares her struggle, as a writer, for the correct organizing principle for her story; and finally, reflects on symbols and how they are interpreted. Plastic Budgie does not play to reader expectations for a story about coming of age as a Chinese Australian, though it does delve into many aspects of that experience. It does not deliver a narrative that is safe, predictable or neatly structured, nor does it wrangle together a conventionally satisfying resolution; rather, it puts all the elements of second-generation immigrant memoir on the table and confronts readers with the instability of meaning and with their own expectations of the story.

In the first part, with humour, irony and cynicism, de Zilva recalls a childhood as the daughter of Chinese parents from Hong Kong. Her grandparents’ rules provide a framework for her existence even before she is born, with her mother told not to leave the house for a month after giving birth and not to think about sex while pregnant or the baby will be infertile. She attends an Adelaide school with Anglo Australian kids who bully her, prompting a period of mutism, during which her parents shrug their shoulders when asked if anything traumatic has happened to her. The family is agonisingly aware of the white gaze, with her parents refusing to watch Cantonese dramas ‘as if someone would find out and tell Pauline Hanson’, and her mother embarking on a mission ‘to make me more Australian’ (p 33). References to cultural markers such as Harry Potter and Delta Goodrem locate the reader in Australia in the early 2000s, but de Zilva does not probe this cultural moment, instead segueing fluidly between past and present. She ponders her family’s affliction with ‘purple’ – her mother’s word for her father’s temper – which the author also recognises in herself and interprets as linked to loneliness and bitterness. She refers several times to a curse, before her mother clarifies, ‘the women in our family are cursed with ghosts’ (p. 108), but it is not until later that this trope is deeply explored.

In the second part of Plastic Budgie, de Zilva reflects on what it means to write an ending. Suddenly she is all self-awareness. The reader can orientate herself and see that the genres gestured at in the previous section are now to be unpicked. The sense that we were being given a summary, rather than immersed in a world, crystalises into an interrogation of the sort of narrative the author should write, an acknowledgement of the weight of conflicting expectations, and the struggle to reconcile warring versions of herself. She recalls different drafts with different foci:

First this started out as a series of random events, like when I poured noodles on a family from a balcony in Darwin. At one point, it was a verbatim recount of obsession with horses and the lead singer of The Killers.’ (p. 123)

She then interrogates her preoccupation with doubling, tracing the presence of twinning all through her life from her Western horoscope (Gemini) to her Chinese one (the equally duplicitous rat) and evokes a struggle with ‘the part of me I couldn’t avoid’ (p.130). She asks her grandmother in Hong Kong if there is any way to end a haunting, to which the woman replies simply, ‘No.’ de Zilva juxtaposes Western medical explanations of hereditary illness with her family beliefs about family curses and explores the legacy of being raised with cultural notions that can’t be reconciled with her Western existence. She explores how she has been shaped by her family’s beliefs and muses that her culture does not really acknowledge trauma, unless you count the opera where the swan princess escapes the ugly frog. So, she goes to the one place everything is acknowledged: Reddit.

At this point, I should out myself as an Anglo Australian reader. Despite being half Chinese, I was raised by my Anglo parent, and when I read, I read with Anglo Australian eyes. I was very conscious of this as I was reading Plastic Budgie, particularly as it was pitched to me as a memoir ‘with themes that resonate for many readers’. I wondered if I was positioned wrong to read and respond to the text as intended. While de Zilva’s mother tries to make her more Australian, as a young person my own discomfort was often prompted by the keenness of others (of adults) to engage with me as a Chinese person when I had no sense of myself as any such thing. The further I read, though, the more it seemed that these were exactly the questions the memoir was dragging to the surface. What is an Asian Australian narrative? Who is it written for and who is it read by? Should a writer be defined by her mother or by her father? Is one more of an outsider when viewed as Chinese in Australia, or when viewed as Australian in Hong Kong? How much weight should we give to medical explanations, and does this mean giving correspondingly less weight to more marginal epistemologies? All of this leads to perhaps the biggest question of our times: what counts as truth?

