Interview with Eileen Chong

Eileen Chong is a familiar name for many English teachers since a suite of poetry from her collection Burning Rice was included in the NSW Year 12 Prescribed Texts list. One of these poems is also featured in the syllabus as part of a study on Contemporary Asian-Australian Poets, however, Chong is so much more than this. With her poetry spanning the remote corners of the human condition - from highly personal journeys into the inner psyche to sharply-observed forays into broader discourse - it's always fascinating to get an insight into her processes and methods. Beyond Burning Rice, Chong's poetry collections also include Peony, Painting Red Orchids, Rainforest, Dark Matter, A Thousand Crimson Blooms, and her upcoming 2025 release We Speak of Flowers.

I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to ask Eileen Chong some questions about her work and she was very generous with her time and answers!

What first led you to poetry?

I've always enjoyed reading poetry, even from before I realised what poetry was. My first poetry, I suppose, was from the Bible. I attended Methodist and Anglican schools as a child in Singapore, and had always been drawn to Psalms and Proverbs as well as the Song of Songs. I remember asking a teacher why parts of the Bible were written in sentences and others in 'parts'--even at a very young age part of me discerned the difference in language between prose and poetry.

I studied Literatures in English and Linguistics as an undergraduate at university, and was a high school teacher for a number of years. I'd always loved reading and teaching poetry, but my tastes were quite conservative and tied to the canon. It wasn't until I started a Master of Letters at Sydney University and studied the craft of poetry under the tutelage of Judith Beveridge that I started to read more contemporary poetry across different cultures and also in translation. I started writing poetry around 2010, and had my first book of poems published in 2012 with Australian Poetry. 2025 will see my sixth collection of poems (and my tenth book in total), We Speak of Flowers, to be published with UQP.

 

Do you feel like your poetry has changed over those 6 collections?

Absolutely—my poems have changed across the 6 collections because I have changed as a person over the past 14 years. Of course my work must have retained some defining aspects of a poetic voice, but my concerns, interests and obsessions have evolved, doubled back, overlapped, expanded and/or changed, and the poems reflect that in themes and form. 

For example: my next collection, We Speak of Flowers, is a book-length poem in 101 numbered fragments to be read in any order (including sequentially). The book demanded to be written in this manner—the usual poetry collection of 50 poems or so was not the right container for this work.

I teach the poems from my first collection, Burning Rice, a fair bit in schools, and as the years pass, I gain more and more distance from those poems, to the point where I often wonder: who wrote them? I’m actually consistently surprised by the craft of those poems, by the density of and the compression of language, and feel like I could not write poems like those now, simply because I am not longer the same person and poet as then. 

At the same time, there are words and phrases I used in poems in my previous collections that I would no longer be comfortable using as my sociopolitical consciousness has grown over time and with age. Some of the ideas that gripped me so intensely at different times have also faded out of focus as I have moved on to different stages in life, and others have come to take their place.

I love that my work remains dynamic and in flux even after more than 14 years as a writer.  I would be bored if I were to do the same thing day in, day out, and that applies to my poetry as well. 

You mentioned Burning Rice as an ongoing bridge into schools; how does it feel having your poetry listed as one of the options for NSW students to study? Does it change your relationship with the text?

I don't write for any specific audience, but I am beyond thrilled that students are studying the poems in Burning Rice. I think it's a wonderful recognition to have my poems studied in schools. I was previously a high school teacher of English in Singapore, and know first hand how transformative literary texts in schools can be for students and what a great impact it can have on young minds, sometimes long after their schooling years.

To the best of my knowledge, Burning Rice is also the first single-author collection of poetry by an Asian Australian to be on the HSC syllabus. That is a great honour, and I certainly hope I won't be the last. Having my book on the syllabus has also helped me greatly in a financial sense as I am able to go to schools to speak on my work, which has provided an alternate source of income as I continue to try to make a living through my writing.

I think it is also important for students to be able to read contemporary poetry and to encounter the poet in the flesh, and to understand that creativity is a process that is constantly in-flux. I have absolutely loved being able to be back in classroom to speak on the craft of poetry and to teach my poems to students. I hope that the poems form an entryway into students thinking about migration, identity, multiculturalism, liminality and ultimately leads them to reading more contemporary poetry.

