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Author: mascara

Vyacheslav Konoval

Vyacheslav Konoval is a Ukrainian poet and resident of Kyiv. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Anarchy Anthology Archive, International Poetry Anthology, Literary Waves Publishing, Sparks of Kaliopa, Reach of the Song 2022, Diogenes for Culture Journal, Scars of my heart from the war, Poetry for Ukraine, Norwich University research center, Impakter, The Lit, Allegro, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Fulcrum, Adirondack Center for Writing, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Revista Literaria Taller Igitur, Tarot Poetry Journal, Tiny Seed Literature Journal, Best American Poetry Blog, Appalachian Journal Dark Horse. Vyacheslav’s poems were translated into Spanish, French, Scottish, and Polish languages.

 
 

Cold drops of rain

Descending from the roof
the melting handfuls of snow.

Moaning and humming
echoes outside the window
the wind plays with the lonely poplar,
bends thin branches.

In the darkness of the apartment
confusion creeps
how is the Bakhmut city
my frontline friend?

 

Year of Darkness

A snowflake pinches the cheek,
the frost bites jokingly,
the fog is sliding on the ice.

As thunder tears apart a rocket supply,
the heart in pain, strangulation of the throat,
oh, that black fog covered the country.

There are thousands, tens of thousands of them.
Maybe hundreds of thousands
of worldly souls that flew to heaven,
from the sooty piles of smoke from the huts of towns and villages.

God, why such a punishment?

 

Lesh Karan

Lesh Karan is a Naarm/Melbourne-based writer and poet. Her work has been published in Best of Australian Poems 2022, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Island, Mascara Literary Review and Rabbit, amongst others. Lesh is currently completing a Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at the University of Melbourne. She’s of Fiji Indian heritage.

 

 

The Floor

She took off her earth-caked shoes
and put them on the floor. On the floor,
she stacked her old notebooks and red pens
drained of ink. She placed her sweat-drenched
leggings on the floor. On the floor, her heart
still racing, too. She piled the organic produce
from farmers’ markets on the floor, alongside
the key holes, acupuncture and Advil. A stone
statue of Lord Ganesha she placed on the floor.
On the floor, his wordlessness, too. The mango
tree from her childhood home, she gently lay
on the floor and saw an orange dove
flutter off. Friends she let go, the friend who
let her go, all on the floor. The ill-fitting careers
she stacked like witches hats in the furthest corner on the floor.
She took her mirror off the wall and set it
flat on the floor, looked at herself
from the ground up. The dream home
she dismantled and stacked on the floor,
next to all the how-to manuals she had bought.
The question she couldn’t answer, she tore
and scattered like seeds on the floor. When
the floor cracks, she putties it
with moonlight, Fleetwood Mac,
fresh Moleskines—
          and continues stacking.

 

Morgaine Riley

Morgaine Riley is a writer and English tutor from Peramangk Country (the Adelaide Hills). In 2021, she was awarded the Peter Davies Memorial Prize for Creative Writing. She has recently completed an Honours in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.


 
 
 
 
Selene

Meg
2022

The drive to Hardwicke is filled with corn chips and ABBA’s complete discography, with sleeping bags and pillows overflowing into the backseat and making it impossible to see out the rear window. On the first day, the weather is horrible—drizzly and gusty, banging the flyscreen doors and dragging green plastic deck chairs across the veranda. 

We sit on the carpet of the beach shack, poring over a photo album from Tony’s Year Eleven exchange to Japan. Jenny gave it to Selene after the twenty-year anniversary. Tony is younger in these photos, only sixteen or seventeen, and it shows in his face and hair. One photo stands out. In it, Tony is wearing light blue jeans and a white t-shirt, standing with his weight on his right leg. His hair is blonde and floppy, like Leonardo DiCaprio, and his smile tilts up to the left. He looks at ease, confident, and very familiar. 

Maybe it’s an aura—the way they hold themselves. Self-assured, always in action, with matching cheeky smirks—a forced moment of pause for a camera that will be abandoned quickly. 

* 

Something Eddy said about that day at Bullies jolted my recognition. “He got completely washed up, but he came in with this massive grin on his face.” A genuine love of trying, not just succeeding. Something the boys admired about Tony, and I treasure in Selene. I love Selene the way these boys loved Tony, and we mourn for how they could have loved each other.

*
 
 
The Keys

Meg
29th May 2022. Hardwicke Bay

On the anniversary of the day Tony disappeared, we walk along the esplanade to the beach. Nearly every second house has a tractor parked out front, old Ferguson types with big back wheels and rounded corners in pale blues and reds with rust bleeding through; or newer, John Deere green and yellow with encased cabs. To tow the boats out, Selene tells us. More heavy duty than your average four-wheel-drive. Fantastic off-roaders. 

We follow the tractor treads in the sand right down to the water line. Lazy and a little hungover, we trail along the beach, jeans rolled up to wander through the low tide and out onto the reef. We squat over shallow rockpools, pulling up crabs for inspection before returning them to their rocky alcoves in a flurry of sand. Pipi casings lie open, pale purple, sometimes pinkish inside, the discards of bait left behind by beach fishermen or washed ashore from their boats. 

We’ve been walking for two hours when we realise we’re hungry and halfway to Point Turton. Distracted, laughing about a boy Amber is “talking to”, we track back on wetter, harder sand, less dawdling this time. The tide has already taken most of our footprints.

Only when we are back at the house, and Kali tries to open the doors, do we realise what we don’t have. The keys.

“Are they inside?”

“No, I’m sure I took them,”

“The glove box, maybe?”

Selene pats the pouch pocket of her jumper in horror. “They were in here. They must have fallen out.”

“Tony’s rock?” We all realise at the same time. We’d been bending to place flowers there, that must’ve shaken them out.

Selene and I look at each other.

“We have to check.” 

A plan is set out. Selene and I will go and check the carpark, where the keys will definitely be, the others will try and get in through a window and see if any locksmiths are working on a Saturday in the middle of nowhere. No need to panic.

The keys are not at Tony’s rock. It’s obvious almost immediately—there’s only gravel and sparse status flowers for them to hide in.

“Ok, ok, let’s think. Where else would you have been bending down?”

Selene grimaces as we look out over the beach. “Pretty much every rock pool,” she sighs.

“Alright.” I don’t let her see how panicked I am. “Let’s go and look there, then.” I grin, “How hard can it be?”

Mirroring the same stupid hope that I feel, Selene grins back. “Right? Not hard.”

Retracing our steps is tricky, because the tide has come right in, swallowing all of our footprints. Selene scans the deeper, looser sand and I give up on keeping my jeans dry, scouring the shallows for any glinting silver. We’ve been staring at our feet for forty minutes when I stumble across the edge of a rockpool. 

 “I think we should head back,” Selene yells over the wind. She laughs when she sees me picking my way out to the reef. We must both be mad.

I stop and turn around to yell back, “One sec!” 

We stand there, a hundred metres apart, Selene with her hands on her head and me up to my thighs in sea water. Simultaneously, we keel over laughing. Then something catches my eye.

“SELENE OHMYFUCKINGGOD OHMYGODOHMYGOD!”

I fish them off the of the slimy rock and half-sprint half-jump back over the reef towards Selene. I shake my fist, keys clenched tight above my head as we shriek and jump and hug in disbelief.

“That’s gotta be him, right? What are the chances?”

*

Nilofar Zimmerman

Nilofar Zimmerman is a writer and lawyer living in Sydney. She is currently undertaking a Master of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney and was the runner-up in the 2022 Deborah Cass Prize for Writing.
 
 
 
 
 

Kaa

Girl dangled her legs over the back of the truck and swung them playfully while she watched Papa and Brother.  The first thwacks of the machetes were jarring.  Thwack.  The stem.  Thwack.  The leaves.  Thwack.  The cane trimmed for transportation.  But their rhythms quickly became melodic, like an ode to the rains that had come down enough and the sun that had taken over in time.

Half-way through the first row, Papa left Brother and walked further into the field to inspect the crops, disappearing beneath a canopy of green.  Girl slid down from the back of the truck, her bare feet landing gently on the dirt.  As she moved towards the maze of sugarcane, Brother stopped and watched her.

The thwacks were muffled as she ran deeper into the field among the rows of brown stalks and green leaves, which brushed her body as she weaved through the narrow spaces between the rows.  She was Mowgli now.  She crouched down into a gap where the stems of two plants had bowed towards each other to form a small hollow.  It was the perfect den for a wolf-child.  Baloo came to visit in the den and the bear told her stories about the law of the jungle as she paced along the soil on her hands and knees, practising her hunting skills.  Don’t fight with the lords of the jungle, he told her.  Bears, tigers, panthers – they must all be respected, just like the pack.  Do you remember the pack, Mowgli?

As she pulled aside a stalk of sugarcane searching for prey she nodded and repeated to herself, the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf.  She pretended Rikki Tikki Tavi, the mongoose, was hiding behind the stalks and pounced over and over again, practising her surprise attack.  A faint thwacking began pulsating towards her and she crouched on her legs with her back straight and her head up, still and listening like a wolf alone in the darkness. The thwacking slowly became louder as the field fell in line with the season.  Run, Mowgli, Run, she thought.  Shere Khan is coming.

When the light waned, Papa called for Brother to put his tools down and store them in the trailer of the truck.  Girl sat in the cabin of the truck wedged between Papa and Brother.  The air inside was thick with sweat and exhaustion and their wet bodies jolted against one another as they drove along the dirt road running down the middle of the sugarcane fields for the three-minute journey to the house.  The dirt road led to a two-bedroom house made of light blue weatherboard with a corrugated silver tin roof, which was fenced in by the fields on each side and dusted with dirt blown up from the ground.

