Not Telling

Not Telling weaves a story of the possibilities and limitations of language. Three distinct sections entwine notions of speech and silence with intolerable psychic matter, intergenerational grief and loss, and the lasting effects of cultural silence. The intersect of the personal and political binds to depict black mothers bearing the weight of colonisation, human relationships halting and failing, and the complexities of dream interpretation. The poems disrupt time and linearity, weaving metaphor into Freudian, Irigarayan and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Through harsh visual depictions of the wretched damage caused by the invasion of Australia, musings on sacred land and celebration of continued culture, Not Telling illuminates the ongoing legacy of colonial dispossession and the strength of its survivors. It testifies to the system of oppression that affects Aboriginal people, connecting present-day black trauma with its origins. Jolted by presentations of the life realities of who we were and are pre- and post-invasion alongside exacting accounts of genocide, the reader is led towards through a harrowing journey. Not Telling sits at the axis of the human psyche and the political collective, offering a unique expression of the Australian experience of race, voice and power.