Madelaine Dickie will start work on a new novel after nabbing two grants that will take her to Mexico on an international writing residency

By Fremantle Press

Fremantle Press author and City of Fremantle T.A.G. Hungerford Award winner Madelaine Dickie is on a winning streak. She was the only Western Australian writer to receive a Copyright Agency grant this year and has secured a writing residency in Mexico.

The announcement comes shortly after it was revealed that Madelaine had been named as one of five Western Australian writers to be shortlisted for the Fellowship Award as part of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.

On the Premier’s Book Award Fellowship, Madelaine said, ‘I don't dare to think what this could mean for my work! As it stands, it's a joy and a privilege to simply make the shortlist.'

As well as receiving the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund IGNITE grant and a substantial grant from the WA Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Madelaine has also obtained a place through Arquetopia Foundation for their International Artist Residency just outside of Oaxaca City in Mexico.

Madelaine said, ‘I'm desperate for that space to be lonely – the kind of lonely that only writing fills. It's my hope that the residency in Mexico will offer an intense, concentrated period during which I can wrestle out a complete first draft of the book. It's a luxury to be able to write full time, and I am so grateful for the funding that I've received that will give me this opportunity.

'My new novel will be a dark, surf-noir crime thriller set in Western Australia and Mexico. At this stage, it's about surf localism and violence – the story hinges on how far the locals in a small WA community will go to guard their waves from outsiders. It also reimagines the Narcissus myth on the Ningaloo coast ... Instead of peering into the pool, the characters peer bewitched at the tiles of their own Instagram feeds. The story will spin around a young Mexican woman who is brutally murdered for posting a video of a secret, sublime wave on Instagram ...

'As well as writing, I'm eager to use the time to binge on Mexican crime fiction, read up on traditional Zapotec legends, check out the fabled Puerto Escondido on a maxing swell, visit Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul, and absorb a myriad of rich sensory details that might be reimagined in fiction.’

Eight authors and three artists have received a share of $46,440 from the IGNITE grants program. The grants range from $1,900 to $5,000, and support the recipients through structured mentorships, residencies and study, some of which involves international travel.

Madelaine won the 2014 City of Fremantle T.A.G. Hungerford Award for her debut novel, Troppo, which has since gone on to be shortlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award and the Barbara Jefferis Award, both in 2018. Her second novel, Red Can Origami, will be published by Fremantle Press in December 2019.

Troppo by Madelaine Dickie is available online at www.fremantlepress.com.au and at all good bookstores.

Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards shortlist announced

• The shortlist of the Premier's Book Awards announced

• Awards ceremony to be held on July 26, 2019 

Culture and the Arts Minister David Templeman today announced the shortlist for the 2018 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.

The Western Australian Premier's Book Awards aim to support, develop and recognise excellence in writing.

This year there are four awards:

• The Western Australian Writer's Fellowship ($60,000), designed to assist a Western Australian writer, of any genre, to develop their writing practice and give them the time to create new work.

• The Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer Award ($15,000) for the first published work of prose, poetry or narrative nonfiction, in any genre.

• The Premier's Prize for Writing for Children Award ($15,000) for a work of prose, poetry or narrative nonfiction written for children (0 to 12 years of age), in any genre.

• The Daisy Utemorrah Award for unpublished Indigenous Junior and Young Adult writing, administered and presented by Magabala Books. ($15,000 and a publishing contract with Magabala Books) for a new unpublished manuscript for a work of junior and young adult fiction, including graphic novels, by an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. 

Other than the Daisy Utemorrah Award, all the awards are only open to Western Australian authors.

Emerging Writer shortlist

• if i tell you Alicia Tuckerman (Pantera Press)

• The Rúin Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins Publishers)

• The Sky Runs Right Through Us Reneé Pettitt-Schipp (UWA Publishing)

• The Wounded Sinner Gus Henderson (Magabala Books)

• You belong Here Laurie Steed (Margaret River Press) 

Writing for Children shortlist

• Grandpa, Me and Poetry, written by Sally Morgan and illustrated by Craig Smith (Scholastic Australia)

• The Happiness Box, written by Mark Greenwood and illustrated by Andrew McLean (Walker Books Australia)

• The Hole Story, written and illustrated by Kelly Canby (Fremantle Press)

• How to Win a Nobel Prize, co-authored by Barry Marshall and Lorna Hendry, with illustrations by Bernard Caleo (Piccolo Nero, Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd)

• Puddle Hunters, written by Kirsty Murray and illustrated by Karen Blair (Allen & Unwin) 

The Daisy Utemorrah Award for unpublished Indigenous Junior and Young Adult writing shortlist

• Paul Callaghan, 'Coincidence'

• Kirli Saunders, 'Mother Speaks'

• Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler, 'Tracks of the Missing' 

Fellowship shortlist

• A.J. Betts

• Amanda Curtin

• Craig Silvey

• Kylie Howarth

• Madeline Dickie  

The winners of the 2018 Premier's Book Awards will be announced on July 26, 2019 during the Disrupted Festival of Ideas at the State Library of Western Australia.

