Cirrus@Austlit

'Taking Kerry Reed-Gilbert’s anthology The Strength of Us as Women: Black Women Speak (2000) as touchstone, the chapter undertakes a conversation between two Aboriginal women poets from Narungga and Wiradjuri standpoints about the transformative power of Indigenous poetry and its significant contribution to literature in the world. Offering an alternative to the essay, the authors discuss embodied engagements with the colonial archive and the theme of relationality that informs so much of Aboriginal writing. The chapter considers the potential of poetry to be both an affective tool and literary intervention. It outlines the methods of Gathering and Archival-Poetic praxis as ways to explore the counter-narrative potential of poetry. In considering the role of memory work and memory-making, the authors also discuss blood memory and body memory.'

Source: Abstract.

'In this episode, a conversation with Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri poet, writer and academic. Author of the acclaimed novel Purple Threads, winner of the David Unaipon Award, Leane’s poetry has also been widely awarded and commended across an extensive career as both a writer and a teacher.

'Her newest book, the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering, moves from deeply tender meditations on Country, culture and kinship, to experimental archival poems dissecting the violence and destruction of the settler-colony. This special book is the result of decades of poetic, political, and cultural work and reflection.' (Production summary)