April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Battarbee and Namatjira
by Martin Edmond
Giramondo
ISBN 9781922146687
Reviewed by GRACE COCHRANE
Martin Edmond is a very engaging storyteller. He involves his readers as if they are taking part in a conversation or reading from the same page in his research. He is also a well-known, award-winning writer of poetry, essays, and screenplays, as well as histories and memoirs—including biographies, so he knows what he is doing.
But there are stories and stories. Some are based solely on evidence – if it exists. Many are constructed from partly remembered or recorded information where the gaps are filled with imagined connections and interpretations. Edmond has done both, in works of fiction and non-fiction. Dark Night: Walking with McCahon (2011), for example, is a very believable but completely imagined account of an actual occasion when New Zealand artist Colin McCahon went missing in 1984 at the time of his exhibition in Sydney.
In this publication, however, using an informal literary writing style, little is imagined or interpreted. Edmond tells it as it is: bringing together the shared story of artists Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira as it has been documented from different points of view, and placing it within the changing political and cultural contexts of their time. This unusual double biography of two artists focuses not so much on their separate personal stories, but on the relationship between them as they pursued their interest in depicting aspects of the Central Australian landscape in watercolour paintings: today we recognise immediately their blue skies, distant purple hills, red rocks, ochre-yellow soil and white tree-trunks. In the 80 years of Rex Battarbee’s life from 1893-1973, and the 57 years of Albert Namatjira’s life within that time from 1902-1959, they worked together over a period of about 30 years, their professional activities ranging from exploring painting techniques to managing their marketplace. Namatjira became famous for his representation in a European watercolour genre of the land he belonged to as an Indigenous Australian, while Battarbee, lesser known at the time as an artist, was crucial as a catalyst.
Edmond not only draws deeply on major publications by scholars and historians about the artists and their work, but also on a number of archival documents in public and private collections, including some important unpublished sources: one of these is Rex Battarbee’s collection of diaries from 1928 until the mid-1950s. Many well-known writers, linguists, artists, philanthropists, prospectors, collectors, ethnographers, missionaries and historians – some associated with the building of the railway and the overland telegraph line – who visited, or were associated with, Hermannsburg in these years, are drawn into the story. Among them are Baldwin Spencer, J.M Stuart, R.M. Williams, Carl and Ted Strehlow, Charles Mountford, Pastor Albrecht, Frank Clune, Jessie Traill and Una Teague. Within the intriguing accounts of the backgrounds, interests and professions of these many and varied people, their documented voices are extracted as quotes and collaged seamlessly, in italics, into the text. Although the sources for these segments are introduced as part of the story and identified at the end – not in a list but in another narrative that discusses their significance and sometimes, discovery – disconcerting for some readers is the absence of footnotes to the quotes that lead to those sources. But it works for me. Despite the non-academic format I was not only carried along by the story but convinced by the authority of the text.
While it is evident that Edmond visited collections and looked closely at the works of both artists that are so central to the story, it transpires that he was unable to include images of Namatjira’s paintings in the book. He found that through a complex sequence of events the copyright in Namatjira’s work was held not by his descendants but by his dealer/publisher from the 1950s. Legend Press refused permission to use images from two key collections, so Edmond’s book is illustrated only with black and white photos of the artists themselves. These too, are described in the narrative rather than through captions, though listed at the end.
There are no explanations for these formatting decisions, and neither does Edmond explain why he became interested in the topic in the first place. He is obviously closely absorbed in the story but clearly prefers to provide us with evidence rather than interpret it. Curiosity made me dig deeper and this revealed a preliminary document, Double Lives: Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira, which was Edmond’s doctoral submission in 2013.[1] What became the published book is the ‘creative work’ component of the thesis, and the initial abstract for the overall submission and later conclusion to the explanatory exegesis, provided the background I was seeking (and following Edmond’s example I will not refer to page numbers within it for the following extracts!). In his introduction to the exegesis he notes of his rationale:
Biography is a primary means of re-construction of the past and, when artists are the subject, that inevitably means a re-evaluation of what they made. We tend to forget how some of those whose work we take for granted these days were once ignored; and also that among those we now celebrate are some who will not later be remembered: but that is where I like to work, in the terrain between remembering and forgetting. It is here that what is lost may be found again; where what has been occluded may come back into the light; where the familiar can be made strange and the strange, familiar.
Edmond became interested during previous research for The Supply Party, his 2009 book about Ludwig Becker, the German-Australian watercolour painter who died during the Burke and Wills expedition of 1860-61. He began to wonder if Battarbee had ever seen Becker’s work, which seemed to him to prefigure that of Namatjira. He discovered that little information existed about Battarbee, and concluded that:
If Battarbee was a cipher, Namatjira … had become an icon: that is …They were both, rather than themselves, representative of notions espoused by others. Soon, a casual inquiry morphed into something more like a mission: I wanted to restore Rex Battarbee to a place in the history of his times and ours; and to retell the story of Albert Namatjira so that it could be understood, not as polemic or example or parable, but as a lived life.
And this is what he proceeds to do. Edmond makes sure readers are first conversant with the background to the story, but without interpretation, saying:
In my view such inquiries by their very nature privilege story-telling over analysis, information over speculation, practise before theory; narrative has to take precedence because without knowing what has happened, how can we begin to understand what it might mean? A deliberate refusal, in the first instance, of interpretative strategies might seem idiosyncratic, indeed impractical, but I felt that any approach that tried to deconstruct earlier versions of what Namatjira ‘meant’ would only exacerbate the problem. The important thing was to establish, as far as possible, the truth of the matter.
Edmond’s introduction takes us directly into three key contextual frameworks: that of the Arrernte people of Central Australia, of whom Namatjira was part; the Lutheran church which established the Hermannsburg mission near Alice Springs, where he was born; and the anthropologists who started to document Aboriginal life and customs, often while travelling for another purpose. This is followed by a chapter on Battarbee’s early life: born in Warrnambool, he had served in World War 1 and had received severe injuries including damaged lungs and a useless left arm with a paralysed hand. Next is a chapter documenting Namatjira’s origins from his birth at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission into the Western Arrernte-speaking people from near Alice Springs, and where he grew up in a Western evangelical community which sought to provide sustainable living conditions for its members, while having little tolerance for the practice of indigenous traditions. From this point, further chapters cross the 1920s to the 1950s, following the interweaving paths of both artists. In talking about their work, Edmond clarifies in the abstract to the thesis that he means: ‘ … both the artefacts they made and the traditions they inherited, transformed and passed on to succeeding generations’.
After three years in hospital following the war, Battarbee studied commercial art, but then began painting landscapes, using practical and quick-drying watercolours, partly because his damaged hand was sensitive to oil and turpentine. Namatjira married young, controversially, and left the Mission for some years to work on outstations and as a camel driver. In 1928 Battarbee set out with his friend John Gardner to Queensland where they painted landscapes for later sale in an exhibition in Adelaide. In the following years they made further trips, this time to Central Australia where they met people at Hermannsburg, including, in 1932, a ‘camel-man’ who showed interest in what they were painting. This was Albert Namatjira, who was already drawing and poker-working artefacts for the Mission, and who started asking for painting supplies following another visit in 1934.
In Central Australia Battarbee evolved his own layering technique for applying coloured pigments to achieve ‘luminosity’, identified in his work as early as 1932 in a painting of Bitter Springs Gorge. In 1936 when he returned alone, eventually to stay, he began to work closely with Namatjira who had already started painting, encouraged by the example of several visiting artists, and who sought his assistance. Recognising both his interest and his talent, Battarbee agreed to teach him this plein-air style of painting, including his own technical secrets. Namatjira responded by telling Battarbee tribal stories of the lands they visited. As they worked together, and as Namatjira’s work started to sell, Battarbee became his manager as well as mentor, as they dealt with ‘the practicalities of making art in a remote area in the middle years of the twentieth century’.
