'It is not lost on me that the name of this journal tugs against the current issue's dedication to Indigenous poetries - the rabbit is a pest, an interloper, on Australian soil; a signifier of colonisation. I grew up with rabbits all around: big white bunnies with brown spots that were our pets, dragging the hutch across the lawn to mow another patch of grass; wild rabbits in the paddocks that had to be controlled; Nanna’s rabbit stew; Nanna saying KFC was actually rabbit meat; rabbits in the headlights with myxo-eyes; a hind leg and two kidneys deposited by a fox beneath the car. When I was born, my sister gifted me her toy rabbit, and he is still a constant companion.’ (Jessica L. Wilkinson : Editorial introduction)
‘What is Indigenous nonfiction poetry?
In short, it is Indigenous poetry. There is no need for the nonfiction qualifier. Peoples so vast and unalike tongue accounts at the common wound of colonisation, and turn that tongue inward to map their mouths. A global tradition that is so nebulous it’s difficult to pin down, and yet clarifies the closer you zoom – continent to region to nation to clan to person. (Alison Whittaker Poetry Editorial introduction)
Epigraph: ‘All is not lost or hopeless when there is poetry.’ – Natalie Harkin, Rabbit 21
Only literary material by Australian authors individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Novice / Scribe by Jose Trejo Maya
Change and My Niagara by Janet Rogers
Off-Island Chamorros and During Your Lifetime by Craig Santos Perez
Saba Breeze by Anwer Ghani
A Native American Poet to a Palestinian One by David Groulx
from The 21st Century New World Poetics by Nyein Way
'Indigenous non-fiction poetry brings forward questions of readers’ expectations that most often are thoroughly formed and bound by Euro-western genre expectations. It is probably a bit late to challenge the nomenclature and the claim that this is ‘a journal for nonfiction poetry’, but I do find it an oxymoron – since poetry, however diverse, often offers a personal narrative that is clearly non-fiction.' (Introduction)
'Indigenous non-fiction poetry brings forward questions of readers’ expectations that most often are thoroughly formed and bound by Euro-western genre expectations. It is probably a bit late to challenge the nomenclature and the claim that this is ‘a journal for nonfiction poetry’, but I do find it an oxymoron – since poetry, however diverse, often offers a personal narrative that is clearly non-fiction.' (Introduction)
