I thought about re-recording this because I couldn’t do it without crying. I thought about not sharing* it at all.
Content note for: domestic violence, violence against women, murder, grief etc.
I wrote this song in 2019. I am not a musician or songwriter. I’m just a poet trying to express some of the frustration and rage and grief I feel about this issue. Every year since I wrote it makes it more true instead of less true.
Each verse (except the last) is based on details from real news articles in 2019 about women murdered by a man known to them. The final verse is from my own lived experience of domestic violence. Lyrics below the video.
I’ve put this into a couple of fantasy reader FB groups but also sharing with my direct networks because I might know people that I don’t even realise would be keen!
I’m looking for alpha and beta readers to develop longterm relationships with my speculative fiction work (fantasy and sci fi). I have a couple of works in progress, including a completed draft of a YA fantasy novel. I’m also in the early stages of a 20year collaborative fantasy-writing project in my home community (regional South Australia).
I’d love to connect with readers in my genre but also really up for reciprocal exchange with fellow writers. I write scripts, poetry and short fiction, as well as the novel and novella length works I’m developing. I’m a longtime fantasy nerd and would love to explore writing for video games in the future too.
I have two queer kids and am bi/pan myself so nearly all of my work features queer characters, and family trauma + love stories are also common features. Climate crisis and climate justice themes are increasingly prevalent in my work too. At the same time, I also just like writing silly little slice of life cosy fantasy and shenanigans.
This memoir essay was originally published by Griffith Review, in Edition 44: Cultural Solutions. It was written and published in 2014. Content note: this piece mentions my lived experience of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Not for me
by Alysha Herrmann
I HAD seen the flyers around. ‘Come and try theatre, learn writing and performance skills in a supportive environment.’
Stupid.
Embarrassing.
A waste of money.
A waste of time.
Not for me. Never for me. I am just a statistic.
THEY BECOME FRAGMENTS. Memories. Flashes of who you have been, who you are, who you could be. Bleeding together. Blending out. Too many things to hold inside of yourself. The more you try to make sense of them, the more they slip into your peripheral vision. The more dreamlike they taste on your lips.
Twelve-year-old me being kissed by a 16 year old boy in a shearing shed. With tongue.
Fourteen-year-old me being held down by a man for the first time. Screaming into the pillow over my mouth.
Fifteen-year-old me, sitting my parents down at the kitchen table to tell them I’m moving out. My mother crying quietly in her bedroom.
Sixteen-year-old me, working 50 hours a week in a factory. My feet hurt. Home to a house that stinks of hopelessness.
Seventeen-year-old me, holding a tiny screaming bundle of flesh and bone in my arms. My son, ready or not.
THESE ARE SOME of my memories. The ones that bleed into my story.
I leave school and move out of home when I am 15 to live with an abusive boyfriend. I believe I have no value, nothing to offer the world and that things will never get better. I am lost.
At seventeen, I become a teenage mother. My son is beautiful. I love him before I know his name. He gives me courage, not hope yet, but courage. Six months later I leave his father and point my feet back towards education. I enroll in the local high school to complete Year 12. I become involved with the local health service, Riverland Regional Health as a peer mentor, heading into schools to talk about the realities of being a teenage parent and sexual health education with Year 9 students.
I am still lost.
I am terrified.
I am eighteen when I see the flyers. ‘Come and try theatre, learn writing and performance skills in a supportive environment.’ I turn my nose up at their possibility. Stupid. Embarrassing. Terrifying. Not for me. Never for me.
Riverland Regional Health, where I volunteer as a peer mentor becomes a partner on a youth theatre project. Those flyers. That project. It’s a collaboration between Riverland Youth Theatre and Vitalstatistix National Women’s Theatre in Adelaide. They want to make a show about teenage parents. Riverland Regional Health asks me, ‘Can you go to this first workshop, as our representative? To make sure we have some insight. And that they’re not wasting our money?’
‘No. Of course they’re wasting your money.’
I go anyway.
And find.
Something.
Something I’d been looking for my entire life but had never known existed.
A safe space. A space to explore the burning questions I have. A space to see myself through new eyes. A space to dream, to interrogate, to fly. We spend the day talking, laughing, sharing, crying. In a few short hours the way the world looks has tilted.
The project is a yearlong commitment, one day per week, followed by three weeks full-time rehearsal and a two-week tour. I am already committed one day per week with Riverland Regional Health as a peer mentor, attending school full-time to complete Year 12, working three to five nights a week at the pizza bar to pay my bills and then of course, being a fulltime single parent to my now one-year-old. I am terrified. Still.
I commit to the project. Completely. I miss two sessions, one for my Year 12 English exam, one because I attend a week-long drama intensive in NSW with Australian Theatre for Young People. This project has changed me. Shifted what’s possible.
WHO AM I?
We’ve worked with two directors, a choreographer, a designer, a musician, a writer. We’ve eaten so much food together. Shared so many tears. So much laughter. I’ve written a monologue. It’s a list of all my fears. I sing in a vignette with one of the other girls. I am fierce. I am humble. I am me.
Who am I?
Halfway through the project, we have a work in progress showing of the performance we’ve created so far. We wait behind the curtains for our cue to enter. We can hear the quiet shuffle of our audience settling. We are all so nervous. We’ve never performed before. I really need to wee.
And then.
The cue. The music starts and this voice, this voice soars out of the speakers, filling the room, the space, the moment. I have goosebumps on every inch of my skin. It is not the musician’s voice we’ve been practicing with, this voice we hear now is mine. My voice, recorded a week earlier. Soaring out into that room. My voice singing and soaring out to all the people sitting in the audience experienced in a way I’ve never heard it before.
Who am I?
We come to the end of the project. Performance time. Crunch time. We tour the show through the Riverland (my regional home) and Adelaide as part of the 2005 Come Out Festival. I am crying backstage after one of the shows. One of our directors confronts me. I tell her the truth. That I am a loser. That my performance tonight wasn’t very good. Her fingers dig into my shoulders. Her face is tight. She shakes me and words rip out between her lips.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you so afraid of how good you are?’
Who am I?
Whoever I choose to be.
I AM EIGHTEEN when I stumble into the rabbit hole that is the arts. Losing my sorrow in possibility. And now here I am at twenty-eight, living the deepest dreams. Random Girls was the name of that project, the one I stumbled into, fell into, was slightly pushed into.