The story takes us though their shared excursions into the land; Namatjira’s introduction to photography, which Battarbee used; and the development of what became known as the Hermannsburg School of painting, which continues today. As well as discussions about achieving ‘luminosity’, using ‘colour’ and ‘painting from memory’, also included are the controversies in the art world about the value or otherwise of Indigenous artists adopting or ‘aping’ this foreign style of painting, and whether or not what appeared to be conventional ‘side-on’ landscapes also carried tribal meanings or anthropomorphised representations. As Edmond notes: ‘The question of who sees what is raised every time we look at Namatjira’s painting; and especially when we consider the possibility that he encoded in his art information that not everyone could be expected to know.’
Further issues include the emergence of unscrupulous dealers and the commodification of work made by other artists, the financial expectations according to custom by Namatjira’s extended family as he became famous and well-off and the changing role of both the Mission and Battarbee during this time. Also documented are the concerns associated with government policies for assimilation, such as Namatjira’s frustration at earning money and being taxed but not being allowed to buy a car, build a house in Alice Springs because of a curfew for Aboriginal people or lease grazing land where he also wanted to paint. His much-publicised ‘citizenship’ in 1957 removed him and his wife, Rubina, but not his family, from the register of wards of the state. However, now with access to alcohol along with all the remaining contradictions in his life, including having to apply for a permit to visit his traditional lands, this frustration eventually resulted in his death, a conclusion recognised with shame and guilt by those growing critical of such conditions.
Battarbee and Namatjira is an immensely readable book, sad but celebratory. Most readers will be aware of some of the story and many of the characters, events, issues and places. But this narrative provides details and insights that I doubt can be found together elsewhere. Martin Edmond’s thesis becomes a reality, in showing that: ‘Albert Namatjira, rather than a wanderer between worlds, was a bridge; that was what he painted and that was where he was torn apart and died; and we are still contending over the bones on the bridge that he made’, and that ‘Rex Battarbee was his friend, his teacher, his guide—and his dealer; he too was torn apart and abandoned to the anonymity of a dead hero; the relationship of artist and dealer is the spine of this story.’ I think Martin Edmond has achieved what he intended. As he concludes in his thesis:
Story-telling is an ancient art and one of its primary functions, throughout its long history, has been to furnish an audience with the material out of which they can come to their own conclusions, construct their own interpretation, find their own understanding.
[1] All quotes are from: Martin Edmond, Double Lives : Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira, Thesis for a Doctorate of Creative Arts, The University of Western Sydney, 2013.
GRACE COCHRANE AM is an independent curator and writer, who has specialised in the field of contemporary crafts for over 40 years. She wrote The Crafts Movement in Australia: a History (UNSW Press 1992), and has written or contributed to a large number of other publications. A former museum curator, she has been a member of many boards and continues to examine post-graduate submissions, contribute to conferences and develop exhibitions. She has an MFA and PhD (1999) from the University of Tasmania and a D.Litt from the University of NSW (2007).
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Here Come the Dogs
by Omar Musa
Penguin
ISBN 9780670077090
Reviewed by REBECCA JESSEN
In an unnamed small suburban town we follow the lives of three young men, Solomon the over-confident charmer, Jimmy his half-brother who tags along, waiting to make his mark, and Aleks who is slightly removed from the others, looking after his family and dealing with the consequences of his violent past. Each of the characters has their own story and set of problems, but the three men are united by a love of hip-hop, graffiti, violence and women.
It’s no surprise then to find out that Omar Musa is multi-talented, a poet and rapper from Queanbeyan, New South Wales. In 2008 he won the Australian Poetry Slam and the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam in 2009. On top of this, Musa has also released two self-published books (The Clocks and Parang), two solo hip-hop records (World Goes To Pieces and The Massive EP) and a self-titled album with international hip-hop group, MoneyKat. Here Come The Dogs is his first full-length novel.
Here Come The Dogs is part prose, part verse novel, Musa alternates between prose and verse effortlessly. It takes a skilled writer to be able to pull off the two styles and deftly weave them together with such self-assuredness. Musa credits his style of verse to late Australian poet Dorothy Porter. Musa says, ‘I tried writing verse in different forms and I couldn’t quite get it, but after reading Monkey’s Mask it clicked and I could see how verse could paint pictures and vignettes quickly.’ (Kennedy 2014) Porter’s influence is apparent, though perhaps most evidently through Musa’s willingness to tackle the big issues with a level of fearlessness. In an interview with Melbourne Spoken Word, Musa says, ‘It’s unafraid to be unruly, and dangerous, and wild. And I like to hope that this book is a little bit fearless; that I kind of went for it.’ (Maya 2014)
Musa embraces the language of the streets in Here Come The Dogs, at times it reminded me of Luke Carman’s An Elegant Young Man (2013), which is set mostly in Western Sydney; the two books share similar themes and language. Growing up in Western Sydney, much of Musa’s landscape is familiar to me and there are echoes of that suffocating feeling that you’re stuck in a place you’ll never make it out of.
Here Come The Dogs opens at the dog races and the rhythm, use of language and imagery immediately sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
Where are these cunts?
Too hot, bro,
too fucken long without rain.
Two by two they troop in,
the madness of summer in the brain.
In the dying light,
the crowd looks like hundreds of bobbling balloons,
waiting to be unfastened.
Sweating tinnies and foreheads –
sadcunts and sorrowdrowners the lot of them. (5)
Musa tackles many themes throughout the novel, some more overt than others. In an interview, Musa says ‘I was interested in writing about powerlessness, about migrations, masculinity and violence in Australian society…’ (Kennedy 2014) These themes come through very strongly in the book and create many talking points. What struck me most were the connections Musa draws between masculinity and violence and how this impacts the women in the novel. I found the treatment of women throughout the novel to be particularly problematic and troubling, partly because it rings true, and partly because Musa does little to challenge stereotypes and in many scenes only works to reinforce them.
One of the main characters, Jimmy, is in the supermarket browsing the aisles and muses,
‘You’re in charge, browsing where you like, and it’s all on display for your pleasure. Take what you want.’ (102)
On reading this passage I immediately marked it on the page and would return to it again and again as I continued reading. This attitude of ownership and privilege seems indicative of how the men in Here Come The Dogs relate to and treat women. As a queer, feminist reader, I’m aware of my own set of biases when reading a text, especially a text that goes out of its way to be viewed as ‘masculine’. One look at the endorsements on the front cover (Christos Tsiolkas and Irvine Welsh) is telling of the intended audience for the book. There are many gems of truth to be found in this book, especially relating to race and racism, Musa seems on point in the sections that deal with these issues, however when it comes to portrayals of sexism and misogyny, there’s still work to be done.
At one point, Scarlett Snow, Solomon’s new fling, calls Solomon out on the fact that he has no female friends.
‘Do you have any female friends?’
‘Course.’
‘Ones you haven’t slept with?’
‘…’
‘Your group of mates is a cock forest, Solomon. Admit it.’
‘It’s not that bad. They’ve been my mates forever, what do you want me to do?’
‘Don’t you hate people who are all style over substance?’
I try to smile. ‘Ouch.’
‘I’m serious. If you don’t contribute anything, anything at all, what’s the point?’
I realise she’s for real. ‘Why do you keep seeing me, then?’
‘Because you’re a good fuck.’
‘Jesus.’ Whatever she’s doing, it’s working. I’ve never been more angry or turned on.
‘What about companionship? Don’t you think you need that?’
She laughs. ‘I don’t need anything. Least of all from you.’
I want to make her take the words back.
She’s loving it,
Suddenly self-destructive.
‘Used to getting your way, aren’t you Solomon?’
I stand up shaking.
‘See you again soon? I’ll call you,’ she says.
