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Ali Cobby Eckermann in conversation with Jaydeep Sarangi

Written by mascara on . Posted in Interviews, First Nations.

Writer, Ali Cobby Eckermann was born in 1963 at Brighton, Adelaide, on Kaurna Country, however, she grew up on Ngadjuri Country. She has travelled extensively, living most of her life on Arrernte, Jawoyn and Larrakia country in the Northern Territory. When she was 34, Eckermann met her birth mother Audrey, and learnt that her birth mob were the Yankunytjatjara people from north-west South Australia. Her mother was born near Ooldea, south of Maralinga on Kokatha Country. Eckermann relates herself to the Kokatha mob too (Ali Cobby Eckermann 2013). Her first verse novel is His Father’s Eyes, and her second verse novel, Ruby Moonlight, won the Kuril Dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowship, which is part of the black&write! Indigenous Editing and Writing Project sponsored by the State Library of Queensland. Ali has won several awards including: First Prize in ATSI Survival Poetry competition in 2006, First Prize Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award NT in 2008, and was Highly Commended for the Marion Eldridge Award in 2009. Her poetry has been translated and published in Croatia, Indonesia, Greece and New Zealand.  Ruby Moonlight was published in 2012 by Magabala Books, and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and was awarded the “Book of the Year” at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2013. Ali Cobby Eckermann, a Nunga poet, is the second Aboriginal writer to win the top prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, in consecutive years. Ali Cobby Eckermann’s important works include:

little bit long time APC, 2009
little bit long time reprinted by Picaro Press, 2010
Kami Vagabond  Press, 2011
His Fathers Eyes Oxford University Press, 2011.
A Handful of Sand: Words To The Frontline co-edited with Lionel Fogarty Southerly Journal 2011
Ruby Moonlight Magabala Books, 2012 Deadly Award Outstanding Achievement in Literature
Love Dreaming & Other Poems Vagabond Press, 2012
Too Afraid To Cry Ilura Press, 2013

 

JS: Could we start with you telling us a little about your childhood, schooling and tertiary education?

ACE: My childhood may sound unusual but it was a regular childhood for many Aboriginal children born in the 1960’s. I was adopted as a baby by the Eckermann family and grew up on a farm in the mid-north of South Australia. Mum and Dad couldn’t have their own children, so adopted the four of us kids. It was a good life: baby lambs and chickens, kittens, the cubby house, gardens and orchards, and the iconic tennis court!

Our family was German Lutheran so we grew a passionate respect for good food and the sharing of it. Collectively our family was self-sustaining, We had a dairy, milked cows every morning and every night. So as children we learnt the practise of hard work. At a young age we learnt to grow sweetcorn, watermelon and tomatoes. My parents were kind people, and I remember their generosity to others. But it was the social arena outside the family group that I found confronting. Even at a young age I remember racism; I did feel that I did not really belong here. Of course this became more evident in my teenage years, at high school, when I met other Aboriginal students, some adopted and some with their families. I had no concept then of the extent of the Stolen Generations in Australia.

 

JS: You have a strong need to educate and also give a voice to those, who for whatever reasons (lack of education, poverty, marginalisation), cannot get their stories told. Do you know of any specific reasons you care about this why you care so much about this?

ACE: Mostly I feel I have this obligation to myself. In hindsight I grieve the fact that when I was a teenager, and life became very difficult, I can’t remember anyone asking me if I was okay. As an angry young person I did not know how to voice my emotions, and as a result I succumbed to the adoption of my only son. This led to many years of addiction. And it was years later during rehabilitation, that I began to recognise the value of every story, and how to value my own. These skills were reinforced after finding my family, especially by the Aboriginal Elders. It is a true value of my culture, to care for others.

 

JS: What are the traditions of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Lionel Fogarty?

ACE: Actually, Lionel Fogarty is one of my best friends. He has been an incredible mentor to me, in my early years, as an up and coming writer. I find his writings powerful; much of what he wrote 35 years ago is relevant today. I was somewhat sad to find Oodgeroo Noonuccal at a mature age; I regret that I did not learn about her poetry whilst in school. Sally Morgan’s My Place was the only book of Aboriginal writing that I discovered and read in my young years.

 

JS: Who are Nunga?

ACE: Nunga is a collective term for Aboriginal people who live in South Australia. In Queensland the term is Murri, in other states the term is Koori. My traditional family in the desert are known as Anangu.

 

JS: How are they different from other Aboriginal communities in Australia?

ACE: I believe, in respect to Aboriginal literature, there is a collective spirit. As Aboriginal writers we need to truly support each other, and support each other to mentor the craft. Each writer will identify by their Language Group name, and may casually refer to the collective terms. Mostly I identify as a Yankunytjatjara writer, and most of my poetry is influenced by the natural landscape of my people.

 

JS: Who are some of the important contemporary Indigenous writers ?

ACE: Lionel Fogarty is one of Australia’s most important writers. He first published his poetry as a young man in his 20’s. The journey of his life has been shared through his poetry, and is a truly honest gift to the world. Kim Scott and Alexis Wright have both won the Miles Franklin Award, the most prestigious literature award in Australia.

A Facebook site BlackWordsAustLit is the best resource of Indigenous Literature in Australia. It is both an archive and an introduction to our newest writers. Check it out and follow the prompts.

 

JS: How many Indigenous authors write in English?

ACE: Most Aboriginal authors and poets write in English. I believe the publishing world requires this, for the selling of our books. It is also a legacy of the removal of so many of us from our family. And the cost of translation in Aboriginal language is very expensive. I feel sometimes the cost is the preventative, and of course we are not empowered to change this. On the other hand the resurgence of Aboriginal language, at a community level, is truly inspirational. Many families and young people are relearning these ancient languages; our mother tongue.