The doubling that de Zilva writes of hints at a discomfort – or split – between the two halves of her identity: Asian and Australian, mother and father, the observer and the observed, the child and the adult, the inheritor of a curse and the recipient of a diagnosis. Such doubling of identity has been a feature of other recent works. I’m thinking of Pip Adam’s Nothing To See, in which each character has dual selves who live parallel lives in two separate bodies. I’m thinking too of Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, which interrogates the phenomenon of doubling in online, political and cultural life, and what this says about polarised culture. After posting a question on Reddit about her haunting, de Zilva learns that many users feel that it is common for people to be frightened of themselves. She then admits to deleting her search history of mentions of ghosts and hauntings, signalling the shadowing between covert online activity and the curated online self of social media. Again, shades of Klein. Deconstructionist and performative approaches to being Chinese have also been features of other recent Australian works – such as Siang Lu’s Miles Franklin-winning novel, Ghost Cities, in which the protagonist achieves a level of celebrity when #badchinese starts trending, a reference to his failure to perform his Asianness in a way that is acceptable to others.

de Zilva’s bio tells us that she wrote her master’s thesis on representation of Asian-diasporic identity in contemporary Australian publishing, and this interest is explicit throughout the text. It may be that in this post-truth era where information is curated for the individual internet user, and where beliefs are chosen to suit one’s identity or agenda, the unified and linear Asian-Australian narratives of writers like Alice Pung and Li Cunxin are giving way to more meta and internet-based approaches to bicultural identity. Some readers of Plastic Budgie may miss the cohesion of earlier waves of creative non-fiction; others may be heartened that Asian-diasporic experience has moved sufficiently towards the centre that attention can now be focussed on questions of self-representation and the implications of how we tell a story.

FERNANDA DAHLSTROM was born in Melbourne and has made homes in Darwin and Brisbane. She practised law for eight years, in the Northern Territory and Queensland.  Her memoir, The Framing, will be released by MUP in 2026. The manuscript was shortlisted for the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer in 2023 and highly commended in the Next Chapter 2024. Her work has appeared in Sydney Review of Books, Kill Your Darlings, Overland Literary Journal, Art Guide Australia and The Guardian. She is currently a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology.

The Language of Limbs

by Dylin Hardcastle

ISBN 9781761269875

Pan Macmillan

Reviewed by AZ COSGROVE

The main thing you need to know about Dylin Hardcastle’s Language of Limbs (2024) is that it’s bloody beautiful. I’m not the first to say that it will be a classic in queer literature, and I won’t be the last. Hardcastle’s prose is breathtaking: lyrical and edgy. And it is language that holds up to very heavy subject matter — which is unavoidable in a book, set during the AIDs crisis in the historically volatile 1970s and 80s. I should probably warn you that reading this book will hurt, especially if you happen to identify as queer or love someone who does. It deals with extreme queer phobia, the violent lineage of Mardis Gras—historical wounds that have barely healed. You’ll probably cry. My advice: allow for tea breaks and, if you can, have a dog ready to pat.

Language of Limbs begins in Newcastle, where we meet two mirrored characters referred to as Limb One and Limb Two. On the same night, these characters both come face to face with their same-sex attraction to their best friends —but while Limb One refuses to continue to lead a life hostile to this facet of their identity, Limb Two chooses to suppress this part of themself and to live out the comparatively charmed heteronormative narrative available to them. The rest of the novel continues with this couplet structure, with alternating ‘Limb One’ or ‘Limb Two’ chapters written from the perspective of the eponymous character.

As they grow from teenagers to young adults, Limb One is immersed in the queer culture from which Limb Two repeatedly turns away. They endure the unimaginable losses of the AIDS crisis while for Limb Two this remains peripheral, a narrowly dodged bullet.

This structure is unconventional, and it takes us a moment to get used to before it starts to work—but when it does, it is incredibly effective. The structure allows complex issues—like internalised queer phobia, the lack of intersectionality in the queer community, and the nuanced relationship between trauma and art—to be explored from multiple angles, giving the book a unique dimensionality. Hardcastle has said that the idea for the narrative structure came from a conversation with a friend about “how almost kissing is sometimes hotter than actually kissing,” which led them to wonder: “what would it look like to have two lives just almost kissing?” (1). The structure functions to constantly remind us to connect the individual lives we are reading about to something larger: the metaphorical “body” which is the only context within which “limbs” make sense. However, many have noted that the narrative complexity could perhaps be off-putting to some readers.

I found that while it started and ended strongly, the narrative sagged somewhat in the middle. This corresponds exactly with the mysterious and compelling slippage between the two storylines. At the beginning of the novel, it’s unclear as to whether Limb One and Two are different people or alternative, ‘sliding door’ versions of the same, , and this ambiguity hooks the reader. The chilling internal dialogue ‘I think I might die here’ (3, 10) appears in both stories, and details like apricot chicken (15, 19), and the copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando in the school library (19, 23) pop up in both stories and take on a ghostly resonance. Such repetitions largely vanish in the middle of the book, when the lives of the characters diverge so significantly that any connection between them feels tenuous at best. There is a resurgence of these shared experiences at the end of the book, but by this point the narratives of the two limbs are so distinct that the device feels almost perfunctory. But whilst I think the structure might have been better sustained, this is a small criticism. 

