Selection of writing

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.

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.

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. …

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.

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.

Separation جدایی 

PUBLISHED Prometheus Dreaming, Nov 2019

It seems my mother bore me for grief that grows of separation (from Hafez 352)
When I was a little girl in Iran I loved spinning around until my brain became fuzzy, I’d lose control and sometimes I’d fall. The roses in our garden swirled red, pink and white as I turned, and I’d smell their sweetness.

The Cry Room

pUBLISHED Verity la, MAR 18, 2018

I just slipped out she said. Like a slip of the tongue, slipshod, a slip stitch forever unknitted. I was born. Slippery, sibilant, small in the scheme of everyday lives. Nothing stopped. There were no celebrations. I was born and everyone got on with their work in the power station, the briquette factory, the mine, a gaping, brown open-cut.