Episode Twenty-Eight: Fire Front - Alison Whittaker, Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi and Laniyuk

and even just looking at Aboriginal women today, like with fierce, we're always at the front of protests, we're always at the front of change, we're always at the front of movement and energy. You can't tell me that that hasn't been happening for the past 250 years. Like, I'm not buying it. [Music] Welcome to Sisteria, a podcast about women and non-binary creatives and their experiences creating and consuming arts and culture. I'm your host, Stefan Schild, and today's episode is one of those last but definitely not least situations. As it is the final episode for this season, but I am absolutely thrilled to have been joined by not one but three incredible guests to discuss their contributions to the poetry collection Firefront, First Nations Poetry and Power Today. Alison Whitaker is a Gomeroy poet and law scholar. She's also the editor of Firefront. Alison is a research fellow at the Jumbana Institute and between 2017 and 2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean's Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Alison has released two award-winning books, Lemons in the Chikamwaya and Blackwork, and will provide links to those in our show notes. Alongside Alison, I was joined by Firefront contributors, Malayika Gessa Fettafahi and Lamyuk. Malayika is a proud Torres Straight Islander and Tongan storyteller that takes many forms. They perform poetry, write criticism, breathe life into worlds. They've written for Overland, the big issue, the Saturday paper, and several publications, both at home and internationally. And Lamyuk is a writer and performer of poetry and short memoir. She contributed to the book Coloring the Rainbow, Black Queer and Trans Perspectives in 2015, and poetry collections, such as UQP's 2019 Solid Air and, of course, Firefront. She's currently completing her first collection of work to be published through Magaballa Books. These three guests were so incredible, it's really a special episode and I hope you enjoy it. We covered practices and protocols of writing as an Indigenous poet, the contradictions and complications of using the English language, and advice on how to maintain positive collaborative relationships. There's also a couple of cute cameos from Malayika's Little Sister, who truly steals the show. I started off by asking the guests to introduce themselves and let us know where they were calling in from. Sure, okay, okay, no shame. Yamma, I'm Alison Whitaker. I'm a comparable man. Today I am recording from Gadigal and Wanko Kutpatri, and monitor this chance to acknowledge their old as an ancestor, who never stayed in sovereignty over this place, and who continue to govern our engagement here. Hi everyone. My name is Malayika Gisofara Fahi, I am speaking from Yagara, I'm an Indian, I'm an Indian. I also want to acknowledge this as unseated territory and I am on Follinan. Yeah, is there anything else that you need to say or who I am? I'm from the Zagoreb and Darwada tribes from Maryland, in the Torres Strait, Austin and I'm Zagore, and I'm also from Follinan, from the village Fahiafah. My name is Laniwak, I'm a writer and poet, I'm Latakia Kulmada Khan and Gurenji, which is Latakia being down area Kulmada Khan being my grandmother's country, the neighboring country, and Gurenji out on the desert. I'm calling in from Wellington and Aotearoa, and it's been really interesting being on this stolen land and seeing the similarities and the differences, and now being a settler in some regards and complicit in the colonization of this land, sort of reflecting on that and my role here in my responsibilities to that. So I thought I'd start with the very basic question of how did this collection come about? It's an incredible book. I loved reading it as challenging as a lot of it is as a white settler. How did it come about? Alison, did you want to answer? Yeah, of course. So you keep approached me to effectively put together an anthology. They approached a couple of more before, so there was, I understand it also, approached Alan Vanjev and who, maybe this is dropping the shot, but they'll be putting together a short story, Equivalent Collection, which I am very, very excited for. So the collection was kind of, you keep approached me for something that purported to be kind of a history of First Nations poetry, and I knew I wasn't the person for that, but something that did interest me was putting together something that demonstrated, I guess, kind of like the precedent from which this renewed interest in First Nations poetry was building, to kind of understand the moment of, I guess, like power that we're having at the moment. And also understanding where it came from so that we can see kind of where it's going to go and what our responsibility to tend to the future fire of First Nations poetry is. So that is how it came together. It's necessarily an incomplete collection, but it does its best to kind of tell a small story about how First Nations poetry is and how it came to be where it's today. And is it 53 poems altogether, 50 something and five essays? Five essays, so they're all, the poems are grouped together into five little, I guess, mini books to demonstrate the relationships that our poetry has with one another, and building kind of a collective black public response inverse. And then yeah, I invited five essays to come in, respond to those poems, kind of to acknowledge that sometimes poetry is accused of just being for poets, and that may be the case outside of black poetry, but that the poetry is built for the community, has an enduring relevance to our politics, public life, private life. And I wanted to demonstrate kind of that, that big collective response. And so I think the essays do it really effectively, especially Chelsea Bonds, which was