Writing to the Wire

By Dan Disney and Kit Kelen

Surely we are better than this? The seeking of asylum in Australia has been politicised in recent decades. Our national conversation has vilified people fleeing persecution and desensitised the Australian polity to human suffering. We are further marginalising the most vulnerable groups in the world and at greater expense than accommodating refugee

• Language: English
• Publisher: UWA Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781742588605

Book preview

WRITING TO THE WIRE

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Dan Disney left Australia in 2010. He is an award-winning poet, and currently Associate Professor with the English Literature Program at Sogang University, in Seoul. His books include and then when the (John Leonard Press, 2011) and either, Orpheus (UWAP, 2016).

Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a well-known Australian poet and painter and Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he has taught literature and creative writing for the last 16 years. As Series Editor for ASM/Flying Islands he has overseen the publication of numerous single author collections and anthologies of Australian poetry, especially for the Chinese reader. His own latest volume of poems is Scavengers’ Season (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014).

WRITING TO THE WIRE

Edited by

DAN DISNEY & KIT KELEN

First published in 2016 by

UWA Publishing

Crawley, Western Australia 6009

www.uwap.uwa.edu.au

UWAP is an imprint of UWA Publishing

a division of The University of Western Australia

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Copyright © Dan Disney, Kit Kelen et al. 2016

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Writing to the wire / Dan Disney, Kit Kelen (editors).

ISBN: 9781742588667 (paperback)

Political refugees—Australia—Poetry.

Humanistic ethics—Poetry.

Australian poetry.

Disney, Dan, editor.

Kelen, Christopher, 1958- editor.

821.00803581

Typeset by Lasertype

Cover design by Design by Comittee

Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Foreword

Poets, like cartoonists, are able to show us things we cannot see. Or which we are unwilling to see. Two identical beggars, sitting on the pavement, begging bowl in front of them. One has a sign which says ‘Help me, I am blind’. The other has a sign which says ‘Help me, I can see’.

The introductory essay to this book captures beautifully the political issues associated with boat people. The poems capture the human realities to which our politicians and commentators are often blind. The people who wrote the poems can see. Hopefully, the people who read the poems will also start to see.

Poetry serves several functions. Good poetry sees the world in ways which are invisible to most of us – until we read the poems. In doing so, it smuggles uncomfortable ideas into complacent minds. The lacerating poetry of the First World War showed just how powerfully the truth can be told. Wilfred Owen, in particular, and his mentor Siegfried Sassoon, showed how poetry can strip away the protective layers of delusion which protect us from the truth of what we do.

In that tradition, this book of poetry captures some of the brutal reality of Australia’s refugee policy in 2016. As Kevin Brophy writes –

You have made an example of me

for I should not have run so quickly

when my husband was killed

and my older brother too –

no, I should not have escaped,

I should have queued

or appealed to you in a letter

of reasoned prose […]

Vladimir Mayakovsky once wrote that Art (which includes visual art, music and poetry) ‘is not a mirror to reflect Society, it is an anvil on which to shape it’. I hope that all Australians who read these poems will be inspired to start hammering our government for a refugee policy which more honestly embodies the true values of this country. As Geoff Page asks –

[…]And can you sing its second verse,

Advance Australia Fair?

It’s not an idle question: it is one we all need to ask, and to answer.

Julian Burnside QC

POEMS

A

Across the Seas

S.K. Kelen

Ahmed

Peter Boyle

Alien Flame

Anna Couani

The Answer

Eileen Chong

As Far As Dandenong

Jennifer Compton

Assimilation

Angela Johnson

At a distance

Angela Gardner

Australia Day 2014

Coral Carter

B

Barbed

Toby Fitch

Beached Dreams

Andy Kissane

Untitled (beast into beast)

