August 6, 2024 • 27 mins
What can poetry do to change the world?
Earlier this year, we met up with poet and artist Jazz Money in a half-renovated room at Carriageworks during the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Scooched into the corner sitting cross-legged on the floor, Red Room Poetry Creative Producer Izzy Roberts-Orr spoke with Jazz about the radical potential of poetry, Sara M Saleh’s brilliant poem, ‘Border control: mediations’, and specificity as a gateway to the universal.
Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and artist whose practice is centred around poetics to produce works that encompass installation, performance, film and print. Their most recent poetry collection is mark the dawn, published by UQP and now available at all good bookstores.
Sara M. Saleh is a human rights lawyer, organiser, writer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. She has been published and anthologised widely, and made history as the first poet to win both the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and the Australian Book Review’s Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat is published by UQP, and her debut novel Songs for the Dead and the Living is published by Affirm Press.
'Border control: mediations' by Sara M Saleh was published in Overland Issue 242, Autumn 2021, and was the winner of the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.
Explore Poetry Month
August is Poetry Month - a continent-wide celebration of contemporary Australian poetry established by Red Room Poetry to increase access, awareness and visibility of poetry in all its forms and for all audiences.
Explore the full program at https://poetrymonth.org.au/
This year, as part of Poetry Month, we're bringing the UK's Biggest Poetry and Performance Festival Down Under. The UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival BBC's Contains Strong Language comes to Sydney 28-31 August.
Check out the full program here - including events featuring both Jazz and Sara https://redroompoetry.org/projects/poetry-month/contains-strong-language/
Support the show: https://redroompoetry.org/donate/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:05):
What can poetry do to change the world? August is
Poetry month, created by Red Room Poetry. We're celebrating contemporary
Australian poets and poetry from the first till the 31st
of August. I'm Izzy Robertshaw and this is line break.
(00:29):
Jazz money is a poet and artist whose practice is
centred around poetics to produce works that encompass installation, performance,
film and print. Their most recent poetry collection is Mark
the Dawn, published by Uqp and now available at all
(00:49):
good bookstores. We met up in a half renovated room
at Carriageworks during the Sydney Writers Festival earlier this year.
Scooched into the corner, sitting cross-legged on the floor to
chat about poetry.
S2 (01:14):
Border control Mediations by Sara M Saleh. Some of the
questions two young soldiers asked me at the King Hussein
border crossing checkpoint. Were you born on a Thursday in
Cleopatra Hospital? Did you come out silently as daybreak smudge
(01:35):
the night sky? And why was your father absent? What
is the name of your father and his father and
his father? Do your neighbors, Mahmoud and Faduma water the
orphan house plant whenever you are away? Are you aware
your parents first arrived in Australia with their life savings
(01:57):
wrapped in brown paper. The only English the lyrics to
We Are the Champions. Did your mother bring two dresses?
One red polka dot and turquoise taffeta in her peeling
60s suitcase? Did you correct her? Thanks, God. Did she
put up a fight when you said you were leaving?
(02:20):
When he left. And how was your first Ramadan alone?
Did you miss the walnut mamool and the aloo Akbar's
tossed at you on Eid mornings? Have you told anyone
about the Enid Blyton books you stole from the Stanmore library?
Because your mother worked three jobs? If you flatten your gutturals,
(02:40):
is it still Arabic? Why did your childhood best friend
run away? What man siphoned her dry? Why does your
grief stick to everything? Did inhaling an onion help with
the tear gas they threw during the protests of oh three.
(03:02):
What remedies did you inherit from your ancestors? What skeletons?
Who taught you to roll? Warak enab like that. There's
two arms to grab you by the throat among magicians
and sewerage and Roman ruins. Can Beirut forgive its people?
(03:23):
How many times have you phoned your mother? Since? Does
your grandmother always boil her water? Twice. And why are
you still shocked at how things don't work there? What
other city turns its war bunkers into clubs? Its prayers
into curses? And why do the wretched always sell roses
(03:45):
on Bliss Street? And how do you revive the dead?
Why did they take your brother? Could you make out
his face amongst the thousands. Flickering in the waters of
the Mediterranean. Did he return months after the funeral to
ask you, what wrongs did I commit? What village do
(04:08):
you carry on your lips? Balance on your breath. Have
you been to Jerusalem during olive harvest season? Did you
pick and press before the settlers gathered like acid in
your chest and poison the ancient trees? Have you tired
yet of the. May Allah have mercies? Have they tired
of you? Were you afraid of the men with guns
(04:31):
those nights? The power cut? Did you splutter your amens
and sweat out your Sabbath? Do you remember the countries
you've lost? Do their crooked rivers still cling to you?
Did you hear the aunties rusted arms, coarse hair on chins.