 

JS: Tell us about the Stolen Generation?

ACE: My mother was separated from her mother at the age of seven. This is very confusing for her, as the mission where they lived had a Children’s Home, to prevent the removal of children. It seems my mother was an amazing student, and it was deemed that continued association with her family would be detrimental to her education. She told me that she would watch from the window as her siblings went with Kami and other family members to hunt for lizards and other bush tuckers. She told me she felt sad. And this is one of the main legacy’s of Stolen Generation removal, the sadness that still exists inside us.

I was 33 when I found my mother. At the time she was the Co-Chair for National Sorry Day, an annual day of remembrance and celebration dedicated to the Stolen Generations. Her legacy in life is amazing.

 

JS: Many of your poems start with “ooooo’. What does this mean?

ACE: This was an error, a typo. The title of these poems is clear. I did get a shock when I saw the publication of this. Now it remains as a mystery for the readers.

 

JS: What are your important themes of writings?

ACE: I would hope all my writings achieve my basic goals; to promote healing and understanding between Aboriginal people and the rest of the world. As I travel internationally I often hear how media has portrayed us incorrectly, that our rights have been returned to us, how past issues have been resolved. This is not the truth!
I do enjoy meeting writers from other cultural backgrounds. Mostly our issues are similar, and often we share a similar expressionism. This has an empowering effect on me. I love reading global poetry.

JS: Could you please mention a few poems which represent you as a Nunga writer?

ACE: Circles & Squares, First Time, Love Dreaming, Ribbons, Wallaroo

JS: You have written verse novels. What stories do they tell?

ACE: My first novel His Fathers Eyes was commissioned to explain the Stolen Generations to upper primary and lower secondary students. It is published by Oxford University Press in the series Yarning Strong. My second verse novel Ruby Moonlight is a story of massacre, the often unmentioned history of colonial impact. It tells the story of Ruby, who survives the massacre of her entire family. I set this story in the 1890’s. I was moved beyond words in 2012 to receive the Deadly Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature (an Aboriginal Award) and again in 2013 when Ruby Moonlight won the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize and the NSW Premiers Book Of The Year. This book should be in every school library.

 

JS: You have already attended translation workshops in India. What is your experience? Do you think that translation works are close to text/original?

ACE: The experience of the Autumn School for Literature Translations is an amazing experience. The passion of the selected students is paramount to the success of this. I was immersed into wonderful conversations; I shared many photos of my family and traditional lands. We discussed every detail. And my heart told me during the final recitals that the students had achieved the best translations of my work.

The unforeseen publication of my poems by the Deptartment of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University is a testament to this. Some of my poems will sit with two or three translations. I am proud that the student’s names and their work will accompany my words. I believe this will become a unique handbook of international translation, due to this shared experience.

 

JS: What do you hope your work will achieve?

ACE: I write in the hope that my grandchildren will be safe in their true identity in Australia. I write that they will not have to assimilate or change any cultural aspect of themselves to achieve what they want. I write in the hope that Australia will become more mature, to embrace the values that only diversity can bring, to be kinder to the impoverished and the poor, and to stop pretending that these issues do not exist within the national identity.

 

JS: Are you familiar with Indian Dalit writers?

ACE: In 2012 the University of Western Sydney hosted a two-day festival for Australian and Indian writers. Alexis Wright and I were invited to open panel discussions with two Dalit writers who had travelled from India for this event. It will remain a highlight of my writing career. The panel was judged one of the highlights of the festival.

The opportunity to return to Kolkata, to travel to New Delhi and attend the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2015 will allow me to meet with Dalit Writers again.

 

JS: Can you describe an “average” working day for you?

ACE: I day dream a lot! Much thought goes into my writing, long before it reaches the page. And some time ago I quit my regular job and returned to visual arts; I love sculpture and painting. I find these two artforms compliment my artistic process. My visual arts actually funds my writing career. So my life is frugal and exciting. There is no ‘average’ day.

JS: If you were to prepare an anthology for school students would you include some of your own poems?

ACE: Of course. Our literature is necessary to inform that our culture still exists, beyond tourism. I would also include oral readings of Aboriginal poetry by Aboriginal poets. I believe our voices bring a beautiful timbre and rhythm of our words, which is both healing and powerful.

 

JS: Do you believe in Literary Movements? What are its weapons?

ACE: I guess my ‘literary movement’ is the establishment of my Aboriginal Writers Retreat. It is an environment for all writers, however it is Aboriginal themed. Every participant must ‘leave their ego on the highway’ and arrive to a place of equality. This is how we learn. I have enjoyed sharing my space, and watching the outcomes in people. Lionel Fogarty was my first Writer-In-Residence and we co-edited Words To The Frontline: an edition of Southerly, Australia’s premier literary magazine.

Originally I established the retreat in my home at Koolunga, in South Australia. However my personal career has grown beyond my wildest dreams. So I am now in process of mobilising the retreat, and am looking for sponsorship to purchase a caravan. The caravan will be customised to include a workspace and include an extensive library of Indigenous literature. Many grassroots Aboriginal writers have not been exposed to multi-cultural writings. Sometimes there is no literature of any kind in their home environments.

It is my wish now, to travel to communities and transport my workshops there. I believe the main benefit will be tri-generational story-telling and writing workshops.

 

JS: What are your current engagements?

ACE: Currently I am in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in America. It is a three month residency and is funded by the US Deptartment of State. The program has been running since 1967 and has allowed Iowa City to become the only UNESCO City Of Literature in America.

 

JS: Would you please share a recent poem  with us?