Christopher Barnett

Before if Ever a Landfall

Philip Salom

Boat People

D.J. Huppatz

Boat-People

Natalie Harkin

Boat Song

Fay Zwicky

Borderlines

jenni nixon

Border protection

James Stuart

C

Cargo? … notes for another way

Anne Elvey

Child’s poem

PH

The Cost of Fear

Susan Adams

Cry

Hazara

D

Dangerous Communications

Janet Galbraith

Dear Bird Send My Message

Sabrin Ahmed

Dear Citizen X,

Anne Elvey

Dear the ones I left behind

Hani Abdile

Dear Sir

Maria Zajkowski

(from) A Death in Winter

Diane Fahey

dispatch box

joanne burns

Dog, Mountain and Moon

Graeme Miles

drone illuminations

Jennifer Harrison

Drowning Inland

Michael Farrell

The Duty of Punishment

Jen Crawford

E

Election

David McCooey

Epistle to Scott

Brian Purcell

Exposure

John Bennett

F

the brush off (Pleasant Island, 32’ south)

Kit Kelen

For a Sudanese Student

Kim Cheng Boey

Four for Scott

Geoff Page

Free Quote

A. Frances Johnson

From The Book of Examples

Kevin Brophy

Fuse

A. Frances Johnson

G

(from) The Goat-Song of the Bone Folder

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

God Goes to Work

John Tranter

Great games

Susan Hawthorne

Greeting to you and peace in your heart

Anne Collins

A Guide to the Process of Seeking Asylum in Australia

Ivy Alvarez

H

Harm’s Way

Kate Lilley

A History of the Siege

Petra White

How to make a paper boat

David Stavanger

I

I am a Refugee

Naomi So

I am you

Jordie Albiston

Untitled (I know subtle cartographies)

Marion May Campbell

Untitled (I went to a cemetery)

K.

If this is a man

Mark Isaacs

Illegals

Mark Tredinnick

In the Bottom Eight

Heather Taylor Johnson

In this place

Lisa Gorton

Intention

Angela Gardner

(from) INTERCOLONIAL

Stephen Oliver

Interlude

Michelle Cahill

The Island Solution

Jena Woodhouse

J

The Jews of Hamburg speak out

Lisa Jacobson

L

The Land of Freedom

K.

Last flight

Angela Gardner

LEND ME YOUR EARS

Jessica L. Wilkinson

Letter (sent back to sender)

Dominique Hecq

A letter to those holding vigil for Saeed Hassanloo

Name withheld

A Letter to You

Peter Minter

Lovesong

A. Frances Johnson

M

Magenta

Joel Scott

Manus Green Tree Snail

Sarah Holland-Batt

Manus Notes

Lorne Johnson

Manus – Story of Black Cage

anonymous

The map

Ahmed Hashim

The Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill December 2014

L.K. Holt

Ministers and Members of Parliament, or, Bliss

Phyllis Perlstone

Minotaur’s Asylum

Jim Walton

The Monument

Vivian Smith

Morning at Middle Harbour, February 2015

Carol Jenkins

My soul died years ago

NH

My time is in your hand

Ravi

N

Nationality II

Melinda Smith

Newspeak in Wonderland

John Brinnand

Night

B.

No entry anytime

Samuel Wagan Watson

O

THE OCEAN AND THE MOON

A. and Janet Glibraith

On Becoming a Housewife for the First Time at the Age of 41

Lisa Brockwell

ONE MINUTE OF SILENCE

S.

On The Waterfront In Genoa, Just Before Dawn, At Chucking Out Time

Jennifer Compton

Operational Matters

Les Wicks

P

passover

Robbie Coburn

places of habitual residence

Lucy Williams

Portrait of a Refugee

Ross Donlon

Public Statement by Humanities and Social Sciences Scholars on Australia’s

Michele Seminara

Q

Queue-jumping

Anthony Lynch

R

Refuge

Michael Sharkey

Refugees

Paul Hetherington

Refuge / Refugee

Ross Donlon

Refugee Sewing Circle

Dael Allison

Reply to a father from a Federal Member

Nathan Curnow

Return to Sender

Brook Emery

Rock

Maria Takolander

S

Screws

Mark O’Flynn

The Secret Language of Border Guards and Those Who Wish To Cross

Richard James Allen

A Seeker’s Soliloquy

Ouyang Yu

Shelf Life

Patricia Sykes

Silence

Melinda Smith

Sky Trail

Les Wicks

Slow death knocks my heart

Ravi

Still/life

Jane Williams

strict separation III

Sergio Holas

STOP THE BAT PEOPLE

Rachael Briggs

Untitled (The Sun replied: ‘Let it begin’)

Bella Li

Survival

A.

