Bella Li: When I think about politics, I think about thought and action and for me, poetry comes very much at the thought part of that process. 

 

Anna Funder: Welcome to Fully Lit. A podcast about Australian writing.  

 

Ellen Van Neerven: I lean towards not knowing how much poetry can change outcomes in its own time, on its own, but perhaps as part of something larger. 

 

Anna Funder:  I’m Anna Funder.  

 

This episode is about poets and their sense of responsibility – to themselves and their publics.  

 

Our guests are award-winning poets Ellen Van Neerven and Bella Li,  with host Lisa Gorton 

 

 You’ll hear a range of poets and poems, from our guests and our host,and others including Natalie Harkin, Lionel Fogarty and Claudia Rankine. 

 

Reading:  “An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine from Citizen:  

 

 

Anna Funder:It’s time to get Fully Lit 

 

[00:01:30] Lisa Gorton: I’m very happy to be sitting down with Bella Li and Ellen Van Neerven to talk about poetry and responsibility. We’re sitting in a small room in Carlton, which is to say we’re sitting on the lands of the Wurundjeri, Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung of the Kulin nations. These are unceded lands, and I pay deep respect to the elders and custodians and story keepers of these lands, and of those lands where you might be listening in. So welcome and thanks for joining the podcast. 

 

[00:02:04 Ellen Van Neerven: Thanks, Lisa. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you, Lisa, and with you, Bella as well. 

 

[00:02:12] Bella Li: Thanks, Ellen, and thanks, Lisa. I was just very excited to be in the same room with the two of you. 

 

[00:02:17] Lisa Gorton: Ellen, do you see a conflict between those two words? Poetry and responsibility? 

 

[00:02:25] Ellen Van Neerven: I think yes. I’ve been trying to think because I haven’t really been able to answer it for myself. When that responsibility starts, does that start in the making and the thinking of the poem? Where does it extend? Is it only when a poem is in the public realm, whether you know online print performed that the poet becomes responsible to something greater than themselves. Or is it there from the beginning? And I wanted to hear your thoughts on that as well. 

 

[00:02:55] Bella Li: That’s a great starting point, Ellen, because I had similar thoughts. The boundaries are fluid. For me, I was thinking about the distinction as I think maybe you were as well, between the making, which is often a private, you know, enclosed kind of self-contained space, and then the space of publication, which is when you start to engage other people, other communities. And for me, the sense of what responsibility might be in relation to poetry is different in those two, I guess, stages. I struggled with first principles, actually. I felt like I was running up against a wall quite a lot, and I forgot that what I do in these cases, quite predictably, is go to the dictionary and look for a definition, because sometimes, and I think this may be is what we might be talking about today is use of language and how when something is used, you know, quite frequently a word such as responsibility is a commonly used word and heard word. You can start to lose touch with what at least one meaning of it may be, and the dictionary definition is definitely not the sole arbiter of what words mean. But it is useful sometimes to return to those and just think about what comes up. And often for me it’s word association, because as we are all aware as well, dictionary definitions often define a word in relation to itself, which I found definitely with the word responsibility. But it did throw up some other words that made me think about the concept. 

 

[00:04:30] Lisa Gorton: I think Gertrude Stein said that the difference between poetry and prose was that poetry was about the definitions of words, whereas prose was more about events during this very fabulous definition. Can I say I’m surprised? Because I feel like in your works that ethical principle begins at the beginning. It’s part of your vision. I’m thinking of the formal play that you have in your works, which is very different from each other. But for instance, to take Argosy, there was such a sense of the conjunctions and erasures that were part of the formal play of the poems, but also part of the vision of challenging certain self-enclosed colonial narratives which self ratified, and so that even at the level of the play of words, you were challenging and showing the insufficiencies of that. That was my reading, and that seems to me to have been part of the beginning place of your work. 

 

[00:05:32] Bella Li: Yeah. If, you know, just speaking about Argosy very specifically, I wanted to say as little as possible through language and draw attention to what is unknowable and unclassifiable and therefore uncontainable many different ways through many different discourses. When I was thinking about this question quite broadly, and my attention always came back to language and its use, and what uses do we put it to? And it’s simultaneously the most one of the most useful tools and technologies that we have, and also the most treacherous, of course, because it can create and erase whole worlds. Absence is a big theme in my work, through all of the books that I’ve done so far, and what I feel some sort of responsibility to in my use of language is to what language cannot and does not speak, and that maps directly onto history. It maps onto. 