I like what you say about creativity being constantly in-flux. Do you find that the ongoing interaction between students and your poetry challenges the idea of the author being in control of the text?

Absolutely. I’ve often spoken about the creative process and how sometimes even the poet isn’t fully aware of what might be in the poem. I’ve always thought that the final stage in a poem’s creation takes place in the mind of a reader. It’s also refreshing to be in the classroom and have students respond to a work in ways that surprise me, but which are completely valid.

Most of all, I really love watching the expressions and responses to my poems when I read them aloud in classrooms, before I explain any of the literary devices used, or even speak about possible interpretations. To witness a poem’s emotional effect on students is a true gift. To paraphrase Eliot, poetry can communicate meaning even before or beyond conscious understanding.

I have also written poems in response to being in the classroom—a kind of metatext about the creative process to try and articulate this interesting circularity. One such poem, ‘Making Sense’, from my last collection A Thousand Crimson Blooms, begins this way:

I tell my students:

poetry is a way to make sense

of what you fear.

And it ends with:

A girl at her desk begins a poem:

I dreamed everyone, even my own

mother, had forgotten my name—

Which comes first, the poet, the poem, or the reader? Perhaps they are all one and the same. 

I love that. I think we get too rigid sometimes about separating the author from the text and their audience. Why do you think poetry became your primary medium for expression?

As far back as I can recall, I have loved language—the science of it, the sounds of it, the craft of it. I majored in both Linguistics and Literatures in English as an undergraduate, but I had to choose one of the two for my Honours year. I very nearly chose Linguistics over Literature—I was particularly interested in neurolinguistics, pragmatics, and lexicography. But Literature won out and, though unknown to me at the time, it set me on a path that would eventually lead me to poetry as a profession.

Simply put, to me, poetry is the highest form of linguistic expression possible. It is the most varied, the most compressed, and the most encompassing of forms. What I love most of all about poetry is its capacity to move the spirit, its neverending mystery, and how a poem can renew and reinvent language in the smallest space imaginable. (Dove: ‘Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.’) 

I also love how poetry is a broad church, and how it aligns itself with every human experience and emotion in ways that other art forms might not be able to. As I grow older, not much surprises me, but poetry retains the power to astonish and revise my experience and existence. (Dickinson: ‘If I feel physically like the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.’)

I often joke about how if I had a choice I would never have chosen to be a poet. It is likely one of the hardest careers to make a living from, because our capitalist society values it so little. (Wordsworth: ‘Poetry has never brought me enough money to buy shoestrings.’) Yet I feel like poetry has been a blessing to me and a calling I could not refuse. Many of my friends from childhood are at the stage of life where they are preoccupied with their careers and life paths, but very few can say that they have spent most of their time pursuing their passion. (Graves: ‘There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.’) I can, hand on heart, say that I have, and I’m grateful for that, at the very least. 

It might seem that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ (Auden), but I believe that ‘a good poem helps to change the shape of the universe’ (Thomas). Above all, it reminds us of what it means to be human, and that there is power in it, that ‘poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth’ (Jordan), even if you ‘tell it slant’ (Dickinson again). Joy Harjo tells us that when you begin to listen to poetry, ‘you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else.’ What other vocation allows you this? Only poetry does. 

You mention some great classic poets from years gone by. If you had to choose 3 great poets from the 19th, 20^th and 21^st centuries, who would you pick?

An impossible task, I’m going to cheat and pick two each. John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Li-Young Lee, Joy Harjo. I’m sure I’ll regret these choices in one way or another. There are so many poets worthy of reading, and not enough time in the world to do so. 

Thanks Eileen. Final question - what advice would you give to anyone wanting to write poetry?

Read poetry. Read non-fiction. Read fiction. Read widely and without prejudice. Read poetry aloud. Listen to its sounds, rhythms, cadences. Study the history of poetry, of forms, across cultures. Read poetry in translation. Read ancient poetry. Read contemporary poetry. Read craft books written by poets. Read interviews with poets. Keep reading, listening, feeling, thinking. See art. Watch plays and performances, attend music events. Walk, swim, sleep in nature. Travel, in person or on the page. Fall in and out of love. Connect with community. Live your life to its fullest. Fill your well, nourish your imagination, and feed your soul. That which spills over? That which cannot be contained? That is the beginning of your own poetry.