‘I’ll think about it.’ I want to hit her. (181)
This scene illustrates to the reader that Musa is aware of the lack of female characters, and more so, the treatment of women in the novel. However, simply pointing out an issue isn’t enough to qualify as having dealt with it. This is a key scene in terms of the intersection between notions of masculinity and violence and how these beliefs impact the female characters. When faced with being emasculated, each of the three male characters respond with violence in an attempt to regain power and control over their situation. Solomon does this on several occasions, first with girlfriend Georgie, then later with Scarlett Snow.
Throughout the novel, there is a consistent theme, women lack a voice, they have no agency. Aleks’ wife Sonya appears to be suffering from depression but we never find out exactly why. When Aleks finds out his sister Jana has a girlfriend, he reacts with violence, ultimately severing his relationship with his sister. Jimmy stalks Hailee, a travel agent who has a boyfriend and no interest in being involved with Jimmy. He follows her home from the supermarket and watches her through an open window. Later, when she embarrasses him, he goes to her house again and throws a brick through the window. Instances like these are littered throughout Here Come The Dogs, and while these views may not be consistent with the author’s, Musa fails to create any internal or external consequences for his character’s actions and treatment towards women.
The novel loses some of its fire towards the end, and rather than going out with a bang, it seems to slowly fizzle out in Part Three. While each of the three male characters are well drawn, Solomon and Jimmy lack character development as the novel progresses. Aleks seems to undergo the biggest transformation towards the end of the novel when he decides against using violence to solve a problem. In direct contrast, Jimmy starts a bushfire and Solomon lets everything slip away, rather than fighting for what he believes in.
‘Fuck the court. Fuck the kids.
And fuck Scarlett if she doesn’t wanna call back.
Maybe she’d stay if I got her pregnant …’ (294)
Jimmy is the most interesting and complex of the three male characters. It’s no coincidence that Jimmy is the one who ends up with Mercury Fire, the greyhound Solomon bought. Both Jimmy and Mercury Fire are wounded, broken underdogs that nobody expects much of.
Musa uses the verse form to great effect, combining poetry and narrative energy to thrust the reader forward, through the book. Musa’s delivery is to be admired, in parts, the writing sparkles. Imagery is at times lush and lucid, reminding the reader, even in the prose sections, there is a poet at work here.
‘I always thought that, from above,
The circle of heads
Would look like bullets loaded in a chamber,
Each MC ready with his percussive, weaponised voice.’ (24)
WORKS CITED
Kennedy, Cris. “Omar Musa’s Here Come The Dogs is trainspotted”. Sydney Morning Herald. 2014. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/omar-musas-here-come-the-dogs-is-trainspotted-20140709-zszu5.html. (Viewed 19 January 2015)
Maya, Carrie. “Interview with Omar Musa”. Melbourne Spoken Word 2014. http://melbournespokenword.com/?p=1115. (Viewed 19 January 2015)
REBECCA JESSEN is the award-winning author of verse novel Gap (UQP, 2014). Her writing has been published in The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks, Stilts and Scum Mag. She blogs at becjessen.wordpress.com.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Daniel Young is a Sydney-based writer whose short fiction has appeared in Seizure, Verity La, Hello Mr. Magazine, Cuttings Journal, Bukker Tillibul and Mascara Literary Review. He’s developing a novel manuscript as part of an MA (Writing), is the founder of Tincture Journal, and is writing about all the novellas at allthenovellas.com.
Chá Yè Dàn
The buildings on this street were old, blackened by age and pollution, and of widely disparate heights. Billy came to a food stall, the vendor selling home-cooked food alongside a few pre-packaged items: bottles of tea, rice crackers, biscuits.
“Hello,” shouted the lady, engaging Billy with kind eyes. On his last visit to Shanghai, ten years earlier, the locals had treated him like a bizarre novelty. They chased him, shouting hello, laughing and even wanting to touch his light blonde hair and stare into his round brown eyes; all in a generous spirit of friendship. This time around, the younger generation were more confident, aloof to foreigners, keeping a casual distance.
Billy smiled, but didn’t answer her, suddenly ashamed of his poor mandarin skills. He spotted a shiny metallic bowl on the table beside a mound of dark green bamboo-leaf parcels. Sticky rice, which he had never enjoyed. It was the bowl that grabbed his attention, filled with tea eggs.
They used to make tea eggs together, in Brisbane. When they lived together like love-birds, for that one short year. In their two-bedroom apartment on the banks of the murky Brisbane river, where the jacarandas bloomed purple as spring raged into summer and final-year exams approached. Brisbane and Shanghai were linked, both bisected down the middle by these turgid brown snakes, rivers twisting through the landscape, disorienting to the uninitiated, and with the occasional bridge providing a means to get around the city.
Qiang held Billy tight, calling him a good boy. Billy mixed the tea, spice mix, star anise and soy sauce, placing the eggs onto the heat. Qiang delivered instructions in his quiet, yet firm and confident voice, and Billy followed along, eager to please, happy to be learning these cooking secrets. When the eggs were half-done, he smashed the shells with a spoon, allowing the rich dark liquid to seep into the gaps, forming brown marbling patterns on the cooked egg white.
Billy blinked and bought two tea eggs from the lady with an awkward combination of pointing, holding up fingers and fishing around for the smallest coins he could find. He knew the words: chá yè dàn. Cha for tea, dan for eggs. Dan-dan for testicles, Qiang had reminded him with a laugh, grabbing Billy’s hand and forcing it towards his crotch.
Although he recalled the mandarin words, his mouth remained fixed in silence, unable to even try and pronounce them. He stood at the stall, peeling one of the eggs and eating without taste, paralysed by memory.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Gap
by Rebecca Jessen
UQP
ISBN 9780702253201
Reviewed by LINDA WESTE
For many readers, the contemporary verse novel offers a startling reading experience; so directly, so succinctly, so urgently does the form communicate—that it compels a single-sitting reading, and is no less memorable for it.
Rebecca Jessen’s Gap is one such verse novel; with just over two hundred pages that can be read in an hour or so, its strong literary effect derives from the force of its narrative drive, its foregrounding of character action and cognition, and most particularly from its method of narration.
Jessen chose the first-person mode to convey “a voice that was urgent and unapologetic, a voice that would draw readers in” (Interview). Gap is one of increasing numbers of verse novels that ignore the mimetic convention of novel-writing implicit in the dictum: “one cannot at the same time live a story and narrate it” (Abbott). Jessen combines use of the first person with present-tense discourse. It is by virtue of this narrative technique that the protagonist of Gap, Ana, seems to narrate events—as she experiences them. For Jessen, the use of first-person present tense in Gap “allows readers to really get inside Ana’s head and (hopefully) form some kind of personal connection with her” (Interview).
Stand in front
of the fridge
forgotten what
I’d come for
rearrange the magnets
in my head
if only time
could be
so easily
manipulated
take a beer out
twist the cap open
with my shirt
watch as the fabric
recoils (52)
The benefits of this choice of narration may not seem immediately obvious. After all, why not narrate using retrospective narration, with the benefit of hindsight that it enables the narrator whose retelling, after the events, can be reflected on and revisioned at will? The answer lies in the psychological imperatives of the verse novel. With its central concerns of need and loss, the focus in Gap is on the consequences of a pivotal event in the life of the protagonist, Ana, and her subsequent unravelling, rather than on a plot-drive towards a denoument; indeed the poems reveal early on what has happened, so the remaining question throughout the narrative is why—why would the protagonist commit this crime, given her circumstances—what compelled her and how did it happen? To ensure this tension Gap withholds the reasons until thirty-five pages before the book ends.
The extenuating circumstances of the protagonist’s situation form the verse novel’s sub-plots: the damaged relationship with her mother; the close connection between Ana and her younger sister Indie—for whom she is sole carer; the troubled memories of Ana’s childhood and adolescence; and the “unfinished business” between Ana and her ex-lover, Sawyer—this being complicated by the latter’s conflict of interest as a police officer investigating the crime for which Ana is prime suspect. While each of these sub-plots has a prescribed and limited scope in the narrative, nevertheless each aggravates and confounds Ana’s situation.
