Buckley and me
Monday, November 11, 2013
During my doctoral research I got to know William Buckley pretty well. As I was scouring material on him a friend, Maya Ward, recommended I read Strandloper, which is an excellent novel based on his life. I have called Buckley the first Australian permaculturalist (cheekily, in front of David Holmgren). Last year Southerly published my Portrait of the escaped convict who slowly nativised into a Wathaurong man over 32 years before Batman and co discovered him. The poem features in my thesis alongside this photograph painted by an unknown artist and undated. The painting hangs in the State Library of Victoria.
Today I was rifling through some images and I came across this photograph taken of me reading at the Victorian Writers' Centre (next door to the SLV) in 2011. I'm standing in front of my poem Step by step, which also features in my thesis.
An uncanny resemblance between permaculture poets? Buckley is important to me because he is a rare European who listened to and learnt from Indigenous land spirit and intelligence.
2 comments:
1. CONGRATULATIONS!
2. a little off topic, but have you heard of the strandloper people? i got a little obsessed with them about a year ago. i have never seen another person write that word, strandloper, in any context, except you. hooray. http://bit.ly/19UDgqQ
hello alana,
sorry this must have slipped through just as we were leaving for our trip up north. yes, when i read garner's book 'strandloper' i did a cursory search for this word. a brilliant book, but not sure why he used this word. i can only think historically all dark-skinned peoples were lumped into the same bag through ignorance and racism, and in some way he was referring to this.
love from rockhampton.
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