Some have also observed that the Limb One chapters were more engaging to read, but as a criticism it doesn’t hold much weight, because the difference between these characters is exactly the point. Limb One has their coffee ‘strong, black no sugar’(53) and this is consistent with their personification as direct and unapologetic, while Limb Two is more careful, tentative. They study hard, get a scholarship and a boyfriend, and even in electric moments of collective action, instinctively recoil (66) when Limb One dives into the fray. On the sentence level, imagery of being ‘turned inside out’ recurs again and again in the Limb One chapters (3, 74, 137), Limb Two balks at this state of absolute vulnerability, instead choosing to remain, to extrapolate on the image, with skin facing outwards. ‘It’s easier this way,’ (13) they tell us. These characters come to represent two sides of the same conceptual coin, subtly different, in a way similar to how fresh blood differs from a day-old bruise, or the way that falling asleep is different to being knocked out.

Further, I think it could be argued that the Limb Two storyline represents a more nuanced perspective that is arguably more applicable today, when hatred has become more insidious, harder to define—when often it exists in glinting eyes, in sharp toothed smiles and sodden, dripping silences. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek distinguishes this quieter form of violence as “subjective” rather than “objective” (2). In Language of Limbs, Limb Two manages to escape the explicit, physical acts of violence—spilled blood, broken bones—that plague Limb One’s story, but is never able to escape what she has chosen to suppress:

‘I nod. Swallow and feel the memory pushed back under. Sunk down. As her face resettles on the ocean floor of my body, I feel the strangle of disgust loosen.’
(195)

The list of other things I loved about this book is long, too long to fully recount here, but I will expand briefly on a few. I loved the unapologetically Australian tone—in the opening chapters, we encounter suburban backyard barbecues (15), Arnott’s family biscuits (22), flowering gumtrees (10), and high school hookups in the back of a Ford Falcon (29). I also loved the poignant and nuanced of different relationships to art: while Limb One develops a career of art making, Limb Two finds their strength in ‘picking at and teasing apart sentences, extrapolating, like a miner sieving earth for gold’ (97) and becomes an editor, highlighting the interesting relationship between artistic practice and the internal. I also loved the unrelentingly visceral imagery used throughout the book—quotes like ‘I feel as if my lungs are on fire, like I might, in a moment, smell the reek of my muscle burning’ (74) create a consistently “embodied” reading experience that nicely complements the broader conceptual framework.

I began this review by telling you that Language of Limbs is beautiful—and it really is. The prose that Hardcastle uses is simply extraordinary. It is writing that’s simultaneously rich with metaphors but also tastefully restrained. While the imagery is dense with the figurative, it never feels flowery or confusing. Take this quote, describing the sudden influx of the AIDs crisis into ‘Uranian House’, the queer haven where Limb One lives:

‘Uranian House opens its door and those who are drowning wash in, drenched and shaken. We give them towels and chicken soup and wait, anxiously, for the blue to fade from their flesh.’
(92)

However, while I loved this lyrical, poetic writing, this prose style coupled with the heavy themes can become a bit hard to get through. See my aforementioned tips re: tea and dogs. 

But that’s about it for my “cons” list. Safe to say, I liked this book. Language of Limbs is blisteringly intelligent, lyrical, and masterful in its execution.

Or, as I keep telling people in my real life: Really bloody good.

 Cited

1. DYLIN HARDCASTLE: Gay Liberation Is Indebted To Blak Trans Women on Podcast: It’s A Lot with Abbie Chatfield •Sea. 7 Ep. 6
2. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, New York: Picador, 2008

Not Telling

by Alison J. Barton

Puncher & Wattmann

Reviewed by ANTHEA YANG

In Not Telling, Alison J. Barton paints an expansive portrait of memory, family, culture and the personal and collective grief and trauma caused by the colonisation of Australia. Weaving through the collection’s three main sections, and binding the themes together, is the concept and interrogation of language — how it has been used to silence Aboriginal history and how it can be reclaimed to enable truth-telling. The idea of muteness, whether by choice (secret-keeping as a form of protection of heritage) or force (the erasure of cultural narratives), is a recurring motif throughout the collection, and the title itself, Not Telling, places the possibilities and powers of language and storytelling back into the hands of Aboriginal peoples. In ‘The phases of psychoanalysis’, Barton suggests the act of reclaiming language, of speaking truth, allows for personal and collective history to live on beyond:

‘speech is the end to mortality
a place for hiding fragments’
(p.28)