 

 

Bella Li: Know what we know of his geography and I think unsettling use of language and the ways in which we feel like language can be totalising, as in, it can present a total world, a total history. And what poets I think are very good at is unsettling language and unsettling that smoothness, because it’s actually very bumpy. It’s actually filled with holes.  

 

 

[00:07:02] 

​​​Reading. “The hundred headless woman” from Argosy by Bella Li 

 

 

 

 

 

[00:09:33] Lisa Gorton: We’ve been talking about the word responsibility, but it started me thinking about whether there are responsibilities that are particular to poetry. And Ellen, do you feel that there’s a kind of responsibility that poetry has, which is different from the responsibility that prose has? 

 

[00:09:52] Ellen Van Neerven: I like what Bela was saying is really making me think about perhaps the first responsibility is to language itself, and maybe that is specific to poetry. Maybe it’s not, because I do feel no matter what form I’m writing, it’s the same feeling and the same same processes that I’m undertaking. But maybe I’m also someone who doesn’t necessarily like to silo writing in particular ways, and thinking of my writing process as being sometimes hybrid and between forms as well. 

 

[00:10:28] Lisa Gorton: Well, I was reading Personal Score with much admiration, and I felt real and fascinating shifts between the prose in that work and the poetry. And for me, it drew attention to something I’ve noticed in your poetry also, and that is how the line breaks and the pauses after the line breaks are so alive. It seemed to me when you got to the poems in there, it was like you being on a field and playing soccer with this sense of so many lines of potential coming out, and from each line break, it could go this way, or it could go that way. And it felt really as though the space around the rectangles of the poetry was animated. And then, in contrast, the prose is full of variation and shifts, quick shifts and very compelling shifts between the personal and the political. But it felt more enmeshed to me. Was that your experience with writing that book, which must have been such a massive work to write and think about. 

 

[00:11:39] Ellen Van Neerven: Yeah. You know, writing that book, its premise was in poetry and what poetry can do on the page. And just as you described, you know, I think the page of a book is a similar shape to a rectangular sporting field. And I really liked the idea of representing movement on the page, representing formation, representing action and shifts. And so that was something that incorporating poetry within prose, within a creative non-fiction work, was a non-negotiable. You know, as you mentioned, you know, something like the technology of a line break to create a turn. Um, uh, when I, when I used to play soccer, I loved, you know, turning the opposition, you know, that quick kind of shift in the body weight. See ya. Open field. And I think, you know, that’s something that poetry can offer in writing about sport, but indeed writing about so many other things as well. 

 

[00:12:50] I think I’ll read a small section from Personal Score, and I’m going to choose a section like mentioned that is about the body in space, specifically to sports writing and how the poetry weaves itself in.  

[00:13:07] 

​​​Reading : “Personal Score” by Ellen Van Neerven 

 

 

 

[00:14:00] Lisa Gorton: You mentioned an interest in hybridity and moving between different forms. I think that’s true of both of your works, Bela. With your interplay also with your artworks. And could you talk about what the vision or ethical principle is that drives that interest in juxtaposition and shift and gaps? Bella. 

 

[00:14:23] Bella Li: This goes back to our first question about poetry and responsibility and definitions and I am interested in categories and not categories in the sense that one category excludes another, but in their overlap and also in the spaces that they create for unique poetry and visual art, for instance. Right. These are two different kinds of genres. Of course. They use different materials. They use different methods. They’re both forms of representation. And yet to think about where one, you know, feeds into another or morphs into another makes it more interesting to think about each. So you have, you know, two or more things bumping up against each other. You learn more about each one, right? As well as the ways in which they can interact and overlap. And so I yeah, definitely don’t want to collapse distinctions between categories entirely because I think that makes it not very useful to think about the, the, the different, um, orders of experience and different discourses that that we employ in the world and that we use. So if there is a politics in that, it is about our responsibility, perhaps towards difference and seeing difference as a positive, um, way in which to know more about ourselves and the world. 

 

[00:15:56] Lisa Gorton: Is it possible for a poem to respond to urgent political challenges and also speak to other times, do you think? And how does a poem do that? And does an example come to mind? Ellen, do you have a poet that you think about and admire who’s managed to accommodate urgency and resonance in their work? 