a real highlight for me. Lannan, you're cute. We're nodding along. Do you agree? Without how did you feel when you were approached to have your poem in this collection? I was so excited. I was so stoked and honored, particularly, you know, to have Alison approach me and to be able to collaborate with Alison as an editor, who I think it really showed the difference for me when you are working with another Aboriginal person who has an organizational role in putting that together. And I really felt that Alison was really compassionate and gentle and, you know, didn't sort of expose me to, like, the sort of like strenuous pressures of publishing, you know, I've worked with other publishers that are like, this is the deadline and this is the date and we need it in on this time and blah. And, you know, I actually took my poem home and sat down with my Nana and read it to her and said, "Do you support it?" Have I, you know, explained things well in this poem? Does it, you know, does it have my nanistic of approval? And that took time because I was living in Melbourne and my Nana's in Darwin and I flew home to see her and, you know, it wasn't so easy as just sending off emails and, you know, meeting deadlines, you know, it required cultural protocol and protocol and approval by my family and to work with an Aboriginal person who understood that and who respected that and gave me the space and time to make sure that every word that I put on to that page I stood by, my family stood by, I haven't experienced that before. So it makes a really big difference. And I want to say Malayka, you were talking before about people mispronouncing your name and your poems about saying your name correctly, saying my name. Yeah. And you did just say, just ask me. So can I ask you now how I should pronounce your name correctly? So it has, I think it has four sounds to it. So, Malayka, Malayka, Malayka, Malayka. I hope I got that right. How did you feel when you were approached to publish your poem? Oh, I say, I, I can't say, that's, that's a whole story tonight. And Allison can chime in when they won. We're here for the stories, big one. At the time, before I was contacted about the poem, I actually put a call out about internship in publishing if anyone was doing one. And Allison had reached out and told me that there was internship for this book. So I got to put the poems together. I collated them on a document for UQP. And before I introduced myself, I was told that my poem was in the book, and I was like, oh, I don't know that. But yeah, it was really, it was surreal, because I was sitting at the desk, and I was like, oh. I was introduced to the job, but also told that my work was going to be in the book. So it was both my hectic to get the internship. But also to find out that my poetry was going to be in the book. So yeah. We've just got an extra little guest who's appeared. This is my little sister. She's how old are you? Do you weigh? OK. OK, that's English. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, she's-- Wow. She likes coming in every time I have a Zoom lesson. She knows when I'm on Zoom, because I'll be talking to myself, and she always wants to come in, and just tell her how well she is. Well, welcome. Yeah, the more the merrier. She's adorable. Thank you. Hello. Hello. I'm still in the show. Hello. But Malayka had such a crucial part of putting the collection together. And I actually didn't know that that's how you found out. I'm so sorry that that was the process that met you. It would have been, I don't know, maybe a bit surprising. That is probably a failure, I guess, of my part. I might have to go back and think about that process. I think it was just surreal in the sense that-- I was surreal in the sense that while we were doing introduction, yeah, we got eye-guys. And I was like, oh, yeah, that was-- yeah. I don't know, it was just very different. [LAUGHTER] I was like, I got a dog and I'm in this book, what? Yeah. That's pretty great. That's a double whammy of goodness. Yeah. And Elson, you have a poem in the book as well. Was that a strange experience commissioning yourself in a collection? Yeah, I asked if I should be in it. And they said, yes, but it still feels weird. So definitely, yeah, I don't know. I didn't want to be a big note when I put it in, but also I didn't want my only role in the text to be this omniscient curator. I really had to show that I had skin in the game. If that makes sense, that's a really crude way of saying it. But I didn't want to misrepresent myself as someone who was looking in on this space but wanted to show that I was involved in that these poems had a relationship both owing to more people who had done the massive critical work beforehand to make stuff like this possible. But also that the work had an obligation to continue one with the next generation of poets but to continue that circular legacy. It wasn't just because I think when people think of poetry, if they're not engaged in the little bit of very world or the poetic community, they might just think of either performance poetry or poetry on a page, but you also commissioned or collated song lyrics and a whole bunch of different ways, kind of oral poems that have gone in there, some have footnotes that are like this should have been read orally if you have a moment, read it out loud and I thought that was really beautiful. How important was it for you to expand it beyond the page? So include words that are presented in other forms? - Yeah, so important. I mean to center poetry on the page is a total disservice to how poetry is experienced by so many of us. And I say that as a page poet, I think Lanioka Malayka both have more experience as performance poets so maybe they might be better quick to answer this question, but I just wanted to acknowledge the diversity of the form that we not only have expertise in the