Call you lonely. Call you nobodies mama anymore? Did you
(04:54):
tell your mama you named him Omar Al-farouq after the
revered warrior? Why did it end with your great love?
Who changes everything? Did he make your wide hips tremble
with Jazz and DeBakey? Did he linger long enough on
each letter of Yalil Yamin and the evening news headlines?
(05:18):
Did your hurts trail behind him like the tangled fishing lines.
Too much for the life he lived. And as weight
like that settle or lift. And what of the days
you feel the earth graying? And when will you stop
writing about borders and bloodshed and war and death and
(05:41):
home and home and home.
S1 (05:48):
Why did you bring this poem today, Jazz?
S2 (05:52):
Well, it's such a lovely invitation to think about a
favorite poem, and it's also a different invitation to actually
think about something worth discussing. And so I thought about
all the pieces that I love that felt like they
sat at the intersection of those those requests, those interests.
And I just adore this poem so much. I think
(06:14):
Sara is doing such a brilliant job of playing with
story and craft, and bringing an audience in to something
that feels so intimate and expansive at once. So it
was a it was an easy choice in the end.
S1 (06:31):
I love that you use the word intimate, because that
is exactly the word that I lit upon when I
was reading and rereading this poem. Um, yeah. And I
think particularly when you're writing at the intersection of the
personal and political as well, to have a poem that
calls you into such an intimate space and such Specificity
(06:53):
is a really remarkable feat in this poem, and that's
something that I really love in your work too Jazz. Yeah,
I'd love to hear more about that kind of that
intimacy that you feel like this poem crafts and how
it does that and why it does that.
S2 (07:09):
I think that word specificity is such a good one
to sort of leap into here, because Sara is doing
a brilliant job of bringing in the very, very specific
and making it somehow feel like an experience that you,
the reader, share. And that is that is craft, right?
Because there are these questions that name people, you know,
(07:32):
we have the names of the neighbors, we have the food,
we have night times and streets and and it it
works in specificity in a way that, that you can
relate these moments of vulnerability, which is what the poem
is full of to your own moments of vulnerability, your
own moments of need, your own questions. And that, I think,
(07:55):
in this poem, elicits the human in a piece that
is highly political. And the highly political nature of it is,
you know, Sara is a muslim poet living in Australia
(08:15):
of Lebanese, Egyptian and Palestinian heritage. She is someone whose
body is politicized. And even if you do not live
in a politicized body, you can read this poem and
begin to have a glimpse of what it is to
be questioned, and to have your validity and veracity under
(08:35):
the microscope of a settler colonial state.
S1 (08:39):
The poem is told entirely in questions, and I feel
like at first it's a device that is really quite
subtle at the beginning to firstly, what does it mean
to compose a poem entirely of questions and yet that
communicate so much, but also beyond that intimacy that we
were just talking about? There's kind of this framing that
(09:02):
haunts the poem of that surveillance of that colonial gaze.
S2 (09:08):
Yeah. And the absurdity of it. Right. Because it begins with,
I've actually been to this border crossing, the King Hussein
border crossing, traveling between Jordan and occupied Palestine through the
Israeli checkpoint. And I was asked the question, where was
your father born? And his father? And I was like,
(09:28):
I'm living the poem. I was so kind of weirdly
inside the art. Um, but here Sara does this great
thing where she plays with the absurdity of it. Right?
Because if the border guard also asks, do your neighbors
Muhammad and Faduma water the orphan House plant whenever you
are away? It shows humanity and it shows an understanding,
(09:51):
and no person who controlled a border would ever ask
these things that are so deeply, deeply humanizing. And so
that's where I think Sara is doing this really brilliant
job of playing with what we deem to be socially
acceptable or permissible and, and the way that she sort
(10:13):
of leads us through something that does seem kind of normal.
Where were you born? We know that anyone who has
a passport knows that sort of question, and then, um,
then moves into the sort of questions that are very
specific to the experience of a Palestinian person and then
expands out into these questions that reveal so much tenderness
(10:36):
and gentleness and humanity that it puts the first questions
in this sort of absurd paradox. Right? And it is.
It's such a simple, deceptively simple device to just ask questions.
Like you were saying, the poem is entirely built of questions.
And that, I think, is actually quite an accessible tool
(10:56):
for a reader of poetry. Right? Like, you don't need
to be a very, um, studied reader of poetry to
be able to understand the device at play. But it's
what she does with it to reveal so very, very
much so simply that I think, is part of what
captivates me about this poem.
S1 (11:17):
You're catapulted through times, and it has this incredible ability
to condense time in that magical way that poems do
so well, that sense of generational connection to and community,
like you mentioned, the neighbors. And do they feed your
orphan house plant and, um, speaking about olive trees and
that care and connection to land? There's kind of this
(11:37):
generational thread through the poem as well. And I would
question whether all of the memories are those of the speaker.