 

Visit Eileen Chong's website here.

Researching for History Curriculum

Thanks Penrith Library!

I thought I'd share with you today one of my current methods for researching and writing History curriculum. There's no single way to program, of course, but I do know that if someone had outlined a few methodologies to me back in my university days then it might have made things a little easier. I've experimented with various ways of writing programs for teaching and I guess that 2020-21 was the moment where I finally became happy with an approach to researching for the subject of History. So I thought I'd share it!

There were a few contributing factors that helped me arrive at the method I now use... 

• In 2019 I was commissioned to write some chapters for the Cambridge History Transformed series. In order to feel comfortable in providing a baseline from which other teachers could work, I knew that I would have to undertake a considerable amount of research.
• At my new school I was placed onto Ancient History, a subject I hadn't taught for at least 9 years. For all intents and purposes I'm basically teaching it for the first time so I needed to refresh my approach.  
• I fortuitously attended some online PL conducted by the History Teachers' Association of NSW. This 'Introduction to Ancient History' module was run by Dennis Mootz, who highlighted the use of Excel Spreadsheets as a powerful aggregation tool for historians to use. 

My approach isn't revolutionary but I'm finding it increasingly useful and it's something I'll be teaching a variation of to my students for the upcoming Historical Investigation component of Ancient History. I'll also teach it when I next have a History Extension class. 

Step 1: Look at the syllabus. 

I start by reading through the part of the syllabus I'll be teaching. In this case, for example, it's the introductory Nature of Ancient History topic 'The Treatment and Display of Human Remains'. 

Then I code the content dot points within the syllabus for my own reference, using the following schema: 

• 1 = The Nature of Ancient History as it's the first module in the Preliminary course. 
• 6 = The Treatment and Display of Human Remains as it's the 6th topic within the module. 
• The four main dot points within this topic are then labelled A, B, C, D.
• Any sub-dot points within these are labelled with a further number, EG. 1, 2, 3, 4. 

Here is what it looks like after I code it...

Students investigate:

• The condition of the human remains and how they were preserved, discovered and/or removed from where they were found 1-6-A
• The methods and results of scientific analysis (dating of finds and forensic techniques) and modern preservation of the remains 1-6-B
• The significance of the human remains and other sources, for examples written, for an understanding of the life and times in which they lived, including: 1-6-C
• The social status of individuals 1-6-C1
• The beliefs and practices of the society 1-6-C2
• The health of ancient populations 1-6-C3
• The nature of the environment 1-6-C4
• The ethical issues relevant to the treatment, display and ownership of the remains, for example the use of invasive methods of scientific analysis 1-6-D

Step 2: Read.

I recently read a tweet where the poet Eileen Chong made reference to a creative process figuratively labelled as 'wool-gathering'. This refers to the necessary time that writers need to spend on reading, gathering up the intellectual resources that will allow for creation. In preparing to teach an area of history I will gather together any available resources I can find, place them in a stack on my table, and start reading. 

Step 3: Raw notetaking. 

I find that, without focus, examining history can become quite overwhelming. Reading one thing will lead to another and I'll be fascinated by the minutiae of particular events only to realise (when it's too late) that it has no relevance to what I need to teach. This is where the above coding from Step 1 comes into play.

Using an excel spreadsheet, I will keep one eye on the syllabus content points and make notes on what I'm reading. Each separate entry is coded with one of the 8 codes from the above syllabus. This is what it looks like:

Click to enlarge.

The columns are as follows:

• Information: My notes from the source in question. This can be a summary, or a quote, or a suggestion.
• Key Word: In something like this topic it's useful to be able to separate the entries geographically as the plan is to examine significant bodies from different parts of the world (EG. Bog Bodies from Europe, Mungo Man from Australia, etc.).
• Reference: This lets me know the source I've used. I keep another tab in the Excel spreadsheet running to collect together my sources as a proper bibliography. 
• Page Number: So I can follow up in case I come back to the entry and realise I need more context, or need to check if I've quoted something correctly. After all, I don't want Keith Windschuttle to come after me (that's a joke for the History Extension teachers).
• Syllabus: The coding from Step 1. This becomes most important in the next step.
• Format: The type of source it's from. This can help me evaluate how I plan to use the information.
• Category: A categorising column additional to the Key Word column can be useful when it comes to sorting the document afterwards, in case there are different ways of ordering the information (EG. By culture/body rather than by geography).