The first of three sections, ‘Wild garments’ maps the effects of trauma on the body through a myriad of environments the speaker interacts with. From place to place, the poet creates a sense of movement through time and memory that gives emphasis to how trauma can cause exterior and interior worlds to coalesce, blurring the physical and psychological. In ‘I pass winter driving to my mother’s house’, Barton explores this through a complex mother-daughter relationship: 

‘when we say goodbye
I wilt practise grief
she    in her heavily unmedicated state
  we
          like two drops of water meeting on glass’
(p.17)

In ‘Birth dress’, the physicality of the book becomes interchangeable with the body: ‘this book will become strained, a weight’. Many of the poems titles in this section are grounded in physical objects or places: ‘Birth dress’, ‘Diary’, ‘the piano’, ‘Turner Contemporary, Margate’, ‘Marseille, winter’. The materiality of these titles ground the speaker and the reader is given a personal history of her. Perhaps it is in this way that the past is called into the present (from ‘Turner Contemporary Margate’: ‘I am tethered to where you left me.’). In ‘Diary’ and ‘Damned Honey’, Barton examines how one moves between the past, present and future through language. What happens when language fails? Or when language has no place to go? 

‘I am worse for asking. I grip questions so tight that my tied heart told me not to and broke stories of silent families in cement. We bridge the night.’
(‘Diary’ p.4)

‘…came so close to telling but restless & still I was steadfast, unrecognisable / we know a tale we can never say, hold a treasure no one can hear’ 
(‘Damned Honey’ p.7)

Again in ‘A verb found’, Barton shows that the limitations of language caused by the invasion of Australia creates a sense of disconnection and dislocation between the speaker and her history: 

‘in speak
we find each other or we do not
no window, no door’
(p.14)

Throughout the collection, Barton’s use of punctuation is selective and intentional. The lack of punctuation allows for the poems to move freely between each other. There is never a sharp ending, only a continuation. This sense of flow speaks to the collectivism and longevity of Aboriginal culture — it is multiplicitous and enduring. In the poems where punctuation is present, Barton uses this to create a sense of formality or junction. How does personal and collective trauma affect the physical state and what becomes of the body in these moments? In ‘Admitted’, Barton uses the sparseness of language combined with punctuated sentences to create the cold and clinical environment the speaker is in:

‘Flocked on wheels, I am an object stilted on a rolling bed. I am a body minus arrest — flawed, frail, efface, small. I am for observation, summoned by medicine, science uninterrupted.’
(p.5)

The second section of the collection, ‘Dreamscape psychobabble’, is a continuous exploration of the blurring of boundaries between the physical and the psychological—the speaker is ‘hunting beyond constructed and re-constructed borders’ (from ‘The phases of psychoanalysis’). ‘Dreamscape psychobabble’ works as a smooth transition from the themes of family and trauma explored in ‘Wild garments’, moving into a deeper and more theoretical interrogation of how history and trauma informs the present self. Barton weaves psychoanalytic theory with dream analysis to strip back the layers of one’s past and explore different versions of selves. In the opening poem, ‘I count in dreams of houses’, the ‘I’ presents itself as both a fluid and solid state that is moving through the dreamscape. Recounting the tangible, the imagery is rich—yet the self feels intangible: 

‘I hike through stories of the self
I measure stares in movement
I carry heavy steps in my hands burdened by what’s behind eyes’
(p.27)

The gaze and seeing are concepts that are present throughout the poems in this section, tying together both what dreams and psychoanalysis allows for: ways of seeing the self from whole and fragmented perspectives. This is explored in two poems:

‘The work is in the repetition
the wrong way around      gaze      imaginary      Other
you not you’ 
(‘The phases of psychoanalysis’ p.28)

‘reminding myself that I am lost the closer I get to him
we gaze into each other as ourselves
we are addiction        it feels good, like the new drinking

….

Lacan’s delusion is that history is without patient
I keep my secrets knowing nothing, becoming illness’
(‘This is the poem of the moment’ p. 46-47)

Barton plays with form, working with the spaces on the page to build on imagery and silence, and to explore the different shapes that language, grief and trauma can take. As we move through the book, there is a sense that the poems are becoming more and more fragmented in form. By the time the reader reaches the end of the third and final section, ‘Buried light’, the words become increasingly scattered. This fragmentation speaks to the displacement of identity, history and memory of Aboriginal peoples caused by colonialism. But, however dispossessed, Barton addresses and celebrates the resilience of Aboriginal tradition and culture through history, highlighting the importance of preserving connection to community, land and Country. In the section’s titular poem, Barton draws connection between trauma, family and heritage, reclaiming cultural history through language: 