substance of the poems that we write, but we innovating and developing form and technique. Yeah, myriad ways that reflect how more been engaged with poetry differently. - Yeah, I agree, why? - Like for discloser and day. I only started performing poetry at the end of 2018. Yeah, and I don't perform any poetry since then but I think I find it so for me it's the truest form that I can express my way through my spoken word in a sense that already in my words allows me to storytell in a way that I can't really do on paper. I can't really do in English. I can't really, you can't see my face when I'm on the page. You can't see the emphasis that I provide on the page. You can't see the way that I move on the page. So it's very different. And I think storytelling for me has always been an experience in a sense that I rather perform live and experience it first-hand rather than providing words and paper. I mean, I'm deadly by far as that. (laughing) But I really prefer talking 'cause, I don't know, there's a sense of like home when you see another black fellow tell their story to you, tell their home to you, talk about their life to you rather than trying to work it out yourself on the page. So I think the difference in storytelling is so beautiful and I take away a little bit of everything in both in different ways from every form. So yeah, I hope that makes it. But that's how I really, that's why I really love storytelling 'cause it's just like, you can tell me a story anyway and I'll walk away different. If you told me the story, I would've walked away different from you writing the story. So yeah. - Vanu, do you agree? - What's your experience been like? - Yeah, absolutely, I really enjoy performing poetry. I really being able to deliver it with the emotion that I intended for the poem. And I guess that's sort of like the clearest demonstration of my intent because it's from me directly. And yet at the same time, I feel like there's a level of safety that we can kind of get through that distance of poetry and print where we don't have to take on the emotional labor or the emotional response of someone. And I mean, that's so prevalent amongst white Australia is to be resistant and violent and insensitive to Aboriginal people and what we experience and our histories. So I think at the same time that is value when having that distance through the page, I've had some real strange things said to me after performing poetry. So I also appreciate the print, but yeah, it's nice as well to have the human connection through performance poetry, absolutely. - When I was setting up, I was eavesdropping on Alison and Malayka's conversation and you were talking about something very similar about having people come up to you after you perform and kind of dumping their white guilt on you, almost. That's my crude interpretation, that wasn't your words at all, but it was just like, 'cause for me, when I perform, I always think about other black colors in the rain. 'Cause it's just like, my apologies for them, it's for them in mind. I keep them in mind when I write. So when non-black people come up to me and they try to dump the emotional emotions on me, in a sense that they want me to resolve them. I can't resolve you from nothing. I'm so sorry you don't, but it's just like, there's just expectation when of them coming up to you and being like, I'm being honest now, like, I'm so sorry that we did this in this now or five. Like these things happen all the time and it's just like, I can't say thank you, because I'm not thankful. I count that I'm grateful, because I'm not grateful, but that's all you took away from it. I think it's something that non-black people have to like sit by themselves, because it literally puts the way back on us again to be like, yeah, we forgive you. Yeah, you're deadly. And it's just like, you have to, you really have to do the way for yourself, because it's always, because I started performing when I was my late teens and it was just like, I was a young fella and I had a lot of, I don't think like, oh wow, you're going to change the world. But maybe, it shouldn't be up to me, like, it should be a collective, like, yeah, a collective thing, because a lot of people only, the way that, look, I could go on and on. Please do. But basically, it's just, it's tiring in a sense that when I do perform, I'm spaking word, or I just go off on stage and start talking, and I come off, and non-black people come up to me, they always just have questions that I wish that they just kept to themselves, or that they could have just easily just Googled that. But it's just, yeah, they literally don't realize that they're putting us through, but retraumatizing us when we come off, and we feel good, and we just heal collectively with our own people and the audience, and they come up to us, and then they just like, wow, you showed us that way, really privileged. And I'm just like, it really takes you a problem to realize that, like, come on now, like, you've lived how long in this world, and taught you that you were privileged by, there's these, it's just, yeah, it's very tiring, and you get tired of it, but I stick around because of the fact that I love performing for black followers, because every time after I have to put up with a number of people, and the black followers come in, they just like, wow, I really cried, and I was like, I know, I couldn't look at you. Because I would have been crying too, because it's really a healing moment, storytelling is so healing, because it's really, it solidifies the fact that you're not alone, which is what I always, it's a feeling that always creeps up on you, and you're the only person in the world that feels this, and you get in that place that I perform poetry, and other followers are like, I feel that way too. I always felt like that, I just never had the words, I've never had the