S2 (11:44):
I agree. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. and also the
way that it traffics through place very, very explicitly. You know,
we move from Australia, we're in Jerusalem, we're at the
King Hussein border crossing. We're in Stanmore. Very specific, very
small inner west suburb in Sydney. We go to Beirut,
(12:05):
that bliss street in Beirut. You know, it really drills down, um,
in place. So you are taken in, in a temporal
journey and also a geographic journey. And I agree, I
don't think I mean, I don't know how much of
this is autobiographical to the, to the poet and how
much of it is, you know, narrative device. But I
(12:27):
think it has the same effect of feeling like a
whole world and a very, very rich world contained in
a single poem.
S1 (12:35):
One of our commissions for Poetry Month this year is
Hasib Hourani, and he's written a really beautiful poem, and
something that we were talking about a lot in the
editing process was specificity as a gateway to the universal
and gorgeous, right? There it is. Yeah. And like, that's
often I feel like what you're aiming for as a poet. Right.
That's something I feel like this poem does so well too.
(12:56):
Like you mentioned Bliss Street and I'm like, immediately. I
have no idea where that is. I have never been there,
but it is so visceral as a reader, that kind
of intimacy that this poem offers through those specific memories.
There's a lot of taste and texture and detail that
is quite embodied in this poem, and it invites you in,
in the most remarkable way.
S2 (13:16):
And so seamlessly as well. Right? Like, I'm always so
struck by poets or any writer that can take you
to so many places, and you don't notice that they've
got you there until you know you're surrounded by the
rich imagery. You're so embedded in it.
S1 (13:34):
Well, I'm interested in both that intimacy and that idea
of specificity as a gateway to the universal, and how
you engage with that in your work.
S2 (13:45):
In my writing, I'm really interested in how can my
specific lens complicate the story? Because I think, you know,
as a queer First Nations poet writing in the context
of settler colonial Australia. I see how neat the colony
(14:09):
wants some versions of the story to be, and how
often the rough edges get sanded off. And I think poetry,
or any art form, really has the ability to complicate,
to add complexity, to bring the texture back in, to
say it's not that simple and it's it's good that
(14:31):
it's not simple. You know, humans are complex, vulnerable, gross,
beautiful things. And our stories are that. And we need
to be able to hold fully. If we want to
make sense of ourselves and where we're going and where
we've been and what we want to do with it.
(14:51):
Something like Sara's poem wraps you in a world and
in a lived experience that feels, you know, it's a
fantastical poem in a way, in the way that it
moves through time and place. But it feels like a
lived experience, and I will never know what it is
to be a Palestinian person trying to cross a border
(15:13):
into my homelands while being interrogated. And yet, Sara, in
this poem, gives me a glimpse of what that feels
like and that feels so radical and political, but being
done in a way that is humanizing and in a
(15:34):
way that I think affects change. You know, I don't
think you can. I would hope someone who reads this
poem is affected by it.
S1 (15:45):
There's such a pushback against the bureaucratic nature of border
questions in these questions that actually give answers that are humanizing.
I love that ending to that. She chooses to repeat.
And home and home and home.
S2 (16:02):
That is the question at the heart of the whole thing, right?
Like what is home and what is it for, say,
a an officer to ask you that? Particularly when the
officer is implicated in your home being taken from you.
And you're right, it's a it's a perfect way to
end the poem because it reverberates out and it brings
(16:24):
the reader in like, what is your home? What is
your relationship to your home? How do you access it?
Why and why can't you? Um, it's brilliant. And as
someone who often struggles to end a poem, I always
applaud when it is very well done.
S1 (16:41):
Something that I see in your work, and I actually
I found the brilliant, um, writing prompt that you gave, uh,
attached to your Poetry Month commission. Was it last year
or the year before? I think it was the year before.
S2 (16:56):
I'm going to say the year before.
S1 (16:58):
Yeah. So two the sunrise. And, you know, that's a
very hopeful poem. And the writing prompt that you gave
was write a love poem against capitalism, write about the
next world to come. We need to sing it into
existence together.
S2 (17:15):
God, I'm cheesy.
S1 (17:18):
But I love it because I think, you know, that's something.
You know, as we've talked about with Sara's poem, this
kind of immensely humanizing aspect and all of the, you know,
beautiful things that it catalogues and captures, but it's also
a record of colonialism and violence and surveillance and as
(17:38):
you say, you know. someone? The officer who begins that
poem and begins that asking being implicated in taking your
home from you. And so. Well, I think there's a
place for both kinds of poetry. Right. And we need both. Um,
we both need the kind of speaking back poetry that
(18:01):
holds power accountable, finding ways of telling the truth, but
also imagining. Yeah, I'm interested in how that folds into
your practice, whether you're still thinking about that at the
moment or whether your focus might have changed as well.