‘we were bound by an era
by registers of speech
we made the shape of eagles
with our hands
and summoned our injuries

we spoke with foreign mouths
as if burying light
with forged blades

by rough white skies
we found ancestors together
in our talk’
(‘buried light’, p. 55)

This reclamation is cemented in the provision of factual accounts and documentation of Aboriginal history, which Barton reveals in ‘Wealth for toil’, a powerful redaction letter from Francis Tuckfield, and also in ‘taper’, which speaks to the years of silencing Aboriginal peoples and the harrowing trauma resulting from the Stolen Generations: 

‘for the life of you
and the life of me imprisoned
dragged in dirt
head open
locked cuffs
hands chained
legs jagged

children ripped
     from screaming arms

taper to
                  silence
                      weighted between the sound and the denial’
(p. 58–59)

The disintegration of colonial language paves the way for a decolonised way of speaking. One that allows room for remembering and truth-telling. In the beginning of ‘no site for hunting’, we see the speaker unable to move in either direction of time, stuck in colonial narrative: 

‘I/you de-subjectify myself/me
in the end the beginning of the body
doubts itself in both directions’ 
(p. 62)

But later in the poem, is freed through the language of ‘murmuring women’: 

‘I speak and my body releases
a trapped bird
we are singular living organism
we are the earth breathing’ 
(‘no site for hunting’, p. 63)

This connection to Country is what returns the speaker to herself. In the very first poem of the collection, the book is an extension of the body (‘strained, a weight’), and here the body is an extension of the land (‘my continent a mind and body’, from ‘because the butterfly’). In addition to connection to the land, Barton writes in connection and conversation with Aboriginal writers such as Alison Whittaker, Alexis Wright and Jeanine Leanne, and in doing so, the book becomes — like the body and like the land — a living thing. The final poem in the collection, ‘as we are’, connects the themes explored throughout the three sections together. Barton’s endurance to holding these expansive themes in conversation with, and in exploration of, each other to the very end results in not only a spectacular reading experience but a powerful and nuanced recollection of the Aboriginal experience. Although the end usually conveys a sense of finality, ‘as we are’ presents itself as an open-ended poem: the work of decolonising, of working through trauma, of understanding the possibilities of language to overcome cultural voicelessness, is not done. This captures the essence of Not Telling. 

‘the mythscape alive and breathing

storytellers

break
grow
plait’
(‘as we are’, p.79)
ANTHEA YANG is a writer and poet living on unceded Wurundjeri land. She co-edited the anthology Resilience and was a recipient of the Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship in 2023 

Framed

By Nishi Pulugurtha

PenPrints

ISBN 9788198156464

Reviewed by SAFA SHARFUDEEN

There are times when we fall into a reading slump where long novels feel too daunting, and we struggle to find the energy or the time to engage with a book. Framed, a collection of eleven short stories by Nishi Pulugurtha, is the perfect remedy for such moments. A lighthearted read, it offers glimpses into small yet significant experiences of everyday life.

Nishi Pulugurtha brings her keen insight, observations and quiet sensitivity to this collection. The stories unravel the beauty of ordinary moments, exploring themes such as love, loss, family, and tradition with a gentle yet profound voice.

The collection feature eleven short stories: “Framed”, “Sitting Out”, “Dinner Party”, “Matters of the Eye”, “Kali”, “The Verandah”, “Pulling Along”, Mobile Phone Recordings”, “Little Star”, “Sounds”, and “The Harmonium”.

Each story in the book offers a distinct perspective, narrator, and style, which contributes to the anthology’s overall diversity and appeal. Some tales delve into introspection, while others adopt a more observational tone, as if we are quietly witnessing the characters go through their lives.

“Pulling Along” highlights the struggles people faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows that while the situation was very tough for everyone, individual experiences varied depending on the financial circumstances. As I read the story, I could clearly see how my own experience during the pandemic was quite different from what the characters went through. Though the story was not overly dramatic or complex, it made me realise and reflect deeply on people’s struggles, hardships and the importance of holding on to hope.

In contrast, “Dinner Party” employs an observational narrative style and tone that captures the subtle complexities of human relationships through casual conversations and unspoken tensions. I won’t give any spoilers, but this was one of my favourite stories in the book because of how effortlessly it portrayed the aspects of family dynamics, marriage and friendships without explicitly stating emotions that allows the readers to infer deeper meanings through character interactions and small details. The ending, though understated, carried a powerful message proving my point that it had a profound effect of subtle storytelling.

