Warrane’s children watched the tall ships come; now towers rise where the songlines hum, unbroken This scarred earth breathes beneath the city’s beat: a heart they couldn’t silence, slow, deep and true This earth remembers every footfall: songs of Gadigal sorrow and steel unspoken Lasting months or more, a communal, visible crying, the place always bound by grief
Two centuries of silence could not bury their song; they still sing their harbour home Images and names, kept memories – unseen, unsaid – the spirit safely travels through All these years of bleeding, the harbour knows; the rocks remember the cry of every stone Unresolved collective and intergenerational mourning, still seeking relief
Grief continues because the causes have never been fully acknowledged or repaired Death manifests through mass dispossession, disease, violence, and murder malevolent All the sorries are never finished, the deeper losses are continuously shared Peoples excluded from decision-making about their culture, heritage and land
Deep historical culture, reduced to plaques, acknowledgements, and museum displays Bulldozed by infrastructure and development; damaged or erased without consent The least I owe is attention, some respect; The least I owe is to not look away Protection laws weaker than commercial interests; consultation, a token hand
What my ancestors named discovery, the land remembers as interruption still I inherit the language of arrival without having paid the cost of entry I stand here in admiration, aware that the ground knows more than I ever will Just two centuries is but a heartbeat to a people who measure time undeclared Grief, which demands absolution, is only another way of asking to be spared
For a longette: The theme is social commentary (usually critical of the status quo and reaching towards a better/longer future) The title of a longette is long; 40 syllables The poem consists of 21 long lines—of 20 syllables each A longette has an ACAB rhyme scheme, with a final rhyming couplet: ACAB/acab/a’c’a’b’/A-C-A-B-/A’C’A’B’B’ The poem can be separated into 4 stanzas of 4 lines each, with a final stanza of 5 lines, or set without stanza breaks, at the poet’s discretion. Use of emojis is encouraged. The same emoji may be repeated throughout the poem, but if you want to use more than one emoji or symbol, you must conform to a 1312 scheme Emojis and other symbols are not counted as syllables. Collaboration is encouraged.
I couldn’t comprehend using emojis in a poem, though Catherin’s sample poem uses them well. And on re-reading the rules, I see that I actually used 21-syllable lines instead of 20! Perhaps I can claim to be the creator of this form now! Either way, I don’t think that I will be attempting it again soon!
I initially struggled to find a topic but as I discovered that Catherin is based near Sydney, a place I became very familiar with for 20 years, my mind kept coming back to Gadigal country. The Gadigal people being part of the Aboriginal owners of the land on which Sydney is built. The only problem? I knew next to nothing about the topic beyond the fact that my ancestors have completely fucked them over time and time again.
So I turned to AI for help. Here is the process I went through:
Prompt (Deepseek): I want to write a poem about the struggle of the Aboriginal people in Gadigal over time and need a 40-syllable title for it. What can you come up with?
I was hoping that a title would help trigger further ideas, which it did. I haven’t had much luck with syllable counts with Deepseek but it did come up with a set of phrases that I noted down before switching to Chat-GPT5 from here on out. I soon discovered that Chat-GPT could identify syllables per word correctly but then couldn’t add up the simple math totals correctly. Don’t trust AI with your maths!
Prompt: Can you give me information on how the Gadigal people mourn and also how they still struggle to be recognised?
Prompt: Can you suggest language that avoids appropriation while remaining powerful?
Prompt: What about some ideas around ‘white guilt’ for the deeds of our ancestors and how to think about that in the context of the Aboriginal people?
Prompt: I need to find some more poetic lines that deal with this perspective and issue – they need to be fairly long sentences. Ideas?
Prompt: Tell me more about this: “Many Gadigal people speak of ‘sorry that never finished’ “?
This poem is my selection of phrases taken from the various outputs of these prompts and then manipulated (by myself, not AI) to meet the form requirements. When I had finished, I asked AI to give me feedback on rhythm and flow and did a little more tweaking. At this point, though, I had been working on this poem for more than 5 hours and I know that I could improve it more with another 5 hours but….that’s enough. 5 hours is often 4 hours and 59 minutes longer than it takes me to write some poems!
I learned a lot through doing this exercise but tomorrow I’ll be aiming for something a little simpler!
“Do not touch me…” “Seriously,” I said. I’m not just the next generation: I’m a real survivor. Hard as old bread.
Quicker than grandma’s slippers thrown with boomerang precision. At the age of five, I could already “read” my mother’s mood to avoid collision;
At seven, I had a set of keys and instructions: “You can find food in the fridge.” And, from there, were all deductions.
At nine, I was my own chef, discovering my own taste. I knew what I liked, what I was and exactly the future I faced.