S2 (18:19):
I'm constantly thinking about the world that we're in, the
ones that we've come from and the places that we're going.
I guess operating in a deep time understanding of place.
And part of that, to me, is recognizing the fragility
of the moment that we're in the fragility of the
(18:42):
structures that are around us, this empire or this outpost
of empire that is contemporary Australia will crumble. Every empire does.
And so what comes afterwards? What can we dream together
(19:03):
and then build together? Because if we don't know where
we're going, we're stuck. We're stuck in what we have.
And it's not good enough what we have. And so
to me, one of the best ways of honouring my
ancestors is to look at the models that were laid
(19:24):
out and sustained this whole continent for millennia, from the
first sunrise. This place has known harmony and balance. And
it's only in the last 250 years that those things
have been so violently taken. And I don't believe they're gone.
(19:48):
You know, there's been this attempt rather to take them,
but we have the ability to restore, to honor and
to grow together. And I think that's how I think
that's how we attempt to honor both those sets of legacies. Right. Like,
(20:09):
we need to have the thing that burns it down,
but we also need to have the seed that grows
in the ashes of that fire.
S1 (20:21):
What a beautiful response to that question. I reflect a
lot on like, what is poetry doing here? Like what
is it doing? And I think fairly or unfairly, a
question is often asked about the political utility of poetry.
And part of me wants to say, well, it doesn't
(20:41):
have to have a political utility.
S2 (20:44):
Every poem is a political poem. And I know for myself,
as someone who lives in a politicized body, if I
write a love poem, it's a love poem from it's
a love poem in defiance to everyone who has tried
to say that a body like mine can't love the
(21:06):
way it loves. Um. And that's someone, you know, in
a queer cross racialized relationship and so on the surface,
it might seem apolitical to write a love poem or
to write about, you know, sunrises or to write about
(21:27):
any of the, any of the things that appear. But
when you put it into context of our humanity And
what we're all doing here. How can a poem not
be political? And I think if a poem about sunrises
isn't is coming from a depoliticized body, that's also political,
(21:49):
because there are power structures at play and we all
exist in dialogue with one another and in community with
one another. And if there are folk who believe themselves
beyond community, well, poor fucking them. But that is political,
you know, you are unaccountable and that's miserable for you.
S3 (22:11):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
S1 (22:15):
Yeah. I guess. And actually, I think that there is
political utility to hope and to dreaming and to imagining,
and I think it can actually be incredibly difficult to
imagine worlds outside of the worlds that we exist in
sometimes or certainly speaking from my own, you know, Western
(22:37):
Anglo experience, the idea of living outside of empire is
pretty wild. You know, it takes a lot of a
lot of thinking.
S2 (22:46):
What's that quote that it's easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism?
S3 (22:51):
Yeah. Truly, truly.
S1 (22:53):
Um, and particularly, I think, yeah, for people who haven't
lived realities where, you know, community. Yeah. As you say
for them, how miserable. But if you can't yeah. Imagine
existence beyond transaction. It's quite it's quite a shock to
do so, to begin to think that way. And if
a poem can be an entry point to that. How
(23:14):
often do you imagine seven generations away from now, before
you or after you? The mercurial I in a in
a poem. And the way that time can be condensed
in a poem. I think that is a gateway sometimes
to being able to see beyond the immediate, uh, and
being able to see beyond the purely individual as well.
(23:37):
And that I think that holds a lot of political
utility in my mind as well. Just that space for
for dreaming bigger than what we've got in front of us.
S2 (23:48):
The dream is behind us and in front of us.
You know, we have the models, so it can't be
that hard, right? I mean, that's that's what guides me.
That's what gives me hope. Because otherwise I'm too despairing.
S1 (24:04):
Why do we need poetry right now?
S2 (24:07):
What is poetry? Right. Is poetry marching in the streets
together with our arms linked chanting? Because if yes, then
poetry is all we need. If poetry is a model
for understanding one another and creating community, then poetry is
(24:27):
all we need. If poetry is the way that we're
going to build these new futures, then it's poetry, right?
We can't do it.
S3 (24:34):
I'm crying, but I'm.
S2 (24:35):
Genuinely thinking, like, maybe. Maybe it does have power. Or
maybe it's too idealistic. But I do think that I
do think it's it's our dreams that can motivate us
to for something better. And it's our awareness of people
(24:57):
and humanity and compassion and country and kin and all
the things that make life worth living, make a world
worth having that can guide us. And if poetry gives
us access to those things and like we need poetry.
S1 (25:23):
Border Control Mediations by Sara m Saleh was published in
overland issue 242, and was the winner of the 2020
Judith Wright Poetry Prize. You can read the poem and
subscribe to overland via the links in the show. Notes.
Sara m Saleh is a human rights lawyer, organizer, writer,
(25:47):
and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon.