The book also beautifully captures the essence of human existence through brief, transient moments. One key takeaway from this collection is that life consists of seemingly simple moments that reveal profound significance with closer observations.

In “The Verandah”, the third person narrative beautifully mimics human perception. In real life, we don’t just experience the world from our own perspective. We also observe others, interpret their emotions, and make assumptions about their thoughts. The story has a simple plot but evokes a strong sense of nostalgia for the pandemic and lockdown time period that was challenging for everyone due to the limited social interactions. Since meeting new people and engaging with others is essential for personal growth, the isolation made life difficult. The use of third person narrative enhances the experience and storytelling by reflecting how we naturally observe and understand the world. It connects a character’s inner thoughts with their actions, making the reading experience feel natural and immersive.

Pulugurtha highlights the notion that our observations— of individuals, places, customs, and feelings— inform our perceptions of the world. Her narratives are not sweeping tales of dramatic events or occurrences but gentle and tender mediations on daily life, inviting readers to explore and discover beauty in the ordinary moments of life.

Her themes explore familial relationships, cultural traditions, and evolving lifestyles. One of the most captivating elements of the book is its untranslated words in Telugu and Bengali. These words evoke the culture and traditions of particular places. This invites readers to explore and fully immerse themselves in the cultural context of the story. The addition of a glossary is a considerate feature that enhances the global participation of audiences while maintaining cultural authenticity. This decision underscores how language and culture are intertwined and even if the text is written in English, certain elements and words are best preserved in their original form.

Pulugurtha’s narrative style is primarily a descriptive one, that emphasises everyday observations. She refrains from imposing conclusions or strong arguments. Instead, she encourages readers to derive their own interpretations from the stories. Her writing is straightforward and simple, filled with moments of quiet reflection.

In the story the “Little Star”, the child’s simple way of telling the story creates a contrast between what they understand and what the reader understands. This difference adds depth to the story, as readers can see a deeper meaning behind the child’s words and actions. The straightforward narration keeps things clear and honest, without over complicating events or emotions. Since children view the world differently without biases or complexities as adults do, their perceptions feel raw and genuine, making the story more powerful and emotionally compelling.

The stories are excellent at transforming the ordinary into something meaningful and remarkable. Pulugurtha doesn’t rely on dramatic plot twists or heavy philosophical references or discussions. Rather, she encourages the reader to pause, observe, and cherish life’s subtle moments.

In ‘Framed’, a familiar ritual and tradition are presented from a fresh perspective and narrator permitting readers to reflect on the theme of loss. Despite dealing with the serious subject of death, the story avoids dramatic narration or intense events. Instead, its subtle moments draw attention to the words, characters, and the emotional atmosphere it creates.

The interesting aspect of the book is that, when stories require intensity to capture attention, this anthology reminds us that you can even explore the gentleness of everyday life. It is just simple.

While this book may not have challenging beliefs or unveil shocking truths, it provides an equally satisfying feeling of warmth, nostalgia and celebrating the small joys in life. Framed is ideal for readers who appreciate reflective, slice of life narratives. If you enjoy stories that delve into human emotions and relationships in a quiet yet impactful manner, you will find Framed to be a true delight. For those looking to ease back into their reading with short, captivating pieces, these stories encapsulate the universal sense of human experiences that we all encounter in our lives.
 
 
SAFA SHARFUDEEN is a master’s student in English at the University of Madras with a deep passion for literature, writing and teaching. She also worked as the compiler and editor of “When the Moon Drowns in Waves”, collaborating with multiple writers and has interned for journals and publications.

Dr Pip Newling reads and writes on unceded Dharawahl Country. She has published memoir and essays, including Knockabout Girl (Harper Collins, 2007).

I watched the May flooding of the Manning River from a distance, with childhood memories of rain and water and disappearing islands, of the power of a deluge running beneath my days.

Peaking at 6.40m on Thursday 22 May, this inundation of the Manning was being called a 1-in-500- year flood and reached much higher than the 1929 flood peak of 5.97m, the previous record for the highest ever flood on the river.

Image 1: The Manning River looking west at Tinonee, upstream
of Taree Credit: Harrison Reed (Global News), Wednesday 21 May 2025

The Lower Manning, all the river islands and alluvial rich river flats spreading out either side of the water course from Taree to the sea, was some of the earliest settled land in the Manning Valley by white settlers in the 1830s.

What these settlers saw was the constant fresh water, the rich soil replenished by flooding, and the mild weather – not too hot in summer, not too cold in winter. And the land was their’s for the taking, so they thought. These settlers appraised the land with a completely different set of visions, values and desires to the Biripi people they met as they cut down trees, re-routed water drainage across the land, changing water tables and flows, and brought cattle, sheep and fences to the district.