Step 4: Sort.

The final step before I start programming my unit (in other words, planning out my sequence of lessons and populating it with resources) is to take all the raw information and make some sense out of it. This is a simple but powerful step where the spreadsheet is re-sorted by using the coding. All the entries are then reorganised in order of the syllabus, allowing me to work through it methodically. 

I then move onto creating my unit of work. Recently, for example, while creating a unit for the Boudicca Case Study, I've been able to refer back to all my entries on Boudicca's representation through history and use this to create a lesson focused on just this one aspect of the syllabus. It's been incredibly useful. 

And that's it. I have other ways of using the spreadsheet but I think this will do for today :)

Writing in Response to the Literary Homelands Prescribed Texts

One of the challenges of the HSC Extension English syllabus is the idea that students need to analyse a broad selection of texts as part of their elective. The mandated amount of texts for study are as follows:

• Three of the Prescribed Texts (two of which must be 'extended print' texts - this means two drawn from the available novel, non-fiction text, drama, and short story suite options).
• Two related texts.
  

This means that, in response to the question given in the HSC Exam for the Elective, students will need to be able to ostensibly call upon detailed knowledge of up to five texts (though in reality, it's most likely to be two prescribed texts and one related). Putting aside any concerns we might have about the level of depth that this allows for in a single one-hour exam, students are required to have a holistic enough understanding of the studied texts to be able to achieve a synthesis of understanding in response to the Elective descriptor. 

So how do we teach this?

There are many roads to Rome, so to speak, but having just finished teaching the new syllabus for the second time I feel more ready now to share a particular approach after fine-tuning the way it works in action. 

This hinges on the use of a schema - download here.

1. Start with your normal way of approaching each text. Students should read, and re-read, and discuss, and analyse, and write about the texts in a variety of ways.
   
2. There then needs to be common identifiable threads that can be applied to all of the texts. This requires legwork from the teacher because students will not have read all of the texts until the end of the course. Part of this legwork has been done already in the Elective descriptor, and this is reflected in the schema. There is room on the schema for additional concepts to be drawn out from all of the combined texts that have been chosen for the students. As far as the Literary Homelands Elective goes, I've indicated a range of common concepts in the schema and left space for the class to come up with further ones throughout the duration of the course.
   
3. After each text has been studied, students look at the schema and connect their analysis to each concept (or half of the concepts - your mileage may vary). 
4. As you move through the course, students come back to this schema over and over again, using the concepts to discuss commonalities and differences, building up their meta-analysis of  Literary Homelands.

Eventually students internalise many of the concepts. They pick out their favourites and they start connecting quotes to a thesis they develop in response to each concept. They write paragraphs exploring their meta-analysis of each concept. 

And then you chuck some HSC-style questions at them and they practise rearranging their meta-analysis accordingly.

This schema approach could be easily adapted to each of the electives. You'll just need to examine the the Elective descriptor for your chosen Elective and use the indicated key concepts to fill in the schema accordingly. Once you've read the Prescribed Texts as the teacher, undertaken some professional learning, or read associated academic texts, you can then populate the schema further to suit the needs of the Elective.

Literary Homelands Essay Response

I sat the Trial HSC Exam.

I'd seen other English teachers talk about doing this, and I'd done it earlier on in my career with Standard English to 'test' myself for reassurance, so the idea to undertake an Extension English 1 examination wasn't completely foreign to me. I won't lie and say it was a piece of cake; I have to admit that I felt kind of nervous walking into an examination with no notes to rely on and having to write a response legibly enough by hand.

I also feel nervous sharing my responses here on the blog... going into that big cold school hall and having to adhere to those time limits was surprisingly intimidating, but maybe the writing will be useful to someone's students. Hopefully.

Anyway, I wanted to do this for a few very important reasons.