No easy resolution or redemption is offered; the protagonist’s self-doubt, her fear of being left alone, of loss, and the futility of her situation are all palpable. Indeed, Gap emphasises instantial cognitive and psychological processes: logic, reason; rationalisation and compensation. The immediacy of the narration draws attention to Ana’s psychological incongruities and heightens awareness of her ethical dilemmas.
Kick around
loose gravel
waiting for
the bus home
fixated
by a magpie
on the powerlines
watch it
swoop
for its prey
with such
measured
urgency
wonder if
getting
what I want
could be
that easy
too. (178)
Three noticeably longer poems in Gap exploit the immediacy that first person present tense narration offers. Each poem’s focus is on an unfolding and significant narrative event, and in each, Jessen’s measured delivery allows a gradual discharge of action and emotion that heightens tension. In the first example, a five page poem (183-188), Ana returns to her mother’s house and in a flashback of memory, relives her crime. The poem’s corresponding shift into historical present tense lends urgency to the telling of the fateful experience. A second poem of four pages in first person, present tense, captures the unfolding dramatic tension when Ana is interrogated at the police station (101-104). The third poem, spanning five pages (191-195), is a reckoning poem, a moment of realisation for Ana—that her life is irreparably changed; a moment when her fears about her future are suddenly amplified:
‘I don’t know,
Indie
maybe this is
what needs to happen
maybe this
is it’
Indie shakes her head
tears forming
‘Please
don’t let them
take you’
I put my arms
around her
try
to give her
a feeling
of safety
knowing
it won’t last. (195)
Gap’s complement of poetic and narrative strategies heighten character cognition, narration and narrative momentum. Jessen breaks with the convention of titled poems and instead uses bold font for the first line of each poem. Punctuation is kept to a minimum. Each poem is constructively segmented to delineate exchanges of dialogue, regulate pacing and support rhetorical emphases. A comparatively lean writing style coupled with laconic phrasing engenders the character’s idiolect. The most common use of trope is simile, accessible examples of which include ‘know tonight /will drag/ like a freight train / crossing country (95) and ‘as if this is stand-up/ and I’m the punchline/ Sawyer has missed’ (72).
A recipient of the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards for Best Emerging Author, Jessen graduated from Queensland University of Technology’s Bachelor in Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2011. Gap won the 2012 State Library of Queensland Young Writers Award in the short story category. Further awards are conceivable: with four accessible publication formats—paperback, epub, pdf and Kindle—Gap will likely garner broad appeal from a crossover audience of readers of Adult and Young Adult fiction.
In the wake of Gap’s auspicious beginning, Jessen now finds herself reflecting on its success and contemplating her next project. Jessen, who never imagined her first book would be a verse novel, recollects “it was a complete surprise but a very welcome one” (Interview). Judging by the success of Gap, readers would welcome further ‘surprises’ from Jessen.
WORKS CITED
Jessen, Rebecca. Gap. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2014.
—. Interview by Linda Weste, 21 January 2015.
Porter Abbott, H. “Narration.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narratology, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, 339-344. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
LINDA WESTE is a poet, editor and teacher of creative writing. Her latest academic research on verse novels is available in the online journals New Scholar and JASAL. She is currently writing her second verse novel.
April 5, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Iranian feminist, filmmaker and activist; Saba Vasefi hosts the 2nd International Women’s Poetry and Art Festival
By Page Sinclair
The Woman Scream International Poetry and Arts Festival is an idea that was born in the Dominican Republic in 2011 and Woman Scream events are now held in a number of countries across the world in the month of March. This festival was part of UNESCO’s 2015 International Year of Light. The festival also focuses on the prevalence of violence against women and aims to unite and empower women across the world. This year is the second time WS Festival has been held in Sydney. The evening took place at the Sydney Town Hall, sponsored by Irene Doutney, City of Sydney Councilor. The proceeds were donated to the Bridge for Asylum Seekers Foundation. Some special guests were temporarily released from detention to allow them to present their work.
We were entranced by the harp music of the talented Joanne Baee from the Sydney Youth Orchestra before the program of speakers was begun powerfully with a welcome to country presented by ‘Auntie’ Jenny Munro. She went on to tell the tragic story of the Gadigal people; the traditional owners of much of the land upon which the modern city of Sydney now stands. ‘Be gentle with the spirits who walk here,’ she cautioned, ‘and they will be gentle with you.’
Our second speaker Dr Mehreen Faruqi a Greens Party MP, emigrated a number of years ago with her young family from Pakistan- rated the 2nd worst country in the world to be a woman. She likened the ‘deafening silence’ of the voices of aboriginal women to the experience of migrant women. She also, adroitly, pointed out that the very idea that politicians talk about what Muslim women should and should not wear perpetuates a bigotry that allows violence against marginalised women to continue unchecked.
Festival Director, Saba Vasefi, presented her own powerful poems along with her equally powerful presence. As always Saba is a voice (a strong and undeniable voice) for those deprived of theirs, as she herself was once silenced. She strongly advocates the humanetreatment of refugees and asylum seekers and the empowerment of marginalised women. Her work was accompanied by her daughter Minerva on cello. Herself a refugee, Minerva attends Tara Anglican School for Girls in Sydney’s west on a full academic and musical scholarship.
Dr Anne Summers also maintained that women must be encouraged to share their experiences citing the power of language as a tool as yet underused in the fight against domestic violence. Dr Summers gave a list of factors influencing the ability of women to escape violent circumstances the first being financial independence closely followed by education and access to safe and affordable contraception.
Poet, Melinda Smith, read her works ‘Gora’, ‘Wall-to-Wall’ and finished with one of the most powerful pieces of the evening. Her ‘not-poem’ consisting of a minute’s silence observed for a particular victim of domestic violence. It served as a potent reminder that the statistics show that about 1 in 3 Australian women will have some contact with domestic or sexual violence in their lives whether that be through the experiences of a friend or loved one or personally. We are all touched by it.
Candy Royalle’s explosive performance poetry took the audience across the world from an Indonesian market place to a house in Belize all tempered with fire of her insight and voice- ‘to heal the world of all its ills; this would be humanity’.
Sara Mansour highlighted the reality of the world in which young Muslim women are targeted for their attire. Who indeed is the terrorist she asks- the one who is the victim of ignorance or those causing the innocent to fear their daily safety and dignity?
Andrea Ulbrick from the ABC noted the importance of behavioral therapy for perpetrators of domestic violence as a way to redress the harm caused. She also gave examples of the power of documentary film-making to ‘go to the heart of the issue’.
Tricia Dearborn’s work provided a lighter touch with her witty humor and deft approach to the more visceral experiences of womanhood. Mariam Shalaam’s poem also dealt in corporeal terminology but in this case her tragic depiction of the victims she encountered as a doctor had a very different effect.
This was followed by Hip-Hop Artist Kween G Kibone who rapped about the soul of identity. Her music featured influences drawn from her African musical heritage and her experiences as a young woman growing up in Australia. Lou Steer’s work also took a theatrical turn with well-chosen costume pieces adding a sinister edge to her poems of childhood abuse, activism and escape.
The next poet was the youngest performer of the evening. Hani Aden is a refugee whose simple and rhythmic poems captured all of us. She came from her ‘home that turned into fire’ to demonstrate how empowering women and girls will light the world. Her final words, earnestly and openly offered are the most compelling argument I have heard to date on why the treatment of refugees in Australia needs to be revolutionised; ‘I was a child of Africa’ she says proudly ‘but now I am a woman of Australia.’ And we are blessed to have her, though we little deserve such a courageous, unbroken spirit, given the reception most asylum seekers receive here.
Professor Martine Antle took us back to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and spoke on a broader scale about the movements within global feminism that arose from that time. Two young female poets Nova Longhurst and Mahdia Rahman spoke of words ‘as a healer’ and a woman’s strength as the ‘most potent’ revenge.
