Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Architecture, Poetry and Impressions of a Bendigo Chinese Doctor, James Lamsey
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Responding to architecture

'Natalie Harkin has suggested that for her, and for other Indigenous poets and writers, poetry is a responsibility.1 In this vein, Birch recently challenged white Australians’ Sorry Day performances of guilt: ‘As we contemplate the word sorry and question to what extent it has become little more than a symbolic gesture – at best – we must also pause and give due thought to the word responsibility.’2 This call is a timely provocation for thinking about White Australia’s relationship with Chinese-Australian history and communities too. Two days before Birch’s piece was published a group of 10 Chinese Australians, including Ballarat leader Charles Zhang, ended a march from Robe, South Australia, at Parliament House – a building designed to impress authority if there ever was one. Standing in the Parliament foyer, just meters from the chambers where the Immigration Restriction Act was passed 116 years earlier, Premier Daniel Andrews apologised for the government’s historically unjust treatment of Chinese people; ‘On behalf of the Victorian government’ he expressed ‘our deepest sorrow and I say to you that we are profoundly sorry’.3 Andrew’s apology is evidently heartfelt, but, though he claimed that ‘we are in your debt for all of those kilometres that you’ve walked’4, it remains unclear whether this debt – linked, as it was, to the labour of the walkers and not to the historical labour of Chinese Australians – is merely symbolic or will translate to monetary compensation, as it has in New Zealand and Canada.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Cordite Poetry Review Land vol. 82 1 August 2017 11953841 2017 periodical issue

    'When we chose to edit an issue of Cordite Poetry Review around the theme of ‘Land’, it was with an interest in the inherent openness of the word. Similarly, we came without a strong affiliation to any particular poetics, though of course our own aesthetic, moral and intellectual predispositions followed us. The process of reading through the many submissions was exploratory and open-minded.' (Editorial)

    2017
Last amended 27 Sep 2017 09:47:56
http://cordite.org.au/essays/architecture-poetry-bendigo/ Architecture, Poetry and Impressions of a Bendigo Chinese Doctor, James Lamseysmall AustLit logo Cordite Poetry Review
Subjects:
  • Bendigo, Bendigo area, Ballarat - Bendigo area, Victoria,
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