Jelena & Caroline

Speaker 1
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Speaker 2
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper. This month, we're featuring live recordings from the September No Wave Poetry readings at the Wheat Chief Hotel. In earlier programs, we've heard from the poets Jennifer Liston and JV Birch, and this week, we'll be hearing from Jelena Dinic and Caroline Reid. The September No Wave Poetry readings were curated by the poet Jill Jones. We begin with readings by Jelena Dinic.

Speaker 3
Hello everyone. We're meeting on Kaurna country and always was, always will be. I would also like to acknowledge people around the world who are forced to leave their homes in search of safety and freedom. Many of them don't have the opportunity to share their story and I would like to invite you to pause and reflect on what inclusion means to you.

Why? We shared a cigarette in front of the grammar school. Small shots of smoke traced us over the winter's icy glow. Light was a blur far behind. The snow was not white. People walked past us. Their eyelids heavy with uncertainties. Our borders closed in on us or was it us growing closer? Sometimes the fear decided. Under an old coat we counted the ribs on our bodies. In a panic tickled each other away. Our love was escaping like a separate entity. We were yet to learn about escaping. My words sound foreign now. I unpack and inhale a breath of spring and everything eventually is just lightness. A path of a question in a distance. Why? My multiple interpretations of it reduced meanings, disconnected dots.

There is nothing left to say or hold back, hands free of touch. I don't return for a while but when I do I hear clearly words scraping between my ribs. If you only knew you would never have left. In the early 90s Serbia was under strict economic sanctions. Civil war was raging in Bosnia and Croatia and my father like many other men was about to be mobilized. So the the day our travel document arrived we packed our car and left our home quietly. I was 17 and had just spent a long summer holiday on the Mediterranean coast and I was unhappy to leave.

So due to sanctions our departure was outside of Serbia. One of our the closest airports was in Athens. So we had to drive through the Kosovo border, Macedonian border and Greek border down south. So we were stopped a few times by military, by soldiers and police. But when we reached Athens and found a hotel to spend the 19 my mother requested an iron. We were living for Australia in the morning and she wouldn't wear a crisp dress. So I looked up in the dictionary and I found that iron has multiple meanings and I took the dictionary into reception and said no to chemical elements and chemical reactions and explosions and yes to this.

And that was the beginning of my love affair with English language. I was in Serbia last year and a few points emerged from that trip. Garden of Stones. It is the first place I go to after I find the house key under the pot and unlock the door. My hand reaches for the switch on the wall through the cobwebs. The new neighbour across the road is glad to see the lights are on. Our windows are open. The night cat and moves as air goes in and out. I hide behind it to undress. The street cats are missing. It is late to ask why. The many lives have gone gently into a distant thought. I walk towards the bed with the lightness of a cat. Wishing my previous life.

A pear falls off the tree. A familiar thud on dry ground. My body gives into a dream as deep and warm as a wimp. At sunrise the old woodpecker is back. Might not be the same one. I'm not what I once was either. He's drumming into the trunk echoing persistence. His whole suggests he flies solo. It takes a long time to grow the strong wings alone. The morning is slowly introducing other birds. I pack for the cemetery. Candles, matches, brandy and biscuits. On the way people say I brought the rain but it always rains when I walk towards the dead. There are holes on the road. I walk as if looking to find again what I left behind.

At the gate the keeper talks with his fist. When you find it never let it go. But he thinks of things that are yet to be born or given a chance like love and hope. He says he recognizes my walk, my step over the cobblestones. The sound of it like a heartbeat. I step back to hear it better. What is in the center of regular stone but stone? When thrown away it doesn't break. The earth has taken enough. Its face distorted after the storms.

05:44

The years of unsaid goodbyes are not coming back. The stone garden has grown. Its flowers are growing towards it. Where do I go? He says ahead past this lifetime then it will be easier. Then we will talk again. Two crows laugh across the freshly washed sky. When I step through the gate, their laugh is perhaps a scream. Is it true they remember a face? I watch one of them closely. The bearer of warnings is of no use. Dear crow, no picking at the old's cabs. The bruise on my knee means I heal slowly. Perhaps I should warn you, if I were a crow, I would land next to you. Smooth my feathers against your life. What is a greater warning?

Being close or flying high, I won't try to understand too much has been lost. It is windy and hot, the granite dust is glued on my skin. I walk the line between the rivals and the patches. The dear one's stones stand up to the living one's hearts. Behind the stones, one at a time, cats arise. Loyal and unafraid, they follow their owners. I feed them biscuits. A few drops of brandy to the ground, then a sip from a soul. A need to clear the air. Through the seasons, a red plastic rose has turned grey. Looking down is not easy. I kneel to light a candle away from the wind. The sun threatens to burn a soul. It doesn't. Just a touch on my shoulder.