As she walked into the house, Girl was hit by the sweet smell of the tropics mixed in with the warm air that filled the living room.  The fruit bowl on the counter of the adjacent kitchen was overflowing with pineapples, mangoes and a bag of apples from yesterday’s trip to the market.  She picked up an empty pitcher from a dining table with a white tablecloth and a clear plastic covering on top and took the pitcher to the sink to fill it with water.  She began carefully measuring out spoons of Tang and mixed the orange crystals into the water, tapping the rim of the spoon three times on the rim of the pitcher when the drink was ready, just like Mama used to.

Brother shouted for his drink as he lay sprawled on the green linoleum floor in front of the television with his back against the foot of the sofa.  Papa sat in his armchair under the gentle whipping of the ceiling fan, sorting through mail.  Girl climbed onto her step stool, slowly pouring the orange drink into two glasses and adding three ice cubes to each.  ‘Here’s a cold drink, Papa,’ she said, using both hands to pass him the glass.

His face broke into a smile.  ‘What would I do without you, sweet pea?’

Brother stared at her as she handed him the second glass.  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, his eyes red and impenetrable.  Kaa, thought Girl, as she returned to the kitchen to put on a pot of beans.  No.  The snake is Mowgli’s friend.

She picked up an apple and began methodically dicing it for Brother, just like Mama had taught her.  As she went to hand Brother the apple, she stopped to watch the laughter coming from the television screen and couldn’t help smiling along with the laugh track as the family on the screen gesticulated with frustration at one another.  As soon as Girl placed the apple in front of Brother, he began scooping handfuls from the bowl, his eyes always on the screen.  Brother began to cough and Papa let out a chuckle as he leant down to tap Brother’s back. ‘Go easy, boy,’ he said. ‘The market isn’t running out of apples.’  Brother smirked and continued staring ahead, putting another large handful in his mouth.

Papa beckoned Girl.  ‘You have a package from Cousin Sister’.  She clasped the brown envelope with both hands, brushing her fingers over the top right corner, which was filled with stamps bearing the Statue of Liberty.  Cousin Sister was Mama’s favourite niece.  She was a manager of Wendy’s now in San Francisco, Mama had told Papa proudly.  She had 20 employees working under her, Girl remembered Mama saying with a smile so wide, Girl could almost see Mama’s back molars.  Had left that man, Mama told Papa.  He punched her and she punched back.  Found a place in a shelter and never went back to him.  America was really something, wasn’t it?  Girl remembered the way Mama and Papa nodded their heads in agreement.  America really was something.

Girl tore open the package and jumped with delight.  ‘Another Babysitter’s Club book, my fourth one.  It’s Mary-Anne Saves the Day,’ she said to no one in particular, waving the book in front of her.  She opened the first page and sounded out the unfamiliar words, just like Mama had taught her.  As she walked back towards the stove, she pictured herself walking through the tree-lined streets of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, through the front door of a weatherboard house and up the stairs to Claudia’s bedroom for the club meeting.  Where have you been, Girl? They would say.  Come and join us.

Girl looked out the kitchen window as she dried the last dish but outside everything had merged into darkness.  She hung up the tea towel for the morning and went to get ready for bed, washing away the day under a cool shower before haphazardly drying herself and wrapping the towel around her body, eager to read her new book.  She darted across the hallway into the bedroom and straight to the dresser sitting between her bed and Brother’s bed.  She straightened Mama’s photograph of Princess Diana, which was hanging askew above the dresser and pulled out her clothes from the top drawer.  As she slipped on her underwear, she remembered Mama’s old atlas on the bookshelf.  She pulled it off the shelf and crouched over it.  She flicked through the index looking for ‘S’ and ran her finger down the page but she couldn’t find Stoneybrook, Connecticut anywhere.  She found Stamford, which was close enough.  The babysitters sometimes went there.  It was real.  She found the map and was tracing the east coast of America with her finger when she felt movement near the door.  She looked up to see Brother standing at the bedroom doorway, staring at her, his eyes darting with curiosity across her naked torso.  She quickly picked up her nightie from the floor next to her, pulled it on and went to push past him.  He put out a long arm and blocked the doorway.  She returned his stare.  He relented and she ran over to Papa, who was reading in his armchair.

‘What is it?’ Papa asked.

Girl looked over at Brother, who was walking over to the television.  Remember the law, Mowgli.  The wolf that follows it will prosper.  Keep peace with the lords of the jungle.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

Throughout the market, dotted with plastic tables topped with crates of fruit and vegetables, stall holders sat on folding chairs playing cards or throwing around lethargic banter under the sun.  Girl hopped and skipped over the dry dirt, breaking the market’s docile rhythm as she followed Papa to the truck for the hour-long drive from town back home.  She held a large piece of taro like a rugby ball and pretended to toss it to Papa.  He laughed as he loaded the truck and handed Girl a bag of apples to hold in her lap

‘We wouldn’t want these to get bruised,’ he said to Girl as he climbed into the driver’s seat.  ‘Brother has been working very hard.’

Girl fiddled with the dial on the radio with one hand while carefully holding the bag in her other hand as they jostled down the dirt road, following the island’s curve along the coast.  The radio crackled as she turned the dial and once she landed on the right song, she nestled back into her seat.  Roam if you want to, the B-52s sang to her from across the ocean.  Roam around the world.  Roam if you want to.  Without wings, without wheels.  She gazed out the open window at the Pacific Ocean stretching endlessly to their left, her bare arms peeling away from the warm leather seat like sticky tape as she sat up to get a better look.

‘Papa,’ she said, ‘How long would it take to get to America?’.

‘It would take many hours, my darling.’

‘Would I need to take an aeroplane, Papa?’

‘Yes, you would.  A large plane.  It would cost a lot of money.’

‘Papa, I want to earn money to buy a plane ticket and live in America.  I’ll work in a restaurant and have a big American house, just like the Babysitter’s Club.’

Papa chuckled.  ‘What about your Papa, my darling?  If you lived in America, who would look after me?’

Girl smiled at Papa, then looked out across the windscreen at the ocean to the left and field after field of sugarcane on the right.  ‘Of course, Papa.  Don’t worry, I’ll always look after you.’

They arrived at the house as the light was starting to fade and Brother was pulling up on his bicycle.  Girl put the bag of apples on the seat and slid from the truck before carefully lifting the bag out with both hands.  She walked over to the front door watching over her shoulder as Papa patted Brother on the back.

‘You’re doing a fine job, boy,’ Papa said. ‘I think we’ll get a good price for the harvest this year.  In a few weeks, we’ll be ready to the take the first batch to the mill.’

Girl walked straight to the kitchen counter, taking an apple from the bag and washing it.  As she slowly diced the apple for Brother, she remembered Mama’s gentle encouragement.  A little smaller, a little smaller, Mama would say to Girl, showing her how to cut the apple.

Girl sat in her nightie on a bundle of cane under the moonlight, watching Papa tie down the stacks of cane piled high onto a large trailer attached to the truck.

‘Can I have a go, Papa?’

‘I’m sorry, my darling, I need to make these very tight.  Otherwise, I’ll be dropping parcels of cane all the way along the coast.’

‘Why can’t I come with you, Papa?’ Girl said.  The bundle of cane she was sitting on jiggled slightly as she fidgeted one leg.

‘Who will look after Brother while he carries on with the cutting?  That is your important job for the harvest and I know you will do it well.  Now it’s time for bed for all of us.  I’ll be leaving at first light, but I should be back at night.’

Girl woke up several hours later and looked across the dark room.  Slap.  Slap.  Slap.  The sound was faint but certain.  She could just see Brother’s eyes fixed on her from his bed, his hand moving up and down under the covers.  Her heart was beating quickly and forcefully.

Kaa.

Kaa is watching.

Kaa is waiting.

She took a deep breath before getting out of bed and walking softly across the hallway to Papa’s room.  She lay down in bed next to him and closed her eyes.

Remember, Mowgli, remember.  If you fight with one of the pack, you must fight him alone and afar.  Lest the pack be brought into the quarrel.  Lest the pack be brought into war.

With Papa gone at sunrise, Girl spent the morning at the house doing her jobs.  Papa will be so pleased, she thought, as she wiped the dirt from the outside of the doors and windows.  She imagined she was Pippi Longstocking getting Villa Villekulla ready for her sea captain father who was coming home from an expedition.  As she pulled towels down from the clothesline, she put her face to them and breathed deeply.  They smelled like Mama to her.  A mixture of detergent and the crisp cleanliness that only came from a day of baking in the hot sun.

At lunchtime, Girl packed a shopping bag with a thermos of Tang and a plastic container of fried cassava, rice and beans and walked down to the field nearest to the house, which hadn’t been cut yet, squinting into the distance to look for Brother among the sea of green.  She took a deep breath and walked further down the dirt road along the edge of the field, holding the bag with one hand and brushing the leaves of the sugarcane with her other hand.  As she wiggled her fingers in the empty space between one of the rows, a hand lunged forward and grabbed her wrist tightly, pushing her against the crops.  ‘You’re late,’ Brother said, glaring at Girl, his face and chest centimetres from her own, the beads of sweat on his forehead hovering over Girl like they were daring her to move.  She dropped the bag onto the soil and as Brother released his grip, she clutched her wrist and ran deeper into the field, weaving between the rows of sugarcane and looking for a path through the jungle.

*

Brother came in after the day of felling, slumping down at the dining table and turning on the television.  His shirt was wet; the day’s heat had defeated him.  On cue, Girl began cutting his apple.  A little bigger, she thought, a little bigger.  She put the bowl of apple in front of Brother and turned towards the sink to prepare the pitcher of Tang.  Measure the powder carefully.  Mix it into the water, just like Mama said to.  Then a hard thumping interrupted her evening ritual.

