AW: Yes, it’s that physical embodied element.

BS: Yes, I want to take people on a journey. Like most poets, you lead the reader in one direction and then take them in a completely different direction, getting people to think differently about things. I like to incorporate the senses into my poetry. I want people to feel, imagine smell and taste. This is evident in my poem ‘A Few of My Favourite Things’, published in Rabbit. I love reading this poem in public and watching the audience’s reactions.

AW: I thought so. Absolutely. Now, coming back to how we first connected, as I mentioned at the start, I came across your work when you applied for Invisible Walls. My project co-facilitator Dan Disney and I were blown away by your writing. So, of course, we wanted to have you on board. In 2022, you undertook a literary exchange with Korean poet Ha Jaeyoun. Each of you produced three astounding new poems in response to each other’s writing and your dialogues. One of the things that came up in your final reflections and Jaeyoun’s, too, for the points of commonality you found in relation to invasion or colonisation is that Jaeyoun is a descendant of people who survived colonisation by the Japanese and remains impacted by that history’s ongoing courts today. Could you share a little more about your experience of the exchange and what you learned through it?

BS: I was ecstatic that I was accepted into the program. It was when I felt like I was gaining momentum with my writing and putting it out into the universe for consideration and getting feedback; this has guided me to where I am now. Most of the time, you’re writing in silence, alone, and you think to yourself: ‘Does this even mean anything?’ When I look at my writing career, being included in the program had a marked effect on me and gave me the confidence to keep going with my writing.

The process of being paired with a Korean poet was so interesting because we needed to communicate through a translator. In the beginning, it was a stop-start conversation. But once we got going, there were similarities and one of them was colonisation and about others invading and influencing our destiny. What I also found interesting was we talked a lot about middens. Midden that we discussed were Aboriginal middens distinct concentrations of shell, bone, botanical remains, ash and charcoal – evidence of past Aboriginal hunting, gathering and food processing activities within a particular area. Our conversation went on to discuss the middens located in South Korea where pottery and shells were found.

I didn’t think middens would be the thing that we would have in common. In a way, our conversations together were forming a ‘word middens’, where some words were discarded, retained, and built up in layers, evidence of our interaction. Jaeyoun shared with me that there was a ship that had sunk with children on it in South Korea and poets wrote poems for the children who passed away. That’s why I wrote ‘Oak Trees and Gum Trees’, as one of the poems created from the program. I asked Jaeyoun to read me a hundred poems by a hundred poets, and then I talked about bream jawbone and shells commonly found in middens:

AW: Amazing. Such a distinctive connection.

BS: Jaeyoun is also interested in crystals and elements, so that’s why I included that reference in the poem.

AW: We’re drawing to the end of our time, but before we wind up, a key question I want to ask is what you’re working on now and/or what’s on the horizon as your next steps. In other words, are there new books or projects we can soon look forward to?

BS: I secured a 2024 Varuna First Nations Fellowship which I completed in January 2024. Soon after the residency, I was approached by Recent Works Press to publish my debut collection of poetry, which is due to be published in September this year. So, I have been working hard on getting the manuscript ready. But I have also been active in progressing my writing profile, I was published in the Rock Remain: Blak Poetry and Story anthology published through Wakefield Press and commissioned to write a poem for the Kindred Tree project. I was also a judge for the 2024 ACT Book of the Year and have run a few writing workshops and readings with the US Mob Writers. In the coming months, I will be part of a panel at the 2024 Headlands Writers Festival, and in October, I will present a paper at the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry in New Zealand on the experience of being part of the Invisible Walls program. My first piece of writing for 2025 will be an essay in the Griffith Review.

AW: Well, thank you once again for making this time possible. It has been so wonderful talking with you, and I’m really looking forward to reading your upcoming poetry book.