For my ex (an unforgiving poem)

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Vacuum

e-bookIn 2013, there were 319,325 migrant workers in Hong Kong. About half were Indonesian and nearly all were women. Recruitment and placement agencies, in...

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In ConversationYou don’t ever want to go so off the rails that you encourage somebody to blow their life up thoughtlessly. It was always helpful to remind myself, ‘The most I can do is offer someone a useful suggestion that they will consider. They still have to make their own decisions based on how they want to live their lives.’ If you take yourself too seriously in that position, you feel like, my God, I’m responsible for the wellbeing of all of these strangers, what if I mess up?

Past-making within the present

In ConversationThe Marranbarna Dreaming story is a central story to Gudanji, and that essential story forms our beingness. My kids grew up hearing that story from when they were tiny babies – they heard it through my words and they heard it through the words of their grannies, so they could embed the story within their own sense of identity and then retell it. Both of my girls are mums now, and they retell that story to their daughters all the time, so it just becomes a normal part of who and how they are as Gudanji people.

The Orcanauts

FictionAs admiral, my rank is Navarch. Below me serve three Plotarchs, or strike-team leaders. The rest, including the calves, are rank and file Orcanauts. Thus far, we have operated as a guerrilla force, mounting unexpected assaults on the enemy fleet, causing maximum disruption to their supply channels and leisure activities before fleeing for the safety of deep, open water. It has been a highly effective strategy, but too piecemeal. The drylanders have dispatched scientists to study our behaviour and offer explanations, rather than send divers and submarines to face us in battle. Their media have portrayed me as a rampaging fish, driven mad by some traumatic encounter with one of their boats.