Robert Frost is quoted as saying that poetry is “when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” It feels somewhat dissonant to start the review of a collection which has an examination of colonialism’s longstanding effects on identity and country as one of its central themes with a quote from a white man. However, Frost’s brief summation seems wholly apt to describe Evelyn Araluen’s debut collection Dropbear.
In this collection which blends poetry with short form non-fiction, Araluen demonstrates a superb control of language to articulate a complexity of feeling that can only be conveyed in her chosen form.
Araluen explores the conflicting experiences of her Indigenous heritage and her habitation within a white, urban environment, the struggle to piece together the various facets of her identity, many of which have been historically (or indeed, are currently) societies, cultures, or experiences in some form of conflict. It’s at times a confronting read, but it’s also relatively easy reading in the sense that the words flow underneath the eyes in a way which attests to the fact this collection is of a writer whose careful consideration of words shows a burgeoning mastery of language.
Yet it took me several weeks to make my way through this little volume (this review was due in weeks ago, near the collection’s release at the beginning of March). I didn’t want to skim over the words or the meanings. There is more than just the surface level of the semantics.
Part of the reason I took so long to write this review is because there is so many layers within the carefully chosen words. I felt as though a cursory review of this book would fail to adequately convey the depth and beauty that permeate Araluen’s writings, or the various facets of meaning that imbue not only the poems and essays, but the manner in which they are structured across the text’s three sections.
Moreover, Araluen clearly draws from her own experience; it feels as though I’m being offered a glimpse into something intensely private. It would be the highest form of disrespect to skip over the words that capture the sense of displacement and reflexive reflection on belonging and displacement, of grief and loss, and the pride in her heritage and identity.
But to see this as only a story about Aboriginality is to be woefully reductive. Araluen captures sentiments that are universal, and while she points out the differences between cultures, this collection deftly draws simultaneous attention to the most human of experiences: rage, loss, and love of family. ‘Concessions’ had me in tears because I would challenge anyone who’s lost not only a grandparent, but the warmth and comfort of a childhood space not to understand exactly what she’s saying within it. In the short non-fiction prose, Araluen touches on something universal; the nostalgia and loss that intertwine when we remember our childhoods, and the loss of a less complex time when we are safe and surrounded by those we love. It’s easily my favourite piece across the collection, although ‘Malay’, ‘Acknowledgement of Cuntery’, ‘To the Poets’, ‘To the Parents’, and ‘Breath’ are also standout pieces that I read slowly, so as to try and immerse myself into the pieces, and left themselves imprinted upon me for weeks afterward.
The recurring theme of loss takes on a more specific dimension when Araluen moves through a more personal experience and examines it through the prism of her own story and background. When you read something as heartbreaking and delicate as:
‘I will meet you at the edges of a body shaped like loss,
and trace the outline of your absence with smoke’
You feel so, so much. And this is where the brilliance of this collection lies. While this is a specific story about a specific history, and the assertion of a voice which has been historically denied, it is also a collection that taps into feelings everybody experiences.
In Dropbear, Araluen describes a land which ‘had no poets but it had thirst and rage and dreaming’ but the depth of her emotions as she reflects upon her relationship to the land, to her family, to the complicated intersection of culture and society, is so delicately, beautifully conveyed, that it should resonate with all readers. Araluen finds thoughts for her feelings, and words for those thoughts, and the words she selects paint such a vivid, evocative picture that it invites her reader to understand a slice of her perspective. Offering that perspective, when it is so personal, is not only brave, but it’s such an important step to so much else.
I desperately hope this collection makes its way onto syllabuses, not only because it is so exquisitely written, but because it wrests back the narratives about the Indigenous Australian experience from traditional (and contemporary) white stories in a fierce, spectacular way.
Dropbear is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up Dropbear? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers.
This fierce debut from award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation with biting satire and lyrical fury. Dropbear interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history with an alternately playful, tender and mournful intertextual voice, deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality. This innovative mix of poetry and essay offers an eloquent witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future.