vocabulary, express it, and I always tell them, yeah, you've always had the vocabulary, you don't have to follow the Western colonial way of expressing yourself. This is it, this is how we express ourselves, so yeah, that's how I feel. There's a number of tensions there that I think run through the entire collection, and stuff, things that you were saying. One of them was in Ali Kobie, she mentions about being around a campfire and sharing stories, and then throwing them into the fire, and that was how they existed, and then as a writer and publisher, kind of dealing with the tension of what I just wrote for my community, and to perform amongst ourselves, and what I should publish. Do you go through that individually as poets yourself? Are there things that you rightly are like, no, this is for us and for me, and for our collective healing, or do I want to publish this? Or is it not something that you consider? Because ultimately, if you want to make a profession out of writing or any kind of performance, working, you have to do it publicly. Or is that question too annoying? I'll answer that quickly, in the sense that a lot of people say for us, and like I speak from experience, and I speak because it's always in the back of my mind. When I write and when I produce something, I always have to think about my family, my people, and cultural protocol, like non-buy people don't have to think about that. On this country, on this continent, like they didn't have to think about how it will reflect our ancestors, or how our ancestors will interpret it. But yeah, it's a weird, like I think it's very weird, in the sense that I'll see why authors write about us and do it in the multimedia way. And it's just like, wow, you think you're deadly, and you don't have to do that much for us, when we have to write about ourselves, or if we have to write indigenous followers into our book or poem, we have to, like we ask my old people, ask my friends that I go out and talk to community, I'll reflect and it takes ages to even produce a proper poem, if it's about someone else, or if I include indigenous characters in one of my manuscripts, it's just, we have to reflect, and none of these people don't do that at all. You know, Lennie, you mentioned that as part of your process with the poem that was published in Firefront, and I was creepily lurking on your Instagram as part of my research. Which, once I said that out loud, that's really creepy, but I was just like, it's part of the research. And I noticed that you posted the Firefront, and you were talking about your experience of having it published, and you mentioned that not surprisingly, this poem got very little attention from non-aboriginal people. The Colony is addicted to our suffering, to our stories of hardship, to fulfill their fantasies of the meek, tired, and originally. How much does that relate to what was just being said about practice and protocol and your own experience with your poem? Yeah, this poem, it's really only ever been Aboriginal people and Aboriginal women, more specifically, that have come up to me after a performance, and said that poem that you performed, I really connected with that, I really heard that, and understood that poem. And then I have non-aboriginal editors and publishers approaching me for particular work, that is just so far from my list of priorities. They're going for the funny poem, for the lighthearted poem. And not the poems that I want to publish, not the poems that are important to me. And so when Alison approached me specifically and said, "Hey, that poem that you performed at one time would love it to be in this collection, it just meant so much, so much, for my priorities to be seen for what they were." And, you know, like I said, there is a protocol that comes with being published. Anything that I put forward to go into print, to go out into the world, I show my family first, I get them to read it, I get their feedback. And even just recently I wrote a poem, and before sending it to be published, I sent it to a cousin who was coincidentally there with my auntie, and they read it, and they said, "Oh, Makas, you've got it mixed up, that's not actually one of our stories, you know, that you're talking about there. You should write about this instead." And so I went back and I edited that poem, and I prioritized the story that they wanted to be told, that my family wanted to be told, because my poems and my poetry, that's the purpose for me, is for furthering my family and my country and my people. And it's not about me alone, it's about all of us coming together on that page, and I need to have their permission before I go forward with anything. And I was on a panel once, and there was this white boy that was sort of like, "I just think that we need to be careful about the word integrity. There's no such thing as integrity and poetry and writing, because you always edit it, so it's never raw and it's never real." And I was just sort of like, "That's it. That's that really wrong with me." And I couldn't figure out why, until I realized that the editing process for me is where I seek my integrity, is where I sit back and say, "What am I actually doing here? Who is this for? Who is this for? What is this about? And how do I make sure that it lives up to the expectations of my family and my country?" and both of you have we talked about the slight footnotes that are kind of littered throughout, but you both had dedications before yours. Did you want to talk about the choice to add that at the front of your poem? So every time I've actually performed my name as a single word, I always yarn about the meaning of the words. So I felt all yarn about today. So basically, before I was born, my father had a dream about my name and about me. So I was given that name for my father, which coincidentally has a meeting on both sides of my family. So my