By Les Wicks. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. This one is or is called a witch perhaps. So she disappears, her only trick. Why travel? No home, (an inflexible, judged word – foolhardy for any to claim) but she was there a tough demountable equivalent. Some […]
By William Pitt. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. Step – step – step –step – the world is much too large; I think I can see the end of land but there’s always more and more; why not sit down and count my thoughts? How wonderful to […]
By Greg Pritchard. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. From where I am lying I can see my sister’s leg Like a long stemmed rose against marble My ears are ringing and all I hear is music The sun is warm and bathes us in orange light […]
It’s what she leaves behind. It’s the devil in the detail. . For the future, a life in another, safer country, she dreams the big things…. hope for freedom for herself, to walk with her face bare to the sun, possibilities for her children to grow and learn in schools without threat, marriage for […]
Earlier this year, five deaf writers presented Through Deaf Eyes at the Melbourne Writers Festival, a unique performance featuring deaf writers telling their stories in Auslan. Developed and directed by the deaf community, this groundbreaking work turns the tables and challenges the conventions, as Auslan interpreters translate this beautifully expressive language back to the audience. […]
For just a few seconds, Yoga believed that she was back home in Sri Lanka but then she understood she wasn’t. Four days ago their ramshackle fishing boat ‘Kumudu Kumari’ ran out of fuel and foundered in the middle of nowhere but an Australian Customs aerial patrol had traced them and a passing merchant ship […]
By Sandra Renew. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. In the moment he decides to go he knows…. He knows that if he does not go he will be killed. He knows that when he leaves the desert and high mountains he can never go back. […]
By Susan Adams. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. We try our lives, father says in mail from his Island of Christmas to Jakarta nothing will happen otherwise. With time to wind, dreams become hope, secrets are a burden in streets. The manifest left for later. […]
By William Pitt. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. The huts are falling on top of each other, all trying to find a bit of light; humanity […]
By Penny Gibson. This short story is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. The apartment smelt of stale cigarette smoke when Bedar arrived. He stared around him in silence as Jerry busied himself with bags of food. “Last fella was a smoker,” he said. “You a smoker?” Bedar nodded. What had […]
By Ellena Savage. A version of this article previously appeared on the Tharunka website, and was the winner of Tharunka Non-Fiction Writing Competition. It is May, 2009. A cold, clear night; frost will set over the tips of lawns before dawn. I wait at a bar for my new boyfriend, Ishmail, an attractive Eritrean-Australian I met though […]
By Emilie Zoey Baker. This piece is part of our September focus on Women’s Rights. See all of this month’s articles here. We were told it was a party, that there’d be heaps of people there. We were stoked ’cause they said the whole team was putting it on. Me and Michelle follow Carlton. We went […]