 

[00:16:14] Ellen Van Neerven: Yeah, so many actually. I think it is so valid for a poem to be of its time and most heightened in its time. But sometimes a poem can be highly of its time and also remain timely throughout different times. I think about this in my own writing process, where there’s times where I’ve felt anxious about whether a poem that’s been written in a particular moment or political event could still perform its strengths down the track, where the immediacy of that moment has faded. So I did write a poem which is called constitute in the lead up to last year’s referendum, and it was looking clear at that point that we were going to get a no result, which we did. And I was feeling urgent and desperate and wanting to capture what it felt like to be in Australia at that particular time. And this sense of self-consciousness emerged in about the second draft. How can this poem be something that lasts? 

 

[00:17:30] 

 Reading “Constitute”  by Ellen Van Neerven 

 

 

 

 

 

[00:20:13]Ellen Van Neerven: And that’s when I did look at poets and poems which hold resonance beyond the urgent moment in time of which they were written. But I was looking at Claudia Rankine, Jericho Brown, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Natalie Harkin and Maxine Beneba Clarke as examples of poets that I feel do this really well. 

 

[00:20:37] Lisa Gorton: What do you think it is about those that allows the particular moment to speak through that work, but also hold a space for other and continuing urgencies? 

 

[00:20:51] Ellen Van Neerven: I feel like these poets, they hold so much history in their words, there’s a real sense that so much context is within a line or a word, that there’s been so many deliberate choices that have been made and so much generosity in those choices as well. And a sense, a feel of accountability. I think they know deeply what they’re responsible to. And there’s often a sense of urgency, but also potentially hope or a potential for things to change. Feeling that the poem can accommodate contradictions within the same poem is dynamic. It’s doing more than one thing, and the reader has a lot of space to enter that that poem. 

 

[00:21:48] Bella Li: Could I respond to that? Thanks, Ellen. That’s really great. And it’s also sparking with some of the thoughts I was having as well when thinking about this question. And I guess to return to this idea of responsibility, when I looked at the dictionary definition, a lot of it seemed to be framed in the negative as like a burden or a duty or an obligation. And I think when I think about responsibility, there are certainly those formal properties. But I also think of care. And that made me think of the title of Eunice Andrada’s recent book, Take Care and What you were saying. Ellen just then makes me think about how that title encapsulates what I feel about, I guess, any sort of attention to language, whether you’re a poet or a prose writer, and what that attention is doing is highlighting the ways in which language and meaning can be complex, can contain within it so many different tonal complexities and meanings. And so take care being in an imperative. But it’s both, you know, can have menacing tones like a warning as well as, you know, a tender imperative to, to take care. So maybe we can segue into looking at that extract from citizen, because I think it speaks to what you were saying, Ellen. This is from Claudia Rankine’s A citizen, an American lyric. 

 

[00:23:15] 

READING : “An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine from Citizen:  

 

 

 

 

[00:23:47] Lisa Gorton: That’s such an amazing book, isn’t it? And that joke is built up through all these horrifying domestic moments, these intimate moments in which a jolt is felt and made visceral for the reader. Mhm. 

 

[00:24:08] Bella Li: Yeah. They’re vignettes of mundane horror and it’s kind of the everyday cumulative horror that people can live with. What Rankine does so well in general is, again, through this attention to language. And in this case, it’s the subject and the pronoun you, you is such an interesting word, right? That second person address because it’s pulling you as the reader in. It’s also expressing a you from the perspective of the writer, but it’s also making you think about context, right? Where is the you placed in the poem in relation to where you are placed as a reader outside the poem? And that context can change, you know, based on so many different factors. As you were saying. They said there’s some kind of jolt, right? And it’s either a jolt of recognition because you see yourself in that, you in that moment, in that context, or it’s a it’s a jolt of discomfort because you don’t see yourself in that. You and you think suddenly, what does it mean to be in the place of that? You who does feel the recognition? So it’s doing so many complicated things and really pulling the reader in and giving them that space through this very simple grammatical unit of language. 

 

[00:25:26] Ellen Van Neerven: Claudia’s voice is so confident and clear and, as you alluded to, so pared back as well. You know, it’s a very short vignette, but it’s accumulative, as mentioned before, and is invested in creating her own power and her own authority in the work. And there’s a responsibility to narrate that moment, to embody that experience, to show the microaggression and what it is when one’s race and gender makes one invisible. 