Random Girls was a Community Arts and Cultural Development theatre project originally conceived by then artistic director of Riverland Youth Theatre Lucien Simon and his creative partner Marisa Mastrocola before joining in partnership with Vitalstatistix (a theatre company based in Adelaide) to explore the stereotypes surrounding teenage pregnancy and parenting. The early stage of the project included free workshops across the five major Riverland towns (Renmark, Berri, Loxton, Barmera and Waikerie), family fun days and barbeques to find participants and supporters for the project from within the community.
The project then entered a long and intensive creative development stage in the Riverland, with weekly workshops all day on a Thursday from March 2004 through to production in 2005. As part of this process, childcare was provided for all of the participants, as was a travel allowance and honorarium for our time – this attention to detail in reducing our access barriers set the tone for the entire project; there was always attention given to the support we needed to engage at the highest level possible. By this stage there were five participants working with Lucien, Maude Davey (then artistic director of Vitalstatistix) and Marisa through a devising process. As none of the participants had ever performed before and we’d developed such a supportive relationship with Marisa, she stepped into a performance role alongside us, bringing our performer total to six.
During the creative development process we were led through a series of skills-based workshops by professional artists, including Finegan Kruckemeyer (playwriting), Sophie Hyde and Bryan Mason (film and new media), Alison Currie (movement) and Heather Frahn (composing/music), as well as being given access to self defense workshops with a Riverland martial artist. We then built on this process, working with our directing team to devise a series of interwoven vignettes exploring our shared experiences, interspersed by individual ‘reveal’ moments where each of us took the stage to share the core of our own story. Everyone had their own experience of this process, some presented their reveal moments as shared scenes with the other participants for support, I really took to the idea of writing and presenting something solo and so with the support of the directors I wrote my reveal as a monologue – a list of my deepest fears as a parent and a person – which in the production I performed in front of beautiful projections of my child in a playground filmed by Sophie and Bryan. The project and the entire process was all terrifying, yet addictive and healing in a way I still struggle to articulate ten years later.
In and around all of this was a lot of talking (and eating!). Talking about our lives. Our hopes. Our fears. Our possibilities. We went to some deep, dark and secret places together. There are many hours of interview footage of each of us tucked away in archives, most littered with tears. It was these hours of talking, of sharing, of delving into our vulnerability that built the base of the theatre we created. These hours of talking bonded the participants and the creative team in a shared exploration of far we could go together. These hours of talking defined and stretched the boundaries of what was safe to share, what was not and what we would be willing to share anyway. These hours of talking grew a practice of self-reflection that is now a foundation in my daily life.
LATE IN THE year-long development of Random Girls, some members of the professional creative team shared their original intention and interest to explore how becoming a mother had, in their words, ‘fucked up our lives’, but how through our stories and the joy we took in our parenting roles, the project changed had not only changed us, but also them and had become instead a story of celebration and affirmation for all of us. This responsiveness and openness from the creative team to changing direction, I think, characterizes truly meaningful community arts and cultural development projects and is what made Random Girls such a powerful experience for all of us – continuing with our audience.
The final production of Random Girls was presented in both Adelaide and the Riverland, with a week of shows in each. We offered shows to school audiences during the day and a limited season of general public shows. The final product was a theatre performance incorporating movement, mime, text, soundscape, projection, audience interaction, monologue, and stylized scenes. Every show saw members of the audience approach us in tears afterwards, many sharing personal anecdotes of their own difficult life moments. Rod Lewis from Adelaide Theatre Guide came to see the show and said in his review: ‘Each are as talented as they are fearless, putting themselves up for judgement before the audience. Forget political correctness. These stories are shared without bitterness and without apology and it is damn good. This is what theatre should be about. How unfortunate that the season is so brief.’ By sharing ourselves, we gave permission for others to share themselves – and it was our creative team who gave us permission to share ourselves by creating a space and a process that believed in us.
Random Girls woke in me the desire to give other people their own goosebumps moment, their own coming home moment, their own being shaken awake moment as a participant (and audience member). Everyone’s moment will be different, but it’s that moment when you see (or hear!) yourself the way others do, when what could be possible becomes larger than what you’ve ever seen before. When you find a space to lift your voice further than you ever thought you could.
Becoming involved in the arts changed everything for me. Everything. I went on to study acting and youth work at a tertiary level. I’ve spoken and presented at national arts conferences, had my work as a writer performed in numerous states, I’ve won awards at a local and state level, worked with thousands of young people and community members using the arts as a tool and a base to explore what’s possible – what it means to be human and become the best version of yourself that you can be.
These are amazing things, things to treasure and be proud of, but they are not the greatest gifts Random Girls and the arts since have given me. Random Girls was the catalyst for me to claim myself. To claim myself as valuable in the world. It didn’t happen in isolation or purely through that project, but Random, Girls started the process, it laid the foundation for everything that’s come since. It gave me permission to dream, to love myself, to invest in myself. To understand that I am complex, difficult, beautiful, worthwhile – Random Girls allowed me to open the door to my own life. All of which has made me a better parent, friend, daughter, sister, lover, worker, community member, human being.
Random Girls wasn’t easy. It was tiring. It was challenging. It was terrifying. Sometimes I just wanted to run away from the directors and all their questions. But I didn’t. Because they made a safe space for me to lean into those discomforts. Because they inspired me to want to overcome them. Because they made a place for me to belong. A place for me to discover that I am not just a statistic, I not just my mistakes. I am the sum of all the choices I make, then and now.
I NOW WORK for a peak youth arts body as the creative producer of a youth arts initiative delivering projects with a very similar ethos. Working in a community arts and cultural development space can be exhausting, demoralizing, frustrating and a huge financial drain. It really can be. But mostly, I just feel joy. Joy to be here working with people who, just like a younger me, don’t see their own value, their own stories, their own possibilities; and then, through this glorious work we do in the arts, creating a space for them to come and discover who they are, who they could be. Seeing the light spill out of them when they have their own goosebumps moment, how could I ever have imagined my life would be this ten years ago? The arts don’t have to be the whole answer, but rather part of the recipe. My work alone doesn’t have to unlock every person’s story. Nor does it have to make everyone an artist. There were five young mums in Random Girls and I am the only one who has made a career and lifestyle in the arts – yet all five of those women hold Random Girls as a treasured experience in their lives. We weren’t all changed in the way I was, but we were all changed. For the better.
I came to them later than many, earlier than some. I came to them cautious. Hesitant. Barely breathing in the skin I was in. I came to the arts eventually. They were for me.