Her first full length poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls Ghazal el-Banat,
is published by Uqp, and her debut novel, songs for
the dead and the living, is published by Affirm Press.
(26:09):
From emerging and established poets to beloved Australian public figures
with an unexpected passion for poetry, Red Room Poetry presents
Poetry Month 2024, a celebration of the many ways poetry
touches our lives. Poetry month 2024 invites the nation and
(26:30):
the world to revel in Australia's poetic talent on a
scale never seen before, thanks to a partnership with the
BBC's Poetry and Spoken Word Festival, contains strong language and
a nation spanning programme. Both Jazz and Sara are appearing
at events as part of Contains Strong Language in Sydney
(26:50):
from the 28th until the 31st of August as part
of Poetry Month. Check out the full program online via
Poetry Month ago.
What can poetry do to change the world? August is
Poetry month, created by Red Room Poetry. We're celebrating contemporary
Australian poets and poetry from the first till the 31st
of August. I'm Izzy Robertshaw and this is line break.
(00:29):
Jazz money is a poet and artist whose practice is
centred around poetics to produce works that encompass installation, performance,
film and print. Their most recent poetry collection is Mark
the Dawn, published by Uqp and now available at all
(00:49):
good bookstores. We met up in a half renovated room
at Carriageworks during the Sydney Writers Festival earlier this year.
Scooched into the corner, sitting cross-legged on the floor to
chat about poetry.
S2 (01:14):
Border control Mediations by Sara M Saleh. Some of the
questions two young soldiers asked me at the King Hussein
border crossing checkpoint. Were you born on a Thursday in
Cleopatra Hospital? Did you come out silently as daybreak smudge
(01:35):
the night sky? And why was your father absent? What
is the name of your father and his father and
his father? Do your neighbors, Mahmoud and Faduma water the
orphan house plant whenever you are away? Are you aware
your parents first arrived in Australia with their life savings
(01:57):
wrapped in brown paper. The only English the lyrics to
We Are the Champions. Did your mother bring two dresses?
One red polka dot and turquoise taffeta in her peeling
60s suitcase? Did you correct her? Thanks, God. Did she
put up a fight when you said you were leaving?
(02:20):
When he left. And how was your first Ramadan alone?
Did you miss the walnut mamool and the aloo Akbar's
tossed at you on Eid mornings? Have you told anyone
about the Enid Blyton books you stole from the Stanmore library?
Because your mother worked three jobs? If you flatten your gutturals,
(02:40):
is it still Arabic? Why did your childhood best friend
run away? What man siphoned her dry? Why does your
grief stick to everything? Did inhaling an onion help with
the tear gas they threw during the protests of oh three.
(03:02):
What remedies did you inherit from your ancestors? What skeletons?
Who taught you to roll? Warak enab like that. There's
two arms to grab you by the throat among magicians
and sewerage and Roman ruins. Can Beirut forgive its people?
(03:23):
How many times have you phoned your mother? Since? Does
your grandmother always boil her water? Twice. And why are
you still shocked at how things don't work there? What
other city turns its war bunkers into clubs? Its prayers
into curses? And why do the wretched always sell roses
(03:45):
on Bliss Street? And how do you revive the dead?
Why did they take your brother? Could you make out
his face amongst the thousands. Flickering in the waters of
the Mediterranean. Did he return months after the funeral to
ask you, what wrongs did I commit? What village do
(04:08):
you carry on your lips? Balance on your breath. Have
you been to Jerusalem during olive harvest season? Did you
pick and press before the settlers gathered like acid in
your chest and poison the ancient trees? Have you tired
yet of the. May Allah have mercies? Have they tired
of you? Were you afraid of the men with guns
(04:31):
those nights? The power cut? Did you splutter your amens
and sweat out your Sabbath? Do you remember the countries
you've lost? Do their crooked rivers still cling to you?
Did you hear the aunties rusted arms, coarse hair on chins.
Call you lonely. Call you nobodies mama anymore? Did you
(04:54):
tell your mama you named him Omar Al-farouq after the
revered warrior? Why did it end with your great love?
Who changes everything? Did he make your wide hips tremble
with Jazz and DeBakey? Did he linger long enough on
each letter of Yalil Yamin and the evening news headlines?
(05:18):
Did your hurts trail behind him like the tangled fishing lines.
Too much for the life he lived. And as weight
like that settle or lift. And what of the days
you feel the earth graying? And when will you stop
writing about borders and bloodshed and war and death and
(05:41):
home and home and home.
S1 (05:48):
Why did you bring this poem today, Jazz?
S2 (05:52):
Well, it's such a lovely invitation to think about a
favorite poem, and it's also a different invitation to actually
think about something worth discussing. And so I thought about
all the pieces that I love that felt like they
sat at the intersection of those those requests, those interests.
