person or book cover
Image courtesy of Magabala Books
y separately published work icon Story About Feeling selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 1989... 1989 Story About Feeling
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'From a master storyteller, this book links personal discovery to a sense of nature. It restores us to a wisdom that is at once powerful and fresh. Includes reproductions of bark paintings and artworks. ' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Editor's note: 'Story About Feeling' is the name Bill gave to the talks we had together in October and November of 1982. I recorded many hours of Bill's words on audio tape during that time. This work is a transcript from those tapes. The original has been edited down and arranged into themes, under chapter headings. Various elements of a theme are highlighted in a story-list at the beginning of each chapter. A full story-list appears at the end of the book, as a reference guide. I haven't attempted to explain or interpret Bill's story. As he says, 'Someone can't tell you. Story e telling you yourself.' His use of this language is not standard English, so a glossary of terms can be found on pp. 172-175.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Broome, Kimberley area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,:Magabala Books , 1989 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Laying Downi"This story e can listen careful", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 1)
Untitledi"Well, I'll tell you about this story", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 2)
When You Sleep... Blood e Pumpingi"Listen carefully this, you can hear me.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 3-4)
Look That Stari"When you laying down in the night, look that star", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 5)
Look That Moon!i"They used to tell us...", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 6-7)
Moon and Native-Cati"Moon. Moon is man. E said...", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 8-11)
Flying-Fox and Bush-Honey-Beesi"I can listen over there flying-fox.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 12-14)
Animal for this Worldi"Crow...e was eating this rubbish.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 15)
Wind for Usi"Wind for us.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 16-18)
The Land for us Never Change Roundi"Listen carefully, careful", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 19)
Treei"I drive", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 21)
Because You Want Road this Timei"We got tree here one...", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 22)
That Leaf e Pumpingi"Tree same thing. E watching you.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 23)
Don't Be Roughi"Well they told me...", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 24-27)
Fire is Nothingi"Fire is nothing when you burn it", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 28)
White-Ants!i"Hollow tree e burn out and e's finished.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 29)
Bulldozer E Killing Iti"E can drive longa road, highway;", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 30-32)
Shadei"Because you pull it up from that earth this tree,", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 33)
Good Smooth Treei"That tree e grow there, smooth tree.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 34-35)
That Signali"That signal.", Bill Neidjie , single work poetry (p. 36-37)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Meeting Selena Sue Hall Pyke , 2022 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 140-143) Meanjin Online 2022;
'Spring, well over a decade ago. I head up the rise before the fruit trees as a tiger snake moves across the path made by my regular round of the tree paddock, a cherished place transformed more than ten years before this sighting, from a barren stretch of grass and rocks. I jump back when I see the snake, two metres in one movement, an impossible feat when I'm not full of fear. It takes a jump like that for my body to know a particular place as snake habitat. Spring is when snakes move their slowest, when they are seen more than they are heard. I still tread that part of the paddock carefully when the sun starts to sting.' (Publication abstract)
Listening to the Stories Woven Around Us Brooke Collins-Gearing , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 64 no. 1 2019; (p. 24-33)
'I grew up in Kamilaroi country, the land of the goanna. I grew up bathing in and being sustained by the river system and artesian tracks. I grew up knowing of my Murri heritage, of the old people living in tin huts on the banks of the Mehi, but not of the deep knowledge embedded in land all around; for me, it took many years of different kinds of reading and listening to learn how to pay attention to this knowledge.' (Introduction)
Six Groundings for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Story in the Australian Creative Writing Classroom: Part 2 Paul Collis , Jen Crawford , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 22 no. 2 2018;

‘All Australian children deserve to know the country that they share through the stories that Aboriginal people can tell them,’ write Gladys Idjirrimoonra Milroy and Jill Milroy (2008: 42). If country and story, place and voice are intertwined, it is vital that we make space in Australian creative writing classrooms for the reading and writing of Australian Indigenous story. What principles and questions can allow us to begin? We propose six groundings for this work:

  1. Indigenous story is literary history, literary history is creative power.
  2. We do culture together: culture becomes in collaboration, conscious or unconscious.
  3. There is no such thing as Indigenous story, and yet it can be performed and known.
  4. Country speaks, to our conceptions of voice and point of view.
  5. History and memory are written in the land and on the body in bodies of practice.
  6. Story transmits narrative responsibility. Narrative responsibility requires fierce listening.