My phone flies through the darkness and lands with a thud/ knocked there by an outstretched hand and my muffled laughter/ I muffle the story too/ a small, but necessary death// #tinytwitterpoem
IMAGE: Seeing Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhales at Bordertown in February 2022.
I haven’t done a reflection blog for the past couple of years. I mean to, and then January starts to unfold and I don’t quite get there and then it just seems silly to be writing one in February or March. But I’ve felt the lack of it. The space it gives me. Space to collect my thoughts, to gather together the loose threads of the year and do my best to make sense of where I’ve arrived and where I might be heading next.
These reflection blogs are too long and unwieldy really, more a space for me. It’s the process of writing them that is actually useful, and maybe I shouldn’t bother publishing them at all. But I remember the little glimmers of golden thread I find in reading the reflections of others. The ways it helps me to see others navigate the(ir) mess.
This year was big and hard. I knew going into it that it was going to be (the choices we’d made heading in meant that it was going to be challenging even without the extra things life always throws). Knowing it was going to be hard didn’t make it less hard. There was a lot to carry, and no buffer (time, money, emotional space) for things to go wrong (which they always do). I entered 2022 feeling like it was a year I was just going to have to get through.
The word I chose for 2022 was “cherish”. It was to remind myself to cherish the small moments, to hold my loved ones close, and to do my best to protect and care for myself within there too. It was a call to action for me to cherish (love, protect and care for) everything that is important to me. To keep what really matters in focus. I kept forgetting what word I’d actually chosen, but I managed to carry the intention close anyway.
I really did cherish the small moments. And in turn, I felt so very cherished. By my loved ones, and by my wider circle. I have felt so surrounded by love and care this year. It has been an incredible gift. A thread to hold me steady.
I’ve really needed that thread this year. My self-talk is possibility the worst it’s been since 2014 and I’ve struggled all year to maintain perspective about anything. I knew this year would be hard but I’ve still felt like I’ve been failing everyone (including myself).
IMAGE: My workspace, including laptop with a large sticker created by Anastasia Beasley. I’ve always been one of those people who collects stickers but never sticks them to anything because it feels too permanent. This is the first time I’ve stuck a sticker to a laptop. The sticker is an illustration of a female frog riding a motorbike, surrounded by the words “Suffer in silence or learn to roar”. IMAGE: I became an Awesome Black Box subscriber this year.
This year felt like three years in one, and I know I’m not alone in that feeling. So many of us are exhausted by the cumulative impact of the past couple of years. It’s been a lot.
IMAGE: A little snap of my daughter’s Appa plushie resting on the bed.
There was a lot of juggling in our lives this year and I found myself referring to things that had happened “last year or the year before” and having Nic and others correct me with “that was this year!”, so here’s a couple of little lists to remind myself of the key things I was actually doing in 2022.
My (external) paid work this year (ie. dayjobs):
Continued as a casual part of the Community Awareness Team at headspace Berri, supporting the hERO (youth reference) group and the new Community Awareness Officer. I was the Community Awareness Officer from September 2020, and handed over the reins to Jordii Enright to take up the role of Statewide Regional Manager for Writers SA in 2021.
Continued as the Statewide Regional Manager of the Writers SA No Limits program. My job title transitioned to Statewide Program Manager mid-year when I also took on the seasonal literary program, including in-person Adelaide events and online events for all ages & locations, alongside the final delivery of No Limits. I decided to finish up with Writers SA at the end of 2022, and my last work day was 16th December 2022. On November 25th 2022, No Limits was the recipient of the Arts South Australia Ruby Award for Outstanding Regional Event or Project, which was a pretty spectacular way to close the year.
Commenced part-time with Riverland Youth Theatre as the Digital & Community Artist (a new role supported by Variety SA), which will be my primary dayjob in 2023 for two days a week.
IMAGE: Installing Raining Poetry in the Regions in Naracoorte. One of the many No Limits outcomes we delivered.IMAGE: Detail from the Ruby Award for No Limits.
Independent/freelance projects this year:
Further development and refining of the script for Guthrak. Guthrak will premiere at the dreamBIG Festival in Adelaide in May 2023. Tickets for school shows are on sale now and general public sales will open early next year.
Part of Things. Although we did less visible work in some ways in 2022, I felt more proud than ever of the impact this initiative is having. Some of the visible work:
We hosted another SALA exhibition and a scratch night as part of Adelaide Fringe.
Provided a venue for Writers SA Riverland activity led by Kirste Vandergiessen, and the Barmera venue for Zacharie Steele’s weekly Delving Around Gamez group, and the birthplace of P.O.T. Luck by Jess Weidenhofer.
Wrote 3 x short sci-fi scripts for Illuminart’s Constellation project. My stories were featured on the Wallaroo Silo Light Show, Quorn Silo Light Show and Port Pirie City Park Projection. Constellation has been nominated for the Australian Street Art Awards (finalists will be announced in January 2023). One of my favourite parts of this project is that the story I wrote for the Quorn Silo was illustrated by the same artist who did my beautiful wrist tattoo back in 2017! This was entirely coincidental, as I wasn’t the producer of Constellation so had no hand in selecting any of the artists/team. I adore Danica’s interpretation of my story & characters, a real highlight of this year.
I was a member of the Minister for the Arts’ National Cultural Policy Expert Advisory Group. Our role is largely finished now, but we’ve been asked to provide comments on some final drafting. We are expecting the final policy to be launched in early 2023.
A participating artist in OSCA’s Rethinking Participation workshops.
The chapter I co-wrote with Claire Glenn and Dr Sarah Peters, was published this year in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Young People. Our chapter is called ‘Making space: a community-engaged youth theatre practice grounded in care’ and is a celebration and honouring of all the brave, creative, clever and complicated young people we have collaborated with individually and together.
IMAGE: Detail from Guthrak creative development in Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility.
My formal learning this year:
Completed the final unit for the Bachelor of Creative Writing I started in 2019. Some background on my very big feelings about this here. My graduation ceremony is in February 2023.
Completed a Certificate IV in Celebrancy, and became a registered marriage celebrant *just* in time to officiate my very dear friend Kimberlee’s wedding to her beautiful new wife Amanda. I got the final registration clearance a week out from the wedding (we had another celebrant complete paperwork ready to transfer to me) so it was tight! Kimberlee is also a celebrant and officiated the ceremony for my husband and I back in 2014, so this was a very special full-circle moment.