A kiss. A reminder to return. Thank you. Shoes. Stepping forward, loud and furious, you think you will reach the stars. You have nails in your stomach. Pain is meant to fit. Your skin shines like a painted handstone. You step on your earthly promises. There will be no wedding. The world left behind is our new beginning. Come, I push my foot in your throat. Now watch where you go.

Letting go in Istanbul. The Bosphorus Bridge 2022. I lean over the boat into the Bosphorus to see Istanbul lying on two continents, falling asleep on neither. A wave slightly lifts the boat and drops it. Half a glass of wine begins to taste like weakness. I hold easier than clarity. And everything inside it is divided into the even sips of if and only. Where do you go when you close your eyes? Not so close to the edge, a gaze into the night. A body remembers a dive into distance comfortably.

A young man with a camera gestures me to pose, shows me how to lift my glass and smile for a small fee. His eyes are lined with a charcoal pencil. He takes a photo of me with the bridge behind. It feels familiar, this strength from afar, the bridge hanging in the dark, in perfect harmony with sky and water, holding hands with the city. Saying, come closer in front of everyone, without words or movement. Yet any closer, and I worry, that behind me is always a bridge I burn as I cross, accidentally, completely. My thoughts curve its greatness, weighing elegance and exhaustion in a sign of a scale, uniting and fooling apart.

My memories of those who never held hands are not anymore than the hands of my husband and my children, who always had led the go so easily to run with excitement towards others. In a moment, another woman tosses her hair playfully for a photo. Much has been said and not meant. No time left for regrets. The boat turns back on a gentle wave, light breaking on the water between the continents. All this wades tenderly sparkles towards midnight.

09:43

So there are always a few ethical questions to consider. I went writing about family members and I'm learning how to do that. But every now and then, I just throw my husband under the bus. So this is, he’s in the travel business and this is my only COVID poem, Close Contacts.

My husband has returned. A traveller whose flight was cancelled has found his way home. He slowly unpacks while I make space for the unexpected. The house is full of him. I find him everywhere. He hovers in the kitchen and takes over the knives. He lifts paper to the window's light and slices it with a sharpest blade. I keep saying, wash your hands. This virus is deadly. We wait from a distance for the world to return. We crossed off the list of our commitments.

He cuts the tenderloins and offers a slowly cooked dinner. I look for a tablecloth. We talk and take time to hear how each other's sentences end. And the sky is empty of temptation. In the corner, the suitcase still lurks with a broken zip and an old address. An invitation. If we had a choice, where would we rather be? Thank you.

11:16

Speaker 2
On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program Emerging Writers. Our guests today are the poets Jelena Dinnich and Caroline Reid, recorded live at the September No Wave Poetry readings at the Wheat Sheaf Hotel. We caught up with Jelena after her readings. Yelena, would you tell us about when you first started writing poetry and what inspired you to write?

Speaker 3
Oh thank you for your question, it's a big question isn't it? And I grew up surrounded with poetry. Poetry was part of our daily life I should say. I grew up with two grandmothers. One was from oral tradition of storytelling and another one was a big reader. So both of them influenced me in many ways. Oral poetry was a big part of my upbringing and then I would spend some time with my other grandmother who gave me books and gave me some great titles to read. And yeah, the world, my world was basically full of books and about books.

Speaker 2
You write in both Serbian and English. Do some poems come to you in Serbian and others in English? What draws you to writing some of your poems in one language and some in the other?

Speaker 3
I write in both languages but I think behind my writing if I have, sometimes I have an idea and I think that's a better poem and that's it's to me, it’s the idea that counts, so sometimes that line, that idea for a poem would come in Serbian and it would come in English and it's not something that I can really contro. But any language, it doesn't matter which language it comes in as long as I like it - I try to grab it as soon as it comes and then I play with it later. I write poetry in English mostly and prose in Serbian, so I don't know why.

Speaker 2
Congratulations on winning the 2019 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award. What was it like to win that award for you?

Speaker 3
Well, it was a great surprise and it meant the world really because I worked in the manuscript for many years, probably ten years altogether, and to suddenly be recognised in that way was a really big thing for me. And also in terms of writing a second language, so to be acknowledged or to be recognised, to have the poems being recognised in that way was really fabulous. Fantastic.

Speaker 2
In 2014 you co -edited the friendly street poet's anthology, The Infinite Dirt. What was that experience like and what did you learn from it?

Speaker 3
That was a great experience. It seems so long ago now. I co -edited The Infinite Dirt with two other amazing poets who I love, Tom Sullivan and Glenn Jones. We had really, we had fun doing this and I learnt a lot from both of them. It was a great experience and it was about how do we put these poems together, how can these poems speak to one another, how it was quite challenging to choose the poems and how do we create a book out of these poems. But it was really a great experience.