1. There doesn't seem to be a textbook out there filled with Extension English 1 essay responses. I inquired about this with a publisher that I've previously contributed Standard and Advanced essays to and the response was, understandably, that the market was too small. I decided that starting to write my own essays might be the way to go about it.
2. I wanted an essay that was written in as close to student conditions as possible. I sometimes think that the 'Band 6' (or in the case of Extension, Band E4) responses provided by teachers (myself included) are slightly disingenuous as they often aren't written by hand, in timed conditions, or isolated from revision notes.
3. Understanding how the examination works feels like a really important thing that I should know. The only way for me to get a fair summation of this is to do it myself, otherwise I'd forever be an observer looking in.
4. I often feel like I shouldn't ask my students to do anything that I wouldn't do. I want to be able to perform well in exam scenarios... teaching students how to write essays for exams without being able to do it myself has made me feel in the past like I was missing something.
   

I was lucky this year as the examination had been set and finalised several terms ago so I was able to go into the examination without remembering what the questions were. As I said earlier, it was kind of nerve-wracking, and I found myself wandering around mumbling quotes to myself in the preceding days in an effort to memorise some appropriate textual evidence.

The Experience

In the past I've given my Extension students the advice that they should do their Elective essay first, and that they should devote 1 hour to each of the two papers. I tried to follow this advice and I was mostly successful, but here's what I learned:

• I ended up needing at least 70 minutes to write an essay with four properly supported body paragraphs.
  
• The Literary Worlds section, even with its two separate parts, only ended up taking me about 30 minutes. The more organic nature of imaginative writing meant that I wasn't constantly needing to stop and keep track of what I was doing in quite the same way that I needed to for an essay.
• I planned out my essay fairly carefully. This burnt up valuable time but it was entirely necessary to ensure that I didn't stray too far from the question or my thesis. I kept having to stop myself mid-paragraph to go back and check on the question, the thesis, and my plan - this is part of why this section took me so long.
• My planning involved quickly writing down my 12 quotes/textual examples, brainstorming a thesis statement of sorts, and then calling upon four different talking points that our study of Literary Homelands is built around in class. I then matched up each of the textual examples to each of the talking points before I started writing my response.
  
• In writing the Literary Worlds imaginative response I had to be careful to remember I was writing for the purpose of reflecting. To this end, I ensured that I consciously used a couple of techniques that I could discuss in reference to the way we had studied the module in class - this meant crafting a piece of writing that allowed for some implied discussion of reader-response theory, demonstrated how I had both mirrored and subverted the stimulus text, and indicated an understanding of the question that had been posed in the examination.
  
• Side Note: I was conscious of writing something that was of benefit to my current students, so I resisted writing too academically. That is to say, I wrote within the constraints of what I hope my students will be able to write. If I'm being honest and self-critical then I think that my elective essay may be too formulaic and that my imaginative piece could have leaned a bit more on the Joyce stimulus.
  

The best aspect of all of this is that I can now safely say I have a much better appreciation of what Extension students need to keep in mind while doing their exam. In concise terms: it's a lot.

The Exam Questions

The exam used is from the practise responses that can be easily found online at the NESA website. I wanted to try and make sure that the Trial HSC matched the HSC as much as possible, so I've relied on this exam for the first two times I've taught this course.

In light of this, if my students went looking for these practise papers and did them all in advance then they'd have a big advantage going into the trial exam. But, really, I think I'd be so overjoyed that they did this much preparation that I wouldn't mind them having this 'advantage' (I say 'advantage' but really, it's just assessment as learning). Suffice to say, I aim to write a new, original paper next time I teach the course - whenever that may be.

The Responses

Section 1, Part A

She sat outside watching the morning sun embrace her backyard. Eveline had never felt more awake than she did now.

This was a new world of action and desire and excitement and endless opportunities. Her memories of home were fading, in fact - 'home' was starting to disappear altogether. Home? But Australia was now home. That place in the past, Ireland, was something that happened to someone else. Not home.

"Mrs. Jones, when do you expect your husband will be arriving?"

It took a moment for Eveline to register that the butler was talking to her. She turned and caught his raised eyebrow before he re-composed himself.