Ngingali

my mother is a granite
boulder I can no longer climb
nor walk around

her weight is a constant
reminder of myself
I sit in her shadow

gulls nestle in her hair
their shadows her epitaph
I carry

a pebble of her in my pocket

 

* Ngingali is Ali’s mother’s traditional name

 

JS: Thank you! You are an amazing source of inspiration.




Jaydeep Sarangi, is a bilingual writer, academic, editor, translator, and the author of a number of significant publications on Postcolonial issues, Indian Writing in English and Australian Literature in reputed journals/magazines in India and abroad. He has recently collaborated as peer reviewer for CLR, Universitat Jaume I, Spain. He is one of the Editors, “Writers Editors Critics” and the Vice President of literary organization, GIEWEC (head office at Kerala).  Widely travelled and anthologised both as a poet and a critic, Dr Sarangi has delivered keynote addresses in several national and international seminars, conferences and read poems/research papers in several continents. He is Associate Professor in the Department. of English,  Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College (Calcutta University), 30, Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata-700033, WB, India. E mail: jaydeepsarangi@gmail.com

Denisa Duran translated by Florin Bican

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

SONY DSCDenisa Duran (b. 1980) is a Romanian poet, translator and cultural manager, author of four poetry books: the award-winning debut collection Pufos şi mechanic (Fluffy and Mechanical), Bucharest, 2003, was followed by the bilingual book Omul de unică folosință / Disposable People (translated into English by Florin Bican), published by Galway Print in Ireland (2009) and promoted during a reading tour in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Dublin; in 2012 she published Sunt încă tânără (I Am Still Young) – a selection of which was included in the anthology The Most Beautiful Poems from 2012; in December 2014 her new book came out, Dorm, dar stau cu tine (I Am Asleep, Yet Keep You Company), accompanied by illustrations. She signed her first three collections with her maiden name of Denisa Mirena Pişcu.

Selections of her poems have been included in several national and international anthologies and translated into: English, Czech, Bulgarian, German, Italian, Turkish, Arabic and Finnish.

 

Amintirile atârnă în mine

Amintirile atârnă în mine
grele
ca nişte mere verzi
cu viermi.
Viermi
şi sub ţărână,
departe,
în adânc,
au spălat oasele
alor mei.




Netezesc mormântul

Netezesc mormântul,
smulg buruienile,
trag cu mâinile de pământ,
ca de-o pătură,
încercând să-i trezesc.





Oamenii se adună în jurul lui

Tatăl
mânca din mâna mea
cu greu.
Şi a murit.

Oamenii se adună în jurul lui
grijulii,
preocupaţi
să nu se molipsească de moarte.




Candele

Am fost ieri pe la Europa
să împrumut o cană de ulei
pentru prăjit cartofi
(sunem mulţi şi mereu se termină uleiul
de parcă l-ar da cineva pe gât).
E drept, E. nu ştie
şi nici nu e treaba ei,
dar o părticică din uleiul pe datorie,
încleiat sau lucios,
eu îl pun la candelele aprinse
pentru morţii mei
şi ai săi.
Memories Hang Inside Me

Memories hang inside me
as heavy
as green apples
ridden with worms.
Worms
under the dirt,
deep down
in the earth,
have also washed clean
the bones
of my people.



I Level the Grave

I level the grave,
I pluck out the weeds,
I tug with my hands at the earth
as if it were a blanket,
attempting to shake them awake.





People Gather Around Him

The father
would eat out of my hand
with difficulty.
And he died.

People gather around him
reluctantly
worried
lest they catch death.




The Lamps I Light Up

Yesterday I dashed over to Europe
to borrow some cooking oil
for frying potatoes
(there’s too many of us and we keep running out
as if someone were guzzling the stuff).
Truth be told, E. doesn’t know,
nor is it her business,
that I pour the tiniest portion
of the oil on loan,
be it rancid or fresh,
into the lamps I light up
for my dead
and for hers.

Letter for Reza Barati by name withheld : Manus Detention Camp

Written by mascara on . Posted in Writers In Detention.

Hello dear Reza,

How are you?
Are you in a good place?
Everyone is here and they are saying ‘hi’ to you.
I’m sure you remember Mustafa! He is saying to you, “Let’s play cards!”
Ali is saying, “Do you remember you would always get 6-6 whenever we played backgammon?”
Hussain is saying, “Do you remember whenever we played soccer, you would always be the goal keeper because you were tall?”
Behrouz is saying, “My mother goes to your mother every day and they cry together”. Hassan is saying, ” Forgive me, when you departed, there was a bit of displeasure between us”.

Reza! Do you know anything about Hamid Khazaei?
Are you together?
Please say ‘hi’ to him and say to him that we miss him.

Reza! It was hard to believe you had departed, we can’t believe it now either.
We would never think that they would kill the strong stocky Reza Barati, unjustly under a stroke with their hand.  Reza, no court of law has been established for you yet!
Your murderers and their masters are walking freely and they are showing off, blocking the way your blood is beside.

Reza, I don’t know if you know what they have done to us in this year that you weren’t here. It’s been really hard. Reza, they shed the blood of those like you and Hamid Khazaei in the name of human rights and they did not even care.

Do you know what Scott Morrison said after your death? He said “the way to stop these deaths is to stop the boats”. It is shameful.

Reza, they are more ruthless that the dictators of our own countries. They kill people at once there, but here, they kill slowly and by torture. They killed Hamid ruthlessly as well. Maybe he’s told you himself or maybe his pride hasn’t let him tell you that, how they did treat him ruthlessly. He died slowly slowly in front of our eyes in less than a week.

Reza, this is end of the world, no one helps us. They completed their racist confrontation by killing you and Hamid to show how mean they are.