And I just adore this poem so much. I think
(06:14):
Sara is doing such a brilliant job of playing with
story and craft, and bringing an audience in to something
that feels so intimate and expansive at once. So it
was a it was an easy choice in the end.
S1 (06:31):
I love that you use the word intimate, because that
is exactly the word that I lit upon when I
was reading and rereading this poem. Um, yeah. And I
think particularly when you're writing at the intersection of the
personal and political as well, to have a poem that
calls you into such an intimate space and such Specificity
(06:53):
is a really remarkable feat in this poem, and that's
something that I really love in your work too Jazz. Yeah,
I'd love to hear more about that kind of that
intimacy that you feel like this poem crafts and how
it does that and why it does that.
S2 (07:09):
I think that word specificity is such a good one
to sort of leap into here, because Sara is doing
a brilliant job of bringing in the very, very specific
and making it somehow feel like an experience that you,
the reader, share. And that is that is craft, right?
Because there are these questions that name people, you know,
(07:32):
we have the names of the neighbors, we have the food,
we have night times and streets and and it it
works in specificity in a way that, that you can
relate these moments of vulnerability, which is what the poem
is full of to your own moments of vulnerability, your
own moments of need, your own questions. And that, I think,
(07:55):
in this poem, elicits the human in a piece that
is highly political. And the highly political nature of it is,
you know, Sara is a muslim poet living in Australia
(08:15):
of Lebanese, Egyptian and Palestinian heritage. She is someone whose
body is politicized. And even if you do not live
in a politicized body, you can read this poem and
begin to have a glimpse of what it is to
be questioned, and to have your validity and veracity under
(08:35):
the microscope of a settler colonial state.
S1 (08:39):
The poem is told entirely in questions, and I feel
like at first it's a device that is really quite
subtle at the beginning to firstly, what does it mean
to compose a poem entirely of questions and yet that
communicate so much, but also beyond that intimacy that we
were just talking about? There's kind of this framing that
(09:02):
haunts the poem of that surveillance of that colonial gaze.
S2 (09:08):
Yeah. And the absurdity of it. Right. Because it begins with,
I've actually been to this border crossing, the King Hussein
border crossing, traveling between Jordan and occupied Palestine through the
Israeli checkpoint. And I was asked the question, where was
your father born? And his father? And I was like,
(09:28):
I'm living the poem. I was so kind of weirdly
inside the art. Um, but here Sara does this great
thing where she plays with the absurdity of it. Right?
Because if the border guard also asks, do your neighbors
Muhammad and Faduma water the orphan House plant whenever you
are away? It shows humanity and it shows an understanding,
(09:51):
and no person who controlled a border would ever ask
these things that are so deeply, deeply humanizing. And so
that's where I think Sara is doing this really brilliant
job of playing with what we deem to be socially
acceptable or permissible and, and the way that she sort
(10:13):
of leads us through something that does seem kind of normal.
Where were you born? We know that anyone who has
a passport knows that sort of question, and then, um,
then moves into the sort of questions that are very
specific to the experience of a Palestinian person and then
expands out into these questions that reveal so much tenderness
(10:36):
and gentleness and humanity that it puts the first questions
in this sort of absurd paradox. Right? And it is.
It's such a simple, deceptively simple device to just ask questions.
Like you were saying, the poem is entirely built of questions.
And that, I think, is actually quite an accessible tool
(10:56):
for a reader of poetry. Right? Like, you don't need
to be a very, um, studied reader of poetry to
be able to understand the device at play. But it's
what she does with it to reveal so very, very
much so simply that I think, is part of what
captivates me about this poem.
S1 (11:17):
You're catapulted through times, and it has this incredible ability
to condense time in that magical way that poems do
so well, that sense of generational connection to and community,
like you mentioned, the neighbors. And do they feed your
orphan house plant and, um, speaking about olive trees and
that care and connection to land? There's kind of this
(11:37):
generational thread through the poem as well. And I would
question whether all of the memories are those of the speaker.
S2 (11:44):
I agree. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. and also the
way that it traffics through place very, very explicitly. You know,
we move from Australia, we're in Jerusalem, we're at the
King Hussein border crossing. We're in Stanmore. Very specific, very
small inner west suburb in Sydney. We go to Beirut,
(12:05):
that bliss street in Beirut. You know, it really drills down, um,
in place. So you are taken in, in a temporal
journey and also a geographic journey. And I agree, I
don't think I mean, I don't know how much of
this is autobiographical to the, to the poet and how
much of it is, you know, narrative device. But I
(12:27):
think it has the same effect of feeling like a
whole world and a very, very rich world contained in
a single poem.
