SMS: I’m so glad you said that. You mentioned being in dialogue with infinite voices – and I note again in your collection the various shades of subjectivities that your poems embody – and so how do you decide who is speaking and with what intent?
JM: The poem comes first a lot of the time; it bubbles out.
SMS: The poem comes first, or is it that the poet really just needs to reveal themselves to the poem? In this process of excavating as they often – we artists say that that’s what poetry is, it’s this excavation where you’re uncovering your experiences and your thoughts to be able to dig out – to uncover what it is you want to say; gently or otherwise. And you do that with discipline and patience and creativity; that’s part of the practice. And sometimes it’s very messy, as we said, and it’s not linear. So, I do wonder whether the poem is there waiting for you and it’s just waiting for you to reveal yourself, or you’re revealing the poem?
JM: The poem becomes the way the world makes sense, and the sense reveals itself through the mystery of the poem. The origins and the destination are complex and twisting, but there you are, right in the middle of the world you’ve made with breath and word and story and the unknown, sharing that small world with infinite other worlds.
Sara M Saleh is a human rights campaigner, poet, writer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon, living on Gadigal land. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been published in English and Arabic in various national and international outlets including the Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin, Overland Journal, Kill Your Darlings, Red Room, Rabbit Poetry, the Sweatshop Women’s Anthology: Volume II, and global anthologies Making Mirrors, Solid Air: Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word, A Blade of Grass, and Borderless: a transnational anthology of feminist poetry. She has run poetry workshops in countless classrooms, community spaces, and festivals across the country, and has performed nationally and internationally. She is co-editor of the 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. She is the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review’s 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. She is currently developing her first novel Songs For The Dead and The Living as a recipient of the inaugural Affirm Press Mentorship for Sweatshop Western Sydney. She sits on the board of national advocacy organisation GetUp! and is a proud Bankstown Poetry Slam ‘Slambassador’.
Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and artist based on Wangal land, Sydney. Her practice is centred around poetics while producing works that encompass installation, digital, performance, film and print. Their writing has been widely published nationally and internationally, and performed on stages around the world. Jazz’s first poetry collection, the best-selling
how to make a basket (UQP, 2021) was the 2020 winner of the David Unaipon Award. Their second collection
mark the dawn is out in August 2024 from UQP.