Spending days outside, without a phone, with just a well-planned route: the hill, the river, returning home at night, perhaps minus one mud-stuck boot.
Real maps made of these small battles that I survived. Scratches treated with saliva and leaves, medicines contrived.
If it hurt, we just laughed and sought distraction from the pain, because further adventures beckoned so there was no reason to complain.
Eating bread with sugar on top, drinking from the garden hose; microbiomes that yoghurt would dream of. Allergies? What are those?
I know fifteen tricks to remove stains from grass, fat, blood or ink, because we only had one set of clothes and wore them til they’d stink.
Transistor radios, black and white TV, gramophones, vinyl and cassettes, carrying CDs and a Discman, singing songs no one forgets.
Tightening tapes with a pencil means little to an MP3 soon with a driver’s license, there was a wider world to see.
Travelling the country in a rusty old car, without hotels, air conditioning or GPS, just with a tatty, discoloured car atlas and an old beer mat with a barely legible address
Always arriving safely, maybe late, but with a smile. The last generation to live without the internet, and revolution was all about style.
I had no backup batteries, or worries of a dead phone. The landline hung on the hallway wall, unanswered if there was no one home.
Believing that any missed calls meant: “I’m fine, I’ll call you back.” I read books while I was waiting or fixed myself a sneaky snack.
I fixed everything with tape or a clip; I rarely bought anything new. With only one TV channel to watch There was always something else to do.
Made of “emotional asbestos,” flowing easily from the back of the duck. With the reflexes of an urban ninja They were the times of making my own luck.
Carrying a menthol candy older than your child in my pocket. I survived without sunscreen and a helmet Or seatbelts in my rocket.
Schooling without computers, youth without multiple screens. Encyclopaedias had all the answers once you’d deciphered what it means.
I had to trust my instincts and say what I thought aloud. Now I have more memories than you have photos in the cloud.
So “Don’t touch me,” I say again Though I’m not sure you could anyway. Here’s my number, call my landline and make sure you’ve got something to say.
An epic poem for me! This one is inspired and paraphrases an article that I, frustratingly, neglected to note the origin. I’m annoyed with myself about that! I’d also like to add that I don’t particularly agree with much of the thought within this piece. Of course, everyone reminisces about their past, their childhoods, etc, but that doesn’t make it better than now – just different. I’ve never subscribed to the ‘things were better in my day’ philosophy. Congratulations if you read this poem to the end! I know that I might not have!
In a quiet, wood-panelled den, there’s a low fire crackling in the hearth. Two leather armchairs face the flames. Don and Ben sit with a small glass of amber sherry each.
You know, Ben, a lot of fireplaces…. I’ve known the best of them. But this… this one has a good heart to it.
There is a soul in a real fire. Something a manufactured flame can never learn.
Right, exactly. The phoney ones spit and hiss. No respect for the burn. This wood here… it’s loyal. Like good oak. I have a place, incredible place, where the oak burns like slow gold.
My grandfather’s house smelled of olive wood. Old, gnarled branches that remembered the sun. The scent was like smoke and memory mixed.
(Taking a slow sip.) This sherry… there’s a story in it. Some sherries are just vinegar wearing a fancy coat. This one speaks up. You can taste the years.
Spanish, I think, Don. It has a quiet voice. A nutty, whispering finish.
Whispering—I like that. Good phrase. It doesn’t shout. It just… sits there, being excellent.
A log settles, sending up a shower of embers that spin and fade.
There. That little collapse. When I was young, I believed each spark was a tiny story ending.
I like a clean end. Not a messy one. Wind, for instance, is messy. Whistling through cracks, no discipline. A fire like this… it’s all agreement. Everything burns on purpose.
Contained, but alive. There is a dignity in that.
Dignity. Sure. Look at that flame, curling up like it owns the air. And maybe it does.
It asks for nothing. Not even our attention.
(Nods, swirling the last gold in his glass.) That’s the real thing. No asking. Just being. We’ll do this again. With my oak. Oak that knows how to hold a flame.
I would like to taste that smoke.
They fall quiet, two old men wrapped in warmth and amber light, speaking of everything and nothing as the fire hums its slow, familiar hymn.
The world clicks by in screens of graphic gain, each hour refined for either profit, loss, or trend. Praising the sharpest tools ever made to explain, yet wondering why these days refuse to bend.
I walk beneath the wires and silent trees and feel a hunger numbers cannot feed. Our minds seem full of malaise and disease, which is surely something none of us need.
I’d trade this clever age, so sure it’s new, to be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn*, to hear a god breathe as the wind blows through, and see the ocean settle for a new dawn.
These times, obsolete is the wonder, not belief; The myth awakes where certainty may sleep.
1994ever 