‘The Edge of Reality’: Paul Magee in Conversation with Paul Collis, Jen Crawford and Wayne Knight

By , , and | 1 September 2023
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PM: Just here.

This is the stretch of the road in which I finished the final edits to a poem about the last time I ever spoke to my father. It was a telephone conversation. I was in Tierra del Fuego in the very bottom of South America and I had a phone conversation with my father.

PC: Did your dad die suddenly?

PM: Yeah.

PC: You were away from home, away from him at the time?

PM: About 3,000km away.

But the last communication we had was when I was in Tierra del Fuego, maybe 20,000km away.

PC: Wow.

PM: Yeah but coming out here, where you don’t see too many signs of telephones – somehow it was the right place for finishing that poem. I reckon it’s the red dirt, actually, this red dirt really affects me strongly.

PC: Strong Country, mate.

It’s very healing Country too, this stuff.

PM: It is, and the red is the same iron that’s in our blood, it’s the same minerals that make our blood red.

PC: What colour is the blood in your heart, Paul?

Do you know?

PM: No.

PC: It’s a clear yellow.

When the first heart surgeon started to cut into the heart to try and save people’s lives, they couldn’t find the blood, cause it’s really thin in there. It’s a yellow plasma colour.

PM: When I’m writing a poem, that’s the kind of blood I want to find.

PC: What blood?

PM: The stuff that is –

PC: In the heart?

PM: Yeah, right in the heart of it.

PC: You have just expressed what a lot of Aboriginal people say about Country – it’s my heart.

PM: Yeah.

PC: All the Aboriginal laws were laws of obligation: to each other, to the law itself, to Country, to all the totems. Even though it hasn’t been taught to us for a long time, there’s a strong feeling for all these totemic relationships – to trees, to animals.

I’ve spoken to a lot of kids who have been brought up in Sydney, or in boys’ homes, people that have had no relationship with their traditional Country at all, or even with other Aboriginal people. Some of them hadn’t known that they were Aboriginal, until later in life. But they’d talk about what I’d say is Aboriginality and that can’t be killed, not even by them, it’s still there. There’s something eating away at them, waiting for them to return.

PM: When you were talking about the blood that’s in the heart, that’s a different colour – that’s I think when you’ve got the real words.

That’s the ink I want to write with.

PC: Wayne, when you go to the cemetery here with me, what’s that feeling like?

WK: Sad.

PC: How about that fence, do you want to talk about that?

WK: No.

PC: What about that gin1 next to the –

It’s a funny name, gin, isn’t it? That’s a derogatory term that whitefellas use for Aboriginal women.

Aboriginal people say yapa: that means ‘Sister,’ ‘Daughter’ too.

I mean, I don’t know enough language, and that’s one of the yearning things for me. And I can’t speak English. I haven’t got a large repertoire of language or anything like that. In some ways, you are your language. I don’t know if it was Stuart Hall, or Franz Fanon, who said that to speak a language carries the weight of that culture –

PM: I think he said to write the poem is not about speaking the language, it’s about letting the language speak through you.

PC: So, when you wrote the poem about your Dad, who wrote it? Is it a conscious or an unconscious thing, when the poetry happens?

  1. Cotton mill. ↩
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Paul Magee studied in Melbourne, Moscow, San Salvador and Sydney. He is author of From Here to Tierra del Fuego (University of Illinois Press: 2000), Cube Root of Book (John Leonard Press: 2006), Stone Postcard (John Leonard Press: 2014) and Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought (Rowman and Littlefield: 2022). Paul is Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra, where he directs the Centre for Cultural and Creative Research (CCCR).

More by Paul Magee on Cordite Poetry Review →
Jen Crawford is author of Admissions (Five Islands Press, 2000), bad appendix (Auckland: Titus Books, 2009), Napoleon Swings (Auckland: Soapbox Press, 2009), Pop Riveter (Auckland: Pania Press, 2011), Koel (Cordite Books, 2016) and Lichen Loves Stone (Tinfish Press, 2016). With Rina Kikuchi, Jen co-edited and part-translated Poet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets from Japan (2017), an anthology of 10 contemporary female Japanese poets. Jen is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Canberra.

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Wayne Knight is a Barkindji/Kunya person. Wayne was born and raised in Bourke. Wayne’s early life was informed by his Grandmother, Neta, a Kunya Elder who lived in Bourke, and who taught Wayne 'cross-language talk' (a multilingual speak that was used between Kunya, Barkindji, Murrawarri, Wongamara language groups in communication, before the coming of Westerners to the Plains Country of his birth). Wayne was taught how to track and identify specific plants and animals by his Grandfather Hope (a Barkindji person). Wayne's knowledge of Barkindji lands was enhanced with and under the tuition of senior Barkindji Uncles and Elders, who assisted his teaching of the waterways between Brewarrina and Menendi Lakes areas, and on the plains country, between Brewarrina (Nyemba Country) and Bourke, Cobar and Wilcannia. Wayne held a senior Indigenous Parks and Wildlife Officer's position with NSW Dept. Parks and Wildlife until a serious back injury caused him to retreat from that work. Wayne's knowledge of Barkindji Culture and Country is unmatched in the Bourke area.

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Paul Collis is a Barkindji man. He was born in Bourke, in far north/west New South Wales. His early life was informed by Barkindji, Kunya, Murawarri, Wongamara and Nyempa story tellers and artists, who taught him Aboriginal Culture and Law. He is author of Dancing Home (University of Queensland Press, 2017) and Nightmares Run Like Mercury (Recent Works Press, 2021). Paul works as Director, Indigenous Engagement, at the University of Canberra.

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