S1 (12:35):
One of our commissions for Poetry Month this year is
Hasib Hourani, and he's written a really beautiful poem, and
something that we were talking about a lot in the
editing process was specificity as a gateway to the universal
and gorgeous, right? There it is. Yeah. And like, that's
often I feel like what you're aiming for as a poet. Right.
That's something I feel like this poem does so well too.
(12:56):
Like you mentioned Bliss Street and I'm like, immediately. I
have no idea where that is. I have never been there,
but it is so visceral as a reader, that kind
of intimacy that this poem offers through those specific memories.
There's a lot of taste and texture and detail that
is quite embodied in this poem, and it invites you in,
in the most remarkable way.
S2 (13:16):
And so seamlessly as well. Right? Like, I'm always so
struck by poets or any writer that can take you
to so many places, and you don't notice that they've
got you there until you know you're surrounded by the
rich imagery. You're so embedded in it.
S1 (13:34):
Well, I'm interested in both that intimacy and that idea
of specificity as a gateway to the universal, and how
you engage with that in your work.
S2 (13:45):
In my writing, I'm really interested in how can my
specific lens complicate the story? Because I think, you know,
as a queer First Nations poet writing in the context
of settler colonial Australia. I see how neat the colony
(14:09):
wants some versions of the story to be, and how
often the rough edges get sanded off. And I think poetry,
or any art form, really has the ability to complicate,
to add complexity, to bring the texture back in, to
say it's not that simple and it's it's good that
(14:31):
it's not simple. You know, humans are complex, vulnerable, gross,
beautiful things. And our stories are that. And we need
to be able to hold fully. If we want to
make sense of ourselves and where we're going and where
we've been and what we want to do with it.
(14:51):
Something like Sara's poem wraps you in a world and
in a lived experience that feels, you know, it's a
fantastical poem in a way, in the way that it
moves through time and place. But it feels like a
lived experience, and I will never know what it is
to be a Palestinian person trying to cross a border
(15:13):
into my homelands while being interrogated. And yet, Sara, in
this poem, gives me a glimpse of what that feels
like and that feels so radical and political, but being
done in a way that is humanizing and in a
(15:34):
way that I think affects change. You know, I don't
think you can. I would hope someone who reads this
poem is affected by it.
S1 (15:45):
There's such a pushback against the bureaucratic nature of border
questions in these questions that actually give answers that are humanizing.
I love that ending to that. She chooses to repeat.
And home and home and home.
S2 (16:02):
That is the question at the heart of the whole thing, right?
Like what is home and what is it for, say,
a an officer to ask you that? Particularly when the
officer is implicated in your home being taken from you.
And you're right, it's a it's a perfect way to
end the poem because it reverberates out and it brings
(16:24):
the reader in like, what is your home? What is
your relationship to your home? How do you access it?
Why and why can't you? Um, it's brilliant. And as
someone who often struggles to end a poem, I always
applaud when it is very well done.
S1 (16:41):
Something that I see in your work, and I actually
I found the brilliant, um, writing prompt that you gave, uh,
attached to your Poetry Month commission. Was it last year
or the year before? I think it was the year before.
S2 (16:56):
I'm going to say the year before.
S1 (16:58):
Yeah. So two the sunrise. And, you know, that's a
very hopeful poem. And the writing prompt that you gave
was write a love poem against capitalism, write about the
next world to come. We need to sing it into
existence together.
S2 (17:15):
God, I'm cheesy.
S1 (17:18):
But I love it because I think, you know, that's something.
You know, as we've talked about with Sara's poem, this
kind of immensely humanizing aspect and all of the, you know,
beautiful things that it catalogues and captures, but it's also
a record of colonialism and violence and surveillance and as
(17:38):
you say, you know. someone? The officer who begins that
poem and begins that asking being implicated in taking your
home from you. And so. Well, I think there's a
place for both kinds of poetry. Right. And we need both. Um,
we both need the kind of speaking back poetry that
(18:01):
holds power accountable, finding ways of telling the truth, but
also imagining. Yeah, I'm interested in how that folds into
your practice, whether you're still thinking about that at the
moment or whether your focus might have changed as well.
S2 (18:19):
I'm constantly thinking about the world that we're in, the
ones that we've come from and the places that we're going.
I guess operating in a deep time understanding of place.
And part of that, to me, is recognizing the fragility
of the moment that we're in the fragility of the
(18:42):
structures that are around us, this empire or this outpost
of empire that is contemporary Australia will crumble. Every empire does.
And so what comes afterwards? What can we dream together
(19:03):
and then build together? Because if we don't know where
we're going, we're stuck. We're stuck in what we have.
And it's not good enough what we have. And so
to me, one of the best ways of honouring my
ancestors is to look at the models that were laid
(19:24):
out and sustained this whole continent for millennia, from the
first sunrise. This place has known harmony and balance. And
it's only in the last 250 years that those things
have been so violently taken. And I don't believe they're gone.