The next presentation was of a trailer for an as-yet unproduced documentary film by Jane Castle. Using her extensive experience and artistic eye she aims to bring the story of her mother (a pioneering female film maker in the 1950’s) to the screen. Her mother, trapped for 15 years in an abusive household suffered dementia triggered by her dependence on alcohol as a coping mechanism. Jane is hoping to crowd-fund the production costs of the film.
Finally, it was my turn as a poet to articulate the experiences of my mother in ‘Tragedy’ and read ‘A Reply’, inspired by and dedicated to festival director Saba Vasefi. My final piece ‘Daring’ closed the night with these words: ‘Stop running. Dare you fear to stay. And face you.’ It sums up the courage it takes for women to speak of their raw and often confronting experiences.
Artfully MC’ed by Jenny Leong, the evening brought together a variety of experiences and insight from a diverse group of artists, the backgrounds of whom included French, Iranian, Pakistani, Aboriginal, Bangladeshi, Somalian, South African, Lebanese and Australian. There was a unity of utterance that flowed through all of the participants. Every performance was a sincere expression of contemporary womanhood and an important way for women to encourage each other to ‘translate tragedy’; to create- loudly and passionately and humanely- and to raise voices for oneself and for those who are unable to scream with us.
April 5, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Mario Bojórquez (Los Mochis, Sinaloa 1968) is a Mexican poet, essayist and translator. Since 1991 to date he has published 9 collections of poetry. His work has been widely awarded, including The National Poetry Prize Clemencia Isaura (1995.) The National Poetry Prize Aguascalientes (2007) the most wanted poetry award in México. The Alhambra Award for American Poetry (2012) Granada, Spain, amongst many other awards.
Mario Licón Cabrera (1949) is a Mexican poet and translator living in Sydney since 1992, he has published four collections of poetry and translated many Australian leading poets into Spanish.
La piedra más alta
Fui contando las piedras del camino
una por una
todas
La piedra más alta
era la nube de tu sueño
el hueco de tu sueño
Yo lo supe
y fui contando las veces que el amor
nos abrió las puertas del destino.
Arte poética
Hemos visto
el ámbito azul de la tristeza
el vestigio insondable de lo que ya se va
Hemos visto también
cómo el descuido de la tarde
nos trajo la memoria de un árbol habitado por su sombra
Tú has visto
mi rostro entre las piedras del sepulcro
la muerte avanzando
Tú ves
el espacio irrevocable de la felicidad
el tiempo de la sonrisa
Yo veo
estas palabras dispersas
el poema.
Ditirambo
Acércate conmigo al fuego de las tribulaciones
que el abismo abierto entre los cuerpo
s
sea el espacio de una danza
la caída o el vuelo
Acércate conmigo al borde del peligro insospechado
Que tus manos inventen otra vez
mi piel y mis sentidos.
| The highest stone
I went along the road counting its stones
one by one
all of them
The highest stone
was the cloud of your dream
the hollow of your dream
I knew it
and I went on counting the times that love
unlocked destiny’s gates for us.
Ars poetica
We have seen
the blue sphere of sadness
the inscrutable vestige of what is now vanishing
We have also seen
how the carefree afternoon
brought us the memory of a tree inhabited by its shadow
You have seen
my face amongst the grave stones
death advancing
You see
The irrevocable space of happiness
the time for smiles
I see
These scattered words
the poem.
Dithyramb
Come with me closer to the fire of misfortunes
so the open abyss between our bodies
turns into a dance space
the fall or the glide
Come with me closer to the edge of unexpected peril
So your hands once again invent
my skin, my senses.
|
April 3, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Natalie Chin lives in London. Her writing has been published in The Quietus, Ellipsis Journal and Living In The Future. 
‘Low-hanging fruit’, he says
6pm, the sun disappears in another poem. The surrounding buildings are emptied like the day is ending. Everywhere we look people are swarming towards the train station like it is the hive. There is a heaviness to the air, to the movement. It all seems to slow down in one direction. I pause on the corner, turn to Alex — Alex, who I only met earlier that day, and now he’s here with me. We light another cigarette and look through the crowds. Let’s play a game, I say to Alex, let’s see who can spot her first.
A minute later, I see her: At the train station, the only stationary figure in an unrelenting stream. There is no one else there waiting. I don’t say anything, begin walking in her direction until she is only a crossroads away. Though we move with the river it feels like I am sleep-walking. She looks exactly the way I thought she might. Funny how that works: like I should always trust my instincts after all.
The way she re-arranges her face from one of anxiety to casual excitement is the same way I would re-arrange my body language when I wait for him: she waits, too. Already, the ache overrides every other feeling. Alex looks at me, he is holding my luggage. He says, Maybe we should just go to the airport. I say, Yeah, maybe. We cross the roads, and she is still in sight, and then we are with the crowd passing her.
As I turn, I see her take out her phone, presumably to ring him. There is a dry ache that seems to drop from the back of my throat, that signals to me that I am losing my voice. Somewhere else up the road, his phone is ringing, but I no longer care: this isn’t about wanting to understand.
I close my eyes, take a final drag of my cigarette, drop it and stamp it out under my foot. I walk up to her, this girl who would shrivel up and die without the male gaze. I punch her in the stomach. She screams as her eyes focus on me. I laugh as I do it again, and then she grabs my hair. The whole crowd splits wide open, like a mango hitting the ground. Someone calls for the police. My flight leaves in five hours. There are whole worlds that none of us know anything about.
April 2, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Irma Gold is an award-winning writer and editor. Her short fiction has been widely published in literary journals, including Meanjin, Island, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies, most recently in Australian Love Stories, edited by Cate Kennedy. Her critically acclaimed debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward, was shortlisted for SPN’s inaugural Most Underrated Book Award and won her a Canberra Critics Circle Award for Literature. Irma is also the author of three children’s picture books, and the editor of a number of anthologies, including The Invisible Thread, an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013. Irma is Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. She recently received a special one-off award for Outstanding Service to Writing and Publishing in the ACT and Region.
Bus 864F
When Celia got on at Currie Street, he was already there. She didn’t notice him at first, but then he wasn’t swearing right off the bat.
Before the bus filled up, she quickly ate the salad she hadn’t finished on her lunchbreak. Just mushrooms and rocket. All that had been left in the crisper. She’d forgotten dressing. It tasted awful. But she felt guilty about the Flake she’d crammed in at the bus stop.
Celia opened the novel she was reading. She liked to read in bed at night but she needed daylight for this book or she’d have nightmares. By Pultney Street all the seats were taken, except for one next to a man in his sixties who sat on the aisle. He wore a gold watch so yellow it was clearly a fake, and he kept checking it. As the bus lurched away from the kerb he began muttering, loud enough to be heard just above the engine. ‘Fucking shitting cunt of a world. Fucking shitting cunt.’
It was the C word that made Celia look up from her novel. She wasn’t sure at first which mouth it had come from. But he was still going, his face expressionless. ‘Fucking shitting cunt of a world.’ He looked straight ahead. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, his legs opened wide.
Celia was sitting diagonally behind him, up against the window. She noticed the ingrained dirt on his denim jeans, the long grey hairs on the back of his neck. He ran on like a soundtrack. Two teenage boys smirked.
Celia tried to concentrate on her novel but she kept treading over the same sentences.
‘Shut up, Mister,’ one of the boys said eventually. ‘Seriously.’
The man paused, looked at his watch, pulled out a bus timetable.
The boy flicked a wave of hair, turned to his mate. ‘So, you know sugar sachets, right?’ he was saying. ‘This guy that invented them spent, like, forever, working out how to make it so that you could, like, bend it in the middle and, you know, open it that way.’
The man folded his arms across his chest again and took up his mantra. ‘Fucking shitting cunt of a world.’
‘Seriously, Mister,’ the boy said. ‘Give it a rest.’