Minister's office - 6552 5400

Kirli Saunders bares us to bright moments in debut poetry collection

First published in National Indigenous Times on May 27, 2019

Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman with ties to the Yuin, Gundungurra, Gadigal and Biripi people in NSW.

‘Poems made him conscious of his breathing. A poem bared the moment to things he was not normally prepared to notice.’
– Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

Kirli Saunders’ debut collection Kindred offers a sequence of poems that shift seamlessly between the concrete and country, the tangible and the spiritual—and, like the best poems, they bare us to moments we’re often too busy, too distracted to notice.

The Wollongong-based poet anchors us with bright details: Mentos wrappers under couch cushions, a yellow bike kneading Glebe pathways, a walk home that smells of childhood piano lessons dipped in jasmine.

But Ms Saunders is not afraid to step beyond the known, to grasp for and allude to a deep and old knowledge that’s just beyond reach.

In ‘Disconnection’, a poem addressed to an unnamed little one, the proud Gunai woman muses on what it’s like to grow up when your roots have been wrenched from the earth. Ms Saunders writes,

I watch your
trembling limbs
ache to shake
in dance
and hear your lungs
as they gasp with songs unknown.

The poem falls into the first part of the book titled ‘Mother,’ which Ms Saunders said is about connection with culture.

“This first section of the book is about my mother being removed from country, and me trying to learn language, to learn about culture, and to learn how I fit in that landscape,” Ms Saunders said.

Not all the landscapes in Kindred are benevolent. The poem ‘Dharawal Country’ sends shivers through the skin, and Ms Saunders writes with power about the way country remembers.

She observes ants ‘like homicide crime scene cleaners’, bloody sap leaking secrets and ‘pine in place of eucalypt’.

“It’s important for poetry to tell the truth. I was struck by this beautiful landscape. But a massacre had occurred so close to where I was writing. So, I used the innate beauty of poetry to tell the truth about what was there.”

Ms Saunders is the founder of the Poetry in First Languages project and she’s passionate about weaving language into her work.

“First Nations languages are very lyrical, melodic. They change as the landscape changes. There’s a synergy between language learning and poetry. Hopefully we can see more writers starting to write in language.”

No woman is an island entire of itself, and the journey to the publication of Kindred hasn’t occurred in isolation. Ms Saunders credits her family and the beautiful people around her for helping grow the wisdom which is finally distilled in this book.

Alison Whittaker, a Gomeroi woman and poet, advises prospective readers to not ‘… mistake [Kindred’s] tenderness for gentleness. Kirli is fierce in her protection of kin and love.’

For Ms Saunders, the creative process involves being fully present and aware of one’s surroundings.

“When I’m not listening, I miss things … To write poetry, you have to show up in order for it to pass through you. I have to show up with a pen and paper.”

Ms Saunders said she hopes her readers connect with the poems in Kindred.

“I want people to find themselves in these pages. To see parts of themselves and hopefully move in new directions.”

Kindred was released by Magabala Books, Australia’s oldest Indigenous publishing house, in May this year. It’s her second major publication—the first, was a children’s picture book titled The Incredible Freedom Machines, illustrated by Matt Ottley.

More information can be found at: https://www.magabala.com/kindred.html

The songs that went viral through the desert

First published in National Indigenous Times on May 14, 2019

Songs from the Stations has been published by Sydney University Press.

Please note, this story contains the names of people who have passed away.

In modern terms, it would have been a chart topper, a pop smash-hit, a viral YouTube clip.

The ‘Laka’ song set, performed by the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory, travelled an extraordinary distance. There are records of performances in Marble Bar, Norseman, Roebourne, the Eucla and Port Augusta.

Ronnie Wavehill attributes Laka to a song man named Yawalyurru, who worked on Sturt Creek and Gordon Downs stations as a milker.

Pintupi man Patrick Olodoodi Tjungarrayi recalls his parents singing Laka on their traditional lands between Kiwirrkura and the Canning Stock Route.

And Patrick Smith and Marie Gordon learned Laka in the stock camps of the Kimberley. On a visit to Alice Springs from Balgo in the 1990s, Patrick Smith recalled hearing an old white stockman—who’d worked on Sturt Creek Station—singing the song. Patrick jokingly said that the stockmen had stolen a blackfella’s song. Marie retorted that Patrick had stolen the Stockman’s Slim Dusty!