She turned around to see Brother holding his throat with one hand and banging the other on the dining table.  She dropped her spoon and stumbled backwards in surprise, catching herself against the counter.  Kaa was gasping for air.  His steely eyes demanded attention.  Help me.  Mowgli, you must help me.

Girl stood immobilised.  She began to move forward but hesitated and turned back to the pitcher, closing her eyes.

Drink deeply but never too deep, Kaa.  That is the way of the jungle.  Mowgli watched as Kaa struggled for breath until finally, the snake fell to the jungle floor with a thud, its gaze fixed towards some distant place.

Girl opened her eyes and turned towards the dining table, swiping the tears off her face with both hands.  Then she reached into a cupboard and picked up a packet of rice.  Papa will be hungry.

 

T.L

T.L writes fiction, short fiction, poetry, and reviews. Her work has been published in Mascara, Cordite, Southerly, Best Australian Poems 2014, and Griffith Review, among others. In 2016 she won the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature. Her second novel, Autumn Leaves, 1922, was released in August 2021 by Pegasus Books USA. She has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University. She lives on Bidjigal land in Sydney.

 

Butterfly

A butterfly battles across Parramatta Road. It’s big and black, with white eyes on its wingtips. Even so, the wind in this storm-season is strong and each car and truck that rumbles beneath it sends fresh blasts to blow it off course. It tries to reach the other side of the highway, but it keeps falling, struggling up and then falling on to the road and almost smashed. Then it rises again, against the wind, against the traffic’s displaced air. I wait in my car and the radio blasts, a doctor from the children’s hospital in Kyiv, the broadcaster prompts him, the boy was six, he had bullet wounds, yes, in his chest, his abdomen, his head. The trucks are constant, the cars, the noise incessant. It’s not gridlock and the heavy vehicles, dirty after all the rain, barrel down the hill. The radio continues, the doctor’s words are scattergun, the baby had wounds. Yes. Shot wounds. Yes, the baby was shot in the head. They shot the ambulance. The Russian soldiers, yes. The ambulance called me. On the way to the hospital. The baby died. The butterfly crosses at the lights, where I wait, trying to get home before the next onslaught of flooding storm. The butterfly pushes itself up and up, black wings in a grey sky, up and up. The radio drones on, another city, another basement, I’m in Mariupol, still, I can’t get out. I saw them, my neighbours. They are on the road now, a mother and her boy and her girl. Before they were on the road, they went up, higher than the roof of the church, it seemed impossible, they went up and up, they were flying. Up and up, black wings in a grey sky, up and over the truck, over the next truck, it dips and is almost smashed, then it rises, it reaches the other side of the highway and the trees that stand staunch against the heavy, threatening sky. 

 

Min Chow

Min Chow is an emerging Malaysian-Australian writer and second runner up for the Deborah Cass Prize in 2022. She works, lives and writes on Wurundjeri land. Her work has also appeared in the Life in the Time of Corona anthology and Peril magazine. She is working on her first novel.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Melonshine

Papa announced that I would start riding to school with Preeti.

Her, with the sticky eyes.

We had both been in the same class since the start of the year but we had never spoken. I could only remember her going blink blink blink in the corner and her sudden burst of cackles among the group who needed extra help in Matematik.

The battered white Proton Saga pulled up when it was still dark outside. Uncle Balan waved, “Good morning!”

Preeti sat in the front with the window rolled down, munching plain cream crackers from a plastic container.

She sang out, “Haiiiii, Lim Bee Hoon!”

“It’s Samantha,” I replied flatly, watching the wet biscuit paste tumble inside her mouth from one cavity to another.

Preeti blinked. “Sam-what?

“Sa-MAN-tha. My name is Samantha.”

We picked up four other people, all piling in the back sleepily, squeezing and trying to shrink ourselves to fit. The smell of starched uniforms and morning breaths filled the car, along with Uncle Balan’s hair oil and Preeti’s cream crackers.

A girl from a year below was practically sitting on top of me. I felt my warm Milo breakfast swish and swirl dangerously in my stomach. I focused on staring at the younger girl’s left hand clutching her water bottle, a curious map of knots and untidy sewing stitches that started from the base of her thumb down to her forearm.

The journey would take nearly an hour, on dusty roads past tall towers exhaling one long, continuous sigh after another into the sky the colour of the muddy drain that ran behind our house. The Proton sped past endless patches of disemboweled red earth, raw and seething as heavy machines and their claws continued their assault, thud-thud-thud.

Papa liked to use the word ‘development’ when we got to this stretch, back when he drove me to school. He said the trees were making way for important, well-known companies from the USA to give local people jobs. Even to those from the plantation, like Uncle Balan. They were friends, helping us out and we needed a lot of help. Bright foreign names appeared on these big towers that were built in what seemed like weeks. I recognised only Mattel from the boxes of my old Lego sets and Barbie dolls.

My favourite part was when we drove past the airfield where the Australian fighter jets were parked, gleaming under the smoked, watery sun. The air force station had been there for many years. Long before I was born, long before Papa arrived. He said the Australians too were friends, like the USA. They came to help us fight off the bad guys as they had more power, more weapons, more everything.

I saw these Australians sometimes at Berkat, the first department store with air-con that opened just a few months ago. They’re just stopping by, Mama absently said to no one in particular. The airforce families lived over on the island, near the beach, where their children went to a special school. I imagined 10-year olds like me with names like Debbie, Luke, Glenn.

Once past the airfield, the Proton finally pulled up in front of the school foyer just as the bell went. We tumbled out of the car, dizzy from the heat and Uncle Balan’s sharp lane changes in shift change traffic. I wiped sweat off my upper lip with the sleeve of my white shirt and caught a whiff of hair oil.

*

“Mama,” I said as I set the plates on the table. My father ate at the factory canteen most nights of the week.

“Can I please not go in Uncle Balan’s car anymore?”

“I can take the school bus, like Suzy and Tina. It’s very safe.”

Mama didn’t say anything. A moment later, she came over and placed a hand on my cheek. It was warm and damp, and it said, be a good girl please.

Being a good girl was the easiest on Sunday, my favourite day. When Papa wasn’t too tired, he took us in his treasured second-hand Nissan on the ferry across to the island. The island was where we belonged, our future forever home. We were leaving the mainland behind and moving over in a year. Papa said the same thing last year but there had been a delay with his promotion to ‘corporate’. But it was going to happen. One hundred per cent. He would be the first local man in the factory to go this far.

There was always smiling and chatting on Sundays spent on the island. Nothing would upset Papa, Mama’s eyes danced and her shoulders dropped.

We ate in Western restaurants with air-con, their windows drawn tightly shut so it was dark even during the day. There was a tealight candle and a vase with a single plastic flower on every table. Papa ordered Fish and Chips, Minute Steak and Spaghetti Bolognese without fail. I preferred chicken rice, but I would pick at the chips and say things like “This is so delicious!” and “I could eat this every day!”.

After that, we visited the supermarket that stocked imported products, where many airforce families shopped for jars of Vegemite and chocolate shaped like frogs. Mama bought a packet of Tim Tams once as a treat for Chinese New Year and stored most of them in the fridge for over a year before they had to be thrown out. Mostly, we drove around the airforce neighbourhood near the beach looking at houses. I pointed out luxurious features, real or imagined, lying within the lacquered gates.

“That one has a balcony! Maybe even a pool!”

“Next year,” Papa said in his jolly Sunday voice, one resolute finger in the air, “we’ll have something grander.”

*

One morning, Preeti held a small black tube as I climbed into the car.

She caught me staring and said, “I’m keeping it for Amma. See? She says the colour is bright and lovely. Like me.”

Preeti’s Amma worked for an airforce family on the island and came home once a month. She cooked and cleaned for them and called the adults Sir and Mum. Mum had given her the lipstick for Christmas, even though Preeti’s Amma was Hindu.

Preeti uncapped the tube revealing the crayon with a flat top and sniffed greedily. She handed it to me, gesturing for me to smell it. I turned the lipstick tube over in my hands. Melonshine, it said on the little shiny sticker at the bottom.

The tube turned up everywhere with Preeti. She showed it to everyone in class, fiddled with it even when we were meant to stand still at Assembly. Uncle Balan had spoken to Cikgu asking special permission to allow it.

I started rolling my eyes and soon Suzy joined me. It wasn’t as if Preeti could do anything with it. Make-up was forbidden, except when we got to perform at the year-end concert. Girls like Preeti didn’t get picked for that.

Preeti trotted behind me as we were heading out to recess. Suzy and Tina raised their eyebrows at each other.

“Lim Bee Hoon! What are we playing today?”

“My name is Samantha,” I hissed.

“Cikgu doesn’t call you that. Your name is Lim Bee Hoon-lah.”

“My friends call me Samantha.”

“OK. But I’m not calling you your fake name.”

She parked herself on the grass near the edge of our circle without taking care to cross her legs. We could see her underwear and I made a show of screwing up my face and pinching my nose, making Suzy and Tina giggle.

*

“There are too many of us in the car. It stinks and I can’t breathe the whole way.”

“The windows aren’t even automatic!”

“She’s a bit dumb in class too. She doesn’t even know what’s eight times nine. Eight times nine!”

I went blink blink blink, by then an impression that I repeated almost every day. Unlike Suzy and Tina and my other classmates, Mama didn’t laugh and said enough.

I was still moody on Sunday when we left to see the new bridge. The Nissan joined the massive queue of mainland families eager to cross what they were calling one of the longest bridges in the world. A real global treasure, right here at our doorstep. Papa usually preferred silence in the car until we got to the island, but he popped in a Michael Jackson tape and drummed his fingers to the beat on the steering wheel. He could have waited in line the whole day.