Celia wanted to tell the cocky boy to shut up himself. What if this man had a gun? What if the boy pushed him over the edge and he turned it on the passengers? Celia wondered if she’d have time to get on the floor. Maybe if he shot the woman next to her first, her dead body would fall on Celia and Celia could just wait it out, until it was safe. The woman was small but wide with a large handbag in her lap. Celia wondered how long she could take the weight.
The man kept going and the boy rolled his eyes at his friend. ‘Anyways,’ he continued. ‘In the end the guy – this inventor dude – topped himself. Cause no one appreciated his genius.’
‘For real?’ Celia heard the friend say.
People were pretending not to hear the man. ‘Fucking shitting cunt.’ Celia kept sneaking sideways glances. If something happened and they needed to put together a profile for the police she’d need to remember every detail. His eyebrows were blowsy and his cheeks were covered in red patches, old scars. His nails were neatly trimmed. He had a small paunch. His grey polo T-shirt was buttoned up to the throat. She’d heard that it was remarkable how accurate artists’ depictions could be from description alone. That sometimes seeing their pencilled perpetrator made victims cry.
At Aldgate the teenagers got off. As the bus pulled away they turned to wave slowly at the man, provocatively. He saw them. The expression on his face was unbending. Idiots, Celia thought. They were marked now.
The bus passed a sloping hill full of alpacas and thundered along towards Hahndorf, so fast she thought of the movie Speed. If the bus veered off on the corner and ended up on its nose, would she survive? She was near the back so perhaps all the bodies in front would give her a soft landing. Or perhaps the sheer force of propulsion would hurtle her over them all and into glass. Best not to think about it.
The soundtrack had stopped. This was almost more unsettling. They were already at stop 44 and the man still hadn’t got off. She didn’t want to get off before him. What if he followed her? What if he beat her to death with a rock? On the weekend she had been reading Raymond Carver.
But then a pretty young thing with red hair and tiny diamonds in her ears got on and Celia felt a terrible kind of relief. The man looked at the girl as she settled into a seat, assessed her, Celia felt. For once Celia was grateful for her mid-forties invisibility.
The man looked at his watch again, and then again only seconds later. Celia had abandoned all pretence of her novel.
In Hahndorf he pressed the button and instead of getting off at the door closest to him he walked to the front. Celia thought, Is this when he pulls out the gun? But then she heard him complain to the driver. They were ninety seconds behind schedule, he said. He would be taking this matter up with Adelaide Metro, he said. His words were crisp.
As the bus pulled away the man stood in front of a popular hotel, all fake old-fashioned brick and grape vines. And Celia thought, Perhaps he’s tourist hunting.
He had foolishly left his timetable behind. She took it. It would have his fingerprints on it.
***
‘There was a man on the bus yesterday.’
Keith had the paper open to the crossword, a Saturday ritual. ‘Not that guy from the hills? The one that stinks?’
‘No.’
‘Cause apparently he’s some genius artist. Real famous. Or that’s what Susie reckons anyway. But honestly, I don’t think the guy’s ever washed. He sat next to me the other day and I had to breathe through my mouth.’
Celia picked up a vase from the table. A browned petal stuck to its rim. She thought about cleaning it, then put it back down.
‘If that’s genius I don’t want a bar of it.’ Keith looked at her over the rim of his glasses, his pencil hovering. ‘So who then?’
‘No one in particular. He was unwell.’
‘Didn’t vomit, did he?’
‘Nothing like that,’ she said. Keith turned back to his crossword.
‘Another word for chimera? Five letters?’
‘He wasn’t quite right in the head. I thought he might be psychotic. You know, the kind that kills young girls.’
Keith snorted. ‘How’d you figure that?’
‘Dream,’ she said.
‘So it is.’ Keith pencilled it in.
‘Where’s the rest of the paper?’ she said. ‘You haven’t binned it already?’
‘Over there,’ he thumbed. ‘Maybe your psycho’s in it.’
Celia half expected Keith to be right, but there were no local rapes or murders. Or none that had been reported anyway.
***
It was nine days before she saw him again, after work on the homeward bound route. For a moment her heart stood still.
He sat on the aisle again, checking his watch every few minutes. His knee joggled up and down. She hadn’t noticed that last time, perhaps he had been doing it but she hadn’t noticed. She put her book aside to focus better. In case her testimony was needed. She was reading Rankin now and it made her realise that people just didn’t pay attention to what was happening around them. Meanwhile these girls were disappearing, being murdered. What if this man was a Rankin imitator, right here on Bus 864F, and she was the only one to notice him, really notice him. She’d heard there were such things. In an interview the author had admitted as much.
He wasn’t swearing this time. His lips were moving but there was no sound. He was wearing a pale blue polo T-shirt, the colour of a starling’s egg, also buttoned up to the throat. She considered repeating this phrase to a police officer. While she sat in a room empty but for a desk, framed by a single spotlight. It was the colour of a starling’s egg, she would say, folding her hands neatly in her lap. They would record her, of course. And when the case reached the courts her words would be read back to the jury. Or perhaps she would have to testify. She saw herself in a sleek maroon two-piece suit, the pencil skirt falling to just below the knee. She would wear her glasses, even though she only needed them for reading.
He stood and Celia realised with a jolt that she had not been monitoring him at all. He swayed and stumbled against the movement of the bus, grabbed onto a rail. For a moment he looked just like any frail elderly man.
He got off at stop 24A this time, just after the freeway. She couldn’t work out why.
***
Their dining table was red laminex, a gift from the previous renters. Celia loathed it, but nothing in the house was hers. Sometimes she stabbed the underside of the table with her fork. It made her feel better.
Tonight it was Keith’s turn to make dinner and he’d prepared one of his five standards, bangers and mash. Celia hated bangers and mash, especially his bangers and mash. The sausages were always overcooked, black and crusty. And the mash was from a packet, pasty reconstituted stuff.
‘Could you pass the salt?’ she asked. She didn’t need the salt. Sometimes she spoke just to pierce the silence.
Keith managed to pick up the shaker and pass it to her without his eyes leaving his book. Another biography, he was always reading biographies. She had hoped for a word, a brief moment of eye contact at the very least.
With her fingers she scraped together a mound of mash, watching to see if Keith would notice. She rolled it into a perfect golf ball, held it poised in the air.
Keith turned a page. Celia pressed the ball onto the underside of the table.
‘You done with the salt?’ Keith said. He looked up and Celia smiled.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’ She wiped her hand on her skirt and passed him the salt.
She considered telling him about her most recent encounter, asking Keith for his thoughts on why the man had got off at 24A. But she decided against it, he wouldn’t give the issue due consideration. Everything rested on her.
***
On her lunchbreak Celia bought a spiral notebook with a hard plastic cover. She recorded all the facts, folded the timetable and tucked it in the back. During staff meetings she spent her time thinking about the man. Actually, she spent most of her time at work thinking about him. Processing applications for provider numbers wasn’t exactly mentally challenging. She took receipt of the scanned form, entered the data, printed off a copy, put it in the delegate’s in-tray, and repeated the process until knock-off time. It was so mundane that one of her work mates had taken to watching old episodes of Black Books while he worked. He was up to season three.
She had to wait a week before the man boarded the 864F again. It was a Tuesday, 5.47 pm. Everyone had that work-weary look, the knowledge that there were still three more days of drudgery and commuting ahead. And then suddenly there he was, up the front of the bus, too far away. He was wearing a business shirt this time. She would describe it as ivory. She recorded these facts in her notebook.
A ninety per cent chance of rain had been predicted. Nothing yet, but the bus was headed towards a bank of swollen clouds, their undersides bruised purple.
They entered a tunnel. The man looked over his shoulder, straight at her, Celia was sure. The faint orange light accentuated brutal features. Celia shrank in her seat. Was he onto her? He looked away. No, he couldn’t be. She’d been so careful.
