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Jeanine Leane

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko

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October 2023, no. 458
Jeanine Leane reviews 'Edenglassie' by Melissa Lucashenko

Edenglassie is the seventh novel by acclaimed Bunjalung novelist Melissa Lucashenko. Set in a brief historical window – a little-known interim of time and place after transportation of convicts had ended but before Queensland became an independent colony in 1859 – this narrative moves seamlessly between what whitefellas might call past, present, and near future. In this interface, Lucashenko creates characters that cause the reader to not only ask – what if? but also where to now?

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Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki

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July 2021, no. 433
Jeanine Leane reviews 'Homecoming' by Elfie Shiosaki

Noongar and Yawuru poet and academic Elfie Shiosaki writes in the introduction to her new poetry collection, Homecoming, that it is the story of four generations of Noongar women of which she is the sixth. The poems are ‘fragments of many stars’ in her ‘grandmothers’ constellations’. Shiosaki ‘tracks her grandmothers’ stars’ to find her ‘bidi home’. The introduction reads as a beautifully crafted prose poem that contextualises the works that follow.

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States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | 'Lady Mungo Speaks' and 'Whitefellas' by Jeanine Leane

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States of Poetry Podcast - Series One

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jeanine Leane reads her poems 'Lady Mungo Speaks' and 'Whitefellas' which feature in the 2016 ACT anthology.

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'Cardboard Incarceration' by Jeanine Leane | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

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States of Poetry ACT - Series One

This cardboard prison they call an archive
is cold, airless and silent as death.
Floor to ceiling boxes contain voices
no longer heard yet still wailing within
and faces no longer seen yet still missing in a
jail of captured snippets, images and memories
like the severed heads and bleached bones of
dismembered bodies neatly locked away in the vaults
of mu ...

'Lady Mungo Speaks' by Jeanine Leane | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

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States of Poetry ACT - Series One

For Garry Papin and the Muthi-Muthi People of Lake Mungo

 

Lady Mungo heard the white scientists trampling
on her people's sacredness and she began to surface –
to speak.
While you archaeologists are stomping on
our graves arguing about the depth of your
new Pleistocene layer my people already know
the ...

'Whitefellas' by Jeanine Leane | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

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States of Poetry ACT - Series One

Whitefellas have a license to stare in
car parks, foyers, forums and gatherings at
anybody else who doesn’t look white.
They’re famous for asking Blackfellas
where we come from even though they
belong to the oldest diaspora of all. ...

'The Colour of Massacre' by Jeanine Leane | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

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States of Poetry ACT - Series One

As a new century dawned white Australians were urged
to feel comfortable and relaxed about their history.
'Shake off that irksome black arm band – legacy of radical
lefties who can't leave well enough alone – and their
tiresome chant that white Australia has a Black history and
we all have blood on our hands.
We've got a new song to sing now!'

Right win ...

'On Cannibals' by Jeanine Leane | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

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States of Poetry ACT - Series One

For Patrick White (1976)

 

When the Badtjala people discovered Eliza Fraser,
her story of cannibals devoured a history.
A century later when the Badtjala people
rescued Ellen Roxborough on the fringes of paradise
White's imagination captured the Aborigine –
the Blacks – for the nation.
When she ate Badtjala woman's flesh,
she ...

About Jeanine Leane | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

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States of Poetry ACT - Series One


Jeanine LeaneJeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri scholar from south-west New South Wales. She currently holds a Discovery Indigenous ...