name, holds meaning once out of my family and on the other, which I find beautiful, because it was a tongue of name, but it still has a meaning in both bloodline. And for me to not tell a proper story about how my name came to be and how one of my great-grandmothers was named after had the same name, it felt, it didn't feel right not to say anything or mention anything. So I always, it was a privilege to you, like, you're like, we have the opportunity to say something. So I dedicated it to my mother, who wanted to give me another name for my dad, was like, no, I had a dream, I had a dream. And I thanked my mom for letting my father name me and for my father for naming me. And I thank my mom again for letting me keep the name. And then I thank my dad and my father because my whole life, my family have always been the only people who have said my name correctly and with love. And for me, it was important to acknowledge the love that's always been associated with my name. So it's always important to acknowledge people with my poems, which is what I always do before performing. But I'm the written page to acknowledge them beforehand, yeah, it was really special. My poem, remember, was, I was really trying to combat the, the erasure of Aboriginal women in the narratives that are told about us. And I just think it's outrageous that, you know, the images that we receive of Aboriginal women, even just like in the paintings, you know, we're always just like sitting on the ground, like wrapped in a blanket. And it's like, you can't tell me that during a war, an Aboriginal woman didn't pick up a spear and fight, you know. And even just looking at Aboriginal women today, like with fierce, we're always at the front of protest, always at the front of change, always at the front of movement and energy. And even the Aboriginal women that do make it into history become footnotes or become a paragraph, you know, become a wife or, you know, become a, you know, the soul survivor. And the complexity of our stories are taken away from us. And so, with, remember, I try to retell the stories of three Aboriginal women adding that, trying to add back in that complexity of resistance and energy and fierceness. And reflecting on my life now, today, trying to survive that same war, trying to make steps towards our survival. And I think about what they must have been thinking and feeling at their times, the quiet moments that they have in bed, you know, feeling overwhelmed. And one of the women that I add dimension to is my great, great grandmother, Ali and Double, who was one of the few surviving members of our tribe after her family were poisoned. And that is my grandmother's grandmother. Ali and Double was my grandmother's grandmother. And if I look at that lineage of survival, you know, my grandmother is another, another link in that chain leading to my, my existence and my ability to resist now. So it was really important for me to acknowledge my Nana and all of the work that she's done as a poet and as an activist her whole life. It, I think, was important to sort of lay out that chain of survival. Amongst generations. And Alison, when you were approaching writers, did you say to them, you have this space, if you wanted to add anything, if there was an addendum, a footnote, any context that you wanted to give, is that something that you approached them with? Yeah, that was something that I have to say. I think I approached everybody with the option of the footnote, but any amendments that they wanted to make to polyforms that had already been published, any contextualization that they thought was necessary. I think I made it clear that that was possible. I, yeah, the curatorial process is something that I definitely would learn to long the way. It's something that I would do differently now, I think, having been through this experience, knowing that, and I don't mean this with, I guess any animosity towards UQP, but like the difference between what it meant to work with a publisher who had hard deadlines, who wanted to do stuff in a particular way, and then having to just, again, with no animosity, be pushing kind of back against them all the time and be like, no, this is how we're going to do it, no, this is how we're going to do it. And realizing that there was a lot more power to push back than I thought I had, I definitely would have done things a little bit different. They, including by outlining a great deal, more of authorial control. Because I assumed that because all of the poems in Firefront had been quite a quite like published somewhere else, been performed, somewhere else, they've been distributed, they've been released to a black public. And I assumed in those relationships by the process that mob would have published it in the way that they wanted in that time, even though some of these poems are actually quite old and at a time when mob didn't have as much power in the publishing industry as they did now, not that that's a lot. And so having the chance for people to actually situate their poems in relation to one another in a way that made sense for them in a way that also fulfilled the responsibilities while also holding it as a record of what it was. That was the kind of complexity, I think, that I was not bridging against kind of like just just sitting in that was yet it's never going to fully be resolved. I mean, how can you resolve something like this in the English tongue in the pages of the institution that has been publishing for a really long time using stolen wealth from the mob seized land it was on? These are things that we are constantly working through. Yeah, one of the interesting, I guess, paradoxes to use a bit of a wanky word. In the book, and I think in poetry that is very interesting is using English and I love to house Stephen Oliver talked about English being a tricky language because it's used to trick