Started and completed a Graduate Certificate of Creative Business with University of Canberra and Compton School. I’d never heard of this program until it was mentioned to me by Kirsty Stark after a Zoom chat during my Regional Arts Fellowship last year (2021). The biggest value for me in this course was the rest of the cohort (including Kirsty, who is an absolute gem). All of the participants are at various stages of starting or running their own creative ventures. I was focused on exploring some structural ideas to underpin the creative vehicle in development from my fellowship. This is ongoing work for me.
IMAGE: Completing my last assignment for Cert IV in celebrancy with this fake wedding! IMAGE: Cute plushies created by Ruby Altschwager in the foreground, with illustrations by Sam Wannan in the background, both presented as part of our 2022 SALA exhibition as an outcome from my 2021 Regional Arts Fellowship.
Other things:
I did a great job of avoiding COVID all through 2020 and 2021, but it finally caught me in June this year and really knocked me around. I still don’t feel 100% in terms of my fitness since having it (I get puffed and tired much more easily).
In April we sold our first home, after it was trashed by our tenants, they owed us many (many) thousands of dollars in unpaid rent and I had to report them multiple times to the child abuse report line. There is a really long story attached to this that I’m not going to go into here, but everything about all of this was hard and horrible. I cried a lot. I am incredibly grateful to my brothers who loaned us money to help ease the strain of this situation over the past 18months.
I put my hand up as a candidate for the City of Mount Gambier in this year’s local government elections. I wasn’t elected (and never expected to be) but created some wonderful connections and conversations in this new community I’m now part of for the foreseeable future.
Oh yeah, and my husband and I, and our 8yo daughter, moved nearly 5 hours away from the Riverland to Mount Gambier. Nic came down in January, with my daughter and I still based in the Riverland and going back and forth between the two communities for the first six months. We joined Nic full-time from end of July. My grown-up son decided to stay in the Riverland (in our house in Glossop) because his life and support networks are all in the Riverland. All of this has been challenging energy wise and financially. It’s a big thing to move away from the place you love (and many of the people you love most), to a new and unfamiliar place. I have a lot of complicated feelings about this still.
There was so much driving this year. I spent a lot of time in my car, solo or with my daughter sleeping in the backseat. This gave me a lot of thinking time.
IMAGE: One of the fifty-gazzillion side of the road photos I took this year.
My word for 2023
connect
verb
connected; connecting; connects
to become joined
to transfer as a step in traveling to a final destination
to hit the intended target
associate or relate (something) in some respect
to have, or establish, a rapport
to join or fasten something together
What this word means to me for 2023:
connect to (this new) place
connect to self
connect ideas
connect others
connect with others
connect values to actions
connect skills, interests and curiosities
connect opportunities with resources
connect the dots
IMAGE: A mid-year selfie.
*
A small selection of significant things/places/people that inspired me, shaped me, moved me, or made me in 2022:
Sunflowers growing on the side of the dirt-road leading to our house in Glossop.
The Riverland Youth Theatre hall, and all of the creative and off-topic conversations I had there this year (after some years of not feeling welcome there).
P.O.T. Luck and the joy of watching Jess Weidenhofer host & perform. I wrote this little poem at the P.O.T. Luck held directly after Riverland Pride March capturing a little of what it’s meant to me.
Packing up my beloved home in Glossop and moving to Mount Gambier.
Watching the river slowly rise and rise (and rise) over the closing weeks of 2022.
The many dedicated, hard-working people in my circles who put their hands up to run for local council in South Australia this year. Special shout out to the always excellent Ella Winnall (who always inspires me) for being elected as the Mayor of Berri Barmera Council.
Seeing Bianca Feher perform live on the stage of the Chaffey Theatre. Bianca went to primary school with my eldest child and I first met her when she was in reception. It was a joy to see her skill and stage presence as a young adult musician.
Kate Larsen and her work & advocacy on arts governance.
Travis Akbar, Nelya Valamanesh and Katrina Irawati Graham, and their individual work. I met Trav, Nelya and Katrina as a fellow participant in AFTRS Talent Camp programs (2019 & 2021) and I’ve felt so much vicarious joy watching their projects and other work this year.
IMAGE: Detail from In the Margins, another No Limits outcome. This detail is from an annotated copy of Sharon Kernot‘s stunning verse novel The Art of Taxidermy, which features locations in the Riverland. IMAGE: Zines created by Stuart Watkinson, and shared at the Portal Fantasy Workshop Weekend (another No Limits outcome).IMAGE: a selfie I took after being swooped by a magpie in our front yard in Glossop, while no-one else was home. This was about 15minutes afterwards when I’d managed to get inside and was still loosing my shit (crying uncontrollably and shaking). I took the photo to send to my husband as we were texting about it to help calm me down. I have a bird phobia, which impacts my life in a lot of ways, but especially during spring (swooping season). This was the first time I’d ever been swooped in our yard and it happened twice within the space of an hour while I was trying to pack the car (as part of the move to Mount Gambier!).
*
This ocean of stars/ tethering me to memory and joy and the sharp grief of both/ gravel driveways and lead pencils undo me/ they carve the edges of this year into my throat/ I swallow it down/ all the things I might say/ when you ask/ are you okay?// #tinytwitterpoem
Written during a Slam Poetry workshop facilitated by Chris Best on Saturday 29th October 2022.
The final draft:
There is water.
Don’t use the f-word.
We are still open for business. But everyone checking. Screens on the counter. Screens in our hands. Screens next to the bed.
The chatter of our community Facebook group swells with the sound of water: seeping, roaring, dreaming, screaming.
I’m at a wedding. I’m at a BBQ. I’m at a 3year old birthday party. I’m at the shops. I’m at school. I’m at work. I’m at home in my bed.
The water keeps rising. Quietly yet.
I didn’t buy a four-wheel-drive ten years ago. I bought a Kia Grand Carnival to carry us home. 92milimetres of rain. Too much. Too quick. Tyres sinking. Skin flecked with fear. One bar to call for help. Make it count.
The water keeps rising.
The water is salt. The water is skin. The water is me trying to let the light in.
Water under the door. Filling the hallway. Filling the floor. Don’t say the f-word. Screaming through the current. The little tells and stains of a life. Insurance never covers what was lost. Community cracks open. Looking for the helpers. Looking for the how.
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The first draft:
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water is salt. The water is skin. The water is me trying to let the light in.
The water keeps rising.