Speaker 2
Can we ask what you're working on at the moment?

Speaker 3
A collection of poems, took 10 years. I was working on it for 10 years. I hope the second one doesn't take another 10 years. I'm working on another poetry collection and I have the title for now and I can share it with you. I hope it's going to be Hope and Other Guests but we'll see how they go.

15:16

Speaker 2
Yelena, thank you so much. Thank you. That was the poet Jelena Dinnich speaking with us at the live recording of the September No Wave Poetry readings. We hear now from the poet Caroline Reid.

Speaker 4
It's such a deep pleasure to be here on Garnerland and thanks to Jelena and Julie and Jennifer. It's been Poetry Month and I did a workshop online with a young poet, Maddie Godfrey, who described prose poems as mosh pits and that resonated beautifully with me. So I'm reading a few prose poems tonight.

Impressions of hate and love. How did we live before grief became a cruise ship pressing on our necks? Before the white assassin who proclaimed love skimmed smooth black stones over our pink lake. These are the colors of my house. From my boat I spy footprints in the mud. Big toe missing on the right foot. Trout ate toe. Destiny ate trout. So it goes. How did we ever live before women gobbled their own feet? I have other questions too. Are we seen? Are we valued? Are we felt? I'm not saying grief is easy. Imagine all your earthly life. You're a poet. Then you keel over. Life is a double park dream.

But don't worry. It's not contagious. When we're afraid to cry, we tiptoe drunk over eons of silvery scars. Hungry as cabin boys, we sniff out honey in the hull. Steel thunder. Sail into blame. Until we remember its connections between things that save us. Now that I'm drowning in seawater, I will cut you a moon from this old skiff. How did we ever even begin to live before tough talking secrets slipped unnoticed from the shore, joyfully jumped ship into the heaving body of poetry?

Thank you. Mosh pit! Waited an eternity for the leprechaun to answer my questions about sad. That's the title. And on Wednesday, I stopped eating meat. My heart big as a boulder. My address the vacant lot opposite the fish shop. Some soreness in the hip and shoulder and all the gods ascending. Now I think in nerves, tongue raw like I inhaled too much sugar. Shadow a shade of pine detached from the body descending. I speak in sentence scraps to you who knows everything. My heart smashed like a Friday night car crash. I'm scared to be born again. Scared to weep like the god offloading storm clouds onto stop signs. The way metal won't melt in the rain and look how it glistens.

At last, a shotgun list. Heart, Crabbit as my dar. Smashed glass eyes, bones crunchy. When I shout, I break teeth. I am jealous of your corpse, your store unpacked. When I am gone, who will read the story of sad to the dead who have forgotten everything?
Who whisper elaborate lies in foolish places? Do we believe there will be sad no more? My flesh decays in a title. Wait, please wait my untamed heart. Then pump your remote language of sadnessing. Yeah, it's a real word.

I'll just do this little one. This was published in Cordite. So if you don't get it all, you can look it up. A small letter to history. And it's an ecstatic poem actually. Response to the artwork by Alexandra Baxter. I know how you must feel Brad, which is the same title as Roy Lichtenstein's 1964 pop art painting. And the best line in this one is actually from the artist's statement, which is what is visible, romances, what is unseen, attempts, sensibility. That's pretty much, much deeper than I would ever write. So keep an eye out for that one. Small letter to history.

Dear Brad, I've been told the 1950s make a great hiding place. Neither windy nor cloudy, perfect for travel by bike. Even the font size on billboards is bigger. There is also loads of alcohol and low price cars. Some germs can cross kitchen counters in less than an hour. How fast can you get here? Just kidding. What I mean is, how do you get people to like you when you're wearing played golf plants and deliberate planet blank face? Sorry, not sorry. Now that the doomsday clock is 90 seconds to midnight, I constantly collide with not keeping my mouth shut. I wish I were different. Chokes. Dear Brad. The moon says, I don't have to be a woman just because history says so.

What is visible? Romances. What is unseen? Attempts sensibility. Knitting done -colored sweaters to match the shade of twilight kangaroos on your golf course? Crush me now. I'm a middle -aged poet, not a mute spectator. A goddess with an android in my ethical shop tote bag. I birth time from a fevered dream while high on LSD in Paris in 1964. My mind is a landmine. My boobs starting guns. I fold temper into your tie, hashtag stranglehold. Like one of eight moons in cold press paper, I contain multitudes. Can you feel the negative space between us expanding? Thank you everyone.

21:39

Speaker 2
Since we last spoke with you back in February and listeners can catch that conversation on our podcast site, what have you been doing?