 

[00:26:01] Lisa Gorton: Invisible, and also hyper visible. Sometimes that interplay that I was thinking about when you were talking about the shifters, there’s this weird dynamic she presents the experience of shifting in and out of view so powerfully. I was interested rereading that alongside Natalie Harkin’s work to think about breath. Both works talk really powerfully and almost have breath as a structuring device or a repetitive allusion throughout the work of inhaling and exhaling, and I was interested in how that worked with their forms too, which also work with breath in the sense that that form of that poem is like a prose poem, I suppose initially, but then it opens spaces out. And then with Natalie Harkin, whose work you raised before Ellen, there’s that sense of the breath, and also with the dashes and the elisions. And in some works, beginning with a form that’s kind of a block that then spirals open and weaves. I think you’ve also written powerfully about breath and the throat. Is that something that you connect with in their work? 

 

[00:27:13] Ellen Van Neerven: Ah, yeah. I admire Natalie for the way that she brings a lot of warmth in her work. So Natalie has a responsibility to memory itself, to family, to community, to country for Noongar or South Australian Aboriginal people. And she’s writing for her family and community, who have been under state surveillance and whose lives have been restricted. As an archival poet, she has a huge responsibility to the past, present and future, writing back to the archive and weaving back, as you mentioned, Lisa, both in form but also in process. And I’m going to read an extract called  

 

[00:28:10] 

Reading : “​​Memory Lesson three afloat in the wake” from Archival-Poetics by Natalie Harkin 

 

 

 

[00:31:06] Bella Li: Great reading, Ellen. But I was also thinking, as you were reading these, these spaces and thinking about what you were saying earlier, Lisa, about breath and those spaces, particularly in these really dense blocks of, you know, justified prose, of those beautiful spaces of breath visually. But also, as you were reading Ellen, I was really feeling those. When I think about that, I think about the relentlessness of the Colonial Archive. Right. How and how language. You know, when we were talking about the different ways to which it can be put to use. So the treachery of language, you know, the Aborigines Protection Board, you know, that that langu$age of protection and chief protectors and being used in such a treacherous way in Australian history is, you know, very good to be confronted by, to see those words on the page and compare it to the historical reality and the effects on people’s lives. Really stark reminders. 

 

[00:32:07] Ellen Van Neerven: Yeah, a really good reminder, Bella, just how words can be weaponized. And, you know, your point of having, you know, that violent language and that history condensed into that block and then having those moments to breathe after that in the way that Natalie’s spaced out? The work is such a stark contrast, but such a sort of necessary one in the way that that also that poem moves into its last segment, where the poet is with her grandmother, and there’s this moment of release as a reader, I breathe out, and as someone reading that poem out loud, I breathe out. You know, that community, that memory of singing and dancing while cleaning with family. And so I think there’s a responsibility to those that love the author, and that feels really present in the work, I think is framed within how this poem moves, and with those pauses and breaths as well. 

 

[00:33:21] Lisa Gorton: Yeah, the rhythms lengthen. Hearing it, I realised that the vision of writing those horrific words out on leaves and then tearing the leaves up and making a weave of them that makes the words be turned to her own purpose, is such a powerful part of the process of writing the book, but also an embodiment of what the book itself does. I think in the way of coping with this sort of horrific blood memory haunting to sort of take words from the titles. I was going to ask what kind of political effect poetry can have? Can it change outcomes in its own time, or does it speak to future times and precipitate the future’s judgement of the present? I think in Natalie’s work, there’s a very powerful embodiment of the impact that it can have. I think the baskets have been well, I hope. What do you feel, Bella? What do you feel? Can poetry have an impact on its own time? Yes. 

 

[00:34:24] Bella Li: Absolutely. And the power of it is that it’s transtemporal or a temporal in a sense, in that it carries the resonances carry both forwards and backwards and the language itself, you know, individual poems as well as the way they use the language within them, um, create communities, linguistic communities as well, which are, you know, I think one of the possibly odd responsibilities I feel when I was reflecting on this, when I’m making a piece is to other texts and from other places and times, and I think that’s something that, yeah, maybe we all feel because we’re all beginners readers, right? We all are writers who beginners, readers. And that’s how we are brought into the world of books and writing. There is kind of this sense of paying homage to what has come before us in, in the shapes of texts, which, of course, are tied to the humans that created them, but also exist in their own worlds. One of the most exciting things I think about, uh, just shows what a geek I am as well, is libraries and feeling like, you know, to write a book is to contribute to a library and contribute to a shelf amongst thousands, hundreds, millions of books that have been written. So. Yeah. And I think that may seem quite apolitical, but when you think about the power that language has, not only to, to decimate and, um, perpetrate horrors, but also to strengthen and create identities and communities. Yeah. 