Two hours later, we reached the gate and paid the toll. As the window rolled up and we passed into the transit area, I felt something shift in the car. Mama cleared her throat and glanced at Papa. He smiled at her and changed gears purposefully, climbing the freshly painted tar as Michael sang why why tell ‘em that it’s human nature for the third time. It was so new and modern, not one pothole in sight we could have been part of a blown-up Lego set Mattel from USA made right there on the mainland.

Soon, we were on the bridge, cruising above the water. My stomach fluttered like on the rides at the pesta, only this was much better. We were practically flying across the strait! The tiny stubborn strip on the map that had kept us apart from the island, now linked and forever changed. As the crest of the bridge appeared before us, the sea too had transformed, from the colour of mucus to a sparkling turquoise.

Papa’s mouth hung slightly open the entire time. Mama kept looking over at him and back at me, her pale hand on her throat while she swallowed several times. At the top, dwarfed between the towers that reached into the sky in the bluest shade of blue, the Nissan sputtered twice, as if in awe. The journey was over in less than ten minutes. It was the fastest crossing to the island we ever made but it felt like we had gone much, much further.

*

Suzy and I were trying a new game. We sat on the ground under the cool, deserted Blok D stairs, with our pinafore skirts pushed up. We were taking turns running our fingers down each other’s lap. The first to give in to the tickle and laugh would be the loser.

It was funny at first. Suzy’s fat fingers tiptoed up and down my lap, tripping over themselves and it was hard not to giggle. When her turn came to sit still, I pretended to play the piano on her lap, with extra sound effects. We had just gone twice when Preeti appeared and plopped down next to us without asking.

She studied us for a little while before putting her lipstick tube down and cracked her fingers until a few of them popped. With a tongue out in concentration, she raised her right fourth finger and hovered it above my lap. She looked at me briefly and when I didn’t say anything, she placed the finger on me. So gentle was the landing that I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t been looking. I froze as her finger started trailing upwards, light as an insect. It carefully carried on north to the middle of my lap before it gained speed and slid towards the edge of my underwear.

Suzy too had stopped moving, her eyes wide and glittering in the dimness. Preeti’s breathing was the only sound we could hear. The same softness now descended, silky tips of a make-up brush skimming downwards over tiny bumps that had sprung up on my skin. I felt hot and cold all over, a fever almost, like the kind I got sometimes with the shower head. The kind you didn’t want to stop.

Suzy jumped back suddenly with a yelp. A thin puddle had crept slowly to the edge of her shoe. I stood up, thigh still tingling and stared down in shock as a stain bloomed across my pinafore skirt and fluid pooled in my white ankle socks. I felt the wetness, just as the sharp, sweet tang of acid hit my nostrils.

Preeti’s finger was still suspended in mid-air when I turned to look at her. In the near-darkness, I just about made out her eyes. Blink blink blinking the terror away.

Papa heard from Uncle Balan at work and didn’t miss a beat when he got home. When he was done, he pushed me into the storeroom and latched it shut from the outside. I couldn’t reach the lights, even when I climbed on top of the stack of old newspapers. I sat sobbing, fighting off the hug from the darkness around me, the black creatures emerging.

—-

“Inside or outside today?”

I smiled brightly, “Let’s play inside today.”

It was Preeti’s turn, and she went looking under the desks and behind the cupboard. Anyone else could see there was no one hiding in those places. I waited in the wings, alert and ready.

Uncle Balan arrived late that day to pick us up, after everyone else had gone. He seemed distracted and deep in thought, so I guessed he was no longer upset. The girl with the stitched hands was jerking about next to me, confused if she was meant to sit back or lean forward. I pushed her back and a fold in my skirt fell to one side, exposing the back of my leg. She gasped.

“You should cover those hands up with gloves,” I snapped at her.

Nobody said anything in the car for a long time. When the car came to stop at the lights, Uncle Balan pulled up the handbrake and twisted fully in his seat to stare at me. I could see he was mad, perhaps even madder than Papa had been the other night. I turned away, my heart beating so loudly I could hear it over the motor engines around us. A kapchai throbbed next to us, carrying a younger boy sandwiched between his father and mother, an Ultraman bag from Berkat over her shoulders.

Alone in my room, I retrieved from my bag the prize I claimed at recess. I uncapped Melonshine and dabbed the glossy red on the back of my palm. It turned brown on my skin like rotten fruit, and I kept pressing the flat top of the stick into it to make the colour shine red again. I decided I would keep it for a day or two, just long enough for Preeti to miss it. In case her Amma returned and asked for it.

Preeti didn’t turn up the next day, or the one after that. One week passed and Mama told me that they were putting me on the school bus because Uncle Balan couldn’t drive me anymore. I shrugged and carried on with my homework.

When no one was looking, I let myself into the storeroom and locked the door behind me. I twisted the tube open with my fingers and felt the blackness breathe unhappily on the back of my neck, down my bare arms and my thighs, like Preeti’s fourth finger. I brought the tube close to my nose. I smelled the sugary wax and pressed the stick to my mouth, imagining the places the colour had touched.

Peter Ramm

Peter Ramm is a poet and teacher who writes on the Gundungurra lands of the NSW Southern Highlands. His debut poetry collection Waterlines is out now with Vagabond Press. In 2022 he won the prestigious Manchester Poetry Prize. His poems have also won the Harri Jones Memorial Award, The South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Award, The Red Room Poetry Object, and have been shortlisted in the Bridport, ACU, Blake, and the Newcastle Poetry Prizes. His work has appeared in Westerly, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, The Rialto, Eureka Street, and more.

 

The Sedulity of Soldier Crabs

Red, red is the sun,
Heartlessly indifferent to time,
The wind knows, however,
The promise of early chill.
—Matsuo Bashō

It’s Boxing Day and the sun climbs a lattice work of cirrus clouds, dripping like treacle in the early afternoon. The sandflats are rinsed with the voices of a hundred children and the air teems with the smell of last week’s storm washing through the estuary after its journey down the Woodstock and Stoney Creeks. The inlet runs emerald green and blue in the deep places and three channel markers meander their way towards the point like a set of mis-thrown darts. 

        Whiting like razors
        
In the water; each one cuts
        
A new memory.

II.

This is Yuin country, and it remembers a time before its wealth was burnt in the lime pit at Dolphin Point and hauled by the Burrill Lake Timber company to Sydney; its cedar, iron bark and mahogany forests floated out to sea. A plaque on the Princess Highway recounts how the rock shelter on the lake’s edge makes children of the pyramids and the language the king used to claim the geology of the place—the basalt and siltstone forty million years in the making.

        Fourteen cormorants
        
Take wing; time written cursive
        
In pages of sea grass.

III

Now, my son’s fingers are little clumps of sand in mine and we run ankle deep across the bar—legs lurching like the loose brush strokes of an infant artist. The pools and pockets of water gleam like the scaled side of a great bream for hundreds of yards before us. He says I’m a sea monster; a shark, an octopus, a crab or whatever he wants me to play. All he knows is the next footfall, and more often, the fall of laughter and salt and the cast net of his father’s arms. 

        Onshore, paddle boards
        
Consume the car park, staking
        
Out their own claim.

IV

I grasp at his arm before he lands on the blue back of a lone soldier crab—an ancient of days, his bone-striped legs the first to walk this water. Sitting. Still. Sifting the sand against the budding toes of my boy. There’s music in the dactyls of his claws, in the iambs of his movement, in the breath of my toddler. Together, they share the notes of time, a semibreve on the boy’s lips—a pause, a new sonata strung in his mind. But he wants to squish it

        —Feel the crush of bone
        
And shell in the webs of feet.
        
There’s so much to learn.

V

The wind winds us up, it blows purple on our skin and black on the faces of a pair of pied oystercatchers, who pry the sand for the living, weighing the hour like Anubis, with beak and feather. Still, the crab remains. Long after we’ve passed. Out there—a relic of the tides, the small cadences of the cosmos marked in the milky way of its shell. We finish by skimming on the board, the boy riding it like a comet over the water, and I, collapsing Phaethon, at the reins. 

        Coolness in the shade
        
Of the wind. Always, the end
        
Begs quiet and time.

 

Alicia Marsden in conversation with Michelle Cahill

Michelle Cahill is an Australian novelist and poet of Indian origin. They live in Sydney; their prizes include the the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing, the Kingston Writing School Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize, the Val Vallis Award and the Red Room Poetry Fellowship. Their work appears in Future Library, ed Anjum Hassan & Sampurna Chatterjee, (Red Hen Press, 2022) and forthcoming in 4A Papers. Daisy & Woolf is published by Hachette.

This interview was recorded on 6 May 2022 on Woi Wurrung Country, on unceded Aboriginal land.

Photo: Nicola Bailey
 
 
 
A.M: I just wanted to start by acknowledging that I live and work and reside on the lands of the Jaggera and Turrbal people, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, before we started.

M.C: Thank you Alicia, I’m currently on Woi Wurrung country, and I’d like to thank the Aboriginal owners. I’d also like to acknowledge the Aboriginal peoples of Guringai country, where I live, their elders past, present, and emerging, and thank them for their laws, their languages and their care of the land, for allowing me to live here on their lands. And to acknowledge that this is stolen land, and always will be Aboriginal land.

A.M: Absolutely. I have recently been studying Alexis Wright’s Boisbouvier oration from the 2018 Melbourne Writer’s Festival, and she has this beautiful quote: “We either ignoring or describing, exploring or grappling on the contested ground of stolen land with unsettled matters”. And I was reading a quote from you, where you talked about your poetry embodying “scrutiny over invasion”. How would you say Daisy & Woolf sits with those unsettled matters?

