POEM 1

“Wiradjuri Dictionary” (Weh-rudge-eh-ree)
From: gawimarra gathering | Publisher: University of Queensland Press, Queensland, Australia, 2024

My 57th birthday present from my son

ngulanyin

is a Wiradjuri dictionary

I sit before this brick-like book its

covers radiating yellow like the sun yiray

between these white pages are Black words

ngiyang yuwin

that rolled from my Grandmother’s Mother’s 

Gunhinarrung Gunimbang

lips but never graced mine

I pore over this silent object –

Ache for it to speak its words to me

press my ear to smooth soundless

pages that they might breathe bunyingganha

these words badhu Wiradjuri

through me in me mulunma 

that I might hear their music play

over my soul

dhulubang

like a love song

ngurrbul

gudhi

POEM 2

“Biladurang Untranslated” 

From: gawimarra gathering | Publisher: University of Queensland Press, Queensland, Australia, 2024

You stop me in my tracks when I

see you in the Grand Gallery of Evolution

at the Museum national d’histoire naturelle

on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire – a mythical

place so the citation says where modernity meets history

and science tells the story of the great adventure.

I trace you

from top to toe and back again

with my eyes among 7000 species collected

and displayed. Ornithorhynchus anatinus –

phylum: Chordata; class; Mammalia; order:

Monotremata. Australian platypus.

On a river a million miles away

where I walked as a child you are biladurang,

My Gunhinarrung stooped with stick,

black hair turned to ash, still walking the river

told me your name. From Mundarlo Bridge

to the Nangus floodplain we’d watch you arch

and dive your rippled story deep into the dark water.

Derrida said,

Every text remains in mourning until it is translated.

I wander through these display cabinets of

butterflies and moths pinned to boards, reptiles

marinating in jars of ethanol, birds and animals

stuffed, splayed out and labelled in Latin

behind glass and wonder.

Are you not already known biladurang,

on Country that birthed you – shaped you

through lands and waters. Named you through story.

On the other side of this translation

a river somewhere will remember you –

on a mountain, a ridge, a plain, a gully or a creek

will know you by your name.

Biladurang it’s your capture you mourn behind

those glass eyes that stare out at me. 

When I speak your name out loud – biladurang

I give it back to you from the river where I

first heard it – the river that still remembers you

free and untranslated. 

Excerpt from Heal Country. Heal our Nation.
From: gawimarra gathering | Publisher: University of Queensland Press, Queensland, Australia, 2024

The nation is a masculine myth that makes all our Countries sick… Most cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Darwin, Perth all bear the names of dead white foreign aristocrats; the highways and byways that dissect, desecrate and mutilate living Countries such as Hume, Macquarie, Mitchell, Newell, Brockman, Stuart, Sturt – all white men with dubious reputations.

When you take away someone’s name you don’t just take away a word. You take away spirit – heart and soul. When you change language from one that names all things as living to one that makes all things, things only, it causes diseases, chronic illnesses, ongoing injuries and sometimes even kills the things that were once living through their names.

That’s what happened here when the invaders came permanently to our shores in 1788. They stole lots of things – our lands, our waters, our languages, our children, our dignity, our freedom, our birthrights to live on the Countries our Creator Spirits made for us.

POEM 3

“O Australia”
From: gawimarra gathering | Publisher: University of Queensland Press, Queensland, Australia, 2024

O Australia I want to follow the transit of Venus/ sail around the corner of the world/ discover your terra incognita/ catch the first fleet/ get a ticket of leave/ take up land/ cross your great divide/ unlock your pastures/ dive into your jewelled sea/ Australia I want to chart an inland river that leads to your opal heart/ be a part of your Australian legend/ work in a working man’s paradise/ have a fair go/ ride to wealth on a sheep’s back/ spread myself out across your wide sandy beaches/ be a bronzed Ozzie/ feel you move from beautiful one day to perfect the next/ sing suburban sonnets to summer sprinklers/ be swaddled in the southern cross of Eureka/ tattoo freedom on my forearm/ weep for your droughts and flooding rains/ Australia I want to sing I come from a land of plenty/ be a happy little vegemite/ Australia I want to find my piece of you/ sing I am one but many/ advance you fair/ say you’ll be right mate/ feel your blue sky lap my ankles/ see you shimmering through my windscreen/ say you are the wide brown land for me/

O Australia I want to drive through your layers of bulldust/ untwist your furphy-history/ pull the wool off your eyes/ tell you you’re dreamin/ hang your dirty laundry on a rotary clothesline/ get the Black velvet out of your closet/ dig deep down under where the bodies are buried/ stitch up your open-cut mines/ Australia you are sick at heart my Country/ Australia we watch our people die/ Australia you are a poor fellow my Country/ what you hid is surfacing/ what you beat is defending itself/ what you scorched is burning you/ Australia there are Countries screaming under your nation/ what you killed is haunting you/ what you silenced is talking up at you/ Australia listen to your ghosts/ hear that terror still nulling you/ Australia what you buried is rising/ Australia you killed your first-born/ Australia we want to cure your national amnesia/ Australia we want to wake you up/ ease your cored-out heart/ Australia we want to sing you/ Australia we want to let you Dream again/ Australia you keep drowning out our voices/ Australia you won’t know us/ see us/ hear us/ listen.

WRITING PROMPT #1

Write a few lines and include a word from a different language in each line. Leave it untranslated. Exchange it with the person next to you. Take 3 minutes to feel the experience of reading an untranslated work.

WRITING PROMPT #2

Using one word from the poem Wiradjuri Dictionary & one of the notes from the wines, connect the threads between this Country’s language & the evidence of the land via the wine notes.

WRITING PROMPT #3

Write your own O Australia poem, with a place of your own choice. It can be a place, a city, a person. But acknowledge the beauty and the shame inherent in the subject of your poem.

WINE TASTING

flavor, texture, emotion

BODY : combination of sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol / weight of wine in mouth; light/med/full

SWEETNESS : residual sugar / bone dry → dry → off-dry → semi-sweet → sweet → syrupy/cloying

ACIDITY: tartness/sourness of a wine, the mouthwatering effect, contributes to freshness & balance; tart, zesty, puckery, soft, round, supple, plush, etc.

TANNIN: naturally occurring compounds in grapes, skins, stems that produce an astringent ‘mouth drying’ effect (opposite of acidity); contribute to a wine’s structure and aging potential; smooth, soft, rough, dry, etc.

ALCOHOL: product of fermentation; high abv: fuller, richer & low abv: lighter, more delicate

ALL FRUIT GROWN ON KAURNA and PERAMANGK LANDS