Flood warnings trickle through. Don’t use the f-word. High river levels. We are still open for business. But everyone checking. Screens in our hands. Screens on the counter. Screens next to the bed. Screens back to then and back to here, and now we’re all checking. What were those levels? What were those warning? When is this meeting?
The chatter of a community facebook group fills with the sound of water: rushing, seeping, creeping, roaring, dreaming, screaming.
I’m at a wedding. Wearing a rainbow with an unbroken smile as the sky breaks overhead. I’m at a BBQ. Wearing jeans and the smell of dread. I’m at a 3yo birthday party. I’m at school. I’m at work. I’m at home in my bed.
The water keeps rising. Quietly yet.
I didn’t buy a 4WD ten years ago. I bought a Kia Grand Carnival to carry them all home. But now I’m trapped in the mud and the muck trying to get out after 92mm of rain. Too much. Too quick. The tyres sinking. Our skin flecked with fear. One bar to call for help. Make it count.
The water keeps rising.
Thick potholes in the overtaking lane. No-one stays left (anymore). Trucks at 40 and we’re all banked up waiting, just waiting. To get through. To get home. To get out.
The water keeps rising.
Fairytale edges of a wide-flat land. Seeping into the lines on my palms and the softness of a jawline I hide behind.
(nothing is worth anything. everything is worth everything)
The gutter is growing green grass and mud. Water pooling under the door and filling the driveway with brown. Flood water is always brown. Don’t say the f-word. Streaks of mud and broken things. Things ripped from where they should be and forced down-river. Through the current. Dragged screaming through the current. The little tells and stains of a life. Insurance never covers what was lost. Community cracks open. Looking for the helpers. Looking for the how.
The water keeps rising.
Slippery fish I try to catch with my hands. No fishing line. No worms. No calm weather. Just rain pelting into my face and wind tearing my mouth open into a snarl. Because sometimes rage is all that is left. Sometimes we are just moments that have nowhere to go.
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water keeps rising
The water is salt. The water is skin. The water is me trying to let the light in.
1. Are you submitting this submission (select all that apply):
X as an artist
X as an individual
About me:
I am a proud parent, daughter of regional Australia, writer, performance maker, creative producer and community organiser. I make performances, installations, experiences, presentations, poetry, essays, digital exchanges, and small moments of connection in public places. Once upon a time I was a disconnected and very angry high-school dropout & teenage parent who thought the arts was a waste of time and money: https://griffithreview.com/articles/not-for-me/
My work is grounded in Community Arts and Cultural Development (CACD) practice, and I am dedicated to nurturing opportunities for regional communities and emerging artists to connect, create and experiment. Because my work is with community and often with young people, it is most often thrown into the boxes labelled “engagement” or “audiences”, as though these words are somehow big enough to contain the raw and raging capacity of the arts to imagine and build new futures.
I work in the regions where arts infrastructure is patchy or non-existent, where reputation and the relationships we build are everything and where city companies frequently parachute in to bring us what they think we need, with no consideration for our own artistic voices, courage, needs, or vision. Where sport is often king and where public transport is so lacking that I bought a KIA Grand Carnival in 2010 to make sure I always had spare seats to transport artists, young people, and community safely home.
I am the mother of two children, an 8year old and a 19year old. They are my collaborators and co-conspirators and future cultural and community leaders. They, along with all the young people I collaborate with every year, shape the futures I want to build.
Regional Australia is my home, my heart, my art, my future. Young people teach me more than I ever teach them. My community(ies) deserves the best of me, and the best of a National Cultural Policy of vision and commitment.
2. What challenges and opportunities do you see in the pillar or pillars most relevant to you? Feel free to respond to any or all pillars:
First Nations: Too many First Nations artists are being asked to be all things to all people without proper and fair remuneration. The unpaid labour contributed by First Nations artists, often while simultaneously navigating hostile and unsafe institutions, has to be a consideration in any future planning. We need to demand more from any organisations with ongoing funding. Watered down quotas are not enough. Tokenistic Reconciliation Plans are not enough. We need paid leadership roles and paid and long-term collaborations that prioritise First Nations expertise.
A Place for Every Story: A place for every story must include children *and* young people as artists and creators, not merely audiences (or content for adult artists to exploit). Children and young people also need to be recognised as distinct from one another in their creative needs and expectations, rather than being constantly lumped together as a single category. This conversation also cannot be separate from the challenges faced by our education systems. In regional contexts in South Australia, senior drama, music, and art classes are largely disappearing, this will shape the future stories we might not get to tell. Advocacy for arts education at every level is critical. Alongside this, a robust youth arts framework that is enabled by dedicated (quarantined) youth arts funding is necessary for the future of artists like me, who thought the arts was a waste of time and money until I accidentally stumbled into a youth arts project for teen mums.
Centrality of the Artist: Art is work and artists are workers. Our work should be valued with fair pay and working conditions, including sick pay, holiday pay and super and I echo the sentiments of Theatre Network of Australia’s National Cultural Policy Submission in this area. Greater security and support for freelance/independent artists who are taking (most of) the risks in our ecosystem.
Strong Institutions: Have succession plans that pro-actively build courage, creative risk-taking and imagine new futures (not just replicate the status-quo). Cycles of death and rebirth are normal, but the decimation of so many organisations, without the support structures to nurture new ones (including funding streams appropriate to this) weakens all of us.
Reaching the Audience: Invest in a Young People and Culture Framework, this should be a central theme of any National Cultural Policy (and deserves its own pillar). Even for companies who do not create work for children and young people, without an arts engaged next generation, we risk not developing artists or audiences for the future.
3. Please tell us how each of the 5 pillars are important to you and your practice and why. Feel free to respond to any or all that are applicable to you:
First Nations: We all live and work on unceded land. How can we all pay the rent and consider our interconnected impacts together?
A Place for Every Story: Regional artists face a cocktail of additional barriers to accessing funding, capacity building, networks, mentors, training and opportunities. Our needs are different and the responses to our needs also need to be different. I want to see more regional work produced in, by, from regional Australia (we are not just your audience).
Centrality of the Artist: Basic income scheme for artists and arts workers. Incentives for arts and non-arts organisations to have artists on the payroll working as artists. Art prizes, fellowships, grants etc to be tax exempt. Australia Council funds restored back to 2013 levels as a baseline and adjusted for inflation at a minimum. These actions will provide opportunities for me as an artist, and a future for the young artists I work with and nurture.