But you don’t know that great people amongst them in Australia honoured you after your death. We can remember in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and many other places. Thousands of people shed tears for you and they condemned their government and that is your actual court. You don’t know but thousands of kind people lit candles for you and sit in streets. They showed humanity has not died yet and the account of the Australian people is separate from their racist government. Today, we are hopeful in the aid of these people with their great souls to achieve our freedom.

You are closer to God there, so pray to God that we will be freed from this prison very soon. Reza, I know freedom was nothing more than a dream for you and Hamid, an unachievable dream that you did not achieve here but now you are completely free, so rest in peace!

Dear Reza, I don’t want to keep you busy for a long time, but you will be in our hearts and souls forever. If the tree of our freedom gives fruit, we will not forget the blood of you and Hamid by it.

We love you both!

 Translated by Ali Parsaei

Hoa Pham

Written by mascara on . Posted in Featured Writer.

RR9jqEyYHZIB3bK-_j6eggBdr9saQs5J1svFbe6_G3Q Hoa Pham is an author, playwright and psychologist. Her novella The Other Shore won the Viva La Novella prize in 2014. Her play Silence was selected as a text for VCE Drama in 2010 and has been performed at La Mama in Melbourne. It also toured throughout Victoria with the support of VicHealth. Hoa was awarded the Best Young Writer of the Year Award from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2001 for her novel Vixen. Hoa’s work has been published in numerous periodicals including HEAT, Griffith Review and TEXT Journal. She is also the founding editor of Peril Magazine of Asian Australian arts and culture.

 

Excerpts from The Other Shore

My name is Kim Nguyen. I’m sixteen years old and my secret middle name is from a poem that means ‘good heart’ in Vietnamese. I have kept many things I see and hear to myself. This protects me, being a plain ordinary schoolgirl in uniform, a white ao dâi that is impossible to keep clean. I do not show off at school, because the pressure of the student competition and the ritual picking on the weakest students by the teachers was too much for me. I learnt about competition on the first day of high school from my best friend, Lien, who told me not to get angry at the teachers’ jibes about me being the ugly sister. ‘They will be silent after they receive a gift,’ she told me. This was my first encounter with corruption—a corruption everyone expected.

In our house many people died, but all of Việt Nam bleeds ghosts from the wars. When I was growing up I would see other ghosts, like Americans, and would practise my English with them. Sometimes they would be wary, other times not. I have gradually learnt not to be afraid of strangers.

My family lived south of Hoan Kiem lake. When I closed my eyes at night I heard the steady whirr of traffic going by. Hà Nội only sleeps from midnight to four am. In the early morning old women like my grandmother would do tai chi on the shore of the green lake. At four am goods would be brought to the markets and to the noodle hawkers on the street. Then the traffic would ramp up and tourist touts and beggars would take to the lake, while the more affluent would lunch and eat ice cream.

In the middle of the lake is the One Temple Pagoda, fierce with a tiger guarding it, a constant reminder of King Le Loi and the legend of the turtle that carried his sword away.

To most people I am no one. To Bà, my grandmother, I was someone special that kept her secrets.

*****

 

I was awake and dressed at four the next morning when the driver knocked on my door.

Huế was just beginning to wake up. The pho sellers were assembling their wares and the roads were almost empty. The dawn was mild and I was grateful for the thermos of tea that the driver thoughtfully provided us with.

It only took ten minutes of driving for us to reach the countryside outside Huế. Trees and greenery dominated and chickens ran across the road. I spotted a turn-off sign for Chùa Hương  and knew we were close.

We came across the new highway suddenly in an open clearing. The road was newly asphalted and came to a halt at a large roped-off pit. Already two labourers were standing around, smoking. The driver parked and we got out, catching a glimpse of the pink dawn edging over the horizon.

Bác Phúc approached the workmen who straightened up and only surreptitiously glanced at me. ‘Are the novices from the temple here yet?’

One of the workmen shrugged.

Bác Phúc gestured to me. ‘Come have a look.’ He didn’t have to tell me to not touch anything.

‘The geomancer tells me that the discoloured soil here is decomposed bodies.’

I glanced into the pit. Mud and water oozed and I glimpsed shards of bone embedded in the sides of the pit.

‘Mass grave. Why did you bring a woman out here?’ one of the workmen said.

‘She’s a psychic. She’s part of the reburial team.’

The workmen’s eyes widened.. Then they nodded in understanding as the sound of a moped cut into the quiet of the dawn. Pulling up at the site was a brown-robed abbot and a novice robed in grey. The novice was holding onto ceramic pots, precariously bundled together, for the remains of the bones.

I bowed to the abbot, who smiled at me and Bác Phúc. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said to us gently. ‘These disturbed souls have been troubling us greatly. We have been waiting for you.’

The novice set up incense on a little mound away from the pit. ‘I can assist you in finding the descendants of these men and women if they are from around here.’

The workmen holding small hand shovels bowed to the abbot, then jumped into the pit. Too soon I was presented with a shovel full of mud and earth from which shards of bone were poking out. I took off my gloves and gingerly reached out to touch the protruding bone.

A scream. A bolt of pain lanced through my insides. Then wailing. She had been abandoned, defiled, and murdered. Her family could not find her. They offered outdoor offerings to the lost souls but could not honour her at the altar.

‘She lived in the village not far from here. She was killed by Americans.’ I could not bring myself to say what had happened to her before her death. So I began describing the scenery around the village, the hills that backed her family’s farm and the closeness of Chùa Hương . She had three brothers and two sisters.

The abbot listened gravely to my babbling, then  produced a notebook from a bag by his side. ‘I think I know which family this is,’ he said and motioned for the novice to bring over one of the reburial urns. The remains were put in the jar and the abbot murmured some instructions to the novice.

Bác Phúc watched approvingly and smiled at me for the first time. Putting a hand over my stomach from the phantom pains I tried to smile back, but instead found myself fighting  tears.