T

Tears

Juan Garrido-Salgado

(Tony Abbott is a) Flarf Fugue

Stuart Cooke

Trash Vortex

Felicity Plunkett

U

Under Canvas

jenni nixon

Upon Cutting my Finger while Chopping Onions and Learning that Cicadas from Venus Are Invading the Planet

Kent MacCarter

V

Villawood

Betty Johnston

Visitors

Paul Hetherington

W

Waterweighted

Aden Rolfe

Ways of flying

Jen Webb

Whatever

Fiona Hile

When Murderers Return Home

Dan Disney

The women of Kurdistan

Behrouz Boochani

Word of Mouth

Patricia Sykes

Who

Ali Alizadeh

Why we need illegals

Rae Desmond Jones

Wire

David Musgrave

Y

Your Karma, Australian

Corey Wakeling

Writing to the Wire

The danger is that a global, universally interrelated civilization may produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages.

– Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

What have we become?

– Julian Burnside, The Hamer Oration

Surely We Are Better Than This?

The seeking of asylum in Australia has been politicised in recent decades; today, a jaundiced spotlight has been cast over the suffering of people we could and should help. Political cynicism and pandering to racist sentiment has had the effect of dehumanising people who are exercising the UN chartered human right of seeking asylum from persecution (as per Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The pandering and politicking have desensitised and dehumanised the Australian polity at large, and shameless procedural narratives delivered by those speaking from either side of mainstream politics in Australia continue to cause actual harm to real people – adults and children alike. These narratives damage our collective ethics and our nation’s sense of identity. Let’s be clear about what Australia has been doing: a mean-spirited interpretation has been applied to the Migration Act (1958) to enable the so-called ‘off-shore processing’ of asylum seekers. Whether on-shore or further afield, that enterprise is now commercialised and detention has become an industry contracted out to for-profit Orwellian organizations such as the gaolers Australasian Correctional Management and Serco Australia P/L, as well as the sardonically-named Transfield and Global Solutions Limited.

Secreted within sites often resembling high security prisons, those who have exercised a fundamental human right are treated punitively and with prejudice. Indeed, refugees arriving in our country endure what Hannah Arendt would term the ‘conditions of savages’ inside facilities purpose-built by political leaders peddling narrowed versions of who we are and who we choose to belong among us. Meanwhile, no journalist or employee within these para-governmental agencies may legally undertake to report on the treatment of ‘detainees’. We are actively ghettoising displaced and traumatised people; we persist in treating these most marginalised groups like some kind of waste management issue. Australian governments pretend that no citizen is interested, and that none in the international community are shocked and dismayed at Australia’s abrogation of its responsibilities. This is stage-managed theatre for domestic political consumption. One notes, by 2015, the now well-established bi-partisan support (from both the Conservative and the Labor sides of mainstream Australian politics) for the idea that those who have paid ‘people smugglers’ to arrive in Australia by boat are ‘queue-jumpers’ and generally persons with motives to be suspected. This can no longer be viewed as a Pauline Hanson-era flight of rhetorical fancy. It is a proven election-winning stratagem.

Let us be clear about what Australia is doing. The people in those places where no journalist may go are leaving lives behind, quite simply because they are fleeing for their lives. Australia is paying vast sums – current estimates range between AU$4 billion and AU$5 billion each year – to ensure that these displaced and disenfranchised people are kept in a constant state of danger and despair, and are given no hope for a better future. As with the US anti-terrorism showcase at Guantanamo Bay, despite the paucity of media coverage, this is really all for the cameras. These people are being made into examples. Our legalistic responses to their plight is fodder for the Murdoch-owned tabloid appetite that makes a difference among swinging