These settlers knew they could make livelihoods and legacy out of the land, straightforwardly and consistently, by transplanting their farming knowledge from Scotland and England. Floods, fires, drought were just another part of doing business. They prayed for – imagined – good seasons, many children and longevity.

The Manning River is a ‘double delta’ river, with two mouths to the Tasman Sea. The northern mouth lies between Manning Point and Harrington and the southern sits at Farquhar Inlet at the end of the white strip of sand of the ‘Old Bar’.

It has a very long history of floods.

The 1840 flood was the first big one recorded by white settlers, ‘A very heavy flood occurred in 1840, which converted the flats into one great one.’(1)

The next flood of note was in 1866.

But by 1866, there were well over 3,000 people in the Lower Manning, blacksmiths, boat builders, shopkeepers, postmasters, clergymen from various Churches, and schoolteachers, all calling Taree home. The impact of this flood was much more significant on humans, property and communities.

Many of these people were the first climate refugees to arrive in the Valley. They travelled across the world from Scotland, due to a string of challenging weather seasons, to settle in the Hunter Valley around Newcastle. They established dairy farms and grew crops, and then, what we now refer to as La Niña, brought a string of wet years from 1860. Switching to an El Niño event in 1864, bringing drought conditions, many settlers moved again, to the Manning.

Our contemporary communities are much more aware of these swings and patterns in weather, or at least their nomenclature, but we seem unable to imagine the worsening and compounding of severity and impact these forces bring due to a warming planet. Or acknowledge the practices that increase the warming.

The 1866 flood was a mid-winter flood that began with a rainstorm across the valley from the mountains to the sea with gale force winds uprooting trees and damaging building on top of the destruction of the crops, stock and houses swept out to sea. The ‘islands in the lower valleys were all but submerged and Cundle Plains was a ‘sea of water’.(2) Peaking over night on Friday 13 July, the river rose quickly and powerfully. In nine hours the water rose twenty feet.(3) Over 6 metres in metric.

Rivers with multiple natural mouths are rare. The only other river in the world with two naturally occurring mouths is the River Nile. New settlers on the river in 1866, didn’t believe that Mitchell Island was an island until the Farquhar Inlet, the southern mouth, ‘broke open’ during the flood. (4) The inability to imagine the river’s full character was misguided and dangerous then and is now.

From 1867 through to 1872, there were major floods every year. This turn of events left the whole Valley, but the Lower Manning community, Taree and below in particular, feeling despondent. Horace Dean, the Editor of the Manning River News, described the mood in an editorial of 7 January 1871: ‘Swollen creeks, weedy crops, damp houses, muddy thoroughfares, delayed mails, cross house-keepers, long faced husbandsmen, wheezing children – these are again looming upon us, as if such repeated visitations were not enough to drive the best natured people like ourselves to some deed of desperation.’

Six years of floods. You would think we would remember this. That these years would have travelled down in some kind of collective memory or Valley DNA. But no. Not for the white settlers who have continued building lives, livelihoods and communities in the Manning.

The years 1927 and 1928 were hard dry years for the Valley, especially the Lower Manning where, by then, dairy farms numbered in the hundreds. The land cracked and crops withered. The droughts crippled the economy of the Valley and so, when it began to rain on Monday 18 February 1929, the relief was palpable. The days were still hot, and the humidity rose as the rain continued. One reporter wrote that, ‘Ten inches of rain have fallen since Monday afternoon to Thursday night and all the world is gay.’(5)

But the rain fell in the upper tributaries of the Manning as well, and soon the river swelled powerfully, breaking banks and taking stock, fences, wharves. By Saturday night, the mark that told the height of the 1866 flood on the Bank of NSW building in the centre of town was covered by two feet of water.

As with the current flood, people had to be rescued from Taree Estate, Glenthorne, and the islands further down stream. Two people died. There were reports of Harrington people, living at the entrance to the sea, watching stock, pigs and cows and horses, swept straight out into the Tasman Sea on a continuous torrent of swirling mud and water, haystacks, dressing tables, beds, back doors all disappearing into the churning ocean. Dumaresq Island was completely covered by water and, as the floodwaters retreated, cattle were found hanging stranded in trees along the Island’s banks.

The drought had lightened the grip the farmers had on the earth and the flood washed topsoil, and several more layers besides that, down the now widened channels of the river.