 

[00:36:10] Ellen Van Neerven: Can you give us an example of a work that you that you’ve you know, you’re right in the process of writing one of your works that you felt a sense of tie or responsibility to. 

 

[00:36:25]Bella Li: Mhm. I mean, sometimes I am very specifically incorporating phrases from other books as a way to draw them in. It’s a very particular methodology through collage. Um, there are other times when I’m referencing texts, but you know, if I’m not specifically using phrases, then it’s a reference that exists in my own head that, um, that for me gives the piece that I’m working on greater significance because it’s situated in a community of texts. 

 

[00:37:02] Lisa Gorton: What about you, Ellen? Do you think that a poem can change things in its own time? 

 

 

[00:37:06] Ellen Van Neerven: I think I just want to sort of mention how I first encountered poetry beyond, you know, the very sort of stuffy dead white poets that we read in school. But it was through attending rallies and I heard poetry on the streets, but that was always accompanied by a lot of other things. It wasn’t, you know, to hear and to bear witness to a poem and words that spoke to a collective experience, um, was always with other forms of activism. That’s why I leaned towards not knowing how much poetry can change outcomes in its own time, on its own, but perhaps as part of something larger. 

 

[00:37:55] Bella Li: I absolutely agree, Ellen, and when I think about politics, I think about thought and action always needing action at the end of it, or somewhere in the mix in order to affect some kind of change in the world. And for me, poetry comes very much at the thought part of that process, and whether it then leads to action is something that I don’t think is required of poetry. It’s not needed, but it can do that. It can raise awareness, increase consciousness in tandem, as you say, with other actions. 

 

[00:38:32] Lisa Gorton: I was wondering about it as a singular fact too, that also could create a space for a certain way of thinking or a different approach. I think I was thinking particularly about Alexis Wright’s phrase sovereignty of mind. Listening to Carpentaria on a long drive on the audiobook and hearing the stories fold in and out of each other in this really generative, non-linear way, I felt like, does something different in the mind? It makes a different shape for language to work in or a different space. And I wondered whether there’s a poetry that can work to generate action and to be read in a public space. And I was also thinking, maybe there’s a place where the poet or the poem just holds a way of thinking, open for a generation. Ellen, do you feel that there’s a work like that that, for you opens up a way of thinking that might not necessarily directly lead to action, but might hold a space that is a space of renewal for the poet between or amidst action? 

 

[00:39:39] Ellen Van Neerven: Yeah, absolutely. A few things come to mind. For me, anthologies also can be quite significant and important. You know, a gathering. There was an anthology centred around living under the NT intervention, The Intervention and Anthology, which was edited by Rosie Scott and Anita Heiss and published in 2016. That doesn’t just include poetry, but also memoir and essays and transcripts, and the anguish and despair of that lived experience really comes through in the poetic medium. And the NT intervention ended in 2022 after 15 years. You know, in that way, poetry can really speak to that experience. I think we talked, you know, in our sort of like pre-chat about the work of Uncle Lionel Fogarty. The way that he and, you know, other Aboriginal writers like Aunty Alexis wright, as mentioned by you, Lisa really takes, you know, what is the Coloniser’s language? English. Presents it in a new form. And as much as that that language and that worldview that’s encapsulated in that language has been weaponized against us, sort of takes it back, reclaims it, creates a plurality of of Aboriginal Englishes as well, and is quite a subversive and impactful, powerful and bold, you know, really exposing as well. It really exposes, um, the artifice of what it means to live in this country and to live in these structures. So, you know, there are writers that I think about when you ask that question. 

 

[00:41:19] Lisa Gorton: Actually, I recall listening to an interview with him online where he said, English is just a tool for us. It’s an instrument so powerful to hear him read the work, particularly because you can hear the, the, the freedom of the thought processes, but also the sort of obstructiveness of Of the language. And I think it’s powerful as a challenge to the sense that English is a kind of neutral or default language that allows you to see reality clearly. 