Out the other side of the tunnel it began to rain in fat spatters. Within minutes the bus sounded like a killing field. At Crafters a passenger behind the man got off and Celia crept up the aisle to take her seat. Now she could hear anything he said above the noise. Examining him she immediately observed something of concern and congratulated herself on moving closer. She wrote in her notebook, carefully shielding it with her left hand should he turn around: 6.18 pm, long scratch on the back of neck commensurate with a fingernail. Possible sign of struggle.
A breathless woman climbed aboard and made to sit in the empty seat beside the man. He held up his palm. ‘It’s taken,’ he said. ‘You can’t sit there.’
The woman stood suspended for a moment, damp curls at her forehead, too many shopping bags clutched against her waist. Then she shrugged, moved up the aisle and braced herself against a pole. Celia thought about standing for the woman, but they were about the same age. And anyway, Celia was on duty. A minute later he pressed the button. He was getting off at stop 25, different again. What was he playing at?
The bus pulled sharply up to the curb and he rose to disembark. In a moment of clarity Celia thrust the notebook into her pocket, grabbed her bag and followed him off the bus. The rain was falling in greasy sheets but Celia paid it no heed. He walked quickly, head down, not looking back once. Celia kept pace.
Dusk was descending quickly. Up ahead a thin milky fog crept onto the road. Celia pushed her hands into her pockets, ran her thumbnail along the spine of her notebook. She kept just the right distance, her heart hammering. He turned a corner, and when she turned it herself, the space between them had narrowed. Suddenly he stopped. She would have him soon.
April 2, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Harriet McInerney is a writer, editor, bookstore worker and tiny cacti grower. She recently completed Honours in Writing Studies at UTS, where she wrote on the blurring/unblurring of the real/unreal. She has been published in Seizure, Voiceworks, and is forthcoming in the UTS Writers’ Anthology, 2015.
Odessa
When my mother went missing I cleared out the slicky golden muck. It had puddled in her shower, dried up on her sheets. Stuck hard on the stairs. I didn’t know what it was. But it’s sweaty honey stench; I recognise that smell walking into Odessa’s. Somewhere lingering, masked underneath.
Mostly, it all smells of meat in her hallway. Rising up through the building. From the downstairs butcher. Odessa greets me. Towers over me. “Come in. Please. Take a seat with me on the balcony,” she says.
My mother had suggested I go to see Odessa. My mother, had that round-eyed belief in spiritualism. Made my own eyes roll. A healer, she healed me, my mother would repeat. She’d say it so clearly: unimpeded, unstuttered. My mother’s words, sometimes, they’d had a habit of being splashed and smashed apart. I remembered. Her voice in my mind. Smattering about.
Out on the balcony I can’t smell the butcher downstairs any more. Can just see the people walking in, and then out they go with dangling plastic bags. The butcher is one place where no one really says no to a bag. Needing to keep the squelchiness inside.
Odessa is very beautiful. Odessa is considerably obese. Rolling pink cheeks as she leans back into a wicker chair. They say that she has travelled far and wide. Learned the tricks. That she never says no, never says never. But knows when to say when. ‘They say’ is what my mother would say. Way back when.
We talk about the weather for not long. And what I am there for – to be healed. Odessa does not like to hear what needs healing, she stops me from explaining. Instead she asks of my mother, and speaks fondly of past visits. I had not really known they were close.
Odessa’s skin is glowing. Wet. In the heat of the sun. Her balcony is very crowded, covered in big pots, and sprawling shrubs and vines spilling out. Strawberry plants and cacti on the table. Everything is thriving.
There is movement in the house. I had thought we were alone. But a tall man makes his way to the door. He greets us, holds out his hand to me, a little too high. I realise he is blind. He introduces himself as Miles and moves to sit on the balcony. There isn’t really enough room. But room is made and Odessa gets us tea. A quick medley of teaspoons hitting against cups. Miles offers his condolences. He knew my mother too, I discover.
“Such sad news. She was too young, too full of life,” he says.
I learn that my mother had done odd jobs for Odessa, from time to time. I’m not sure why I am surprised, we weren’t the kind of family to tell everything, but it seems a banal thing to keep quiet.
On Odessa’s earlobe is a golden honey-like substance. “Her body weeps. But it does not know what it weeps for,” I remember my mother saying. About this Odessa. In her vague kind of way. Odessa catches me staring and wipes it off.
Miles goes out and Odessa begins business talk, saying that she is not your typical healer. That she has come to healing later in life. The honey is on her ear again and is about to drip down. It distracts us both.
“This is kind of it,” Odessa says. “My body leaks sap.”
“What?”
“Sap, just like from a tree.” Odessa’s voice is calm and gentle.
“It comes out of my body. Through a few different places, sometimes in the creases of my palms, or my fingernails, or the piercings on my ears.”
“Oh.”
“It started a few years ago now. I’ve gotten used to it. But it took some time. It’s the sap that can heal. Just look at how all these plants are growing! I put the tiniest bit of sap on them while they’re young, and they grow up fast and strong.”
Half-drunk tea cups are still cluttering the table. Odessa picks up a teaspoon. Holds it under her ear. Collects the sap as it drips. Her eyes downcast. The sap is thick and it collects on the spoon slowly. When there is enough Odessa motions me to dip my finger in, and smear it on my forehead. Odessa closes her eyes. Then we both sit there, in silence, and I can hear the door of the butcher’s swinging back and forth, but it now seems far away.
Odessa asks, just as I’m getting up to leave, whether I would be interested in doing some odd jobs for her. Just from time to time. Running errands and the sort. Since my mother cannot anymore. It’s a strange request. Odessa says there aren’t many people she would trust.
When I get home I remember I have friends coming round. I keep my visit to Odessa quiet. Just for now, I think. Until I have it worked out. In my tiny apartment there is barely room for company. My friends, with families and children, live the conventional lives we all used to laugh at. They visit to escape their screaming toddlers. Or, sometimes, because they worry about me being alone. These friends have been all support in the time since my mother disappeared. Now, months later, there is little hope left. Her car had been found parked near the beginning of her favourite bush track, which took you deep into the valley, a walk really too difficult for her aging body. She must have fallen, been hurt, maybe, had knocked herself unconscious. No remains had been found though. Search teams had scoured the area, but unearthed nothing. I don’t know what to think.
I start doing odd jobs for Odessa the next week. Odessa doesn’t have a phone or internet so I go to her flat for any instructions. Even then, it is usually Miles who answers the door, and tells me what she needs. Often it’s collecting groceries or posting mail. It seems Odessa does not often leave the apartment. Or not at all. This goes on for several months. I like taking care of her, and thinking that this is what my mother used to do. When I go to the supermarket I wonder how many others collect things for Odessa. She hardly wants any food. She can’t live off the stuff I buy for her.
After a while Miles has gone. When I ask, Odessa says she thinks he’s gone to work in the country somewhere. She’s not too sure, he left pretty quick. People often come and stay to be healed, she mumbles. But sometimes it just doesn’t work.
One day I ask her if she leaves the flat at all. Odessa says hardly ever. That she worries about people seeing her skin with the sap. She doesn’t like the outdoors anyway, she says. Even though the plants on the balcony are thriving. I want to question her further, take the chance while I have it. This is the first time Odessa has mentioned the sap since our first meeting. I ask if she knows what causes it. My burning question. Odessa doesn’t. Sap in trees comes out when pressure builds up inside. The sap spills out any way it can. Odessa guesses it’s the same for her. Trees use the sugars in their sap for new growth, for flowering and fruiting, and after that there isn’t a lot of need for it.
I start spending more time at Odessa’s house. On the weekends. Odessa works from home when she can, but otherwise she has a job at the butcher’s downstairs. She rents the flat from the same family who own it, and they are always happy to have someone extra. Wearing the tight hairnets and long sleeves, it is manageable for her. She no longer believes in the healing, Odessa says, she doesn’t want to do it anymore because she isn’t sure it works. Doesn’t think it works and also doesn’t want it to.
Odessa is moody. Particularly when questioned on something. She gets lonely in that flat of hers, but refuses to venture any further than the occasional a.m. shift at the butcher.
