NancyElin.blog

#Poetry Blakwork (title poem)

• Author: Alison Whittaker
• Title: Blakwork
• Published: 2018
• Publisher: @MagabalaBooks
• Trivia: 2019 shortlist Victorian Premier’s Award Indigenous Writing
• Trivia: 2019 WINNER Mascara Lit Review Avant-garde Award for literature
• Trivia: 2019 shortlist ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year
• List of Challenges 2019
• Monthly plan
• #AWW2019
• @AusWomenWriters
• Trivia: Review:  poem  Cotton On   (pg 15)

Cover:

1. I was staring at the book  turning it front to back.
2. Why the choice of a bird on the cover?
3. Perhaps if you live in Australia  you know what it means.
4. I had to find out more about the metaphor of a blackbird.
5. Difficult to read….
6. Origin of the term ‘blackbirding’:
7. The term may have been formed
8. …directly as a contraction of ‘blackbird catching’.
9. ‘Blackbird’ was a slang term for the local South Pacific indigenous people.
10. It might also have derived from an earlier phrase,
11. ‘blackbird shooting’, which referred to
12. …recreational hunting of Aboriginal people by early European settlers

Title poem:      Blakwork  (pg 3)

1. The sun rises 0530 am on this side of the world.
2. No matter how hard I try…I’m wide awake at 0600 am.
3. My eyes are not yet focused so I use a magnifying glass to
4. …read the first poem in the chapter Whitework.
5. Blakwork: 41 words that pack a punch.
6. I didn’t realize that today (26 May) is #SorryDay in Australia
7. This poem sums up the sentiment of
8. …reconciliation from an other perspective.

1. Type of Poem:  poet-in-conversation (present tense)
2. Who is speaking?  Alison Whittaker the poet
3. Who is ‘you’  in the poem?    White Australia
4. Title:   Blakwork
5. Australia’s slavery started because other countries abolished it.
6. Aboriginal people were used in
7. the pearling, sugar cane and cattle industries.
8. They suffered terrible abuse and were denied their wages.

Conclusion:

1. There is an energy…tension  in this poem.
2. I tried to discover the  starting subject and
3. …then the discovered subject in a poem.
4. There is always a door to be opened the
5. will lead you down another path
6. …in this poem a ” cynical path”.

1. Starting subject:
2. blakfella works –> payment callous hands –> profit to white Australia
3. Door: words   “white guilt”
4. Discovered subject:
5. Blakfella works –> payment now bound by contract (indentured)
6. profit –> white Australia can have “soothing” feeling of reconciliation
7. “nine to five forgiving you.”
8. #powerful

BLAKWORK

• Fresh blakwork; industrial complexes
• hands with
• smooth and flat palm callouses.
•      Soothing re —
•                         –conciliation
• That dawdling off-trend meme
• white guilt. To survive it; well,
•      it’s naff to say, but compul–
•                       –sory to do. Indentured blakwork, something like
• nine to five, forgiv–
•                      –ing you.

1. Words I had to look up for a clear meaning of the poem:
   
2. industrial complexes – (self-interest ahead of the well being of the Aboriginal people)
3. dawdling – wasting time, idle, trifle
4. meme –  behavoir
5. naff – clichéd, unstylish
6. indentured – bound by contract

#Poetry Alison Whittaker “Blakwork”

• Author: Alison Whittaker
• Title: Blakwork
• Published: 2018
• Publisher: @MagabalaBooks
• Trivia: 2019 shortlist Victorian Premier’s Award Indigenous Writing
• Trivia: 2019 winner Mascara Lit Review Avant-garde Award for literature
• Trivia: 2019 shortlist ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year
• List of Challenges 2019
• Monthly plan
• #AWW2019
• @AusWomenWriters
• Trivia: Review:  poem Blakwork  (pg 3) (title poem)
  

Conclusion:

1. This book consists of 15 chapters and 94 poems.
2. I still am trying to learn how to read a poem.
3. I am going to read a poem …then really try to figure
4. …out what the message is…or what do I see in the poem.
5. More of my reviews about these poems
6. …will appear during the summer..in drips and drabs.
7. These poems will take time to read.
8. The author has put so much thought into her words
9. …I don’t want to rush my reading

1. Poetry does not need a story…that is not its function.
2. That is why poems sometimes make people cringe!
3. The reader speaks English, the poem is in English
4. and still the  reader (me)  has no idea what it means.
5. This will be my biggest poetry reading challenge.
6. Just look at the way the poems sit on the page!
7. I glanced through the book and see images, emojis,
8. poems with unique shapes, punctuation and lists.

1. I am not going to review them in lofty poetic terms
2. …but just by asking myself some basic questions.
3. What is the shape of the poem? Who is speaking?
4. What images does the poet use? Allusions?
5. How do they make me feel? Stumped or enlightened?
   
6. I’m even going to read the poems to the cat
7. …I need to hear the sound!

1. Poems tells us the history of the human heart.
2. All poets are struggling with the different things:
3. loneliness, racism, gender roles, sexuality
4. colonialism, family, class, history,
5. …violence, culture, pleasure, joy.
6. I’m eager to learn what Alison Whittaker….
7. …is struggling with.

Poem:      Cotton On            (pg 15)

let’s compare hands              s t r e t c h

tendons wrists across            o c e a n s

here: a common                     wound.

Cotton On:

1. My FIRST reading:  12 words  placed on the page leaving a 10×10 cm blank center page.  words describe hands ready for planting and harvesting. The key word is ‘oceans‘ referring to the overseas labor force that is used in this industry. The blank page could indicate a field that is planted with cotton seeds. Title:  Cotton On is perhaps a reference to seeds…starting.
2. I then contacted the poet via Twitter:
3. “I’m just starting to read poetry and I admit I don’t understand it after a first reading…so I re-read alot. Reading: Cotton on (pg 15) in Blakwork. May I ask…why the big open space in the poem? What am I missing! Thank you for your time #justasking”
4. Reply  from  Alison Whittaker:
5. “I try to not be too prescriptive with the poetry, but in Cotton on, the spaces denote the physical space across the pacific between communities wounded by cotton, and the act of stretching out to touch. it’s whatever you make of it!”
6. My SECOND reading: Then I put my thinking cap on.
7. Who was wounded by cotton?
8. USA the slaves on the plantations.
9. AUS the aboriginals who see their sacred rivers drying up.
10. The aboriginals say:  “If there’s no river, where’s our culture?”
11. The landholders (cotton farms) are pumping all the water out
12. for irragation and water management.
13. Now I see the connection in the poem.
14. The slaves and aboriginals are stretching their hands
15. across the Pacific Ocean.
16. Both wounded by cotton.
17. “The last line “here: a common wound.

#AWW2019 Maxine Beneba Clarke

Introduction:

1. I needed to share
2. Maxine Beneba Clarke’s poem on my blog.
3. There is something so rewarding in this poem
4. if you are willing to
5. …let go of what you already know.

Ritual

We’ll go cardboard-boothed

  to the primary schools

community centres

  and the churches to boot

and friendly neighbours

  ideologically opposed

will avert their eyes

  as they fold up their votes

Last thoughts:

You want a poem to unsettle something…

1. Maxine Beneba Clarke has done it
2. ..about Australian elections 2019
3. There’s not a word wasted in these clean, spare lines.
4. We could use this poem for elections all over Europe!
5. You can read THE ENTIRE POEM  HERE
6. Thank you @slamup