TJ
I wrote poetry from the age of six until leaving the city at 40, and then I abandoned my muse. Over the past decade here on Djaara Country, I’ve written not a single poem. In the city, my muse was existential angst, uncertainty, shifting identities, and capitalism. I have no need for her in this life of abundance and joy.
My life now is profoundly imbued with agroecology – a science, a set of practices, and a social movement (Wezel, Bellon & Doré 2009). Agroecology is a scientifically and experientially justified practice of agriculture that is sensitive to the ecosystems in which it is situated and that fosters the democratic participation of farmers in the food system. I am a farmer, a butcher, an activist, and an activist-farmer-scholar researching the agroecological transition in Australia. From hands immersed in soil to stroking the bellies of grunting piglets, to clutching a boning knife seaming muscles from hanging carcasses, to tap tap tapping dispatches of persuasion and analysis, I am seeking to be here, doing this.
The process of this creative collaboration with Jess has taught me that the gentle muse who guides me through the life I now lead in common with nature is ready to flirt once again with poetry, to sing out of tune, in harmony, in questions and rhythmic pairings.
Jessica L Wilkinson has published three poetic biographies, Marionette: A Biography of Miss Marion Davies (Vagabond 2012), Suite for Percy Grainger (Vagabond 2014) and Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine (Vagabond, 2019), highly commended for the Wesley Michel Wright Award. In collaboration with composer Simon Charles, Marionette was developed into a performance work of voice, music and sound; they released an album in 2018. Jessica is the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry and the offshoot Rabbit Poets Series of single-author collections by emerging Australian poets. With Bonny Cassidy, she co-edited the anthology Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (Hunter, 2016); and with Cassandra Atherton, Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours (Hunter, 2021). She is an associate professor in Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Tammi Jonas is an agroecologist in principle and in practice, farming heritage-breed Large Black pigs, cattle, and garlic with her bricoleur husband Stuart on the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people in the central highlands of Victoria. She is president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), co-editor and co-author of Farming Democracy: Radically transforming the food system from the ground up (2019), and undertaking a PhD at the University of Western Australia on the biodiverse and decolonising practices and politics of small-scale farmers, and the impacts of the state on their efforts. She is grateful to have at last fallen for a new muse, the Land, having abandoned her abusive capitalist muse a decade ago.