people. How do you resolve or kind of work with that in your own work with that tension, question for anyone using the English language? I hate English. Well, that's one answer. I generally hate English and when I do my work, I purposely, so in the editing process, my poem, I think my mother's in father and I think it was confusing. But for me, I was thanking my aunties and my dad and my aunties and my my mother's and because kinship ways, I only have uncles, so I only thank my father. I think it was weird for them to try to work out how to say that in English and I was like, that's how you say it. That's how you say it. So I think a lot of people just don't realize that we can say deadly things in English, but they're going to have to sit with the fact that we're not going to use it the way that they want us to. Because I will, a lot of people will pull me up with spelling and how I phrase things and it's just like I did that on purpose. But you're going to have to sit with that because I'm not going to change it. So it's that process of like telling them that one this is how I pull the speak to that I have no respect for how you tell stories, how Western colonial ways, like colonial ways of storytelling is prioritized in these spaces. I will have no respect for that. I can tell stories however I want. You can't tell me nothing because I'm a storyteller there. And the whole fact that I will purposely also just, yeah, not spell anything right and not use grammar right. And when I do use language, it's always like I can't say it, but it's literally like an inside joke between like everyone else can speak it and everyone who can't speak it has to sit there and game and laugh like they know what what I just says, like you don't know, but that's definitely that you think you do. So it's this process of being like I'm going to use my language however I want because again, this or everything I write is for black color. So why would I write in a way that has to prioritize like even the vocabulary that I use, I make sure that I don't use words that I like people are like, oh well, I don't know the meaning for that. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to use it. I always prioritize how I grew up for me as well by being off topic as well. English is my first language. Why would I use a language that I wasn't born with to tell stories that went told in that language. Why would I do that, but yeah, yeah, it's a hard thing to navigate because I mean, English is my first language and it, you know, using English is one of my strongest skills. It's what I make my living off of. It's what I used to further my message and it's not really where I'd like to be and I'd like us to. I know that we will continue to take steps moving back towards our languages and it's something that I try to bring into my writing as much as possible. And there's a lot of mistranslation, like there are a lot of Aboriginal values, Aboriginal concepts that don't translate into English and then there's an opportunity to misinterpret. I mean, recently, I had a poem in a song that has the opportunity to have like quite an international audience and I realized that when I talk about country. It would be interpreted in a sort of like nationalistic way and that it could be sort of like more government, you know, if I'm like, yeah, the spirits of our countries and that's not what I meant, you know, and I had to really reflect and think about how I can communicate more clearly what it is that I'm trying to say and moving beyond the limitations of what English provides us. And I think really the it's about going back to using our languages for those terms. And if you get it, you get it if you don't, you don't. But you know, at the same time, I think it's an English is an interesting tool for I think like global solidarity work amongst other people who have been colonized and to be able to to maintain that connection today. Yeah, yeah, I also just want to add quickly that English doesn't like adding onto that English doesn't have ways to express certain feelings as well. Like it's like we they can misinterpret values, but when it also comes to feeling and connection to like our spirituality, they have my idea how to talk about that because there's no words for it. And you try to come up with words for it, so you try to mix your own language into English, but it's still it still doesn't work. So English is so limiting in the sense that it will never truly encompass the black experience on this country because it was never used to do that. And language shapes societal values and ways of thinking and ways of being. So when we have been colonized, you know, the language played such a huge part in that shape, but we were able to communicate. And how that then goes on to affect, you know, sort of like group culture, to be able to move back to our languages, it will again reshape us and our values and solidify them in like day to day. Society, systemic changes, speaking of words, I have to ask the inevitable question that Alison, I'm sure you've been asked in literally every single interview, the title, fire front. But from what I've read, it was before the most recent bushfire catastrophe. Can you talk a little bit about why you retained that title, you did write about it in your introduction and in the acknowledgement section, but I think it's just an interesting thing for people who might be coming to it, fresh. And yeah, yeah. So fire front, the title was actually just a working title to kind of represent the subversive power that First Nations poetry has, but also the the fuel base that it comes from. There's a lot of like contemporary white fellas talking about black parties, if it's like just manifested in the last five years, and it's like led by young people, which we know is absolutely bullshit. And so to kind of talk about poetry in this way, and