Mt Alfred – coupe 735-502-0004 (Tambo)
Text by Louise Crisp | photograph by Lisa Roberts
Mt Alfred – Nuggur-yowatie
Coupe city my friend says – there’s not much forest left standing
between the coupes – VicForests strip mining since the seventies
I walk into a tree a hollow a human-sized hollow knowing it’s the last
old tree for 200 years: from colony to coupe the past encapsulates the present
Louise Crisp’s latest collection is Glide published by Puncher and Wattman (2021). A previous collection Yuiquimbiang (Cordite Books 2019) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and highly commended in the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. Her work focuses on specific regional environments of south-eastern Australia and experiments with the formal possibilities of integrating poetics and environmental activism. Crisp lives in East Gippsland on the unceded lands of the Gunaikurnai nation.
Lisa Roberts is a photographer who chases bats, blossom, disappearing trees and epic landscapes. She lives and works in Gippsland on unceded Gunnai Kurnai Country. Her current project is The future is a big sky. A survey of old forests scheduled for logging and burning. Her recent exhibition was Flying Foxes and Disappearing Trees at East Gippsland Art Gallery.
