'From well-known poets Charmaine Papertalk Green and John Kinsella comes a tete-a-tete that is powerful, thought provoking, challenging and unapologetic. Papertalk Green and Kinsella call into question what we think we know about our country, colonisation, land and identity. Each poem is part of a striking conversation that surrounds topics such as childhood, history, life, love, mining, death, respect and cultural diversity. This extraordinary publication weaves two differing lives and experiences together and rarely pauses for breath. Papertalk Green and Kinsella’s words traverse this land and reflect back to us all, our identity and how we got here.' (Publication summary)
'This chapter argues that ecopoetry is too easily absorbed back into the logics of capitalism and colonialism. Aware of the delimiting forces surrounding its own context, the chapter argues to be taken not as an essay but as an action. It argues that for a poem to bring about environmental change, it must be part of connected interventions. The chapter outlines the poetic yarning between John Kinsella and Charmaine Papertalk Green, a member of the Wajarri, Badimaya, and Nhanagardi people of the Yamaji Nation, as a means of generative protest. It also provides an example of poems written in medias res in the collective resistance to a proposal to build bike trails on Walwalinj, a mountain sacred to the Ballardong Noongar people. This example demonstrates a poem is shaped by the particular situation and how the poem is one part of a network of actions that formed a campaign that was led by Aboriginal elders. The chapter also includes collaborative poetry written during the Roe 8 Highway protests in 2016 and poetry protesting the proposed destruction of the Julimar Forest by mining companies.'
Source: Abstract.
'Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners in Australian writing has a long and fraught history, and appropriation remains a serious issue in the Australian publishing industry today. At the same time, however, positive instances of collaboration, particularly in contemporary writing, have shown its capacity to produce rich and nuanced cultural outcomes. This article is part of a developing project aiming to investigate collaborations like these and their related industry outcomes. It looks to feel out some of the complexities around Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration, considering as a starting point Randolph Stow’s work with Daniel Evans, which led to the publication of “The Umbali Massacre […] As told to him by Daniel Evans” in the Bulletin in 1961. As a case study, it has several interesting features: the context of Stow’s work with Indigenous peoples and his friendship with Evans; Evans’s direct contribution to Stow’s Miles Franklin Award–winning To the Islands (1958); Stow’s failure to properly acknowledge Evans in the novel’s frontmatter; and his subsequent appropriation of Evans’s voice in the Bulletin piece, even while advocating for Indigenous sovereignty. As such, it illustrates both the dangers and the potential of Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration as a dual inheritance in the industry today.' (Publication abstract)
'False Claims of Colonial Thieves is the founding myth of colonial Australia. Yamaji poet Charmaine Papertalk Green and settler poet John Kinsella launch into the long overdue conversation Australia needs to have between the Country’s First Peoples and the settler-invaders. Australia needs this radical intervention in publishing to move forward in dialogue with First Nations people.' (Introduction)
'False Claims of Colonial Thieves weaves together two disparate voices, Charmaine Papertalk-Green and John Kinsella, in a demanding collection that reaffirms the troubling environmental era we are living through. Structurally, the book shifts between traditionally oppositional views – an Aboriginal woman and a white man. Neither dominates the narrative: instead, we witness their shared commitment to challenge the environmental direction Australia is spiralling towards. Their concerns take the form of protest.' (Introduction)
'False Claims of Colonial Thieves is the founding myth of colonial Australia. Yamaji poet Charmaine Papertalk Green and settler poet John Kinsella launch into the long overdue conversation Australia needs to have between the Country’s First Peoples and the settler-invaders. Australia needs this radical intervention in publishing to move forward in dialogue with First Nations people.' (Introduction)
'False Claims of Colonial Thieves is a new poetry book that calls into question what we think we know about country, colonisation, land and identity.'
'In her poem “Simply Yarning”, Charmaine Papertalk Green writes:
'Yarning is a beautiful conversation / From that moment / That space / That time / Yarning puts us on common ground.
'Her co-author John Kinsella responds warmly with his own hymn to the art of yarning:
'How can I but take up the call, / Charmaine, and yarn right back at you / – it’s what we do when we connect, / have a yarn about this and that.' (Introduction)
'Somewhere before White Fragility became the lingo du jour of anti-racism workshops, white people stopped telling me out loud that they were ‘one of the good ones’. They chuckled and said ‘Oh, I’m so white’. They offered me a conspiring wink. It’s not as suave when I reciprocate. I can only blink, or hold my hand over one eye like an optometrist, testing just what it is I’m meant to be seeing.' (Introduction)
'Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners in Australian writing has a long and fraught history, and appropriation remains a serious issue in the Australian publishing industry today. At the same time, however, positive instances of collaboration, particularly in contemporary writing, have shown its capacity to produce rich and nuanced cultural outcomes. This article is part of a developing project aiming to investigate collaborations like these and their related industry outcomes. It looks to feel out some of the complexities around Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration, considering as a starting point Randolph Stow’s work with Daniel Evans, which led to the publication of “The Umbali Massacre […] As told to him by Daniel Evans” in the Bulletin in 1961. As a case study, it has several interesting features: the context of Stow’s work with Indigenous peoples and his friendship with Evans; Evans’s direct contribution to Stow’s Miles Franklin Award–winning To the Islands (1958); Stow’s failure to properly acknowledge Evans in the novel’s frontmatter; and his subsequent appropriation of Evans’s voice in the Bulletin piece, even while advocating for Indigenous sovereignty. As such, it illustrates both the dangers and the potential of Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration as a dual inheritance in the industry today.' (Publication abstract)