Poetry Writing Workshops as ‘True, Impossible Archives’ (or, Teaching as Collaborative Research)
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Several years ago, my first-year students at Western Sydney University were reading 'Wild Flowers' alongside 'Rise Again' by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish.One student offered an electrifying reading of Eckermann's poem that I've never forgotten.2 He began by recalling a trip to Beirut he'd made as a young adult, long after leaving the city as a child and migrating with his family to Western Sydney.How did the city appear to you, I asked?The same, he deadpanned, with more bullet holes.My student observed that each stanza of 'Wild Flowers' marks a different phase in Australia's recent history-the first, colonial invasion, the second, pastoral settlement, and the third, contemporary Aboriginal experience: Mallets pound fence posts in tune with the rifles to mask massacre sites 1 'True, impossible […] archive' cited from Buurma and Heffernan (2).I am grateful to my colleague Dr Ben Etherington for reading and commenting with acuity upon a draft of this work.2 To respect privacy, students' names are not shared in this piece. I
Source: Australian Humanities Review
DOI: 10.56449/76298135
Author: Kate Fagan
Institution: Western Sydney University
Language: English
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4297571845