Published in Overland Issue The 2018 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize · Uncategorized Highly Commended: Waiali Possum Cloak Julie Jedda Janson (Darug and English) By waragal nightfall, Koori ngurra, Black’s camp. Firelight – tree flickering. Sounds of singing, gumleaf playing, trilling. Arriving in her true country, calling her, singing her. Carrying her mother with broken heart, broken limb, eyes drinking in … Yurungai, black duck place. Clean fresh water, bardo, to drink, swim with fish, mogra, eels, burra, green water dragons, bidjiwong, lily flowers drifting. Sweet bardo. Koori people diving, digging, lily roots to roast. Roasting in coal hot fire. A bird ghost place, green grey bush of these mornings, a golden river, birds diving over shimmering bardo. Bardo. She eats gum tree manna, sticky sweet, dusty on leaves, licking fingers. Walking across empty ground – dragging fire wood. Chief Nurragingy watching, he gives her a soft brown possum cloak. Soft waiali cloak. Soft. Running fingers in fluff. Piling white river driftwood along red river gums she lights a fire – white man’s tinder box, flint making sparks, a waiballa fire stick tickling smoke and flames, misting river. The misty river. Misty. Voices echo hills and lagoon. Refugee dullai, wirawi from distant tribes. Darkinjung, Gundungurra, Darug, Woromi, Biripi, Wiradjuri, Gamelroy… Dream a cruel journey through brown snake curling leaves. Blood and pus, heads beaten in. Corn cobs stuffed in mouths and flies buzzed. Gibbets of strange fruit. Stench of rotting flesh. Seeing herself, running. Running. Chased by a great grey horse, sweat smelling. Tail flicking her face as rider swerves and jumps from yarraman horse, picking a flogging branch. Flog her broken heart, broken land. Huff and puff. Swung like a scythe. She ran whu karndi quick as wirriga goanna, dived behind rocks, melted into iron stone. Goonge in stone. Now, she glimpses herself in a white man’s mirror. Shimmering. A black curly haired girl. White gleaming teeth. Gleaming. Manna sweet face. Eyelashes thick, thick as feather down. Worowi muttong whu karndi Muru wallawa nangaree. Singing, gumleaf playing, trilling Image: This line will melt away very soon / flickr Julie Jedda Janson Julie Jedda Janson is a Burruberongal woman of Darug nation. She is a teacher, artist, playwright, poet and novelist. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize. Her published works include The Crocodile Hotel (Cyclops Press, 2015) and The Light Horse Ghost (Nibago – Booktopia, 2018). More by Julie Jedda Janson › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 14 February 202514 February 2025 · Poetry 9 to 5 Dave Drayton volunteer to clown / undermine an award / construct to heave / interfere in class / dismantle if civil / disregard no cause / freelance at ennui 1 13 February 202514 February 2025 · Reviews Echoing of the white gaze in Evie Wyld’s The Echoes Karen Wyld Wyld’s creation of voiceless-nameless-lifeless Blak people in The Echoes serves no narrative purpose. This novel is not truth-telling of invasion and occupation, and it does not envision justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Instead of rejecting or confronting lazy literary tropes and colonial-style narratives, the author has erased Blak voices, bodies, histories and futures, adding her own voice to a never-ending echo of white-gazed literature when silence would have been better.
