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.
Alison J. Barton is a Wiradjuri poet based in Naarm. She has degrees in Professional Writing & Editing, Social Work and Gender Studies, and balances her writing career with a day-job as a Social Worker. Themes of race relations, Aboriginal-Australian history, colonisation, gender and psychoanalytic theory are central to her poetry. She is widely published in Australian and international poetry and literary journals including Meanjin, Meniscus, Overland, Cordite, Westerly Magazine, Australian Poetry Journal, Rabbit and Mascara Literary Review. In 2023 she won three fellowships with Varuna House and her poetry was recognised in numerous prizes. In both 2022 and 2023, Alison’s work appeared in Best of Australian Poems, and she was the inaugural winner of the Cambridge University First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship. Alison’s work can be viewed at www.alisonjbarton.com and you can follow her latest achievements on Instagram @alison_j_barton.