Speaker 4
I've been working on a new collection called Room 1824 and it's moving along quite nicely. I'm still trying to find the form of it and that is taking a long time. So in terms of the writing I think I'm being a little bit hesitant and I think I just need to dive in a little bit more and get the first draft out and then worry about the form of it. So that's what I've been doing in terms of writing and a couple of other things I've been doing is working with a couple of visual artists. So I've done two exhibitions this year which I didn't actually expect to do but it's been a wonderful experience.

So we just did one as part of Sala. It was called The Pursuit of Happiness and it was at West Torren's Auditorium Gallery. We all had different things. I mainly worked with photos and collage and text so that was there for about a month. We just brought that down a few days ago and the other thing that's been taking up my time is I did a program called Vaulting Ambitions that I did at Prompt Creative. So that's a co-thing, it's a business arts development thing that's, so it's about artists having access to professionals to teach them a little bit more about the business side of arts basically.

So I've been focusing a little bit on that which means I'm trying to tidy up my website and pitching shows to people and all those kinds of things that can be a bit scary but having that support there has been absolutely wonderful. So yeah, it's mainly what I've been doing.

Speaker 2
And you mentioned working with visual artists and for the fringe you collaborated with visual artist Donna Gorge on a multi-disciplinary project titled SOLIS. Yes. I went along to that and really, really enjoyed it. What was the general reception to this multi-disciplinary project? Yeah.

Speaker 4
We had a really positive, positive response to it and it was just so wonderful. So we did the readings in the gallery and Donna also worked with people, sat in that tent made out of tea bags and had conversations with people and that really opened up emotions for people. So it was a very, it was one of those exhibitions that was very quiet, you know, and we ended up putting, as you saw Kate, so I wrote the poems on rice paper, which were very light and delicate and they sort of matched the delicateness of the tea bags and it was really interesting because people had, people actually read the poems, people stood there and read the poems, didn't just move on from one art work to the other and yeah, people were really moved, people were really moved by it.

Yeah, so it was really nice to be able to hold that space and really just kind of be really open about talking about grief and yeah, it was really lovely. It felt almost kind of like we created a little bit of a sacred space, you know, and we were glad that people trusted us enough to kind of sit with us when I read the poems and to sit with Donna and you know, it's asking people to be really a bit raw, isn't it, those kinds of things. So I think people that come along to those kinds of exhibitions are very, very open, are willing to be open and we are really grateful for that because there's no, it's no fun kind of making work and being in a gallery and no one's there. So yeah, we were really lucky, we feel really blessed to have had that interaction.

25:55

Speaker 2
So you're planning future multidisciplinary projects, looking ahead to next year's say.

Speaker 4
Donna was one of the artists that I worked with on the pursuit of happiness and that was pretty full on as well and Donna has been working very very hard also and in fact Bernadette is the third artist and we had such a beautiful time working together that we do want to work together again maybe next year but we haven't actually kind of like talked about what that might be yet yeah I think we all sort of feel that because we've all kind of had loss in our lives in the last few years and we sort of we did all sort of comment oh wouldn't it be great just to do a pink exhibition.

And then the Barbie film came out and we're like no we're not going to do that but that is just a little bit of an indication. I think where we just kind of like maybe we just need to lift a little bit of light like we're never gonna you know we're never gonna be doing a fairy floss kind of show but we all sort of felt like let's lift let's let's lighten things a little we need a little more light coming in so but yes we definitely want to work together, we just, we're just waiting for that idea to percolate and bubble up and Donna and I are actually working so we've developed a workshop so I do a three hour writing workshop in the morning and then she picks up those threads and teaches people how to make an artist book using those words and text so we're still working together.

Speaker 2
Yeah. So how can people find out about that work?

Speaker 4
That one, we've already done one at a late library but the next one coming up is at Gallery 1855 in Tea Tree Gully. There's a gallery out there and that's happening in November. Best bet is to go to Tea Tree Gully Gallery 1855 and they have all of their workshops. They've got heaps of workshops actually and it's mostly visual artists that come along but writers can come too.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Brilliant. It's lovely to catch up with you again, Caroline. You too, Dave. Thank you so much. And we will keep in touch and find out more down the track.

Speaker 4
Yeah awesome ,that'd be great - thanks so much.

Speaker 2
That was the poet Caroline Reid - and earlier in the program we heard from the poet Jelena Dinnich - and with Jelena and Caroline we complete our three-part series recorded live at the September No Wave Poetry readings held at the Wheat Sheaf Hotel.
Speaker 2
You've been listening to Emerging Writers. This program can be heard at the same time each week on Vision Australia Radio, VA Radio Digital, online at VARadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts where you can catch up on earlier episodes.

Speaker 1
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29:14

Speaker 2
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