M.C: I think that it speaks of the story of a group of people who have been disenfranchised from their own country because of colonisation. The history of Anglo-Indians and Eurasian people is such a troubled one, with so much erasure, and has much in common, in many ways, with the history of Aboriginal people being moved, displaced and deracinated, and having to fight back against that to reclaim their language, their sovereignty and their culture. I think one review described this as a “novel of reclaiming” and that’s what I’m bringing into light is Daisy’s culture and Daisy’s language and her – well, not so much her language, I take that part back, but Daisy’s culture and her family and her absence of language, the fact that she resides in English as a result of colonisation. That’s mentioned in the first chapter where she speaks, when she talks about her children being tutored in Urdu and Bengali but they speak English better. There are little pointers in that first introduction to Daisy, where the conflicts for her as a mixed ancestry person are being dramatized by the fiction. So, I think in answer to your question, that’s really how it sits with unsettlement- I also think Mina, being the Australian author, who is also a migrant, an Anglo-Indian migrant, she’s able to sense, always, that she’s on stolen land and that this is Aboriginal land and this comes up for her in the first chapter when she’s talking about how colonisation came to the south coast of New South Wales where her family live, and how there were [coolies] from Bengal on those early ship journeys, and that they actually found their way with some of the colonisers because of Aboriginal people helping them walk from the south coast right up to Sydney, what was Sydney then, in Gadigal country. Mina’s aware of that and she’s also aware in the final chapter which was set in Varuna, not wanting to give too much away, on Gundungurra country where she’s aware, while speaking back to a white male who’s quite entitled. Mina tells him this isn’t even your land anyway, so I feel like Mina is a character who is aware of this fight against racism and this struggle of all disenfranchised people and First Nations people. In her own way, she’s so distanced from her culture, and she carries that grief with her every single day. There are obviously differences between her situation and how it might feel for Aboriginal people, but there are also some similarities and the sense of being able to share that struggle against the colony and against the oppression, which is often Eurocentric oppression and European oppression of First peoples.

A.M: I really liked how the story was cushioned on both sides by an acknowledgement of that, with the parts in the front and the parts in the back that you mentioned. Those were some of the first things that I highlighted that really struck me as poignant, especially with this sort of literature, writing back to the empire, these post-colonial excavations of literary canon, acknowledging that what’s there isn’t just what was always there; that there is so much more that’s been pushed to or resides in the margins, that isn’t spoken about or that stories aren’t recorded from but happened anyway. I thought that was a really beautiful theme throughout the entire text.

M.C: Thank you, Alicia. I love how you described that, as well. It’s a journey towards gathering the knowledge. You have to go back in order to reclaim, to go through the archives and piece together, and also new making as well, creating and adding and contributing to the archives in that process. I guess that was my process as a writer – there are so many gaps when you’ve had this experience as of being disenfranchised from culture and language and home. Having been so dislocated and removed from home, where do you call ‘home’?

In some ways you are always homeless. Those gaps make it very difficult and pose quite a challenge, but I found that on the positive side, there is substantial shared memory and shared collective history that can be added to narrative. I also use technology in terms of the internet to be able to help my research. So that was an enabling aspect to my research, I didn’t always have to go to libraries or rely on books.

A.M: Daisy & Woolf sits with such beautiful peers of texts like Wide Sargasso Sea, or Foe by Coetzee, doing the work of writing back to the empire and centring characters who were, to quote yourself, “devoured in the imperial closet” by the “wolves” of the Western canon. So it has such fine company, as well.

M.C: Thank you, Alicia. I’ve read those novelists and just admire so much the passion and the viscerality of their work, that it is multi-textured and vivid. I wanted to create that sort of narrative detail in Daisy’s journey, in her life and her voice, to give her an embodied voice. I was on residency at the Hurst in Wales at the time, and I was reading lots of journals from travellers who had travelled from India, or had travelled through the Suez Canal, and reading about the Indian independence struggle and so forth. When her voice finally came to me, it was just a wonderful moment that I could start that first chapter, where she speaks of stepping out into the dark morning, it was before dawn, and she was stepping out into the streets of Kolkata. I wanted that her appearance be similar to Clarissa Dalloway’s first appearance in Mrs Dalloway, where Virginia Woolf makes her opening sentence, “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”, and on it goes. I wanted something memorable and focused for Daisy, this woman who had an intention to do something that day, whilst conversing with her lover.

A.M: I really enjoyed finding the parallels between the beginning of Mrs Dalloway and the beginning of Daisy & Woolf, but when you departed from that, with Mrs Dalloway being a day in the life of Clarissa, but Daisy & Woolf is so much more, for Daisy and for Mina, it spans so much more time and space, and I really liked how you made that distinction.

M.C: I didn’t attempt to do anything in particular in terms of comparing the work to Mrs Dalloway, I was more focussed on the voice, getting the voice right, and then allowing the voice to follow its own journey. I had a good sense of where Daisy was going, so that helped me to structure the novel, because I knew she was traveling to England. Still, I didn’t really know what was going to happen. It’s a beautiful thing to have the story lead you as a writer and you trust that, as well as being the engineer of it. To allow that trust, I think it’s an interwoven relationship that you have with the text itself.

A.M: I love how Daisy has the agency, even in the structure and writing of her own story, I’m very fond of that idea, of characters having their own agency, if we’re just the scripters, I guess? That’s very interesting.

M.C: I experimented with the use of diary and letters. I thought a fair bit about whether to write in first person present or past tense or third person, as well, and I think a lot of my work I try in different tenses, POV as well and see how that works. The immediacy of the first person is powerful, it becomes quite separate from me as a writer. Even with Mina’s voice, although there are definitely autobiographical traces to it, having a first person POV, Mina becomes her own self and is released from me.

A.M: I really enjoyed how different and distinct the voice of Mina and Daisy were throughout the text. I very much enjoyed that, even though as a metafiction we understand the motions of writing but seeing the distinct voices and how they would tackle things was very interesting.

M.C: Mm, so how did you find the difference between Mina and Daisy’s voice in that respect?

A.M: I found they were both, not bleak so to speak but there was definitely an element of bleakness to the writing, in both perspectives. I think Mina’s was almost more visceral because there was more… not that there was more emotion, but there was more immediacy, because it was dated to 2017, and contextualised by events that she was mentioning, like the Grenfell tower collapse, and a lot of things that contemporary readers would see and remember. With Daisy, though, it was slightly different, but they both had elements of bleakness and viscerality, as you say, I totally agree.

M.C: Grenfell Tower and all the events that were happening, it is something that we find ourselves watching on social media, and all these things happening, the Black Lives Matter movement, landslides and environmental issues affecting Nepal and the Himalayan areas, all the changes that are happening, and we know that people of colour are suffering, right? They’re the ones who are going to be impacted, the ones who have housing insecurity, who are affected most in these situations, with economic vulnerability. There’s a sense of this world that we’re living in being so problematic on so many levels. Mina is also dealing with personal issues and past traumas, losses of her relationship with her offspring and the loss of her mother, her grief, and she’s trying to navigate personal intimacy as well. It’s a very fraught time for her that the novel is charting.

A.M: Both perspectives are saturated with grief, but especially with the modern events – I think because of social media, we have such an immediacy of knowledge, things pop up on Twitter or Instagram, we see them, we scroll. We think about it for a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, but then the next big, horrible event happens, and we’re distracted by it. But when we see those events harkened back to in fiction, it brings back all the emotions that were inherent to it, that we forgot about because of how readily information is available.

M.C: Absolutely, that is so true. How we just move on, it’s sort of overwhelming: a cascading current of issues and concerns; and so often re-traumatising.

A.M: There’s so much to pay attention to, so much to give nuanced thought to, but there isn’t a lot of time, because things are always happening.

M.C: It fragments us, doesn’t it?

A.M: Yes, absolutely.

M.C: It’s very hard to then focus on the work we have, the task of writing, which Mina has undertaken. In order to do that, to excavate that space, she has to sacrifice quite a fair bit. That’s where the bleakness comes through, the waves of bleakness and vulnerability.

A.M: Carving time for the people and the characters that haunt us, even though there’s already so much haunting us from contemporary events.

M.C: The haunting of Daisy’s voice through her life. And Shuhua Ling, the Chinese author who was in a relationship with Virginia Woolf’s nephew, she is also ghosting Mina’s writing of this novel.

A.M: Yes, this text is full of ghosts. But I like that we’re giving them, not so much a space to haunt but shining a light on them so they can tell their own stories, rather than just echoes through the text or other people’s works. I thought that was wonderful.

M.C: Ah, right. And how do you think it’s different in non-fiction? Does fiction do something different for you, reading these stories about these women, Shuhua Ling and Daisy – was that a different experience than say, if you had read about it in an essay, I’m curious about that.

A.M: I think so. It makes me think a lot about literary language and how that has such a different effect even if the words are the same, or have cousins in non-fiction, so to speak. I think the emotional aspect of literary language and fiction holds hands with the ghosts of these women. It’s much easier to read and see their experiences through literary language. It reminds me a little of Bakhtin, how he talks about literary language, specifically the language of novels is heteroglossic and it contains multiple different languages within the text – the languages of class difference, or race, or gender – and I think that is what’s happening here, in the literary language of Daisy & Woolf. I wouldn’t, I don’t think, get the same experience with non-fiction – I don’t the ghosts would be quite so loud, or prominent.

M.C: What Bakhtin says about heteroglossia and how literary language allows these interactions of different registers of voices. The silences become vocalised in all their different registers; I agree. In an essay, a writer can be scrutinised, and it’s so factually dependent, that your interpretation of facts in an essay could be criticised or turned around and used against the purpose that you had hoped to champion. I feel that in fiction, that’s less of the case because you don’t need to rely necessarily on the facts, although you can use fact, but you can use elements of the surreal, elements of embellishment or dream, or poetic language, or have different visualisations coming into the facts and merging with facts. In that respect, there’s a license for you to explore, and speak with greater liberty, to allow these aspects to be fleshed out. You’re doing that from behind a shield that protects not so much yourself but protects the truth that you want to give a space for as a creator and as a writer. I don’t like the word creator [laughs], I feel like it’s quite a dominating way of thinking about the writing process.

