When I approach Jazz Money and Kirli Saunders at the signing table after the event they’ve just participated in – Songstress Poetica – the first thing I say is, wow, I think that might have just been my favourite panel I’ve ever seen.
Jazz – a Wiradjuri poet and writing peer of mine, who I’m lucky enough to also call a friend – laughs and says, oh, come on! I think I’ve heard you say that before!
And they’re right. Jazz has heard me say that before… at the signing table at Bendigo Writers Festival last year immediately after seeing Jazz Money share the stage with Sara M. Saleh, Claire G. Coleman, and Izzy Roberts-Orr. I remember how I’d been holding a notebook in which I’d quoted Jazz, who said, this entire continent is predicated on poetry. And Sara, who told us all that the Arabic word for a line of poetry is Bayt, meaning home.
I laugh now, in the signing line of Sydney Writers’ Festival, telling Jazz and Kirli, no, no, I swear to God! I meant it last time at Bendigo, and I mean it now… that really did just take over on my list of top panels I’ve ever seen!
This is my last blog piece for Sydney Writers’ Festival. I’ve never dedicated time to writing short pieces such as these, and it’s surprised me how much fun I’ve had with them. I personally struggle to write at night, so I’ve been waking at the crack of dawn every morning to produce each story before the 9am deadline. In soft blue light, I’ve reflected on rivers and sex and remembering and rage. And now, I’m faced with the challenge of summarising what has been quite possibly my favourite Sydney Writers’ Festival ever.
I have this running joke with someone I love where we’ll turn to each other at the end of spending time together, and one of us will ask, any final words?
It feels hilariously dramatic of us, to be this morbid with each other, really leaning into the gag, giving weight to the moment as if these really are our final words. It’s heightened in an absurdist way that makes everything feel charged and desperate. But I think the reason I continue to find it so funny is because it points to a sharper, and more deep truth, which is that endings are unending – how in truth, few things are ever really that final.
I think of Thomas Mayo who I’ve written about twice this week, whose determination to repeat the story of the Uluru Statement from the Heart as an act of remembering carves out space in the present for futures in which all of us are alive and living.
I then think of my notebook of the quotes I noted down from Jazz and Kirli’s panel, in which they shared the stage with panellists Afra Atiq, and Kerry Bulloojeeno Archibald Moran, and chair, Alethea Beetson. I think of how I believe that writers are really just finding different ways of saying the same thing, and how I’m most floored by a writer when I think to myself, wow, I would never have thought word it like that!
And how I found myself floored, more than once, in Songstress Poetica. So much so that I’ve decided that the final words of this blog will not be mine, but rather those of the panellists, their stories repeated here as an act of remembering.
I hope you enjoy these final words as much as I did.
What does it mean to gather and share breath? To share song?
A choir is so much greater than the sum of its parts.
– Jazz Money
When I told my Aunty, “But I can’t sing…” she responded, “birds in the bush,” because you don’t listen to any one individual bird, it’s all of them together that makes us feel calm and brings us joy.
– Kirli Saunders
Birds were the first song.
Songline and storyline collaborate together.
It’s poetry in motion.
I’m walking in the shadows of characters. Reading is feeling these characters and walking in their shadows.
Books linger you on.
– Kerry Bulloojeeno Archibald Moran
We are the stories we inherit and the stories that we tell … it’s poetic legacy.
Every time I speak or write a poem, it’s a responsibility.
Sometimes we write a poem because we must and we erase because we think we should.
– Afra Atiq
Silence will travel in everything. Grab hold of that silence and let that silence be unbroken. Sing songs loud!
– Kerry Bulloojeeno Archibald Moran
To hold is to be held, so witness how it is carried.
– Jazz Money
– Dylin Hardcastle