 

[00:41:42] Bella Li: Yeah. And I think when you travel as well, outside of English speaking countries and feel that even in those countries where English isn’t the native dominant language, people still speak it. So you can, even when you travel, have this false sense of it being universal or, you know, somehow in a hierarchy at the top of the hierarchy. And I think that’s why writers like Lionel Fogarty, like Alexis Wright and and yourself, Ellen as well, when when they’re paying attention specifically to the English language and jamming it in the way, you know, with the poem that we were thinking about was Varuna House, which, you know, every time I read that, not just aloud, but in my head, I stumble because he’s really just jamming what you would think of as conventional syntax of the order of words. And also there’s a great line towards the end where he says something like he uses the word typo close to the word white flies, and he’s really challenging you to be like, clearly, I know what I’m doing here, but you’re, you know, your your usual way of reading through would be to be like, oh, that’s a, that’s a misspelling or a misuse of, of words. And he’s like, well actually no, this is, this is my, my way of using this language. And, you know, how do you feel about it when you’re kind of stumbling in this way that I have orchestrated, you know, as, as a master of this language? Yeah. It’s a really powerful effect.  

This is from Lionel Fogarty’s Varuna House, and it’s towards the end of the poem.  

 

[00:43:29] 

Reading excerpt “Varuna House” by Lionel Fogarty 

 

 

 

[00:43:52] Lisa Gorton: I was thinking of the Lacanian sense of languages, patriarchal and labeling and defining. And that has always been really strange to me, because I think of it more as a branching off of many meanings that words can embody. And it sounds as though that’s what you’re talking about. You don’t find the genre conventions a constriction, but a kind of freedom, because there are many branchings off from each word within it. And the history of the word opens up other possibilities for its future. Is that what you mean? It feels like a really generative encounter with the history. 

 

[00:44:33] Bella Li: Yes. And I think in general, I find structure and constraints to be the grounds for freedom because having some, you know, obviously not a very restrictive shape, but some sense of a container and that that can also be outside of language like familial structures or community structures, allows you scope to to move in and out. 

 

[00:44:57] Ellen Van Neerven: Yeah, I’m a little bit opposite. Like I potentially don’t like too many constraints when I’m writing, but I can also really see and through your description of that process and through others, I can also really see that how it can really, you know, strip things down to the essential and sort of be a way to sort of move through. For me, it depends on where I am in, in the world. What about you, Lisa? 

 

[00:45:22] Lisa Gorton: I think that form has this something crystalline. Well, in some poems crystalline or in some poems, like a plant form that it only is what I like. If I feel like it’s got an internal principle of growth that somehow connects with the sense of time that’s in the work, if that makes sense, and hearing myself say it, I realise it doesn’t make that much sense, but it’s more a sort of feeling about the way in which the words grow in a sort of pattern or a rhythm, or with the stops. I also feel that, um, the way that you can manage a line break where you charge it with a sort of silence is something I admire. 

 

[00:46:10] Bella Li: We were talking about this, Lisa, in relation to your work, it immediately made me think of the first poem from your latest collection. I think I read it somewhere that it’s according to a Fibonacci sequence, the way you’ve structured, and also does this incredible thing where it’s about, uh, it’s not an armadillo, is it? It’s a pangolin. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. Like the way it kind of unfurls through this Fibonacci sequence structure that is such a hidden, buried structure and yet provides this incredible scaffolding for the poem to unfold in a way that mimics the action of a pangolin. And I had never come across, can you believe syllabics until that? And suddenly I was like, oh my God, what an incredible way to use form and structure through, particularly in the English language, because we don’t often think in syllables. So it’s kind of this really nice, often hidden and based on sequences and numbers, which I really love. But yeah, how, you know, have you had a long standing interest in syllabics as a, as a compositional technique? 

 

[00:47:23] Lisa Gorton: Well, I think so through Mary Ann Moore really. And the way in which she could get so much of that world into her work and many different voices. So I really liked that. But it was interesting. I was writing that poem Mirabilia in the early days of lockdown, sitting out in the sun at the front of the house. It took a long time, but what I discovered, which I found really interesting in language, is that it is mathematical, but the mathematics is a measure of sound, and so that it was a really good way to encounter the basis of sound in the language, you know, which is something that lies, I suppose, somewhere at the back of the dictionary definitions and hasn’t really interesting interplay with them. I began to find myself on zoom meetings, watching people’s mouths and just being amazed that the tongue flapping in the mouth makes sounds. And these sounds present to someone else as words, and then the words hold all the meanings that we ascribe in language to the world. So I think it was an encounter, in a sense, with first principles of sound in the language, because I have never been good at having a really spoken voice in poetry, because I think it was always such a solitary proceeding for me, it was a way to encounter sound in a different way. 