'This two-part paper discusses each of these groundings as orienting and motivating principles for work we do as teachers of introductory creative writing units at the University of Canberra. Part 1 discussed the first three groundings and was published in TEXT Vol 21, No 2, October 2017. Part 2 discusses the remaining three groundings.'  (Publication abstract)

Park Jonathan Dunk , 2018 single work prose
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , July 2018;

'Leaving the train at the sliver of Engadine station I find a changed topography. The chicken shop has turned into a café slash hair salon, and there’s a fifties America-themed burger joint. A sign on the Princes’ welcomes us to Dharawal country. The people milling through the streets are younger and more diverse, some of them have fashionable hair and are accompanied by children in paisley. There’s an Aldi and a Coles, a Japanese restaurant and a Thai. I’m told now there are markets on weekends – when I was growing up here it was a charred sausage on white bread from the soccer clubhouse. The light has the same slant though, it stains the exhaust miasma from the highway in the same way, it drifts into the same wiry scrub, and vanishes into the same barbed warren of banksia and scribbly gum. Someone’s put up a rail fence, and there’s fresh gravel crunching beneath my boots.'  (Introduction)

Bill Neidjie’s Story About Feeling : Notes on Its Themes and Philosophy Philip Morrissey , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 2 2015;
The late Bill Neidjie was one of a remarkable generation of Aboriginal elders who in the late 20th century mediated Aboriginal knowledges for a wider audience. These knowledges were individual and specific, and originated in each elder’s engagement with modernity, rather than being the articulation of a primordial wisdom tradition. This article conducts a reading of some of the key themes of Story About Feeling – a collection of Neidjie’s narratives recorded in October and November 1982 by Keith Taylor and published in 1989. In these narratives Neidjie identifies a universal human subject, defines inter-species concordance, the relation between nature and culture, and the experience of the Aboriginal sacred and its effects in the everyday. Story About Feeling returns continually to the reality of djang and its corollary feeling – a modality that is always in excess of any story that attempts to represent it.' (Publication abstract)
Untitled David McCooey , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: Fremantle Arts Review , September vol. 5 no. 9 1990; (p. 22)

— Review of Lori John Wilson , 1989 single work novel ; Story About Feeling Bill Neidjie , 1989 selected work poetry
Fear and Loathing in Rural Darkness Penelope Nelson , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 16-17 December 1989; (p. 9)

— Review of Story About Feeling Bill Neidjie , 1989 selected work poetry
Bill Tells Us How It Feels Edwina Toohey , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 120 1990; (p. 37)

— Review of Story About Feeling Bill Neidjie , 1989 selected work poetry
E'll Be There, Million Million Star, Because E Stay, E Never Move Rod Moran , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 17 March 1990; (p. 7)

— Review of Story About Feeling Bill Neidjie , 1989 selected work poetry ; Lori John Wilson , 1989 single work novel ; Me and You: The Life Story of Della Walker As Told to Tina Coutts 1989 single work biography autobiography
More Wisdom From Bill Neidjie Mark O'Connor , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 28 January 1990; (p. 25)

— Review of Story About Feeling Bill Neidjie , 1989 selected work poetry
Aboriginal Australian and Canadian First Nations Children's Literature Angeline O'Neill , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: CLCWeb : Comparative Literature and Culture , June vol. 13 no. 2 2011;
'In her article "Aboriginal Australian and Canadian First Nations Children's Literature" Angeline O'Neill discusses Canadian First Nations and Australian Aboriginal children's picture books and their appeal to a dual readership. Inuit traditional storyteller and writer Michael Kusugak, Nyoongar traditional storyteller and writer Lorna Little, and Wunambal elder Daisy Utemorrah are cases in point. Each appeals to Indigenous and non- Indigenous, child and adult readerships, thus challenging two assumptions in Western scholarship on literature that 1) the picture book genre is necessarily the domain of children and 2) that traditional Indigenous stories are, similarly, best suited to children. O'Neill considers the ways in which Indigenous children's picture books represent the interaction between text and culture and challenge notions of literariness.' (Editor's abstract)
Deixis Rediscovered Russell West-Pavlov , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Spaces of Fiction/Fictions of Space : Postcolonial Place and Literary Deixis 2010; (p. 184-205)
The Once and Future Country Liana Joy Christensen , 2012 single work prose
— Appears in: Famous Reporter , December no. 44 2012; (p. 160-174)
Doin' the Post-Colonial Story? Neidjie, Narogin and the Aboriginal Narrative Intervention... or,Flagging the Post-Colonial : Hoisted on Whose Petard? Hugh Webb , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Span , April no. 32 1991; (p. 32-40)
Reviews Veronica Brady , 1990 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , March vol. 35 no. 1 1990; (p. 87-92)
Last amended 16 Nov 2018 08:25:46
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