Bác Phúc came over to my side with the thermos of tea. ‘Have a rest for a few minutes my dear, ‘ he said. Clumsily I walked away from the pit and sat on the car bonnet. I crossed my arms, hiding my head in my hands to conceal my shame from the men.

The hours passed by in a blur. I was hit by the pain and humiliation of death again and again. Bác Phúc began to work alongside me, his face stoic. He would squat down next to the remains, his face a frown, and close his eyes. Then he would tell the abbot what he saw.

With the help of the abbot we were able to identify nine people from nearby villages. Then I was presented with another mound of mud with bones protruding from the muck. I was reminded of the bones of a chicken after the slaughter as I braced myself for the impact of touching them.

The shock comes like a pistol shot to the back of the head. I am drenched in fear, standing in line, waiting. My mother stands next to me clutching my hand, sweating. I had been told to be quiet, and this time none of my cheekiness asserts itself; even the adults are quietly standing in the darkness down in the basement of the school.

Then a door opens and men in black come down the stairs with guns. With frightening efficiency they make us kneel on the concrete floor. A gun muzzle glints in the dim light and then a crack. My teacher Long falls forward. Someone screams.

Panic! . . . and Ma cowers to the ground, covering me with her body. More cracks and the smell of blood. Then a thunderclap in my ear. Mum goes limp above me and I am squashed under her weight. I wriggle and blinding pain shoots up my leg. Then I fall . . .

A child! The National Liberation Front had murdered families in cold blood, just like the Americans and the ARVN had. I recoiled from the knowledge. Opening my eyes I saw Bác Phúc looking at me with concern.

‘A child . . .’ I stammered.

‘Where did they come from?’ Bác Phúc asked, his stare fixed to my face.

‘South.’ The word was shaken out of me.

‘I see.’ Bác Phúc gestured at the workmen and the area of mud that the geomancer indicated was dug up and thrown to the side of the road. The abbot knelt by my side and I turned to him.

‘They aren’t honouring the dead . . . ’

The abbot looked at me with sorrowful large brown eyes. ‘These are Southern dead. Your colleagues are from the government.’

A chill ran down my spine as I realised the political implications of what I had seen. ‘They will still haunt the road . . .’ I murmured.

The abbot paused for a moment, then looked away. ‘In the eyes of the Buddha there are no political sides or ideology. We will look after them.’ He rose suddenly to his feet and Bác Phúc approached, indicating I should get back to work.

Fucking gooks. Never let a man sleep. Have to get out of this hellhole, stay alive for three more days then out of here. Never again.

‘American,’ I said. I wanted to sit down and cry and never get up again. The workmen heaped the soil and remains on the side of the road. The novice went away on his moped and came  back with wooden boxes lined with red paper. The American remains were placed in the boxes and put in the back of our car.

‘The Americans like it when we can return remains to them,’ Bác Phúc said neutrally. The labourers returned to work and Bác Phúc clambered back into the pit.

Exhausted and covered with mud I sat down on the side of the road. I imagined I was covered with the bloody remains of the victims I had seen. Even the American was treated with more respect than the southern ers. It made no sense. Surely the souls from the south would haunt the road too?

Shivering, I unwillingly flashed  to what I had seen of the American’s feelings. He had died slowly, suffering the same way our people had.

‘We will pray for them,’ the abbot said softly in my ear. I turned to the wise man standing impassively by my side. The novice had lit more incense and begun a quiet chant a few steps away from the open grave site. The sun had risen and the heat of the day was making itself felt. I glanced at Bác Phúc but his eyes were closed in trance talking to the geomancer about what he saw.

‘Politics keep men divided,’ the abbot said. ‘But we all suffer no matter which side we are on. After we die there are no distinctions. You are not like him. Your spirit is still young. If you need counsel please come to Chùa Hương  and ask for me.’ The abbot left my side as if he had said nothing of import and returned to the pit.

Bác Phúc had identified more southern soldiers and the heap by the side of the road grew. I sipped a cup of tea, listening to the chant for the dead and then the sound of the bell from the novice. Its sound returned me to memories of my own temple  in Hà Nội. A moment of peace came over me.

Then I began to cry for what I had lost.

(These excerpts are from page 1-2 and page 42-56 The Other Shore, Seizure, 2014)

Mary Branley

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

mary branleyMary Branley is a poet, writer, musician and teacher based in Sligo, Ireland. She has two collections of poetry: A foot on the tide (Summer Palace Press, 2002) and Martin let me go (Summer Palace Press, 2009). She is also a recipient of a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and Sligo County Council

 

 

Rūmī’s Letters to Shams

i

Shams, we have yet to meet
but I check the temperature daily
in Tabriz wondering

if it is the cold or the heat
that will send you to me
the dark season or the light?

Perhaps the fluctuations of the dollar
will have a bearing
as on the flow of oil.

Every night the angels whisper
sweetly in my ear, saying
soon your love will come

through the open window,
the smell of night rain in her hair,
dew of morning kiss on her lips,

a full moon language
in each moon eye. Oh Shams
my heart is ready for your hands.

ii

How unexpected it was
When the windows of the heart
Opened from the back like patio doors
And I entered the garden alone
Dazzled in sunlight, thick with birdsong
And the deafening fragrance of Shams
Whispers from everywhere
Stay in the garden, love from here.
Who knew the heart held such a secret?

iii

Let me make a bed of words for you
with sheets as light as the fall of dew
on the curve of your breast
and rest your head on a swan’s wing.

When you burrow in
the mattress whispers back
a silken phrase, the scent of your name
in honey suckle breath.

Let me tattoo my love all over you
with the nib of June’s new moon
indelible ink of midnight’s summer blue
crazy words you’ve never heard before.

