Episode 28 – Fire Front
Listen to full episode :
In today’s episode, the final for this season, we speak with not one but three incredible guests to discuss their contributions to the powerful poetry collection Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today. Steph is joined by editor and contributor Alison Whittaker, editorial assistant and contributor Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi, and contributor Laniyuk.
January 20, 2021
In the final episode for this season, we speak with not one but three incredible guests to discuss their contributions to the powerful poetry collection Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today.
Steph is joined by editor and contributor Alison Whittaker, editorial assistant and contributor Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi, and contributor Laniyuk.
We covered the practices and protocols of working as an Indigenous poet, the contradictions and complications of using the English language, and advice on how maintain positive collaborative relationships.
Links to topics discussed:
Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today out now through UQP
Blakwork by Alison Whittaker
Lemons in the Chickens in the Wire by Alison Whittaker
Shout outs to:
TV show: I May Destroy You
TV show: Lovecraft Country
Fiction: The Deep by River Solomon
Fiction: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Fiction: Pet by Akweke Emezi
Poetry collection: Mookanunganuk by Kathy Mills (Laniyuk’s nana!)
Music: “Silence Is” Lucie Vano (feat. Laniyuk)
Fire Front is a ground-breaking anthology of First Nations poetry showcasing some of the brightest new stars including Meleika and Laniyuk, as well as leading Aboriginal writers and poets including Bruce Pascoe, Ali Cobby Eckermann and Tony Birch.
Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi multitasker. Between 2017–2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Alison is a Senior Researcher at the Jumbunna Institute at UTS. Her debut poetry collection, Lemons in the Chicken Wire, was awarded the State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship in 2015. Her latest book, Blakwork, was published in 2018 and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and won the QLA Judithe Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection. Alison was also the co-winner of the 2017 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for ‘Many Girls White Linen’. She was the Indigenous Poet-in-Residence for the 2018 Queensland Poetry Festival.
Laniyuk is a writer and performer of poetry and short memoir. She contributed to the book Colouring the Rainbow: Blak, Queer and Trans Perspectives in 2015, has been published online in Djed Press and the Lifted Brow, as well as in print poetry collections such as UQP’s 2019 Solid Air and 2020 Fire Front. She received Canberra’s Noted Writers Festival’s 2017 Indigenous Writers Residency, Overland’s 2018 Writers Residency and was
shortlisted for Overland’s 2018 Nakata-Brophy poetry prize. She runs poetry workshops for festivals, moderates panel discussions, and has given guest lectures at ANU and The University of Melbourne. She is currently completing her first collection of work to be published through Magabala Books.
Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi aka Vika Mana, is a proud Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyteller that takes many forms. They descend from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes of Mer Island and the village of Fahefa in Tonga. They perform poetry, write criticism, breathe life into worlds. They’ve written for Overland, The Big Issue, The Saturday Paper and several publications both at home and internationally.