also to acknowledge that we're having a moment where all of the work of our ancestors, but also the literary predecessors who worked really, really hard to give us this fuel. But the moment's kind of finally happening, the fire front was like a thin mine, and now the wind has changed a little bit, and now it's kind of equipped in its full power. So that was the governing metaphor, I guess, if you like, behind fire front. And by the time that the devastating bush fires isn't that we had last year and early into this year came around, we had the opportunity maybe to change it. But I thought in addition to being kind of an apt metaphor as it was outside of this context for First Nations poetry, it also highlights like why we do it, like what's it staying when mob don't control our own affairs, when mob denied caring for our own country. And so it kind of stayed and that acknowledgement went in that the devastating bush fires season kind of demonstrates that poetry is part of this broader political ecology that's pushing for land rights and for control and for the meaningful recognition of sovereignty. And as a legal reality, but also as a reality that if the settler colony doesn't begin to acknowledge sovereignty, which exists, whether or not they say it does, these are the things that escalating crises that are going to keep happening. I think it's time now for our arrogant arts section where we answer listener questions with an authority we don't have, it's an exercise in imposter syndrome for all of us. Today's question is from Sarah. Sarah asks, I'm used to working collaboratively with lots of people, so I'm finding it hard to be distanced from my team and collaborators right now, but I also feel overwhelmed by constantly emailing and online meetings to keep in touch and keep things going. Do you have any advice for artists working collaboratively at this point in time to help ease the load and make it fun rather than worries. So obviously we're on zoom now and we're recording this a bit differently. This is how a lot of collaborative processes are taking place when we're used to meeting in the same room, or if you're a performance, performing to a room full of people, which is maybe something we're not able to do so much. Now, do you have any advice anyone on how to make it more fun than just emailing and just zooming or how to really lead into those things and make them fun and easier, I guess. I'm going to be a little bit blunt. I just think that it is really important to collaborate with people that you trust personally and politically. It makes it a lot more fun and it just makes it a lot more safe. And so, you know, to have Alison approach me, it was a hard yes straight away. And sure enough, you know, trusting that that decision and trusting that feeling of trust made that experience a lot more enjoyable, you know, but safer for me and my work beyond just the relationship that I have with Alison. And I know that I can trust the way the, the way it is. work is going, the collection that will be in in the context that will be received in. And I just think it's important for mob to work with mob and for people to work with people that they trust because there are a lot of snakes out there that really just want to use you and use your work and use your culture and make money off you. So that would be my hot take. Very good. I can't even tell you. I can't even tell you how much I'm nodding along to that one. Any other advice? I just backup what's this and 100% because they're they're going to be people who will try to use you as a token, taking black for not just their shares with their panels, like their star, so be a 100% aware of that. And yeah, if you want to if you want to do it do it, but also make sure that you bring other black colors and stats base to be like, we're going to take over this place then, but yeah, like make sure. Also, yeah, 100% work with other black colors, 100%, because it's a very different experience to working with non-black colors because it's just like, I don't know, it's like working with a family. Family that you love, it's like working with your favorite cousin, basically. Basically. Now you have high expectations, don't blame me. Make sure, make sure. Yeah, that's all I have. Alison, do you have any advice? Yeah, I mean, if it's I just want to kind of backup what's been settled ready, but if this is like contained specifically to the pandemic, I think like as more working in the arts, like there's a more working anywhere, there's always this kind of like pressure that's coming from outside our community to to produce and to truth tell that's not necessarily for our own ends and like, I don't I've noticed it kind of intensify maybe over this last little period and you don't have to do it. Like if something like this is like if you're feeling pressured or it's not conducive to what you want to be doing, if it's the right you've got you have a right to refusal and even if that's kind of, I hope this doesn't sound tacky, but like looking after yourself and your wellbeing and that of your family and your community, if all of those things come at the expense of writing or collaborating or doing creative stuff, like that's okay. And it's something that we're not told very often that, you know, there are things that are more important with this and sometimes it's okay to let the puppet say no to say no. And I think there's a certain amount of leverage as well, like I was asked to speak on a panel recently and I was just sort of like what has this person interviewing me got anything to do with my work? I was like I want an Aboriginal person, like why are you not getting an Aboriginal person to talk to me on this panel? And they did it, you know, and like maybe you won't always get that response, but if you can just sort of be like I'm uncomfortable with this, I need you to do this, you