Poetry Shortlist
Title: the body country
Author: Susie Anderson
Publisher: Hachette Australia
the body country is an evocative exploration of a world that too often marginalises and the power of a land that can offer connection. A meditation of wandering and wondering on Country, inviting the reader to understand the complexities and changing forms of self and love.
A Wergaia and Wemba Wemba woman, Susie Anderson captures profound meaning in moments often lost in the busyness of a day, encouraging us all to stop and allow ourselves the space to notice. To notice the shape of a mouth as it says goodbye; the colour of the sky as you fall in love; the way a steering wheel is turned carelessly after many wines; the crunch of dry ground after drought; the smell of fire on the wind; the movement of ants before rain; the power a word, a dress, a piece of art can give to run towards something new.
These are poems that take us across rural and urban settings; from the personal to the universal, from looking inward to mapping the land and always bringing us back to the Country that connects us all.
Photography by Sarah Walker
Susie Anderson writes from the nexus of compassion and resistance. Her poetry and nonfiction are widely published online and in print, such as in Archer Magazine, Artist Profile, Artlink, un Magazine, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia and in many poetry anthologies. In 2018, she was runner-up in the Overland Poetry Prize and awarded the Emerging Writers Fellowship at State Library Victoria; in 2019, she was awarded a Writers Victoria Neilma Sidney grant and was a recipient of the Overland Writers Residency. In 2020, she edited the online journal, Tell Me Like You Mean It Volume 4, for Australian Poetry journal and Cordite Poetry Review.
Her professional practice is as a digital producer in the arts and creative industries ranging from Sydney, London and Melbourne. Leveraging her position within institutions, she attempts to bring about change by uncovering and amplifying stories from her own and other communities. Descended from the Wergaia and Wemba Wemba peoples of Western Victoria, she currently lives on Boon Wurrung land in Melbourne.
Judges' report
In the body country, Susie Anderson traces the boundaries and contours of the body and of Country, while reflecting on their interrelationship. Spiritual invocations of Country are paired with confessional domestic realism, giving the collection its combined sense of inclusivity and intimacy. The writing is assured, with a light, deft touch brought to word choice and lineation. A core strength of the collection lies in its range of tones. The poems switch between humour, domesticity, and intimacy, and contain sudden and memorable lines. We were struck by the interplay of different conceptions of time in this collection. Minimal, short-line texts – which Anderson refers to in her afterword as ‘essay threads’ – wend like a river around poems with a more immediate, conversational syntax. This is an immediately engaging, and deeply reflective, collection.Extract
embrace
when I return the air bites asking where you been bush nags my clothing and each prickle torn from shoelace stings punishment for absence mist rolls across mountain named by homesick Scottish it’s been Gariwerd longer morning sunbeams whisper willy wagtail gossip every rustle makes me jump I thought no one was around but there always was someone here timeless mountain range shoulders this land I love sitting still and solitary inhale exhale nothing else is quite so fixed heavy with thousands of years become part of atmosphere *sunday feeling
evening sunset by the lake sent shadows through half-clothed trees maybe fire burning bright beyond town but mum said it was just paddocks gleaming shepherd’s delight. faded signs in twilight, broken play equipment and rickety fences reminded us everything was wrong in the world. winter had been dry and town was crunchy the paper said children under five wouldn’t know what rain was. no river water flowed and trees shed crispy bark broke well underfoot. mum brought presents from the city, but instead of newness, everything could have gone down with the sun. burn up in f lames. no one else around as we crunched leaves, an empty sunday walk through rundown tennis courts and abandoned CFA training areas. *leave early
we always sat with the boys up back of the bus. our world neat paddock grids, edges ever visible. fire season years later blew through boundaries. wind changed direction and the plan was leave early. no neighbours lost lives or houses but land incinerated hundreds. sheep burnt before their time. farmers dug pits of blackened soil excavating earth for charred carcasses unaware what they had already extracted. similarities so small now, distant and past. our differences spread out across years taking up space boys from the bus now horrified grown men digging mass graves gathering remains with tractors. *the body was just a temporary, lonely container that I happened to be borrowing
the book meant the body was container for the self I feel like self is slippery and wants to be untethered from the world will do anything it can to get liminal
the self wants to know what the light was doing
how shadows fell
how clouds opened
how sun felt on skin
About the author
Susie Anderson writes from the nexus of compassion and resistance. Her poetry and nonfiction are widely published online and in print, such as in Archer Magazine, Artist Profile, Artlink, un Magazine, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia and in many poetry anthologies. In 2018, she was runner-up in the Overland Poetry Prize and awarded the Emerging Writers Fellowship at State Library Victoria; in 2019, she was awarded a Writers Victoria Neilma Sidney grant and was a recipient of the Overland Writers Residency. In 2020, she edited the online journal, Tell Me Like You Mean It Volume 4, for Australian Poetry journal and Cordite Poetry Review.
Her professional practice is as a digital producer in the arts and creative industries ranging from Sydney, London and Melbourne. Leveraging her position within institutions, she attempts to bring about change by uncovering and amplifying stories from her own and other communities. Descended from the Wergaia and Wemba Wemba peoples of Western Victoria, she currently lives on Boon Wurrung land in Melbourne.