Radical Poetics: Writing Forward, Writing Blak Welcome?

The English language is an import to this country. As with the foreign flora and fauna brought by the boats to the shores, language spread where the speakers settled; thrown over like a blanket on the same bed where the pillows of the ‘dying race’ were being smoothed.
And yet, we survived.
Indigenous poets who have been published since owe a lot to the landmark publication of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s 1964 collection We are Going, the first published collection of poetry from an Aboriginal person in this country. In the time since, poets have ‘written back’ into popular literary spaces with playful ways of using the English language and tongue-in-cheek refusal to adhere to those structures and conventions. The novel uses of Aboriginal English play with the limits of language to rework its meaning into the written and spoken word. Each poet is writing into a growing body of literary works dealing with the ongoing systems of oppression by challenging but also poking fun at the structures that uphold them.
In this episode, Alice Bellette (Palawa) speaks with poets Alison Whittaker (Gomeroi) and Laniyuk (Larrakia, Kungarrakan and Gurindji) about their work, as well as experiences with communities that foster the literary voices of Indigenous people in this country. We also talk about the ‘coding’ of language, a strategy poets use to articulate different meanings for different audiences, usually in ways that privilege Indigenous audiences. We reflect on what this might mean for the various audiences of this kind of literature.
You don’t need to be a regular reader of poetry to get something out of this episode, just bring an open mind and a value for the connections between humans.

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