News

Two new IF project publications

Two new chapters from A Book That Opens are now available, the central output of the IF project ‘We Come from the Past: Orality, Indigeneity and the Flow of Culture’ with Paul Magee, Paul Collis and Jen Crawford. The idea is to compose a whole book by speaking it. Spoken on Barkindji and Nyemba Country by a Barkindji elder, academic and poet (Paul Collis), in dialogue with two white poet-academics (Jen Crawford, Paul Magee) and five local Barkindji, Kunya and Nyemba interlocutors (Gertie Dorigo, Bradley Hardy, Margaret Knight, Wayne Knight, Brian Smith), taped and transcribed, A Book that Opens provides a book-based archive of oral intellectual practice on Country along the Darling / Baarka River in outback New South Wales.

‘The Edge of Reality’: Paul Magee in Conversation with Paul Collis, Jen Crawford and Wayne Knight is published by CORDITE Poetry Review, and can be read HERE.

 

The second article, published by meanjin, ‘Unfinished Business at Gundabooka’ can be found HERE. Authors: Paul Collis and Wayne Knight, with Jen Crawford and Paul Magee

‘It all comes in ‘conversation’. There is a ‘sync’ that happens differently for each person, place and circumstance. Allowing for that synchronicity to happen is often the difference between white fellas and Aboriginal researchers. Often, we Aboriginal fellas say, “You can’t push it…” All that stuff around people ‘not knowing much’, feeling ashamed, having the right to speak depends on the circumstance, place or person, at any one point in time. It’s as much about trusting the space, the circumstances and the people in it.’

– Paul Collis