A.M: Hmm, is there a term you prefer?

M.C: I think ‘writer’, I don’t mind ‘writer’, but I find it’s a little bit precious, in a way, and I’m a little bit anxious about it, for myself anyway, I like to trust the work a lot and to build my intuition and work with that. I like to allow that to take on a life. Though, in some respects, it’s out of my control.

A.M: Yeah, it’s sort of as if the term ‘writer’ has a sense of something along the lines of ownership? Giving the text the agency to be what it wants be, the purpose that you wanted it to have, but also have its own sovereignty.

M.C: Absolutely. It’s such an interesting process, and it’s also interesting to talk about it, as well, because it’s a curious thing to talk about, that text that is quite separate from you, to talk about it objectively. Maybe that’s a tricky thing, in some ways. But I think what I’m really excited about is that it’s a story I hope will take on it’s own life. The most exciting thing for me, to be quite honest, is when people are reading it, for it to have its own life in their imagination, not in mine. In that respect, it isn’t my story anymore.

A.M: Absolutely. Perhaps not as concrete as death of the author, but letting it transform from not just a work but a text.

M.C: That’s right. I just have this little bit of confidence that it has a vividness, that it will come alive in people’s imaginations: the voices of these women, these brown women. It’s so exciting for me to see the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ used and being discussed in forums.

A.M: Well, it’s definitely taken a life in my own imagination, and I have been pestered quite a few of my friends about it, saying “you have to read it, you have to”, and using my bookseller privileges for evil [both laugh].

M.C: Oh, awesome, that is so good to hear.

A.M: So I can tell you for me it’s definitely taken a life in my head, and when I was reading it, there were so many times I put the book down to go “okay, that was a sentence I just read. I have to turn that around in my brain now” [laughs]. I’ve tabbed the life out of this poor book!

M.C: [laughs] I saw that lovely photo that you posted with the little tabs, that was amazing, that was so lovely. I’m really glad that you enjoyed it, I really enjoy hearing that people loved the characters or that they found it very vivid, that means a lot. There’s a lot of different aspects to the industry, but that’s a very special part of it, to hear readers responding in that way. To me, anyway, I don’t mean to be anyone else, I know there’s a clichéd persona of the ‘writer’ [laughs]. I’m just myself, just following my truths and pursuing and putting it out there and believing in it, being willing to say these things. For example, about storytelling, about how I like most when the story writes itself, it’s out of my control. There were parts when Daisy is in France, and some of the things that strike her were not planned, it was just my fingers tapping on the keyboard and these sentences coming out. They were deep feelings she was having about the losses she’d experienced as a brown woman leaving her home in Kolkata. I won’t say too much because I’d like readers to follow the story themselves but, yeah, it was really wonderful that it was just Daisy channelling through me. I do love that most about fiction, and poetry as well, but particularly in fiction, when that’s happening, you really trust the truth of it.

A.M: That’s such an endearing idea, that characters are just writing through us. You take a step back as a writer and ask them “where do you want to go, where does your story go next?” That’s such a brilliant idea, I really enjoy that concept, especially with work like this, and I think that’s how we get monumental works like Daisy & Woolf and like Wide Sargasso Sea and their peers, when characters really say “no, this is my story, and this is how it’s going to go.”

M.C: Oh, awesome. Talking to you, telling you, instructing you, taking on life and a body and language. I suppose it’s like the way we talk to plants, and plants talk to us. It’s that kind of thing, where there are these voices we can connect with and hear and respond to and channel.

A.M: Absolutely. We were just talking about the industry before, and I wanted to know, are there any pieces of wisdom or advice you would like to pass down to other writers, whether they’re new writers or young writers or any sort of writer? Or, is there anything you wish that someone would’ve told you about writing or the industry, not just before this book but before your other poetry pieces or essays?

M.C: I would definitely say persistence is important for writing. The most necessary thing is to believe in yourself and to believe in your work, and to trust that passion and believe in it. To not be swayed by society’s pressures about what you should be doing with your life. Be obsessed. Be okay with the obsession that writing is, keep finding your strengths and improving your weaknesses, where you see faults in your writing. In some ways I think, although it’s wonderful to have readers who go over your work and give you feedback, you are your best teacher. Finding what’s not working and what is working – you’ll do that by just doing the writing, the more you practice. I think there’s something technical about writing, as well, in that respect. The more you do, the better you become. You just get to be at the point where it happens, but it’s happening more easily. You also need to give yourself the space, to create spaces for yourself, and time and place and opportunities for you to immerse. Never be discouraged, because it is a long journey, but it’s so worthwhile. Even though you may have failures, in the short-term, in front of you, that’s just nothing in the scheme of time. Ahead of you are these successful pieces of work, they’re there, take your time. There’s no rush. Sometimes we feel that pressure, so-and-so’s got a novel out and they’re twenty-five, and they’ve got an agent, but there’s actually so much time. So, stay calm with that. Trust the real process and spend time with your writing, that’s my advice.

A.M: That’s so wonderful to hear, thank you very much for that! There is definitely that pressure, there are so many amazing young, successful authors, but there is always that feeling of “oh, they released their book at twenty-one and I’m twenty, when am I going to”, sort of thing. So, it is so nice to hear reaffirmed that there is that allowance of time.

M.C: Absolutely, there is so much time, and it is so worthwhile when you can have a book – I look at this now and I’m so happy and proud, it’s such a good book for myself. Nobody else’s measure, just my own measure, and I’m so proud of it. In some ways, it was a long time coming, in research and upskilling myself, and in other ways. So yeah, there’s that time and there’s time ahead; enjoy the journey, that’s what I say, enjoy. It’s so rich and there’s no rush.

A.M: That’s wonderful, and it is such an amazing novel, you should absolutely be so so proud of it, it is so good.

M.C: Oh, thank you, Alicia. I really appreciate your reading. The other thing I would say to writers is that I think it’s really refreshing to be amongst communities of writers, such as yourself, and younger people. That’s where the energy lies, actually. I was so looking forward to talking to you, I could just tell from your review you loved the book and your questions would be refreshing. It’s so important to not worry too much about the conventional and the heavy critics, don’t bother so much about reviews. Just connect with your audience, and with your communities, young communities, diverse communities, LGBTIQ+ communities, POC communities. It’s so important that we just open up the spaces.

A.M: Absolutely! When we get those voices that have been pushed to the margin, that’s when we get these beautiful, transformative works of art that we wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s terrible that they have to push themselves into the centre because they’ve been denied places, but when we finally start hearing from people who have either been denied the language or the agency or the space to make these pieces of art – the art that we get is just fantastic.

M.C: It is, it’s so rich. One of the things I’ve focused on, in talking about the book, is collaboration and the importance of allyship. The novel does speak to the non-encounter of white feminism with the other woman. That is something that allyship can address, and to me, it’s been an important part of activism. There are many very radical thinkers in Australia who really want to push things forward and change the literary landscape, and to allow for literature to be transformative. I think allyship and collaboration are really crucial, and that’s why, in part, I agreed to change the title from ‘Woolf’ to Daisy & Woolf. My initial title was Woolf, and it was suggested to me to change it and I totally embraced that, because I think book production is not something a single individual person can achieve, it’s a collaborative effort. Together we’re part of an industry that loops, and a collective community, and we all contribute. We can sulk and harden, but we can also vibe together. Through shared work, we can reform and transform.

A.M: Yes, definitely. As you talked a little about the decision to change the title, at first I didn’t quite understand, but when you explain the connection to allyship, it makes sense. The part in the novel, when you talk about the poetics and the etymology of ‘woolf’, and the different variations of that – that was such a fascinating passage, linguistically, and to tie that into the title and allyship is so very interesting.

M.C: Thanks Alicia, I enjoyed writing that part! The title ‘Woolf’, as a metaphor is quite powerful, and that was the title I wanted, however, I feel that metaphor itself is being challenged. It comes from an aesthetic tradition which tends to be apolitical in the way it negotiates meaning and representation. I think that the power of naming Daisy is specific and sets down her difference, exceeding the power of metaphor. Even though owing to my background as a poet, I’m naturally drawn to metaphor, I feel that just the naming of Daisy with Woolf, the appearance of [Daisy] on the cover, an Indian woman, a dark woman, dressed in European clothes with a European haircut. That hybridity centres her, the Eurasian woman beside Woolf, the white feminist, the privileged upper-class colonial. There is a subtle, unique presence.

A.M: There is always a sort of fondness, too, whenever Woolf is mentioned, even while excavating the Orientalism embedded in her work, especially Mrs Dalloway. By placing India and Daisy in the narrative’s peripheral, but there is always that imagining of Woolf. It was a very nuanced perspective and I very much enjoyed that reading as – I don’t want to say ‘as a Woolf fan’, but as a someone who has enjoyed her works – I thought it was a very interesting, very beautiful perspective.

M.C: So, you enjoyed the homage?

A.M: Yes. I definitely did. I wouldn’t say Mrs Dalloway is my favourite, but I did definitely like the connections. With Daisy & Woolf, you can’t forget that there is a homage aspect, but it becomes beautifully its own text. If that was worded well [laughs].

M.C: That was worded perfectly, I’m very happy to hear that you had that response to the text.

A.M: Thank you so much for your time, out of your very busy schedule I’m sure! And thank you for your lovely words on my review of Daisy & Woolf.

M.C: Thank you, that’s awesome. I’ve loved chatting with you, we’ve covered some great ground and topics, I’ve really enjoyed hearing your reflections.

A.M: Thank you so much!