Let me wrap your sleep
in the mandolin trills of dawn
and you can fold your dreams up small
and slip them in loose change.

The Sky Had Turned Pale Green by Emily O’Grady

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

Emily O'Grady picEmily O’Grady is a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology, where she won the 2012 Undergraduate, and the 2013 Postgraduate Writing Prize. Her fiction and poetry have been published in The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks, and Award Winning Australian Writing.
 

 
 
The Sky Had Turned Pale Green

When the drama captain dived into a shallow swimming pool in my final year of school the chaplain held a vigil in the chapel every lunch break. Each afternoon we gathered around a battery operated candle on the teal carpet in a blobby oval, offering significant memories while eating toasted sandwiches from the tuckshop and passing around a packet of Minties or Snakes. Each session began with two minutes of silent reflection and a meditative Angelus. When it was my turn to contribute I pretended I was too distraught to speak.

The vigils came to an end when she woke as a quadriplegic twelve days afterthe fall. The administration organised a free dress day to raise money for her family to renovate their bathroom, and renamed the end of year Cabaret in her honour. On graduation her parents dressed her in the school tracksuit and styled her short hair into a braided stump for the occasion. No one had thought of a ramp to get her on the stage so she sat by the bottom of the stairs—her parents gripping her shoulders—while a scrolled diploma tied with a purple ribbon was placed in her lap and subsequently rolled onto the floor. I couldn’t tell if the mood was one of mourning or celebration. She wasn’t wearing shoes, and I remember looking at her socked feet and thinking of sleeping lambs.

Everyone seemed to indulge in the witchy ritual of the vigils and pawed over the tragedy, debating fate and God and euthanasia in the hallways and beneath the ancient, Moreton Bay fig that left a bed of glossy leaves across the brick paths. When Felicity had drowned at the end of Year Nine, her funeral was held during the Christmas holidays, so by the time the New Year came around the murky disbelief had already lifted and any opportunity for bonding or existential discussion was avoided. Though the start of term mass was combined with a memorial service, because she’d only been at the school a few months there were no significant memories for anyone to share. Up until graduation Felicity was spoken of rarely and abstractly, as though she were a hazily remembered dream or a childhood memory you couldn’t be sure wasn’t one you’d absorbed from the television.

Felicity and I knew each other through the kayaking club. Every Friday we paddled a kilometre downstream and drifted along Norman Creek. I’d been kayakingsince Year Eight, but it wasn’t until Felicity began boarding at the College that I’d come to tolerate those afternoons sweating into the Brisbane River. It was mandatory for every student to play an extracurricular sport unless they had a medical certificate. I chose kayaking because for the most part it wasn’t a team activity, and even in April and October the heat could be so oppressive that the thought of hockey or touch on the oval was unbearable.

We kayaked three afternoons a week. On Monday and Wednesday we trained for the interschool competitions held every few months, while the Fridays on Norman felt like a holiday from the repetition of sprints along the bank. The creek was always dank with mangroves, and rotting jetties that led to shacks with weathered Tibetan prayer flags strung from their porches. Cans of XXXX bobbed on the water like golden, mangled logs. When we got too close to the mangroves the tips of our paddles would stick in the silty sludge that reeked of sulphur. The creek was always silent but for the chug of the coach’s tinnie, the slurp of fibreglass being suctioned from black mud.

Felicity boarded at the College even though her parents lived in a townhouse on the other side of the river. The other boarders were from out west, or from the Torres Straight and Pacific Islands, and had home visits only for term holidays and sometimes long weekends. At the end of each week, instead of going to the boarding house Felicity would skulk up the ridged boat ramp, bare feet slick with river water, to the school gates where her mother would be waiting with a taxi.

One afternoon I followed her from the water. While the rest of the team capsized into the river in ritualistic unison, Felicity dumped her kayak on the green turf pontoon and headed to the boatshed. She never capsized, not even on purpose.

She stood by the paddle rack, fingering the fibreglass cuts along her legs: swollen welts with glistening slivers prickling the skin. I unbuckled my lifejacket and took a sip from the bubbler. The water was warm and tasted of chlorine. Felicity leant against the cement wall and wiped her wrist under her nose.

‘God, this is such rubbish,’ she said.

‘What is?’ I said.

‘This,’ she said, gesturing to nothing.

‘Did you capsize?’ I said, knowing she hadn’t.

‘No,’ Felicity said. ‘But I’m itchy.’

‘Here,’ I said, handing her a greasy bottle of baby oil from the first-aid kit. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

Felicity shrugged. She flicked open the cap with her teeth and poured oil into her hand. It pooled in her palm and leaked over her fingers.

‘Have you kayaked before?’ I said. ‘You’re pretty good.’

‘Christ no,’ she said, glazing oil onto the cuts. ‘I hate water.’

She threw the baby oil back into the first aid kit and wiped her hands on her ruggers. From the pontoon I could hear girls capsizing, shrieking like seabirds as they plunged themselves fully clothed into the river.

Though my older sister went to a public school my parents had transferred me to the all-girls Catholic College halfway through Year Eight. While most girls complained of the school’s severity I found it calming, as though I were a baby being swaddled. Jewellery and nail polish were against the dress code, and if a teacher suspected you were wearing makeup you were marched to sick bay to strip it off with witch hazel and a fistful of cotton balls.

Rather than rebelling against the rules, it evoked a sense of ferality amongst even the prettiest girls. At lunchtime they’d strip down to their underwear on the H block verandas to change into their sport uniforms. When it rained, they made no effort to take shelter, and came to class with mud-flecked calves and their bras fluorescent under soaked blouses. During dissections in Science, a particular clique even hacked the tails off their rats and kept them as talismans, the limp flesh creeping out of breast pockets like thin, white fingers.

