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13 - The Strength of Us as Women

A Poetics of Relationality and Reckoning

from Part IV - Embodied Poetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

By
Jeanine Leane  and
Natalie Harkin
Edited by
Ann Vickery
Ann Vickery
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
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Summary

Taking Kerry Reed-Gilbert’s anthology The Strength of Us as Women: Black Women Speak (2000) as touchstone, the chapter undertakes a conversation between two Aboriginal women poets from Narungga and Wiradjuri standpoints about the transformative power of Indigenous poetry and its significant contribution to literature in the world. Offering an alternative to the essay, the authors discuss embodied engagements with the colonial archive and the theme of relationality that informs so much of Aboriginal writing. The chapter considers the potential of poetry to be both an affective tool and literary intervention. It outlines the methods of Gathering and Archival-Poetic praxis as ways to explore the counter-narrative potential of poetry. In considering the role of memory work and memory-making, the authors also discuss blood memory and body memory.

Keywords

archivecolonialismrelationalitystandpointGatheringArchival-Poetic
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry , pp. 219 - 235
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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