by Tom Meagher
Glenice Whitting’s piece Why We need to Write the Exclusion Narratives captures a common theme throughout this issue of Other Terrain. In this issue, we explore the tragedy of the untold stories of forgotten people, the unseen scars borne by those who survived, while we remember those who did not. In Uppgivenhetssyndrome, Michele Seminara addresses the inhumanity of assigning children to internment camps. Seminara describes Resignation Syndrome, a psychological condition exhibited by children on Nauru (and elsewhere) who withdraw into unconsciousness as a result of significant trauma – “first thirst/then speech/then sight/then sense expire”.
Disconnected, without purpose, without power, without roots, without play, they resign. Judith Herman once wrote that “the prisoner no longer thinks of how to escape, but rather of how to stay alive, or how to make captivity more bearable”. The captive child finds their solace, their powerless protest, their response to state-sanctioned barbarism inside, withdrawn, unconscious – “lost little ones/my loves”.
While detained children withdraw, Mohammad Ali Maleki’s Promised Land is animated by raw betrayal, despair and the stolen dreams of a man incarcerated on Manus Island. Maleki’s words lay bare the human cost of Australia’s egregious and criminal human rights violations – “I’ll be glad to rest under the soil. The grave is my only remaining desire now.”
The weight of this cruelty grips even those outside its cages as the question of who has the right to a decent life stalks even our rare peaceful moments. In Lipstick, Magi Gibson wonders “how can I think of shopping for lipstick while food banks sprout like bindweed in our town” as she compares the banal ritual of applying lipstick to the ritual brutality imposed on others. Meanwhile, Marilyn Humbert applies “chain store cosmetic concealer”, painting over the cracks – the unspoken brokenness of “her silent screams” in Reflections.
We return to consider the forgotten people squeezed out of Manhattan’s housing projects in the shadow of the construction of Trump Tower – “the trading of history for cash”. Magdalena Ball’s The Art of the Deal chronicles heartless heart of midtown gentrification as the casualties of “market signals” become the losers of the casino capitalist coup that ushered in the neoliberal era.
The mourners of those lost to the terror of gun violence are the subjects of Rochelle Jewell Shapiro’s After the Shooting. As the site of tragedy transforms into the site of compassion and human unity, the solidarity of those in grief is crafted beautifully, capturing the shared pain of mourners, whose bodies blur and flow into one another – “the breast your breast is pressed against, into the vibrations of each other’s solar plexus, the pelvis, the churning belly that is shared”.
Patterns of terror are never far from the minds of women as they pass through this world. Warnings are issued and lost lives referenced as we deliver instructions and corrections to women and girls – even after they are murdered. “She lost her life, why say that? It sounds like he thought she was careless in claiming her independence to walk home Alone.” Wendy J Dunn dedicated her poem “I’m almost home safe” to Eurydice Dixon, another woman murdered in Melbourne while walking home. A woman murdered on our streets is an act of terror, a colonisation of public space – and we respond by issuing corrections to a murdered woman, and instructions to those still living. Don’t walk at night – remember Eurydice, remember Aiia, remember Tracey, remember Masa, remember Courtney, remember my darling Jill – used…used to issue instructions to women to make their world smaller, to acquiesce to male violence, to stay in their homes.
Wendy J Dunn once again reminds us why there is no refuge in staying at home for so many women in ‘MeToo’: Victim Blaming she writes, “he beat me, knocked me to the ground, kept beating me, until I broke, and crumbled inside”. ‘Stay at home’ is statistically more of a threat than a safety directive. This issue of Other Terrain alone records many deep wounds that women experience whether through violence, expectation, defiance or compliance. The toll of growing up a defiant girl in patriarchal family structures is explored in Tina Tsironis’ Above All Else, Respect Your Father, while Ali Whitelock writes of learning to remain invisible, to read his signals, his conditioning, his subtle forms of control, the unspoken messages he can later deny as long as they remain unspoken:
“if you say how you feel he will roll his eyes and sometimes
after the eye rolling
there will be a sigh and what that means is that you must not say
that thing again.”
Magi Gibson ensures we remain vigilant not to ‘other’ violence against women to outside groups or communities. In She Counts…Gibson remains focused on the brutality and prevalence of women murdered by men in their homes in Australia, – “each killed by a man who said he loved her once”, serving as a brutal reminder that, as I write, it is inconceivable to imagine even one single day in this world where a woman is not murdered in her home.
These forms of control and violence are directly addressed with Angela Wauchop’s review of Natasha Stott Despoja’s book On Violence, delving into the lack of understanding of men’s violence against women in Australia, decrying the “lack of urgency” in pushing for solutions other than an ill-equipped, disincentivising legal system that has not developed the adequate tools to deal with traumatised women and girls.
I sat in a courtroom while my wife’s murderer was sentenced. My experience of court was harrowing – I was not under scrutiny. My trustworthiness was never questioned, my sexual history not disclosed, my clothing was not judged inappropriate, but I’m still rattled by the memory – the tyranny of process, it’s stillness, the sterility of the procedural pomp and performance of the courtroom. The motionless unblinking silence of the gallery…and all the while my trousers were soaked through from wiping my palms on my thighs. My heart was indescribably huge…bursting through my stomach, throbbing and nauseating. The endless quiet moments, the shuffling of papers, the deliberation, the school hall smell that catches in the throat.
Even with this experience, I cannot fathom the trauma of what Jenny Butler describes in Courtroom Steps. She delivers a searing indictment of courts that “expect so much from the wounded, to rip their guts and let it all spill out”. While defence attorney’s pontificate on the ‘ruined lives’ of accused rapists, the court expects their victims to sit in stoic splendour, in perfect victimhood, while the ritual humiliation of the courtroom dogfight plays out in front of them, so rarely providing justice, recompense or anything other than additional wounds. Butler speaks to the performative theatrics of a lawyer willing to humiliate, to appeal to a base social impulse that blames women for their own victimisation, holding up her underwear in court and concluding that the style of garment “meant the woman was ‘open to meeting someone that night’”.
Abby Claridge writes with blistering clarity of the denial and self-blame loaded on top of discovering your infertility as a woman in Maybe. Rose Lucas writes beautifully of human connection and the liberation that comes with creating art in Walking. Amanda Bell describes an act of conventional defiance and demands of self-perfection in Cutlery, the Importance of. Elsewhere Melinda Smith, Joe Humphries, Lauren O’Connell, Stuart Barnes, Kenneth Pobo, Audrey Molloy, Jayant Kashyap and Bethany George deliver top notch prose and poetry.
A literature a standard this high is rare and something to be deeply treasured. It is my great pleasure to introduce this issue of Other Terrain.