On her first day of school Felicity was fawned over.

‘You’re like a little doll,’ the girls said, as they draped Felicity’s hair over their own straw-like ponytails and compared the pale underbelly of her forearms to their freckled sunburns. At lunchtime they bought her cartons of chocolate milk from the tuckshop, manically grabbing at her clothes and hands to get her attention. But it wasn’t long before Felicity’s shine dulled, and after a few days no one was interested in her strange inflections or the way her fingers were like polished twigs.

My parents felt sorry for Felicity. Whenever she came over after training my mother cooked fancy meals from recipe books and had us sit at the table to eat. My sister bombarded Felicity with questions about her father’s job in Japan. My father switched off the races.

One night after dinner I sat in the bathroom with Felicity as she drew on her eyebrows with a black eye pencil. Most mornings she shaved them off with a disposable razor. When she hadn’t shaved them for a few days she compulsively ran her fingertips over the stubble.

‘Your family are really nice,’ she said, sketching the pencil along her brow.

‘They’re alright,’ I said. ‘They get so excited when you’re here.’

‘Your sister’s so pretty,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go to the same school?’

‘I went for a while. They were all morons.’

‘Did you have any friends?’

‘Course I did.’

‘It was just a question,’ Felicity said, raising her eyebrows to her reflection.

‘I had this one friend but she was totally mental,’ I said. ‘We were playing Mercy one day and one of her wrists snapped.’

‘What’s Mercy?’

‘Here,’ I said. I grabbed Felicity’s wrists and laced her fingers through mine. I gripped her knuckles between my fingers and twisted until a knuckle cracked. ‘Like that,’ I said, freeing her hands. ‘But harder.’

‘That’s awful,’ she said. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘It’s a game.’

‘Pretty weird game.’

‘It was kind of funny,’ I said, washing my hands in the sink. ‘Plus, her bones were like little sticks.’

‘Did you get into trouble?’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I said. ‘She was so skinny.’

I flicked my wet fingers into Felicity’s face and she elbowed me at the waist. She’d changed back into her uniform after kayaking, and wore the blueberry skirt unbuttoned and low on her hips like how the other girls at school wore theirs. A strand of hair fell from her elastic and into her eye. She tucked it behind her ear and peered at herself in the mirror.

‘Your teeth are so white,’ I said. ‘Like little pearls.’

Felicity began to take kayaking as seriously as the seniors training for States. She was always at the front of the pack unless I convinced her to lag behind with me, and she never skipped training, not even if she had a cold. After a while her shoulders and stomach thickened from lifting weights on the scraps of dusty carpet in the boatshed.

‘I’m so fat,’ she said one night at a sleepover, pinching the skin of her thighs.

‘Well, you’re pretty so it doesn’t matter anyway,’ I said.

‘My mum says I’m getting fat.’

‘Who cares?’

‘I’m sick of kayaking,’ she said, collapsing back on the bed.

‘You better not have any of these then.’ I tore open a packet of Tim Tams and bit into one. The chocolate coating was mottled white from being in the fridge. It had no taste and the crumbling biscuit felt like ants in my mouth. Later, when Felicity went to the bathroom, I realised I’d been clutching the half-eaten Tim Tam in my hand the whole time. It had melted into my palm, a fistful of mud.

Unlike Felicity, most of the girls at school were soft and large. They took up space, sprawling their fleshy arms along desktops, hooking their feet around desk legs, skirts draped between their thighs. One of the girls had only four fingers on her left hand. We’d been in Girl Guides together for a short time in primary school. Despite her deformity the other girls had always given her the gifts we made on craft nights, trying to court her affection: flaking soaps moulded into pastel flowers and ducks, and splintered Paddle Pop stick photo frames.

One morning before Soc. Ed I saw Felicity staring at the hand. The girl was at the set of desks beside us, sifting through her hair for split ends and nibbling them off with her teeth. The hand was a rubbery pink, contorted into a stiff curl. She used it as a weapon, wrapping it around her friend’s necks, or scraping the splitting fingernails down their cheeks. She called it her paw.

When she saw Felicity staring, she jabbed the paw out.

Felicity turned back to her text book, but after a minute was gazing back across the desk as though hypnotised.

‘Can I touch it?’ Felicity said. She leaned over to where the girl was balancing on the back legs of her chair. The hand rested limply on the desktop like it wasn’t a living thing. Felicity moved her own hand tentatively. When she brushed the girl’s scaly palm with her fingertips Felicity jerked her hand right back as though the paw had electrocuted her.

‘Does it hurt?’ Felicity said.

‘Nah,’ the girl said. ‘It’s always been like that.’ She drummed her fingernails
against the desk and turned her chair towards Felicity. ‘Your dad lives in Japan, right?’

‘Only sometimes,’ Felicity said.

‘That’s so cool.’

‘I guess.’

‘We’re having chips in the park after school,’ the girl said. ‘Come if you want.’

‘Can’t,’ Felicity said. ‘I have kayaking.’

‘Too bad,’ the girl said, reaching into her pencil case. She unwrapped a pack of grape Zappos and placed a lolly on Felicity’s text book.

‘You should wear a glove,’ I said to the girl.

She ignored me and went back to her ratty hair. Felicity chewed on the Zappo and smoothed out the grey wrapper until it was ironed flat. Later, I wrote Felicity a note folded into a tiny square and flicked it on her desk, but she didn’t look up from copying off the whiteboard. When she yawned her tongue was stained purple in the centre like a pinch bruise.

The following week the river was thick with jellyfish. Usually the water was a dull brown, but it was close to clear, as though the blue blubbers were small moons illuminating the river.

