I am trying to remember the moment that I lost hope
I am trying to remember the moment that I lost mum.
I see her sleeping during the heat
as a child, and I want her near.
I see her speaking Canto, loudly.
Her smile refreshes so. I see a violence
she introduces to me, and laughing she tells me
of a violence her father introduces to her.
I see her crying in the corner of her bedroom
unable to understand her children.
I see her now walking behind me,
into the dark, smile fading.
I am hiding behind that phrase, introducing violence,
when there are flecks of ink on my feet.
I think it happens before I can think of it.
I am keeping only
the ones that make bright jokes in the sky,
where the stars are gone, long made into cages.
In the cage where my heart once sang,
I have made an egg shaped moon.
Every day I touch the screen of my phone
to draw a tarot card.
I empty the sky
to make room
for the moon.
I look at her light to unravel
the beginning of myself,
but our binding thread
has snapped, some time ago
now. This trap has become my home.
I wonder if you think about the end of all things too?
Of course you do.
It’s easy to play along.
Sit in the dark a little while
like your mum once made you, and hum a small song.
Drown out the sound of water.
Become only your song.
Lose your own breath with hers in the dark.
Our hearts thrum a little while.
There is a chattering of ink on my feet.
This moment refreshes like a spectral joy.
Hope is sudden and forever when it hums
as I walk outside of my mother’s house,
and the sun fades—
will I not come back?
Vidya: Tell us about your current artistic practice.
Steven: I am an artist, writer, and community artist—since writing an honours thesis on how fan fiction communities prove that the notion of an author-as-originator is not only useless but actively harmful to the creation of an ethically creative culture, I have spent a lot of energy helping others to express themselves with projects of their own making. My artistic practice is motivated by a desire to develop new ways of living and being, and the biggest concern that I have is the ongoing sixth extinction of the Anthropocene epoch, and its ties to intertwined capitalist patriarchal and colonialist structures.
What prompted you to write your poem for the series?
I was initially motivated to explore my relationship to hope in the current moment. In the framework of conversations about the anthropocene, people identify as either hopers (who believe humans will solve the climate crisis) or doomers (who believe humans will become extinct in the near future). I have issues with people who so readily embrace doom when they have the privilege to not currently experience the worst of what is happening, but I am also frustrated by a naive hope that assumes our way of life can continue any further.
When I wrote this poem, I wanted to know why I do not sit easily within either of those two camps. What was the moment, the point of difference, that has meant I can actively engage with the worst possibilities for existence, and find a home in that? As someone who is discovering that their heritage is unmoored, and that colonial and patriarchal violence is present and replicated in family members, I feel like I have a black sputtering fire to take with me into the apocalypse, a dark hope.
I found the poem’s link between personal familial loss and a general cultural fracture very moving.
There were very distinct moments where I realised that the type of emotional connection that I wanted from family was impossible, and that in the effort to fit within an idea of my white self, I was exhausting myself—so much of what is thought of as great art and literature is actually just white propaganda that aims to get you to think of yourself as white, so that you cut away your cultural self to fit. I used to think I was so clever for knowing Latin. It is not so much a disappointment with my mother so much as a coming to understand her pain as our pain, as a colonial hangover. Imagine raising children in a culture that is hostile to your identity, and then finding your children are hostile to you. Imagine that culture being the same that celebrated the company that enslaved your father.
In 2015 I performed a work where I lived nomadically in Perth and physically carried all my possessions with me on a pushcart. In contrast to that weight was the freedom of existing outside of the expectation of white culture, and sitting with the truth of history. I see it as less a general difficulty and more an acceptance of the reality of colonialism, and a desire to move towards justice that is stronger than hope.
Which poets are you currently reading?
I have mostly been reading and re-reading Ellen Van Neerven, and Eileen Myles. I have also been viewing the work of Yayoi Kusama and Ana Mendieta. I have been re-listening to MIA and Princess Nokia. I have been exploring the politics inherent in the podcast How to Survive the End of the World. I have been getting into activism.
Because I exist in the space between visual art and literature, and because I love pop culture so, and because I work mostly as an administrator of other people’s things, I am woefully under-read. I don’t find the time to properly explore for myself the vast amounts of contemporary cultural content. Part of me is glad for this dialling out, as the impulse to craft and create more and more sometimes feels like a type of self-consumption, but I am also dreaming of a time when I will have time to stop and see beauty.
About the author
vidya rajan is a writer, editor and performance-maker. she currently lives in melbourne and is a writer in residence at the malthouse theatre. you can get in touch on twitter.