Board members, we need to talk about Palestine | The politics of publishing | Poems, place and digital space
plus... exciting Perth Festival news and hopes for a kinder new year
Board members, we need to talk about Palestine
Like everyone else at the moment, Australian arts and cultural organisations have been making headlines for what they are or are not saying or doing about the daily and devastating breaches of international law and human rights happening in Palestine and Israel right now.
I’ve been sharing a lot more than speaking on this topic, because although the last few months have been a masterclass in international law and how it’s being broken day after day on our watch, I am not an authority, nor am I a member of the communities closest to this particular grief – and it is vital that we continue to amplify the voices of those on the ground and those in the diaspora and multi-faith communities calling for ceasefire, justice, humanity and peace.
But this Board business put things firmly back in my lane. So, you can now check out my three short videos that call on Boards and Board members to make sure to talk about what’s happening, how that’s playing out for arts and cultural organisations in Australia (and beyond), and what we can learn to help meet our fiduciary duties to our organisations and duty of care to the people within and who engage with them.
Watch Part 1 on TikTok or Insta – on boards in ‘turmoil’, departing donors, Board member behaviour and responsibilities, including case studies from Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts (ACCA), National Association and Visual Arts (NAVA) and Collingwood Yards.
Watch Part 2 on TikTok or Insta – on leadership and politics, fiduciary duty and duty of care, cultural safety and media justice, and whether a scarf is just a scarf, including case studies from Sydney Theatre Company and Mushroom Records, and learnings from Dr Ruth De Souza in The Relationship is the Project.
Watch Part 3 on TikTok or Insta – on censorship and silencing, risk and relationship management, First Nations solidarity and the responsibility of allies, including case studies from the Sydney Opera House, Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie and Australian journalism, and learnings from Diversity Council Australia, NonProfit AF and MEAA Members for Palestine.
The coda to the series turns to our duty of care to each other – our friends, families, relationships and communities – and how that intersects with care for ourselves at a time of great grief and great pain. Because duty of care applies to Boards and artists and arts and cultural workers, but it applies to everyone else too.
Watch Part 4 on TikTok or Insta – on community and loneliness, circles of preoccupation and care, how history will judge us, and how nothing is ever lost online – including our silences.
Or read more about the series on my website.
On the politics of writing and publishing
As I mentioned at my Warrane/Sydney launch of Public.Open.Space. last month, it feels awkward and uncomfortable to talk about book stuff right now, which has made me even more grateful that my book is about control and protest, silencing and speaking up. Because writers, artists, anyone with a platform, and anyone living on or benefiting from unceded land have an obligation to use our platforms to do so, to listen, learn, interrogate that learning, insist on media justice and speech free of bias and hate, and to recognise and act on our responsibilities.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of talk in the #BookTok community about keeping politics out of ‘safe’ bookish spaces – which is both as nonsensical as it is impossible. Even having the choice to engage in this discourse is political – and that comes with responsibilities as well. Check out my ‘and another thing’ rant about the politics of publishing for more…
On the subject of politics, the last few weeks have seen me transition from solo writer to proud unionist. Not just because of MEAA’s recent work for freelancers like me, but because of their leadership in calling for a ceasefire and media justice at a time when more than 85 of our journalist colleagues have been killed in the last two months alone (compared to 8 in two whole years since the invasion of Ukraine, and with 15 more gone just in few days it took me to draft and send this enews). So grateful in these impossible times for community, leadership and all those speaking up.
Digital poetry in Australia, China and Hong Kong
Over the past three decades, digital platforms have become a significant global player in the development and dissemination of poetry.
Like other online art forms, the creation and consumption of digital poetry has grown further and faster since the COVID-19 pandemic—as more people turned to poetry to make sense of the changing world and shared that poetry through one of the only platforms available to them during that time. ‘Poems are ideally suited to social media,’ New York journalist Michelle Dean writes, ‘because they pack so much meaning into so little language.’
However, this coming together of digital and poetic culture is different for poets in different countries, depending not just on geographic and internet access but language use and platform preferences, as well as the degree to which online activity is monitored, censored or controlled.
Read more in Poems, Place and Digital Space: online poetry in Australia, China and Hong Kong in the latest edition of Westerly Magazine. (Thanks, Daniel).
Image: ‘The Surface of Ghosts’ by Caroline Hagood, Westerly 68.2
Poetry at Perth Festival Writers Weekend
Grateful to continue to spread the good word of digital poetry as part of Perth Festival Writers Weekend 2024.
Join me for a tiny little digital poetry workshop on Sunday 25 February at the State Library of Western Australia in Boorloo/Perth.
Explore the creative possibilities of digital poetry: from politics and advocacy to profile-building and pseudonyms. Write your own short-form poems ready for publication online and get tips and tools for getting or building your digital poetry profile.
Bookings now open on the Perth Festival website. Presented in association with the good folks at Writing WA. (Thanks, team x).
Here’s to a kinder new year
I know many of us are approaching the end of the 2023 in a state of exhaustion or grief, helplessness or hopelessness, fear, trepidation or all of the above.
Personally, I don’t have much capacity left for reflection or celebration. But I also can’t remember ever being as aware of my privilege or safety, or as grateful for my communities and all those using their words, bodies and energies to fight for our sector, for self-expression, for humanity and a more hopeful future. So, thank you. Go as gently as you can. And here’s to a kinder new year.