‘Are they poisonous?’ Felicity asked as she rested her paddle along the pontoon, steadying the kayak as she clambered into the cockpit.

‘Only if you fall in,’ I said.

The water was choppy from the shock of frothy waves from City Cats zigzagging back and forth across the river. As we paddled along the bank I tried to spear the jellyfish with my blade. Every time I got close to slicing one it darted deep into the water.

‘You’ll make them angry,’ Felicity said. Her balance was shaky, and she kept her eyes fixed in front of her, not looking down. She’d forgotten to put on a lifejacket. Her thin shirt clung to her back.

‘They don’t have nervous systems,’ I said. ‘They don’t feel anything. How could they get angry?’

When we got to the mouth the rest of the team were already paddling deep in the creek. Because it was the end of term, instead of being in the tinnie the coach had taken a kayak and was leading the group. The sky above us was grey and as shadowy as the damp trees. The mangroves surrounding us like burnt forests.

At the first bend I stopped paddling. Felicity was in front of me. I prodded her in the back with my blade.

‘Let’s go back,’ I said. ‘We can paddle across the river. Go to the park.’

Felicity sighed and looked up into the trees.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It won’t take long.’

‘We’ll get in trouble,’ she said.

‘No one will notice us,’ I said, paddling beside her. ‘Look how far ahead they are.’ The last of the girls had turned around the second bend and were disappearing further up the creek.

‘I just don’t see the point,’ Felicity said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go with you.’

Felicity rolled her paddle along the cockpit rim, her water bottle sloshing between her feet. Falling, blackened leaves made tiny ripples in the still water. The string bracelet I’d weaved her twisted around her ankle like a multicoloured snake.

‘Fine,’ I said, reaching for the bottle at her feet. ‘Fine.’ The white food particles from Felicity’s backwash looked like Sea-Monkeys contaminating the water. I took a sip and the stale water felt thick and warm. I stared at Felicity’s shirt and she looked down as well. Goosebumps burst from her arms like lavender hillocks.

‘That was pretty stupid of you,’ I said, tightening the buckles of my own lifejacket. I tossed the water bottle into the mangroves and started turning and paddling up the creek, back onto the river. The sky had turned pale green, the infested water an expanse of eerie blue as translucent monsters riled beneath the surface.

Catherine Cole

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Photo on 2013-05-13 at 18_42 _2Professor Catherine Cole is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of  Wollongong. She has published novels and two non-fiction books. She is the editor of the anthology, The Perfume River: Writing from Vietnam and co-editor with McNeil and Karaminas of Fashion in Fiction: Text and Clothing in Literature, Film and Television, (Berg UK and USA, May 2009). She also has published poetry, short stories, essays and reviews.

 

from War Aphorisms

21.

If you fuck in the fields on a summer night the moon will appear at midnight.
Such is the nature of elongated days that when at last you see a face in the enamelled sky you must remind yourself not to be afraid:
it is just the moon, veiled and bursting.

22.

I stand on the edge of a field, on the edge of a trench full of poppies, runaway barley, weeds.
In the trench is all history since 1914.
Isn’t a trench a cruel thing?

23.

Two hares box in the frosty field,
their hind legs turning hoare to crystals.
A halo of frost around their heads, ears long flat ribbons.
Naked fun.
They disappear, white tails the last of them.

24.

Sometimes a horse looms from the mist,
ghost or real, who can tell.
It’s hooves send clods flying.
I know horses.
I know mist.
I know soil.
What truth can be found in that trinity.

25.

An old stone wall with eighteen bullet holes.
Probing fingers enter the wall.
If the souls of the dead need somewhere to go it surely must be holes filled with abandoned swallows’ nests.

Meeta Chatterjee

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

meetaMeeta Chatterjee is a lecturer in academic language and literacy in Learning Development, University of Wollongong. Her academic and professional interests lie in the area of doctoral research and writing. She has written about humour in Indian women writing in English for her Masters thesis. She has been writing poems for decades, but has only published occasionally. She enjoys the challenges of creating multisensory images to tell a story.

 

Erasure

Those who saw her go, deny that she was naked.
She tugged the sky off the clothesline, wrapped it
round herself and walked into the river-they said.

Fourteen days later lamps and rumours flared
on the banks of the Ganges.
Fishermen say that she strides into the village
stark naked, on full moon nights.
She ignores offers of clothes,
ties her wet hair into a bun
and walks past the living.

Some say she visits the temple, clangs
the bells to crescendo and then
dissolves into the flame of an oil lamp.
Others have seen her behind the abandoned house
beckoning drunken gamblers.
“Very unbecoming of a Brahmin girl-even in death”,
they shake their heads.
Others claim that they have seen her big with child
waving her voice at the wind—
her songs naked too.

In her own home, no one speaks of her.
They’ve blacked out her pictures from family albums
and scrubbed her off collective memories.
But on some cold winter evenings, when the sound of the conch
scatters and scatters
through the incense-filled prayer room
images of my dead eighteen –year old aunt dance
on grandma’s eye-lashes
asking to be grieved.

 

Landscape: Travelling Through South Australia

The coastline disappears-bewitching in its flouncy, racy skirts and the
promise of bare skin.
The smell of the rainforest and the seeds in the shade is memory.
The sky is a chalice, upturned on land –the  last drop gone.
Occasionally the soil desperate for seed and water
parts its itchy legs
stealthily to irrigation and grows guiltily pubic.
But mainly, the land blisters and throws up dead animals on the veins of roads.
Bones jutting, skin broken and broken again, the land endures the sun
roaring its orange pulp of heat.
At nightfall, the sky and land meet like wounded saints- too tired to sleep.

‘Erasure’ and ‘Landscape: Travelling through South Australia’ were published in The Journal of Literature and Aesthetics in 2004.