Just as now, once the waters had receded the mud was everywhere. In houses, shops, dairies, through machinery and cars. The clean up was a mammoth task. The stench was awful; it always is after a flood. Mud clings to everything and smells rotten and old as though something ancient has been vomited up by the river. The layer of mud was so great in the worst affected areas that winter crops couldn’t be planted. The silt just bakes onto the grass, killing it all.

But the Valley slowly recovered. The alluvial flats were renewed. Life by the river continued and the feats of water, escape and survival became part of the folklore of the town:

Fancy nearly a mile of telegraph line swept down through farms here. Fancy having to wrench the iron roof off to escape into a flood boat.(6)

My flood was the 1978 flood. It was the biggest in my childhood, in my living memory. In 1978 the water came all the way up to the corner of the main street, Victoria, and Pulteney Street, filling the road. Victoria Street was the Pacific Highway route then, and the road was cut, isolating Taree. Houses in Taree Estate and further down stream had water up to their ceilings. The brown swirl crept up the banks and filled the Rowing Club, the Sailing Club and spilled up into the parking areas that dotted the riverside. Rapidly rising and then edging into town, it stopped eventually at 5.45 metres on the gauge at the Martin Bridge. All of Taree Estate was flooded, as were parts of Glenthorne across the river and Dumaresq Island. The Lower Manning flood plain was flowing with water. The second mouth, Farqhuar’s Inlet at Old Bar, usually choked with sand, burst.

“It’s only from up in the air you can see it – it’s indescribable,” said the then Manning Shire President, Councillor Ray Gillogy, after taking a tour in an RAAF helicopter.(7)

My stand out memory from that flood is that the town swimming pool, built on the riverbank, was underwater, overflowing with murky brown water. It was where I spent much of my time, swimming laps, mucking around. The river had come up over the fence of the pool and swept branches of trees and rubbish and, as I remember it, a dead Guernsey cow into it. The carcass, its white patches still white, was floating on its back, four skinny legs stiff and stuck straight up in the air. It moved in the current, buffeted against the fence. ‘There’s a dead cow in the pool!’

Image 2: The Manning in flood, the view from the swimming pool,
17-18 March 1978

A few years ago, I spent some time focused on Taree and the Manning Valley, working through my love-hate relationship with the place. I spoke to a great number of people about their memories and feelings about the town, the Valley, the people. Many of those conversations have remained with me. Biripi, Worimi, non-Aboriginal and newly minted residents of the Valley all shared their different relationships to the place with me.

One of those conversations sits top of mind. One Biripi Elder told me:

The river hasn’t changed… The mountains haven’t changed.
The sea hasn’t changed. There might be a new street or two,
but the river hasn’t changed. (8)

His comment chimes loudly because this history is what we know in our bones. We live by the river because we love the river, in our own way. But we whitefellas choose to embrace a forgetting, a not-knowing pretence that gets us through to the next good season.

Look at the aerial photos from May of the Manning River. See the wide swathe of milky brown water and sludge, the sweep that traces the old flood plains, the old river channels. The river remembers. This expanse and stretch and flow is what the river knows. This flood – like all the previous floods – is a flex, a forecast of what will come, of what has always been possible.

First Nations oral histories told of floods and land inundation dating back to 10,000 years, when the sea levels rose dramatically at the end of the last ice age. Correlated and supported by linguists, geographers and geologists, these stories come from communities around Australia and tell of people having to leave significant areas for higher ground due to flood.

Now in a climate emergency and collapse, it is on us to both remember and imagine. And also to listen. To learn from what has happened in this land before our times.

There is another photo from the 1978 flood of the Manning River that I have been thinking about too – it’s a photo of a fox marooned by water hanging onto to a fence post for dear life. I can’t help but think this is our current, our future status if we don’t pay attention.

Image 3: A fox stranded in the 1978 flood,
17-18 March 1978.

I acknowledge the Biripi people of the Manning, the First Peoples of this land, and pay my respects to Elders past and present and celebrate their continual presence in the Valley. I recognise the deep knowledge and spiritual connection they have to the lands and seas on which I grew up. The Valley is unceded land and always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

(1) The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 October 1873
(2) Birrell 1987, p. 137
(3) The Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, 12 February 1929 p. 3
(4) Fitzpatrick 1914, p. 119
(5) Port Macquarie News and Hastings River Advocate, 23 February 1929
(6) Port Macquarie News and Hastings River Advocate, 23 February 1929
(7) The Manning River Times, 17-18 March 1978
(8) #5, recorded interview 2012

Images:
Facebook, Thursday 22 May (credit unknown)
The Manning River Times online
The Manning River Times online

The copyright of the 1978 flood photos has been sought but no information was available. Any updates welcome.