 

 

ALICIA MARSDEN is an Australian reviewer, bookseller and student. She studies law, literature and politics at the University of Queensland, and is passionate about the overlap between legal studies and literature, namely the gothic. She blogs about books and her current literary musings on Instagram, @dashedwithprose.

 

Ben Hession reviews “Sydney Spleen” by Toby Fitch

Sydney Spleen

by Toby Fitch

Giramondo

ISBN 9781925818758

Reviewed by BEN HESSION
 
 
 
 
Sydney Spleen is the latest collection of poetry by Toby Fitch. Its title alludes to Charles Baudelaire’s volume of prose poems, Paris Spleen. Whilst for Baudelaire, there was a desire to import the expansiveness and consequent wider palette of nuances of prose into poetry, Fitch, in his collection, utilizes a mix of styles, including prosaic lyricism and a continuation of his experimentations with form and language as seen in Rawshock and Bloomin Notions of Other and Beau. The latter, in turn, owe more to the likes of Mallarmé, with their intrinsic strategies of deconstruction being explored in Fitch’s essay, Aussi/Or. The poems in Sydney Spleen are an acutely intimate response to a period of personal challenges for Fitch, with many focusing on the effects of a city wracked by the concurrent disasters of the 2019-2020 bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic. Fitch writes with disarming candour, and his skill in intimating his experiences capture the unease that for many permeates the recent cultural memory.

Fitch does not attempt to re-write the individual pieces of Paris Spleen in a contemporary, Sydney context. However, he does, in this collection, share something of the spirit of Baudelaire, with work that is ‘always unsettled, always shifting and recoiling at each new and unforeseen experience.’ (MacKenzie, xv) As we see, in the collection’s second poem, ‘New Phantasmagorics’, the prosaic rhythms present a clear but restless movement of the personal amid the pretensions of a city:

My eyes are barcodes. I have one partner,
two daughters, one dog, three debts.
The city’s an organ ablated from the world. (4)

Importantly, the same poem acknowledges that the city occupies contested space, noting the attempted erasure and re-erasure of its Indigenous people, a people whose broad and respectful connection with the land is replaced by one where entrepreneurial concerns have become of primary interest:

At Mount Annan, a Stolen Generations
Memorial is maliciously damaged. Mass piles of
exoskeletons are deposited on the Kurnell foreshore.
*’Hard hit’ aquatic species* include soldier crabs,
urchins, soft sponges and coral like bryozoa.
Never profitable enough to become a priority. (6)

The potential for financial exploitation of the land is further explored in the ironically matter-of-fact prosaic poetry of ‘Beneath the Sparkle’ where the Plutonic railway tunnels become a place for plutocratic opportunity:

          God knows land above ground is too
expensive for anyone to buy, let alone cultivate and
be creatives on. And so, a fresh kind of colony in the
underworld is being floated by the minister. Whatever
happens, He on behalf of the State is determined to loot the
underground property market so that, even at the cost of
raiding the surplus, the lake will retain its cool. (11)

The colonial-capitalist conceptualisation of land, as noted here, is further examined in ‘Pink Sun’, where a suburban setting and the material hubris of settler culture and rhetoric is deconstructed through puns, broken colloquial speech and the visual contrast to the impact of the bushfires which recurs as a surreal and nightmarish refrain:

          at peak hour
                pink sun
          black sky
                you can return now
          for eternity
‘cause you’ve stood up with the Hellsong
hung loose and come out the other
sideline without a hose
to fan the arson online with
cooked roo matching
the way you beer every burden
yet still leave time to cash in
on the outskirts
milk the handshakes of town just look
at the beautiful housing bubble
blooming and pearling as marbled meat
          at peak hour
                pink sun
          black sky
                you’ll fly back for Sydney’s
          sparkling water (32-3)

In ‘Dust Red Dawn’ Fitch acknowledges an Indigenous sense of place expressed by Country. Here, its physical displacement in the dust storm of 2009, is not only representative of the disruptive effects of colonization, but also in what Meera Atkinson has recently described, while discussing the poem, in her essay in Cordite Poetry Review, as a ‘mash-up between the spectres of colonial trauma and climate trauma’. (Atkinson 4) The impacts of these both draw the individual perspective into a wider scope of disruption, as well as presaging disaster to come:

Country in its teeth. When the dust-red dawn
dwarfed Sydney it was much redder than this
orange-grey haze people are dissing on the tweets
like it’s nothing, like there aren’t still tonnes
of it settling on every windowsill, millions

of airborne specks turning sinuses to rage.
As a two-year old, Evie was afraid of specks;
Couldn’t comprehend them. She used to point and scream
At any tiny fleck invading her bath-time and –space–
they were alive, could morph into other forms. (68-9)

The sense of interconnectivity we see here is reinforced later:

          … How do I talk to my daughters
about all the tiny beliefs being part of the big ones,
about tipping points that have already been breached,
about the version of history they’ll inherit
that can’t go back to time immemorial and that’ll

probably soon completely cease reverberating
through the future’s waters….. (69-70)

Finally, the piece returns to re-affirming the Aboriginal identity of the place where the city sits, noting the consequences of a seemingly deliberate colonial ignorance in reading the land:

I return to land, watch the specks we picked up
get whisked over Gadigal and out to sea,
tiny flecks of red and black subsumed back in-
to the ongoing fallout and wash-up. (70)

As we can see, Fitch’s solidarity with Indigenous custodianship of the land is more than a purely political concern, it is a recognition of its respect for environmental interconnectivity – that’s also covered elsewhere in the collection – and the human responsibilities within it.

Against this, is the national political landscape and its priorities, with its constructed identity of Australianness, itself a largely white-Anglo import with subsequent variation. In ‘Captain’s Cull’ (34-40), verbal slippage is used to parody this, associating it with the Australorp, which the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary defines as an ‘Australian breed of [English] Orpington fowl.’ (ACOD 82)

In an interview with Elena Gomez in Cordite Poetry Review, Fitch has stated that, among other things, poetry ‘For me it’s to make meaning of my world and the world around me – to make sense and critique.’ (Gomez 1) In one sense, this can be seen through a broader level of interconnectivity as demonstrated by streams of consciousness poems, where random and disparate phenomena are rendered as part of a whole, not only within the context of the body of the poem itself, but via Fitch’s perspective. One finds this in such poems as ‘33 Fleurs du Mal of Sydney’, ‘Pandemicondensation, or Dreams Refusing to be Sonnets’, and ‘Planned Obsolescences’. In this poem, there is a preparedness to detach oneself, through his children’s imaginings, from the world around him, which, itself, presents a seemingly unsettled space:

Safeguarding the future requires believing in one. Official
sources say. Bats no longer live rent-free in my head,

though I allow them to sublet. After being detected in the
deepest point in the ocean, microplastics were found

near the death zone of Mount Everest. Meanwhile, heads
of dog sculptures in cemeteries are even more moss free

‘cause people keep petting them. Cancel culture remains a bone
of contention. Not unique to this year, the world’s investment

in protective technologies was dwarfed by its spending on
ice cream. Moving to Net Zero, the ghost in my heart chips

away at its cell. That things just go on is the catastrophe.
This morning I asked my daughters to get dressed.

No, they replied, we’re making The Hidden World.
After a split second of apoplexy, I couldn’t fault them. (76)

On another level, making sense of his world has also meant examining his own position as non-Indigenous person on unceded Aboriginal land. In ‘Dust Red Dawn’, he acknowledges his own family’s “background in colonial poesis.” (69) In ‘January 26’, there is a distinct desire to be elsewhere, when the only available time to celebrate his first daughter’s birthday, coincides with the date of invasion:

and each time round this endeavour seems more designed to fail,
transporting us to where we were destined to be
from the moment a race with pale skin dropped anchor
and shook the sandstone, struggling and still unsure
of learning how to start over again, how to walk this back,
uninvite ourselves from this hot, manicured parkland,
then navigate through a capital ablaze
with idylls of our own making. (72)

It probably should be said that not all references to the personal sphere in Sydney Spleen are contextualized within the cityscape and the larger world it represents. The unsettled experience, for example, that is a lack of job security is explored in ‘A Massage from the Vice Chancellor’, where the managerial language of Fitch’s employer is deconstructed through puns and visibly interrupted stanzas, which break down the usual patterns for reading poetic lines. These serve to highlight a lack of fixity, and thus the impersonal nature of the communication and indifference to the consequences for the staff to whom it is addressed:

Since I wrote to you on ___, regarding                  projected
our new ‘new normal’ austerity              budgie shortfall
measures your staff               while a prudent app roach
Time frames              of great magnitude should poke
your         you in the coming days about what this

moans for your impact option, which                  national
has arisen intake, as outlied.               agents have roles
We anticipate some               to play in flattering your
deferral, loads              curve, but also in minimising our
Inter-         goading principle; and that, of course, is

to increase the rigour. We are currency                  to emerge
on track to achieve only core              from this timely
maintenance. And so               crisis and for your extra
thank you for              ordinary faculties in sustaining
managing         department head. Yours, _______ (43)

In this poem, the spacing speaks as much as the words used and what is implied. The interaction between text and the page seen here is characteristic of much of Fitch’s work, and, again, this, in turn, is elaborated upon in ‘Aussi/Or’. Of course, the more strident examples of these are in the visual punning of Fitch’s shape poems, to be found in this collection, such as ‘Spleen 2’, ‘Spleen 3’ and ‘Spleen 4’. In ‘Mate’s Rates’, shades of political compromise radiate out of an ideological black hole.

We see the strategies utilised in these poems have been reconciled toward a more demotic sensibility, bringing to the fore the otherwise latent politics of language and its constructs which had been seen in previous collections. This, itself, is reflective of the overall shift in tone to be found in Sydney Spleen.