know, got a little bit of leverage towards it sometimes. And yeah, use that, although people should have those ideas anyway if they're coming to you, that's the issue, like that goes back to the enemy, like there's no festival without us, right? Like there's no book without us, so. 100%. So I did want to present you with the opportunity to give a sisteria shout out to any piece of art or culture you've been enjoying recently. And I know that a few people have been kind of locked away. I'm in Melbourne, um, on lockdown. But I want to hear I've got nothing, I've got nothing to recommend. All I'm doing is sitting in this little box, talking to wonderful people like you editing and doing boring office work. So please give me good things to listen to to read to watch. Alison, do you want to kick us off? Yeah, I haven't actually watched this yet, but I have planned an entire weekend around it that I'm really looking forward to. I made Destroy You, which I think is going to be the 2020, um, but like text TV show, yeah, work of art. I am so excited. So, but it's so good. Sorry, I watched this. Oh, you'll be all excited. I've got to hold it until Saturday. It's nice to have something to look forward to as well. That's great. It's true. I have, I have a lot of recommendations there. I, so I've been watching Lovecraft Country. It's the sci-fi type of take, um, uh, of uh, well, what they described as, actually I don't know how to describe it. Just watch it. Um, there's a lot of black people in it. I love that fact. Like, and we get to tell our stories in a way that prioritizes our own, well, African-Americans get to prioritize the way that they tell their stories about their ancestors and, um, ghosts, which I really love. Um, and the next one that I think, um, I have two books, um, actually three. But, so basically the date by River Solomon is about, um, the ancestors of the, um, of slaves who, of those enslaved who, um, jumped ship and drowned and turned into mermaids. Um, so those are their ancestors and basically tells you the life of these mermaids that live under the sea now. Um, so that's why River Solomon, they're really, um, cool, um, pet by, um, aqua here. Um, amendi. I'm pretty sure I've mispronounced the name. Um, but that book is about, um, a trans girl who's new and who chases down, um, a monster that, um, came alive from their parents, um, painting, um, her mom, bitter, her name is, um, painting. So she chases that monster down and it's like set in this world that prioritizes abolition like they've abolished prisons and so beautiful. Um, I, like he didn't want to finish it because I still want to live in that world. And clap when you land, um, is a story told in this, um, by Elizabeth, um, as severe. Um, and it's about these two girls who had lost their father, um, in a plane crash, um, and then mysteriously find out that their sisters and both their father who had passed away had two different families in two different countries. So yeah, hmm, very interesting. Also great. You're giving me some things to do. Thank you. Madam York, what was yours? What's your shout out? Um, I have two, um, firstly, um, my Nana, Kathy Meals is actually, uh, publishing her first collection of poetry. Yeah, look at Nanganath, which will be published through, um, bachelor institute and she'll be launching it at the, um, northern tofu writers festival. Amazing. In October, which I'm just so excited and like so proud, um, and so I'm really excited to get my hand on a coffee. Um, and Nana's been writing poetry for literal decades. I've been writing about our, our history and our, you know, been sharing culture and just been so incredible. Um, she's so, she's so strong. So I'm really excited. So everyone should go out and buy a coffee. And what was your Nana's name again? Kathy Meals. Great. Yeah. Um, and then the second one is, look, a little bit of a shameless plug. But, um, I've collaborated with a very, very good friend of mine and we're releasing a song together, which will be on Spotify September 17. And it's sort of in the current, I guess like political reflection, um, of policing, um, and state sanctioned violence, reflecting on the connection between what's happening in the Philippines with, um, their current ruler Duterte. And I guess, you know, looking for connection and solidarity with Aboriginal people and recognizing the, the relationship and the connection between what all oppressed people are going through globally. It's all related. Um, and so that'll be out on Spotify. Her name's Lucy Varne. This song's called Silence Is. Um, September 17. Exciting. How exciting. I actually did have one shout out and that's it ever run based on this conversation. I'm sure you're already clicking on to order it now, but go buy a fire front. It's excellent. As this conversation proved, listen to these amazing voices. Go read some. Thank you very much for joining me today. This has been so wonderful. I feel so enlightened. She's back. You want to listen? Yes, sir. Who knows? Oh, whispering. Yeah, you want chips. Don't we all? Why does that have to whisper that, though? Oh, that's a secret. You get your chips. You want to go get your chips? Adorable. All right. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye. is supported by the Melbourne City Council Arts Grants program and recorded on the lands of the Rorundary people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to the elders, past and present and to the elders of all the lands as podcast reaches. Subscribe to Sisteria Everywhere and follow us @SisteriaPod. Links to everything discussed in the episode are available at SisteriaPodcast.com. Our theme music is by Rainbow Chan, the song is called Last and it's from her album, Spacings. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and we hope you tune in again soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]