Selection of writing
Zombie Crone
These four job applications are a waste of time, acts of a true zombie feeding a burgeoning bureaucracy of senseless shit. After weeks and weeks of energy-gobbling, hamster-on-a-wheel stress, finally, the penny has dropped. I’ve just got to pretend to be looking for a job.
Inquest File No: COR2857 / 04(9) Delivered 27/09/06 and 14/05/10
This poem is part of a series of poems called ‘Colonial War Continuum’
Known by his tribal name, Mulrunji was thirty-six years of age.
A fisherman and a hunter, he was a fit, healthy man who lived on Palm Island with his partner of more than ten years. . . .
Commutare
Published Sydney Review of Books, 21 March, 2022
Run-down and on the verge of burnout, I will continue making art, imagining radically different futures during my best commutes, dancing, dog paddling upwards towards the clouds, doing breaststroke through the air, gliding. I pull into my driveway in Blacktown, the western suburbs where, as one young arts worker once said, we have the best sunsets.
Earthly
PUBLISHED DISABILITY ARTS ONLINE, 22 jAN, 2021
Some describe elements of my writing as magical. I see these elements as reflections of cultural realities; myth, turns of phrase, musicality of spoken language, the way imagination can be part of the everyday and accepted by a community as such.
Dignity is essential.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE CHERKI
Alice Cherki is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. Born in Algiers, 1936. She knew Frantz Fanon well, working by his side in Algeria and Tunisia as a psychiatrist, and sharing his political commitment during the war of independence in Algeria.
Invasion Species
Published Plumwood Mountain, Vol 8, No 1
where yellow-spotted goannas lay their eggs late in the wet season or early in the dry sinuous with whiplike tail fierce long claws she digs a helical burrow ….
Grandmother
published in New Contrast, 189, Vol 48, Autumn 2020
I smell meat cooking on the barbeque, innocuous in a typical suburban yard in Blacktown. The warmth of the winter sun penetrates my skin, the grass is cut, the deck needs oil, a scrawny rose bush winds its way too high, clinging to the asbestos wall, clambering up and over into the guttering.
My freedom is my writing. My freedom is my peace of mind. My freedom is my good relationships.
AN INTERVIEW WITH KEN CANNING
Ken Canning is a Murri activist, writer and poet. His people are from the Kunja Clan of the Bidjara Nation in south west Queensland, Australia. His Bidjara name is Burraga Gutya. Ken has lived in Sydney for over 30 years. He worked as an academic and cultural adviser at the University of Technology Sydney and is currently a support worker at the Judge Rainbow Memorial Fund, where he assists people who have experienced the criminal justice system.
AstroTurf
Published cordite poetry review, May 2021
deserts stalk the earth
at ever-increasing kilometers per year
annihilate soil that nurtures new growth
fill the girlchild’s eyes with grit
at ever-increasing kilometers per year
the Gobi the Sahara the Kalahari
fill the girlchild’s eyes with grit
propelled forward like dehydrated race walkers
the Gobi the Sahara the Kalahari
whip up disease-laden dust storms
propelled forward like dehydrated race walkers
valley fever whooping cough meningitis Kawasaki disease …
Little Tree
Published Meanjin, 17 Dec, 2018
I have opened the door and stepped into the beginnings of my old age, into the house of my youth. Surrounded by the smell of wood, not damp, musty perhaps, and the scent of my mother. Avon Unforgettable, floral, carnations with undertones of moss. …
Disgust: what is not discussed in Australian politics
PUBLISHED OTWAY JOURNAL, ComING back to Earth 2021
The sky is a dark smoke cloud tinged with orange, it’s difficult to breathe outside. I assist my mother to shower, rubbing shampoo into her hair. I hand her a facecloth to wipe soap from her eyes. We’ve closed the windows and doors to stop ash from coming inside. It’s hot. I’m disabled, 63 years old and my parents are in their late 80s. My mother is ill and has been in bed for a few months.
Time to draw the line
an interview with AMANDA KING & FABIO CAVADINI
Amanda King and Fabio Cavadini have been collaborating since 1987 as a co-producer/co-director team, making documentaries in a non-observational style combining interviews, archival and contemporary footage. They have worked together for almost 30 years tackling stories based in Australia and the region, about the environment, Indigenous rights and the arts.
I make work I want audience to see, rather than what they want to see.
AN INTERVIEW WITH DAN DAW
Dan Daw is an Australian-born artist, currently based in the UK. He collaborates with a growing network of companies and artists to develop new dance work for UK and international audiences. Among his most recent works are Beast and On One Condition. Beast is a 2015 Greenwich Dance and Trinity Laban Compass Commission, created in collaboration with choreographer Martin Forsberg, designer Jenny Nordberg and lighting designer Guy Hoare.