Strong Institutions: Reimagining formal structures (in particular incorporated associations and companies limited by guarantee with volunteer boards) to better enable flexibility and artistic leadership. I want to see more regional organisations based in regional locations with their leadership teams living and working from the regions (in the same way I want to see First Nations organisations led by First Nations people).
Reaching the Audience: The projects I have seen which have the biggest impacts were not always the ones with the largest audiences. How can our funding models/frameworks shift away from a “bums on seats” mentality/pressure to recognise a broader understanding of impact and audience development (especially in regional communities where the number of people we can reach is already smaller). Arts + health + work + life + community + regions + education = it’s all connected, and we need to think and operate in interconnected ways.
4. Are there any other things that you would like to see in a National Cultural Policy?
As a regional artist, the consideration of digital access is critical to me. This means education and building digital literacy, improved infrastructure, incentives for city-based organisations to collaborate with and embed regional artists as staff and collaborators.
The consideration of climate change, and the real effects this will have on how we live and work and make art over the coming decade.
Artist in residence models embedded into non-arts organisations, in particular local councils and schools.
DID I SAY A ROBUST AND RESOURCED YOUTH ARTS FRAMEWORK? I just want to be really, really clear this belongs everywhere, under every pillar, threaded into how we imagine and build the future. What is our 200year vision?
5. How would you like us to attribute your words?
I give permission for this submission to be published and attributed to me, Alysha Herrmann.
Heartburst on repeat and sugar in my mouth. We keep planting trees and trying to give the sky back to ourselves, and to each other. These lines on a map we’ve tried to tame. These ideas we’ve turned into borders (borders closed/borders open/borders closed/borders open/borders broken).
We are nine million doses of courage
We are needles of hope
Spinning
Spinning
Spun.
This year was made of time
The slow kind of time we tried to hoard
The fast kind of time that left no room to mourn
This year
This year
This year
I leave behind.
Today I will be dreaming,
And asking, always asking—
My small bestie checks the weather. My lover and I read the news and laugh at yesterday’s memes. Tangled in sheets beneath an Australian air-conditioner and the weight of unforgotten shame. Neck sticky with cobwebs and sweat. Hands gentle with fear. I ask questions that have no answers. An uncultured laksa simmers in the kitchen. We toss away the rain-ruined cardboard. We toss away the old lies. I serve the laksa hot.
A termite-eaten doghouse falls apart in the backyard.
The man who carries it away closes his eyes.
Today is heavy with dust and heat and hope.
Today is
Today is
Today is
Over.
Happy World Poetry Day.
x
UNESCO first adopted 21 March as World Poetry Day during its 30th General Conference in Paris in 1999, with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard. World Poetry Day is the occasion to honour poets, revive oral traditions of poetry recitals, promote the reading, writing and teaching of poetry, foster the convergence between poetry and other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and raise the visibility of poetry in the media.
Poetry has existed on every continent and every culture. Soak it in.
This piece was written 21st August 2019 for a uni assignment. My lecturer’s original comments and edits are included below. I’m publishing it here, now, on 15th March 2022 because Jess messaged me on Sunday and asked me to publish it.
Walker was 19 when he died (a few months after I wrote this piece). My son is 19 now. I’m so angry.
*
Cause: Hungry for the Ocean of my Ancestor’s Care
Last year I heard Natalie Harkin use the term blood-memory and haunting. Her voice giving shape and texture to the itching beneath my skin. I wanted to leap up from my chair and hug her. I wanted to call my Nana and ask her to tell me. I wanted to cry. Big fat, shuddering I can’t breathe cry.
I sat silent. Still. Contained.
It was a panel after all, and I was just another face in the crowd[AH1] .
*
The man who killed Elijah Doughty was granted parole after serving 19 months in prison. He was sentenced to just three years in jail. Just three years. For killing a 14-year-old boy.
In various reporting about the case, Elijah’s grandfather Albert Doughty is quoted as saying, “It sends the wrong message: you kill a black and you can get away with it.”
Of course, the man who killed Elijah was found not guilty of manslaughter – and certainly not guilty of murder. He was jailed after being convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.
The jury that convicted him did not contain a single Aboriginal person.
*
I fucking hate cops. I really fucking hate cops. The way they swagger with their hands on their hips, bristling with guns and radios and power. The way they shine a torch in your eyes and assume they know who you are.
*
You kill a black and you get away with it.
You kill a black and you get away with it.
You kill a black and you get away with it.
This whole country is killing blacks and getting away with it.
*
“Disadvantaged and dying young. All odds against you before your life has begun.”
Jessica Wishart, Bidjara woman, and mother of two Arrente boys sings from the stage. Her right hand lightly touches the swell of her growing pregnancy. A third Arrente boy on the way.
“Two years in your sentence, you take your own life. The land cries for you, your mother weeps. Her greatest fear, a death in custody.”
Jess is my friend and I’ve heard this song before. This time she has a full band behind her and a captive audience. She’s asked me to record her singing this song on my phone.
I hold my hands steady. I hold my breath.
“Dark-skinned boy we don’t speak your name. But the problem is, nor do they.”
*
You kill a black and you get away with it.
*
I’ve never watched Jordan Peele’s Get Out. I’m afraid of horror films. They give me nightmares.
I read the script for Get Out last month. I thought a lot about the Sunken Place after reading it. A dark cavernous place where no-one can hear you scream. A place where who you are is stripped from you completely.
In 2017 I visited the Beechworth Gaol. There is a cell – just one – that was for mothers who had breast-feeding infants. It has a private courtyard for outdoor time so that they weren’t put out into the yard with the rest of the prisoners. The room is small, narrow, cold and dark. As I stood in the cell – I was there on a social enterprise tour in a $60,000 leadership program – I tried to imagine being locked in there with a screaming hungry baby.
The prison closed in 2004 – the same year I finished Year 12. My son – my screaming hungry baby – turned two a week after my last Year 12 exam.
*
The Guardian has an interactive database that tracks every known Indigenous death in custody in Australia from 2008 to 2018.
Filter by
Year
Cause of death
Issues flagged
Display by
State
Gender
Location of death
Coloured boxes with silhouetted figures appear when you enter your filters. I click on a blue square (New South Wales the colour code tells me) with a thicker silhouette.
A pop-up box appears.
“The young man made two attempts at self-harm before taking his own life in his cell.”
The other information in the box tells me he was 20.
I click on a yellow square (South Australia) with the same thick silhouette.
Male, 18, SA.