The Laka song set is one of five analysed in the Sydney University Press publication Songs from the Stations. Drawing on detailed knowledge from the main performers Ronnie Wavehill Wirrpngayarri Jangala, Topsy Dodd Ngarnjalngali Nangari and Dandy Danbayarri Jukurtayi, the book maps the origins of these songs, as well as describes tempo, breath takes, language and the tremolo effect of clapsticks or boomerangs—all in a bid to help people learn the wajarra today.

The term ‘wajarra’ is a Gurindji word which loosely means to ‘play about and have fun’. In musical terms, it’s a genre of music. Wajarra (like its equivalent ‘junba’ in the Kimberley) is freed from the restrictions of sacred songs and can be performed anywhere and by anyone.

The five song sets detailed in this book were most frequently performed between 1913 and 1967 in the Victoria River District—on stations straddling the WA and NT border.

While considered the ‘pop songs’ of the era, these days the songs can be tricky to learn. With communities saturated with television, radio, and Netflix, the frequency of wajarra performances has declined. There’s also the issue of language. While many singers can recite a song perfectly, they don’t always know the meaning of the lyrics.

The knowledge in Songs from the Stations has been carefully compiled—with Ronnie Wavehill’s account of learning wajarra told both in language and English.

It’s not a book for the generalist.

The research is rigorous, specific and would be of interest to Gurindji people eager to learn about wajarra, linguists, teachers and historians. It would also be of particular relevance for Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians studying the renaissance of Aboriginal classical music. The analysis of the rhythmic texts of the five song sets—Mintiwarra, Kamul, Freedom Day, Laka and Juntara—is sophisticated, requiring a detailed understanding of music.

Songs from the Stations is an important work—an invaluable work. It’s the first time that these public songs, as performed by the Gurindji, have been documented in detail.

Recordings of the song sets can be listened to online here, while Songs from the Stations can be purchased here.

Anzac Day: difficult to forget, when that’s the date you were blown up

First published in National Indigenous Times on April 22, 2019.

Pattie Lees joined the WRANS and served for two years. Photo by Pattie Lees.

Frank Mallard talks of being a ‘tunnel rat’—one of the ‘mad Australians who chased Viet Cong down these tunnels’. Gaye Doolan jokes that she joined the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service because she liked the uniform. And Roy ‘Zeke’ Mundine asks, ‘… how can I forget Anzac Day?’ He says in 1969 on Anzac Day he got blown up. He stepped on a mine, or the side of a mine, and it blew his leg off.

These powerful stories and many more are included in Our mob served: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories of war and defending Australia. The book documents the contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to the Australian defence services from the Anglo-Boer War onwards.

The perspectives of these men and women are truly kaleidoscopic.

We learn of the friendships—the true meaning of the word ‘mateship’—which in recent times has become politicised and hollow. Many of the men and women acknowledge in their stories that mateship means even more than placing the team above the individual, more than duty: it’s about the unspoken emotional territory of shared life experiences, survival and loss.

Take Bill ‘Kookaburra’ Coolburra from Palm Island, in QLD, who became especially close with a bloke called ‘Snowy’ George Wilson—nicknamed for his fair skin and hair. They were famously known as the ‘twins’ and referred to each other as ‘twin brother’. Former Prime Minister Harold Holt took it literally. On a visit to Vietnam he asked to meet Snowy’s twin brother and was shocked to find out that he was an Aboriginal person! Together, the twin brothers fled the Military Police after a bar brawl in Vietnam. Together, they faced life and death situations in the field. And eventually, they were joined together in a physical sense. When Bill needed a new kidney, Snowy gave him his.

We learn of the reasons people joined up. In many cases, it was to escape the Protection Acts, access education and training, and to receive better pay. For Mick Pittman, from Casino NSW, it was ‘to get out of town.’ Mick joined the RAAF in 1968 and said, ‘…after 17 years with Mum, the military was a walk in the park … Piece of cake!’ For Pattie Lees, a career in the navy gave financial security and direction. ‘I felt I was being useful. I had some purpose in my life.’

Our mob served gives enormous depth to contemporary reductionist views on the service of Australian men and women, firstly, by recognising the service of Aboriginal people and secondly, by gathering such a multifaceted range of stories and experiences.

It’s the result of many ‘Yarn-ups’ and informal interviews with ex-service people or their relatives at over 40 locations around Australia. The interviews took place between 2014-2017 as part of the ‘Serving Our Country: A History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in Defence of Australia’ project, led by Mick Dodson.

The stories are funny, tragic, thoughtful and profound, and they serve to fill an enormous gap in modern Australian history.

This book should be considered an urgent addition to school curriculums and libraries. It would be of interest to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people curious about Australian history or conflict; or tired with the over-simplification or popular nationalism associated with Anzac Day.

Our mob served: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories of war and defending Australia has been published by Aboriginal Studies Press.