(19:48):
You know, there's been this attempt rather to take them,
but we have the ability to restore, to honor and
to grow together. And I think that's how I think
that's how we attempt to honor both those sets of legacies. Right. Like,
(20:09):
we need to have the thing that burns it down,
but we also need to have the seed that grows
in the ashes of that fire.
S1 (20:21):
What a beautiful response to that question. I reflect a
lot on like, what is poetry doing here? Like what
is it doing? And I think fairly or unfairly, a
question is often asked about the political utility of poetry.
And part of me wants to say, well, it doesn't
(20:41):
have to have a political utility.
S2 (20:44):
Every poem is a political poem. And I know for myself,
as someone who lives in a politicized body, if I
write a love poem, it's a love poem from it's
a love poem in defiance to everyone who has tried
to say that a body like mine can't love the
(21:06):
way it loves. Um. And that's someone, you know, in
a queer cross racialized relationship and so on the surface,
it might seem apolitical to write a love poem or
to write about, you know, sunrises or to write about
(21:27):
any of the, any of the things that appear. But
when you put it into context of our humanity And
what we're all doing here. How can a poem not
be political? And I think if a poem about sunrises
isn't is coming from a depoliticized body, that's also political,
(21:49):
because there are power structures at play and we all
exist in dialogue with one another and in community with
one another. And if there are folk who believe themselves
beyond community, well, poor fucking them. But that is political,
you know, you are unaccountable and that's miserable for you.
S3 (22:11):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
S1 (22:15):
Yeah. I guess. And actually, I think that there is
political utility to hope and to dreaming and to imagining,
and I think it can actually be incredibly difficult to
imagine worlds outside of the worlds that we exist in
sometimes or certainly speaking from my own, you know, Western
(22:37):
Anglo experience, the idea of living outside of empire is
pretty wild. You know, it takes a lot of a
lot of thinking.
S2 (22:46):
What's that quote that it's easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism?
S3 (22:51):
Yeah. Truly, truly.
S1 (22:53):
Um, and particularly, I think, yeah, for people who haven't
lived realities where, you know, community. Yeah. As you say
for them, how miserable. But if you can't yeah. Imagine
existence beyond transaction. It's quite it's quite a shock to
do so, to begin to think that way. And if
a poem can be an entry point to that. How
(23:14):
often do you imagine seven generations away from now, before
you or after you? The mercurial I in a in
a poem. And the way that time can be condensed
in a poem. I think that is a gateway sometimes
to being able to see beyond the immediate, uh, and
being able to see beyond the purely individual as well.
(23:37):
And that I think that holds a lot of political
utility in my mind as well. Just that space for
for dreaming bigger than what we've got in front of us.
S2 (23:48):
The dream is behind us and in front of us.
You know, we have the models, so it can't be
that hard, right? I mean, that's that's what guides me.
That's what gives me hope. Because otherwise I'm too despairing.
S1 (24:04):
Why do we need poetry right now?
S2 (24:07):
What is poetry? Right. Is poetry marching in the streets
together with our arms linked chanting? Because if yes, then
poetry is all we need. If poetry is a model
for understanding one another and creating community, then poetry is
(24:27):
all we need. If poetry is the way that we're
going to build these new futures, then it's poetry, right?
We can't do it.
S3 (24:34):
I'm crying, but I'm.
S2 (24:35):
Genuinely thinking, like, maybe. Maybe it does have power. Or
maybe it's too idealistic. But I do think that I
do think it's it's our dreams that can motivate us
to for something better. And it's our awareness of people
(24:57):
and humanity and compassion and country and kin and all
the things that make life worth living, make a world
worth having that can guide us. And if poetry gives
us access to those things and like we need poetry.
S1 (25:23):
Border Control Mediations by Sara m Saleh was published in
overland issue 242, and was the winner of the 2020
Judith Wright Poetry Prize. You can read the poem and
subscribe to overland via the links in the show. Notes.
Sara m Saleh is a human rights lawyer, organizer, writer,
(25:47):
and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon.
Her first full length poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls Ghazal el-Banat,
is published by Uqp, and her debut novel, songs for
the dead and the living, is published by Affirm Press.
(26:09):
From emerging and established poets to beloved Australian public figures
with an unexpected passion for poetry, Red Room Poetry presents
Poetry Month 2024, a celebration of the many ways poetry
touches our lives. Poetry month 2024 invites the nation and
(26:30):
the world to revel in Australia's poetic talent on a
scale never seen before, thanks to a partnership with the
BBC's Poetry and Spoken Word Festival, contains strong language and
a nation spanning programme. Both Jazz and Sara are appearing
at events as part of Contains Strong Language in Sydney
(26:50):
from the 28th until the 31st of August as part
of Poetry Month. Check out the full program online via
Poetry Month ago.
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