The pervading sense of the current collection is probably best represented in the choice of the expansive ‘Morning Walks in the Time of Plague’ as the concluding piece of the collection. Here, the family as a basic social unit is set against a world estranged by COVID-19. Restrictions resulting from the pandemic have meant the local playground is no longer a place to play in. Instead, ironically, the children are forced play among the gravestones of Camperdown cemetery.

The prosaic rhythms offer a sense of casual intimacy and paradoxically, detachment too, as the narrator casts his all-seeing eye over a sequence of episodes of life. The detachment is heightened by the details of the new ordinary where a rising death toll is juxtaposed against the children’s imaginary world of unicorns and ‘alicorns’ with its escapist ideas of space being similar to the ‘Hidden World’, found earlier in ‘Planned Obsolecences’. In a typical scene we see:

A fallen leaf makes a crunchy blanket for the girls’ unicorn
toys. Grass blades as food and padding on a small square
sandstone plinth. Frankie and I sit on a much larger plinth,
shoulder-to-shoulder and doomscrolling, comparing news,
including the story of a young boy who died of the virus in
London.

Minky rips a branch to shreds. Frankie jumps down to play
chasey with the girls, running with a sense of abandon
only urban wildlife could rival. She chases them to the
FORCEFIELD, a flat grave surrounded by a knee-high cast-
iron fence. (94-5)

And later, we find:

We prefer bunnies today as we follow the chalked
direction along the footpath−hopscotch, run, left-
foot hop, right-foot hop, jump-jump-jump, now do it
backwards, and then, ‘the circle of the silly dance’. With
dozens of others in the park, Evie, Tilda and I could be
doing the Danse Macabre above 18,000 skeletons, part of a
community-vs-immunity Breugel painting. (96).

The poem ends with lines that reference previous scenes, intermingling the real and fantastic, as if what one actually encounters and what one creates in response are both part of the same, authentic experience. The parody of Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’ adds humour that is in keeping with this sense of authenticity:

Turning and now not turning, both the girls’ scooters’ back
wheels have come off their axles. The centre cannot hold
… and out beyond the FORCEFIELD, running in widening
circles around the plinth I’m on, Frankie and the girls
are each now out of sight, out of earshot, as I yell into the
cemetery air.

The gravel driveway crunches its broken star shards
beneath my feet, the same gravel that sent Evie and
Tilda sprawling the other day, beneath the giant bamboo,
the Moreton Bay Cthulhu and the line of Canary Island
palms like massive spiky lollipops, all of them swaying,
rustling, then headbanging in the wind as it picks up from
somewhere in the ground-glass sky. (99)

Phenomena, and their perceptions, pass fleetingly, yet are interconnected within the narrative. They are swept up into the ether, to be not unlike the clouds mentioned in the epigraph to this collection (taken from Baudelaire’s ‘The Foreigner’). And yet, articulated and agglomerated together, they form a conscious, human whole to be shored up against the ruins of a particular period of time.

Arguably, though, the period has not completely closed. Whilst the bushfires have been extinguished, the effects of climate change on the weather and the Earth remain a persistent threat. A cure for COVID-19 and its variants also remains elusive. Atkinson notes the particular ability of poetic texts to ‘have the power to bear witness to the threat and trauma produced by social-injustice crises.’ (Atkinson 2) Further, she notes how the poetic response remains relevant in the present, as trauma, itself, breaks down the boundaries of time. (Atkinson 3) In Sydney Spleen, Fitch offers nothing that might provide us with redemption in the face of disasters which beset us. He can’t. However, he does remind us that we are not alone in what we suffer. Indeed, the whole planet suffers with us. What we see depicted in this collection is a kind of resilience, which, again, is a highly personal response. Our survival, of course, shall always require collective action.
 
 
Citations

Fitch, Toby. Sydney Spleen, Giramondo Publishing Company, Artarmon, 2021.
MacKenzie, Raymond N. Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen and La Fanfarlo, trans. with introduction and notes by Raymond N. MacKenzie, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis.
Atkinson, Meera. ‘Writing Threat and Trauma: Poetic Witnessing to Social Injustice and Crisis’, Cordite Poetry Review, 15 September 2022.
Gomez, Elena. ‘“The amorphousness of meaning-making”: Elena Gomez Interviews Toby Fitch’, Cordite Poetry Review, 1 February 2022.
Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997.
 

BEN HESSION is a writer and critic based in Wollongong, south of Sydney, Australia. His poetry has been published in Eureka Street, the International Chinese Language Forum, Cordite Poetry Review, Mascara Literary Review, Bluepepper, Marrickville Pause, The Blue Nib, Live Encounters: Poetry and Writing and the Don Bank Live Poets anthology Can I Tell You A Secret? Ben Hession is also a music journalist and is involved with community broadcasting.

Laura Pettenuzzo reviews “Open Secrets” Ed. Catriona Menzies-Pike

Open Secrets

Ed. Catriona Menzies-Pike

Giramondo

ISBN 9780648062165

Reviewed by LAURA PETTENUZO
 

As both a reader and writer, I was eager to dive into Open Secrets, to immerse myself in the wisdom of those with far more literary experience. As a disabled writer still shielding from COVID-19 and knowing that many of these pieces were written at the height of nation-wide restrictions, I was curious to see how (or if), the authors would engage with the impact of the pandemic. I came away from Open Secrets feeling simultaneously impressed, soothed and challenged. The multiplicity of my reaction affirmed the cohesiveness of the collection.  

There’s no magical thinking here, no waxing lyrical about the elusive muse and the passion that more than makes up for the lack of recognition or remuneration awarded to writers in so-called Australia. This is a collection that boldly confronts the realities of the writing life, particularly during a pandemic: the challenge of making ends meet, the additional pressures for those living on the intersections of marginalized identities and despite it all, a commitment to the written word.

Open Secrets asserts the imperative to address the lack of recognition and compensation for writers in so-called Australia. As Catriona Menzies-Pike notes in the introduction, we live in a world that “measures value in dollars and widgets and accords so little to literature”. Fiona Kelly McGregor’s ‘Acts of Avoidance’ lists the pay rates for the publications she’s written for in the last few years and adds that, disappointingly, “these rates have remained the same since 2017.” In ‘Award Rate’ Laura Elizabeth Wollett recounts being shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (PLA). In an imagined acceptance speech, she says, “Thanks for the money. It’s a lot. I wish there was more to go around”. Despite her simple aspiration “to live and write,” Woollett doubts her ability to write if she wins the PLA, asking her husband, “What if I get so comfortable, I stop trying?” Her fears are echoed by other contributors, for different reasons.

No excavation of the writing life would be complete without a focus on imposter syndrome, which Open Secrets tackles with a frankness and vulnerability that called out to my own sense of writerly inadequacy. While Elena Savage Lisa Fuller’s ‘Fight or Flight’ confronts “the horrors of the blank screen” and the “urge to run” that it evokes. It is both heartening and disappointing that success does not dispel the “dark passenger,” as Fuller calls her disparaging self-talk. There are few Australian authors who have known as much success as Fuller in recent years, yet she describes being gripped by “absolute terror.” Receiving an email from a student wrestling with similar doubts, Fuller tells them, “The only way through is never to stop writing or learning.” ‘Fight or Flight’ was written as Fuller was “trapped inside [her] house,” during lockdowns, an experience that stifled some writers and galvanized others. 

Several essays in Open Secrets explored the experience of writing (or attempting to write) amidst a global pandemic. For instance, Suneeta Peres da Costa described her mother visiting her unmasked, proclaiming, “COVID-19 is not contagious!” Throughout De Costa’s piece is the refrain, “I’m supposed to be writing this essay on technology,” even as she describes all the activities she does which are not writing. Peres da Costa captured the universal struggle of the literary craft, which, for some, was exacerbated by lockdowns: the way it seems we sometimes have to grapple with ourselves to simply sit down and do the work. She masterfully evoked the sense of futility of that work given all that was unfolding in the world, wondering if it “will matter even less now than any time before, given relative prospects of dying from an incurable virus”. But it was Fiona Wright’s piece, ‘On Being A Precedent’ with which I related most, which explicitly and bravely illuminated the ableism inherent in so much of the pandemic response and the writing life. Wright rejected the notion of a “new normal” because its precursor (normal) is so often “something that rejects us regardless of whether or not (and consciously or not) we mould ourselves to fit”. For Wright, and for many disabled people, the pandemic and restrictions brought a rare and unfamiliar sense of alignment with the able-bodied world, as well as opportunities to work and socialize that had previously been deemed impossible. Wright’s piece concludes with her defeated observation that she can only “watch on as wider society refuses to adapt for people like me, or to change”. The world, Wright noted, is vastly inaccessible to those of us with disability, as is much of literature.

The complexity of prose and ideas in some of the essays, ironically, mean that it is only accessible to a well-educated and/or highly literate audience. Writing, however, does not have to be intricate to the point of inaccessibility to be beautiful, engaging, and successful. I imagine this collection may have had a wider potential audience if it approached some of its ideas in a way with which readers with varying levels of literacy and/or education could more easily engage. 

Open Secrets is not so much a celebration of the writing life as it is a collective, frustrated lament at the economic uncertainty with which creatives in this country must live, the impact of the ongoing pandemic and the long and often arduous and emotionally fraught writing process. And yet, each of the writers continue to sit down at their desk, at a table in their local café, in a park, pouring words onto a page or a screen. They believe, as one day I hope we all will, that literature and humanities mean “having a natural interest in the true, beautiful and the good,” which is worth all the rest.  
 
 
LAURA PETTENUZZO (she/her) is a disabled writer living on Wurundjeri country. She has a Masters in Professional Psychology and writes Plain and Easy English for various organisations. Her words have appeared in SBS and The Age. Laura is also a member of the Victorian Disability Advisory Council.