 

[00:48:57] READING : Mirabilia by Lisa Gorton  

 

 

 

[00:52:17 ]Lisa Gorton: We’ve been talking about poetry and responsibility, and maybe part of choosing to think about that was the discussion about having a poet laureate for this country, I wonder? Bella and Ellen, what kind of work you would like that poet laureate to do? What kind of work would you like that Poet Laureate to achieve? 

 

[00:52:41] Bella Li: Not work for the state is probably the only thing. And I feel like if if poetry doesn’t bear a responsibility towards something, it’s towards the state and towards institutions of power and authority beyond that, you know, and I know that puts, um, puts this whole prospect on shaky ground because it will be a position funded by the state. And so what kinds of expectations will there be? I think ideally, I would like them to be able to do what they want, write what they want for who they want. Yeah. For them to be as unconstrained as possible. What this shape and structure of that role will look like, I think needs to, to some degree, be self-determining. I would also say that the decision to appoint a single poet laureate in some kind of semi representational way is not a great one, in terms of the ability for poetry to encompass plurality and multiplicity, and that being one of its strengths. 

 

[00:53:47] Lisa Gorton: What about you, Ellen? 

 

Ellen Van Neerven: I feel exactly the same way. I’m very cautious to be too prescriptive of the work the poet will do, and thinking long term, you know, I want there to be several poet laureates, each having their own work and interests and writing that’s unique to them. I think it will be very hard for the first poet laureate, because this has been something that’s been talked about for so long. You know, there’s other countries like Aotearoa, New Zealand and the US that have had this as a long, a long establishing thing. And so it’s highly anticipated and everyone will have opinions on what is important for this person in this role to represent and communicate. And I’d want them to have their own vision, their own lane, and inspire people by being themselves and being true to themselves. And I don’t want this sense of like crushing public expectation or opinion of the community or feel like that they have to fit their work into a neat, palatable box. And I don’t want their message to be watered down as I feel often arts commentary in this country is so watered down. I’m thinking about pride, actually, because I think I met Selina Tusitala Marsh, who was a New Zealand Poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. That’s another thing that I’ve observed in other countries. There’s a two year term, so you know the value of the award. 

 

New Zealand is $100,000 New Zealand dollars, and 20% is retained by the National Library to cover costs such as events and promotion, and also the laureate’s tokotoko. So a tokotoko is a carved ceremonial walking stick which is presented to the laureate when they are appointed. And so Selena, you know, in Brisbane at the Queensland Poetry Festival, was holding the tokotoko really proudly. And it’s paired with a parent, Tokotoko, which is retained and displayed in the National Library. And so the sense of, that sense of pride that Selena had of being pointed, this position really kind of came through in the way that, you know, I was talking to her and the way that she was communicating it on stage. I think about a sense of pride, of being a national poet laureate and how that would translate here, you know, what is there to be proud of, of representing this country. And I put that as a rhetorical question. And so that’s how I think about how, you know, this conversation will shift and move. And I really agree with Bella’s point about, you know, the emphasis on a singular being so kind of patriarchal and capitalist structure in itself. And perhaps there’s models where it can be more community or more inclusive to more than just one person. 

 

[00:56:39] Bella Li: I was looking at your example as well, and what I really like about that example is that there is this sense of custodianship that is passed on not just from the state, but from the first peoples of that place. And I think that, to me at least, would make it more significant, something to be proud of, actually to be carrying on in some way, be some part of this tradition that has stretched back thousands of years already. These are the custodians of culture in this country. They should be involved in its continuation, in the present. In this role in particular, I think. Yeah. Agreed. 

 

[00:57:20] Lisa Gorton: Thank you so much for coming and talking about poetry and responsibility. It’s been a fascinating conversation and I’m grateful for your time and your care. 

 

Ellen Van Neerven: Thanks, Lisa. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you, Lisa, and with you, Bella as well. 

 

Bella Li: Thanks, Ellen, and thank you, Lisa. 

 

[00:57:39] Anna Funder: Thanks for listening to Fully Lit.This series is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books with the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros. I’m Anna Funder.