Description
6pm for 6.30pm Friday 30th October Julie Janson in conversation with Mark Tredinnick This collection tells a life—many lives. Janson's book begins with childhood, and a tribute to her father, Neville. This is one of several deep and enduring relationships—including those with her "Kaathi Sister" Jenny Ebbsworth, and with her beloved but troubled brother, Brian—which have anchored her and enabled her to survive the abuse, deprivation, discrimination and violence compellingly documented in poems such as "The Smallest Violin in the World" and "Hallelujah Praise the Lord." The focus softens and broadens as the book steps from childhood into the thick of life; the particularities of autobiography and family merge with myth; the scope of imaginative sympathy expands, and the individual story, Julie Janson’s own, becomes the story of the suffering and resilience of a people. In the end, the circle of the book’s compassion expands to embrace "all God's creatures"—the victims of the Black Summer fires, a lost and bewildered stranger in an airport, an Indian beggar, a starving dog. Julie Janson, a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal nation, is an acclaimed novelist, playwright and poet. She was a lecturer for thirty years in Aboriginal programs and a teacher in Sydney and remote Aboriginal communities. Julie has had ten plays produced professionally in Australia, Indonesia and USA, has written five novels and has had poems published in Island, ABR and Overland. My Kaathi Sister is her first poetry collection. Mark Tredinnick, Managing Editor of 5 Islands Press, is an award-winning poet and essayist. Mark has written several books and a dozen collections of poetry, most recently Chain of Ponds: New and Selected Poems. Mark was awarded an Order of Australia in 2020 for services to education and literature. Since 1996, Mark has taught poetry and prose at the University of Sydney.