Cause: Self harm.
*
My son is turning 17 in November. He has pale white skin, blue eyes and shoulder-length hot pink hair. Our next door neighbours – a husband and wife with two young kids – are both police officers. My son has never met them. My daughter, aged five, keeps asking to meet them.
*
Elijah Doughty would have turned 17 this year.
*
My Nana was 17 when my mother was born. The same age as I was when my son was born[AH3] .
*
The Uluru Statement from the Heart says “We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them.”
The Uluru Statement from the Heart was written in 2017. The same year I visited Beechworth Gaol[AH4].
*
My Nana holds my history hostage. She doesn’t know that she holds it hostage. Or maybe she does.
I remember my mother saying “..and don’t you ever bring it up. Some things are too painful.”
There are lots of things my family don’t talk about.
Things I don’t talk about.
*
My dad grew up on a farm called Karinya. That is not an English word. My grandma – my dad’s mother – remembers my great-grandfather buying fish from Aboriginal people who lived at the bottom of the cliffs. The Karinya homestead sat at the top of those cliffs.
I’ve never been there.
*
You kill a black and you get away with it.
*
I saw The Secret River, a play produced by Sydney Theatre Company a few years ago and I thought about Karinya and the cliffs my dad grew up on.
In the play, the Aboriginal cast spoke in Dharug and it wasn’t translated into English. Unless you spoke Dharug (I don’t), the only perspective you had access to for most of the play was the English characters. Most of the audience when I saw the play were old white people.
*
You kill a black and you get away with it.
*
My mother remembers playing with her darker-skinned cousins. She remembers their nicknames but not their legal names.
*
Jordan Peele tweeted in 2017 “We’re all in the Sunken Place.”
2017. The same year I visited Beechworth Gaol. The same year the Uluru Statement from the Heart was written. The same year that I tweeted this about Elijah Doughty: I’ll trade you/ one life for a motorbike/ one story to hold the life/ one mouth to ask why//
We are all in the Sunken Place.
“No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.”
*
Earlier this year Jess Wishart and Nancy Bates were performing at a Reconciliation Week Event. Both of them are singer/songwriters. Both of them are teaching me that my voice matters. That our voice matters. That we have to keep screaming. Writing. Talking. Listening. Singing.
“If you won’t take our hand
If you won’t understand
If you won’t see that justice
is something we don’t have.”
When Nancy Bates – a proud Barkinji woman and friend – sings, you listen. When Nancy says “Please sing. Please sing, everybody.”
You sing.
And they did, the crowd of old and young that filled the Adelaide Festival Centre Quartet Bar in May this year, they sang. Together they sang the song that Nancy dedicated to Elijah.
Elijah who would have been 17 this year.
“Please take our hand
Let’s make a stand
Help shine a light
On our Human Rights.”
*
I am made of fragments.
Fragments of history.
Fragments of memory.
Fragments of song and skin and trying to let the light in.
[AH1]I think we need just a touch more context for this – the reader doesn’t know exactly what Harkin meant, so can’t parse your reaction.
[AH2]I want a little bit more here – maybe a comment on issues of race and incarceration in Australia?
[AH3]Doesn’t add as much as other vignettes. Maybe relevance not as clear.
[AH4]Like connections but not everything needs to be said.
If you haven’t already – go and have a look at the overall info for Novel November, my FAQ blog and the original announcement about my Fellowship. I’m going to assume anyone reading these blogs has read all of that already so that I don’t have to keep repeating background details.
You can also see the world details starting to develop here and all of the writing I’ve done so far here, with other updates on my FB & Insta.
Fellowship Process
I spent the weekend out at Pichi Richi Park (between Port Augusta and Quorn) attending an artist retreat organised by Country Arts SA and Performing Lines as part of the recently announced Local Giants initiative. Twelve artists, including me, spent 2.5 days with three mentors and staff from both Country Arts SA and Performing Lines exploring and unpacking individual project ideas each artist pitched in their application. I pitched Novel November and the longer-term 2040 ambition I have from this residency.
It was so, so lovely to spend this time immersed with other regional artists sharing hopes, doubts, ideas and questions. It was also probably the first time I’ve really talked about my big ambitions for this project directly and openly with people outside of my direct community (other than the mentor chats through my Fellowship activity) so felt like a bit of a litmus test for “does this idea actually make sense and have potential?”
Readers, I think it does.
My challenge now, especially as I come to the end of this residency period supported by my Fellowship, is to make decisions about next steps to grow momentum and continue building the overall vision in a way that has integrity and a structure that can sustain me and others stepping in and out around other commitments. No small task but I am excited by what we might build and develop over the next few years. My brain right now is very much thinking about initial resources to support that, including meaningful local partnerships. More to come.
*
This week I’m back to writing each day at Part of Things with an open invitation for people to join me in person or online. You don’t have to be working on ideas/stories set in the lands of the river, you’re welcome to just hang out and work on unrelated projects. You can also still follow along everything I’m writing in the g-doc.
I haven’t created as much space as I wanted to for the deeper reflection on practice during my Fellowship so far. I’m okay with this overall, as the mentor chats have been really rich and opportunities like the Pichi Richi artist retreat have functioned in this way too, but I do still want to carve out a little more time over this coming week for that space to reflect, dream and learn. I will report back next Wednesday with how I go.
This weekend I’m also going to work on a small grant to support Sam and I to work together in Jan/Feb on developing up the bones of an idea for a graphic novel out of the lands of the river so far. It’s always a challenge to be in the middle of the creative side of the work and having to think about the next steps from a forward planning perspective, but it’s just the reality of this kind of work. Funding cycles are long (planning six to twelve months in advance minimum) and it also takes time to build other kinds of stakeholder and collaborator relationships, so I’m always balancing both in my head as I go. The here and now, and the where to next. Some people hate these two sides but I actually enjoy both. I enjoy strategic planning and grant writing and documenting as well as being in the room writing, dreaming, creating and collaborating. I’m probably very lucky to find pleasure in both.
Novel November Progress
Across the last few weeks I’ve attempted to explore at least one character on all of the five primary worlds of the lands of the river (which we still need to name overall?) and in doing so, continue to develop the wider world logic and other ideas as I go. This week I focused on characters on Uttie and Lican specifically, partly because Sam has done such beautiful illustrations of Tael and Vespur over the past weeks and I wanted to explore the places that had received a little less love.