One day one of the butchers notices the sap. Odessa doesn’t think he knew what it was, but he got scared anyway, told the boss that she was unhygienic. Butchers need to be hyper-vigilant about that. So she stopped working there, and stayed home instead. All the time. Just up there sitting on her veranda. Worrying about money. Thinking about being forced out of the apartment. Then Odessa got obsessed with fire risks. Called in building inspectors to assess the place. And then went around and tried to fix things, installing smoke detectors on the staircases and threw out all the rugs in the apartment. Trying to make sure nothing could force her to leave the building.
Odessa got so hard to handle, and so little in want of company. I stopped visiting her. Slowly. It wasn’t just me distancing myself, some days I would knock on the door and get no answer. I knew she was home. But the door was bolted, balcony empty. I tried to contact Miles to ask him why he left. I hadn’t paid attention at the time, but they’d seemed so close, and he’d left so suddenly. There were no details, no traces to be found.
Downstairs, at the butchers, they asked me about her. Said they always heard moaning from upstairs. Said about the different men and women that had come to stay with her over the years. The one’s who never stayed long. Just long enough for the butchers to get to recognise them, but not long enough for the apprentices who only worked weekends. They were just being friendly, neighbourly, but I left pretty quick with nothing much to say.
It’s a year or two later when I first notice sap, not blood, spilling out of a graze on my knee. I am shocked. I keep an eye on it, but it only stays there a little while, hovering and golden, before it drips down my leg. When the wound heals the sap disappears too. But then a few months later there is sap forming around my fingernails, then falling from my eyes. Thick gluggy tears. I think about calling in on Odessa. Then I never do go. I’m no longer interested in an explanation. The idea of being with her, indoors, it feels stifling.
I am out, having lunch in the sunshine when I realise I feel hungrier for the sun than any food in front of me. I eat because it feels normal, because the others are, not because it makes me full or satisfied. Later I am walking home, taking a short cut through the park, when I notice I want to sink into the grassy earth. My feet pull downwards. I struggle to keep moving.
When I think over these developments they are startling. But I don’t like to think things over so much anymore. I think about my mother trekking down that remote valley. Imagine her dragging apart sprawling undergrowth.
I go out to the scrubby land near the cliffs the next day. The sky is huge. Clear and welcoming. I walk along feeling the rustle through my limbs. Notice myself sinking. And I let myself crust over.
March 27, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
A Vicious Example
by Michael Aiken
Grande Parade Poets
Reviewed by ALI JANE SMITH
I’ve been visiting Sydney all my life. Doing city things; museums, art galleries, parks, department stores and shops that specialise in the necessary obscurities you can now order online. There are places in Sydney that have been transformed beyond recognition since my childhood, and others that have changed so little they can put me right back there, holding an adult’s hand and looking up at the little piece of blue sky between the tall buildings.
Many of the lyric poems in A Vicious Example take city scenes, often Sydney scenes, as their subject, and the most accomplished piece in the book is a long sequence on the city of Sydney. Michael Aiken, however, is as much interested in Sydney’s car parks and loading docks as he is in golden sandstone and glittering water. While Modernist literature of the twentieth century drew on city life experiences of speed, change, disruption, proximity and mobility, both thematically and aesthetically, Aiken’s approach is very much of his own time. There are glimpses of the more familiar fast and bustling city, but at other times the pace is slow, the spaces close to empty, his attention focused on the city as peridomestic habitat as much as a site of heightened human interaction. He writes not as flâneur, but as sentinel.
According to Aiken, the best view of Sydney can only be seen through
the guard’s
compartment
at the rear of
a North Shore train
going across the bridge
and an alcove behind the, “’premier address in Sydney’” is also a convenient place for urination. Aiken sees such places – the famous bridge, the smart cbd address — not from the perspective of commuter or office worker, but from that of the guard. He watches brief scenes and interactions, observes change over time, finds the poetry in repetition.
Well-dressed
women
falling in the street
repeatedly...
almost without
variation
a woman
in
a suit
comes crashing ... |
there’s an echo here of Frank O Hara’s poem ‘Lana Turner has collapsed’, perhaps even Duchamp’s painting Nude Descending a Staircase, but the key to the image is repetition, the fact that this is not a one-off experience inspiring affect, but a repeated observation that invites the reader to think further. Aiken sees the obvious but often overlooked cruelties and follies we all practice, and has a measure of vitriol to share, but can also be generous and appreciative, as in ‘Burwood Park’, where he celebrates the women who “perform their kata in the gazebo”, the operatist who “gives out an aria” and the fearless council worker in rubber gloves. This scene of community and civic life is brought into focus by the presence of a war memorial, “remembering the dead/ who were never there to realise/ we won.”
Another poem, ‘The canal’, has the canal as a kind of metronome, more accurately a water clock, filling and emptying regularly and repeatedly, the detritus of styrofoam cups and beer bottles described in the same breath as koels and cuckoos. The canal is observed overnight, and as daylight and the streetsweepers arrive, until at last the real experts on this locale, golfers “with secret knowledge of how every trap, ridge and fairway performs” arrive as the canal continues its business of filling and emptying and filling again.
Aiken does not always use the kind of care and restraint that makes this odd poem simultaneously appealing and unsettling. Included in the collection are the kinds of poems that might get an immediate reaction in a performance, for example, but don’t stand up to much re-reading or deeper consideration. There are enough poems in this book that making a few exclusions could well have resulted in a more focused collection of strong poetry. The temptation to simply let as much work as possible find an audience, or to demonstrate a variety of interests and styles might explain the inclusion of some of the pieces in this collection.
At the close of the book, Aiken includes an explanation ‘On the use of excerpts from Tim Low’s The new nature and John Birmingham’s Leviathan in Sydney: 1934 13922k1 – 1811 1682k2’. This explanation becomes a de facto statement of his poetic. Aiken discusses his use of excerpts from John Birmingham’s history of Sydney, Leviathan, and Tim Low’s The New Nature, a study that looks at the species of native birds and animals that have emerged as winners in the encounters and interactions between humans and other species, from the familiar birds we see in our backyards and parklands to bird species that have flourished as a result of the construction of sewage systems. On re-reading the poems after reading this explanation, Aiken’s selection of these two texts seems inevitable. It’s not just Birmingham’s lively, rock ‘n’ roll writing style that is likely to have appealed to Aiken, but also Birmingham’s interest in the continuities, as well as the disruptions, in Sydney’s history. The many hours this poet has logged in the security industry, working strange hours in odd places, seems to have provided an ideal opportunity for sustained observation of the less picturesque fauna of the city – there are recurring appearances by foxes, rodents, currawongs, ibis, and bats. It’s the kind of nature writing that Tim Low practices, the natural history of things as they are, rather than a reaching toward an imagined return to an idealised, pre-lapsarian wilderness.
These two texts might also be thought of as an echo of the Aiken’s use of time and space in his poetry. In this closing explanatory piece, Aiken makes it clear (though it is evident in the poems) that the pragmatic reality of his work as a security guard has revealed the life of the city at times and in places that most readers will not have experienced. It also implies the stationery gaze, the repetition of experience and observation that is so significant in this poetry, and leads to Aiken’s understanding of the city as interconnected systems, even ecosystems. It might not be everybody’s idea of ‘ecopoetry’, but Aiken’s interest in the life of the plants, animals, and birds of the city looks squarely at the way that birds and animals often framed as pests, and plants known as weeds thrive in both public and interstital spaces. It is an utterly contemporary, even urgently needed, way of looking at ideas of nature and culture. Perhaps Aiken identifies with the flying fox, hidden in plain sight in the foliage of trees in the parkland and gardens of the city.
ALI JANE SMITH is the author of Gala (Five Islands Press). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Southerly, Cordite and Mascara Literary Review. Her reviews and essays have appeared in The Australian, Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. She lives in Wollongong.
Battarbee and Namatjira
