Having a Holiday
Headed west, us brindles laughed deeper, from the base of our lungs. A week of success and weeks of exhaustion too. Aboriginal women in need of a getaway. This was somebody else’s Country, and we found them too, at the morning café, day after the latest Federal election. Night before, almost started fights, asking for the channel at the pub. Classic behaviour that and we ignored the screen anyway.
But there at the morning café, eating little chocolate cakes and drinking strong coffee. The Country’s protectors. Talked about rich Country, the green grass, black lava rocks. Bull kelp I was surprised to see. The sun blew and we got further away from all of our Countries. The she oaks whistled with the birds. Small towns with empty churches and big oceans. A quick photo with Uncle Archie, feeling humbled and in love. Nat, Kate, Alice and Neika.
Vidya: Tell us about your artistic practice.
Neika: Lately I have been trying to pick the medium that seems best for any particular story. This can make you feel like a master of none, but at least it feels honest. Earlier this year I facilitated an art show exhibiting myself and two Trawlwoolway cousins Lauren Gower and Kalyani Mumtaz. The show was about how the three of us respond and work in relation to living on Kulin country, away from our ancestral lands and families. This is part of the cultural framework I operate in. I have been trying to take film more seriously, and have started working with bull kelp, a traditional material used for making practical utilities like water carriers. I’ve had many interesting conversations around what it means to use it in an art context.
Do you work much with prose poetry? The style here really supports how this poem rises to the feeling of a still moment: a memory and photograph.
My journaling style since I was a kid has been very similar to prose poems. When I was an undergraduate my teacher kept telling me my poems were too prose-like and my fiction was too lyrical. When I try to write poetry from a more abstract place, I’ve had people say they have ‘literally no idea what I’m talking about’, so I’m still working on the in-between.
The poem reads like a joyful love letter, but not one without weight. The decision to ‘have a holiday’ feels especially like an active choice.
That points to the question of how any hyper-politicised subjects get to just ‘be’. I am really lucky to have First Nations friends from so many different Countries around this continent. On that trip we were all from somewhere else, so we were talking a lot about the Country we were visiting; the land’s history, its elders, warriors and customs. As much as I was writing for myself, I was also trying to write to them.
Any thoughts on the editing as part of process?
An editor who loves what they’re doing shows. They radiate a very specific kind of comfort that makes the writing process less lonely and my precarious working life more worthwhile. I also work as a freelance editor. I doubt I radiate much! But from the other side of things, having a writer trust you to go through the editing process, which is very intimate, and find a new place for their vision they are happy with is one of the nicest parts of the job.
Who are some poets you’re currently reading or commonly turn to?
I recently got a lot out of Ocean Vuong and Solmaz Sharif. In the past few years I keep returning to Allison Whittaker, Eileen Myles and Ali Cobby-Eckermann.
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.