I shared the Tael illustration in last week’s blog, but here is Sam’s vision of Vespur:
You can see dotted around the market a number of flower-fairies based on mice:
Though I also love these variations on flower-fairies too:
Sam did these imaginings of flower-fairies before I suggested the version based on mice and I love both for different reasons. I think I am starting to lean towards Sam’s original concepts (directly above) over the mice-fairy concept just because it enables more exploration for anyone who wants to create things in this world. Perhaps we might turn the mice-fairies into another project entirely, who knows?
People have asked “what happens if people write stories or create ideas that don’t match?” and honestly I think that’s fine. We’ve created some core things as a foundation but if people want to take those concepts and develop it in ways that are inconsistent that’s okay from my point of view. I’m working to be consistent within whatever I directly write and create myself, but it doesn’t bother me if we end up with a multiverse approach of things that don’t quite align or contradict each other. The real world is messy too and versions of the truth tell very different stories. I’m more interested in the process of people creating and building things with shared connection than I am in a super rigid world/structure that is internally consistent. Those of us who decide to continue collaborating and building bigger outcomes from this starting place will of course have to make decisions about what we do or don’t include, but that would be true anyway because any process of adapting between forms requires that (books to films for example). It might be naive of me, but I think the canon of this world will work itself out over time as we explore, iterate, test, share, develop. Either way, I’m interested in the process and in making space for people to believe in, and explore, their own ideas and instincts.
If you haven’t already – go and have a look at the overall info for Novel November, my FAQ blog and the original announcement about my Fellowship. I’m going to assume anyone reading these blogs has read all of that already so that I don’t have to keep repeating background details.
You can also see the world details starting to develop here and all of the writing I’ve done so far here, with other updates on my FB & Insta.
Fellowship Process
As mentioned in last week’s blog I spent Thurs & Fri in Adelaide attending Reset, with two fabulous emerging artists, Kirste Jade and Jess Weidenhofer, who have both been part of Novel November (and have worked with me on other projects in the past). Lots and lots of food for thought and you can scroll through and have a look at my reflections during the two days over on my Twitter account, and see a wider cross-section of insight via #ResetArts.
Attending conferences and gatherings like this has always been an important part of my practice/creative career for a bunch of reasons, most of which I’m terrible at articulating but if you’re twisting my arm to pull out some key reasons:
a sense of connection to the wider industry (I talked about regional isolation in my first blog of this series).
I’m really aware of my lack of formal training and the professional development and informal learning from these kinds of gatherings is really valuable to me.
the general opportunity to be exposed to new ideas, new professional crushes, new networks and new projects. I always go away with a handful of people/projects/organisations that I want to find out more about.
I feel a sense of responsibility to be an active participant and contributor to the sector/industry/community, and that means showing up, listening, reflecting and adjusting what/how I’m doing things where relevant. For example there were some really thoughtful and direct calls to action at Reset about divesting from mining companies (ie. don’t take money from resource corporations because it’s implicit support and “artwashing” the damage these corporations are doing to our communities and planet). I’ve always had mixed feelings on this because all of the money we accept is “dirty” and has strings attached, but the conversations at Reset have asked me to revisit the absolutionism in some of my earlier mixed feelings. Context does matter and there is nuance and I don’t want my work to directly or indirectly contribute to the success of companies and individuals who put profit over community. I’m always learning. Always.
as I’ve moved further into my career and developed professional networks and friendships, gatherings like Reset have also become mini reunions, which links back to the first dot point, but also has a value in itself. Relationships matter and the relationships I have sustain me and inspire me. All of my work starts with and is founded on relationships (*side note, if you haven’t already read it, please go and read Jade Lillie’s The Relationship is the Project. A fab book that resonates with so much of my perspectives.)
Attending Reset was good timing for Novel November, because as mentioned elsewhere, this residency project is a starting place to explore and start building the foundations for a much bigger long-term project, so thinking about sustainability, about workplace practices, about collaboration and advocacy and community building is very much on my mind. It was valuable to have some outside provocation to keep stirring and stretching my own thinking. It was also personally meaningful to me to have Kirste and Jess there with me. Both acknowledged that some of the content was difficult for them to connect to and understand and I remember that the first conferences I went to often felt like gibberish, but I know how each opportunity kept opening up new learning and new opportunities for me and I hope it will be the same for them. I’m still unpacking all of the conversations and ideas presented at Reset – I’m a slow thinker – but you can find out more about it here.
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If you’ve been following along in the g-doc, you’ll know I haven’t popped in any new writing since last week’s blog, which is why I’ve named this week’s blog: what does work look like?
I hear a lot of writers berating themselves for low word-counts and not producing enough content. I don’t do this (though I used to!) because I know that I produce a lot of work in lots of different ways across the many threads of my practice/work life anyway, but also because I know that “work” and “writing” doesn’t always look like sitting at a computer typing words into a document. Sometimes writing looks like taking a walk to process ideas and wrestle with a plot point, sometimes writing looks like planning out a practical schedule to give you more writing time and breathing space, sometimes writing looks like professional development and networking, sometimes writing looks like day-dreaming, sometimes writing looks like scrawling scraps of ideas onto serviettes while out to lunch with friends, sometimes writing looks like admin and the business side of making it all work, sometimes writing looks like research, sometimes writing looks like being out in the world and living your life, sometimes writing looks like rest.
This past week has included all of those things and more.
This coming weekend there are no community workshops because I’m lucky enough to be heading to Pichi Richi very early tomorrow morning to be part of an Artist Retreat with Country Arts SA and Performing Lines until Sunday afternoon. I’ll be working on my bigger picture ideas for Novel November during this retreat and connecting with other wonderful South Australian regional artists.
Next week I’ll be back to writing in the g-doc each day before wrapping up the Novel November residency with a little sharing celebration on Sunday 28th November.
Novel November Progress
Content note: grief, death, death of a young person, suicide.
As I mentioned in last week’s blog, a young person I know died recently and that informed some of my writing in the world of Novel November last week. Sam responded with this illustration to some of that writing:
Grief tastes like salt:
Too small in worlds too big
Mouths open with no words
The children hide in Tael
Beneath the surface of the sand
The children hid in Tael
Beneath the watchful eye of home
The children die/d in Tael
Beneath the echo of a lie
Sam has also created this beautiful rendering of Tael and folk headed to the library:
Sam’s illustrations are beautiful and I’m going to share more of them on Insta & FB across next week so stay tuned for that and my next update on Wednesday 24th Nov.
creating art in the desert 