"Oh, I don't know - he's always traveling. I shan't be surprised if you never get to see him."

The butler sniffed, clearly unimpressed. What did Eveline care? This was the other side of the world. If she wanted to say she was Mrs. Jones, that she had an ersatz husband off fighting wars or exploring jungles, that she was educated and upwardly mobile... If she wanted to say these things then how could this snooty, ridiculous butler challenge her? In Australia, she could be anything.

Yes. The morning sun was radiant as it glinted off the river over yonder, as it reflected off the greenhouse, and breathed life into everything it touched. Eveline? Who was Eveline? She was Sabrina Jones now. She must think of herself as Sabrina, not Eveline.

"Pass me that, would you, James?" she said in her best, most haughty voice.

The butler reluctantly gave it to her and she held it high in the sunlight.

Beautiful.

Let them try and take it away from Sabrina. Just let them try.

Section 1, Part B

In order to invite the reader into my continuation of Joyce's 'Eveline' I took the opening sentence of the writer's original text and mirrored its structure while subverting its intentions. Where Joyce wrote of the character looking out from an interior world through a window, I decided to place her outside to symbolise a difference in place. Where he wrote 'evening', I have used 'morning sun'. This is intended to suggest a new, positive beginning for the character through the use of pathetic fallacy, and Eveline is no longer 'tired' (as described in Joyce's opening lines) but now "had never felt more awake".

To give the impression of this being a more energetic setting and frame of mind for Eveline, I used polysyndeton, "action and desire and excitement and..." The character is clearly open to new possibilities now that she has left Ireland for Australia. A stream-of-consciousness approach is used in the second paragraph with fragmentary and truncated sentences, as well as rhetorical questions, to show the process whereby Eveline constructs a new identity for herself - Sabrina Jones. This acts as a symbol for the embracing of new opportunities.

Needing to generate a potential for conflict, I have made some suggestion that the butler is suspicious by having him ask after her "ersatz husband". The reader is encouraged to engage with further mystery through my choice to have the object at the end remain unnamed. By referring to it obliquely as just 'it' and using an enigmatic, one-word paragraph of "Beautiful" (which could refer to anything - the object, this new situation Eveline is in, the view of the backyard), I hope to unsettle the reader enough to provoke their own reader-response: a deliberate choice with no intended meaning at this point, as I want to convey how reader-response theory can work.

Download Section 1 Response.

Essay Plan

Section 2

Composers use their texts as a platform from which character voices are employed to illustrate the changing world. As a result of processes of modernity such as marginalisation, hybridisation, colonialism, and the instability of language, these characters become representative of the formation of complex identities that result from shifting homelands in the 20th and 21st centuries. The creation of these identities can be observed in texts such as Eileen Chong's suite of poetry, Burning Rice, the play The Secret River by Andrew Bovell, and Ding Xiaoqi's short story, 'The Angry Kettle', each of which provide a forum in which authors can explore the aforementioned ideas.

With the impact of diasporic migration, communities and individuals often find themselves marginalised within Australia's constantly changing society. Eileen Chong explores this idea in her homage to her Chinese ancestry, 'My Hakka Grandmother', with the line "Wild birds in search of a new place to call home" illustrating the lack of power inherent in migrating peoples. The Hakka people are a nomadic group lacking in a fixed homeland, as evidence by the use of the adjective 'wild' in a metaphor designed to evoke images of a group forced to 'fly' from place to place. The connotation of the word 'new' further conveys the idea that the persona's people have lost their previous homeland: they lack the security afforded by a fixed community. This process of disempowerment in similarly expressed in Xiaoqi's short story 'The Angry Kettle', wherein the Chinese protagonist faced with a symbol of white Australian dominance, the titular kettle, remarks that she "barely had the guts to look straight at it". This allusion to the kettle's power lends the object a sense of personification as if it were an intimidating force to be reckoned with - an item that symbolises historical English superiority in Australian society. The process of marginalisation that results from unequal relationships of power is further explored in Bovell's adaptation of 'The Secret River', in which the play's events reach an appalling climax whereby the increasingly dominant white settlers massacre the Dharug people while singing a song of home, 'London Bridge'. The contrast between the tragedy that befalls the Dharug and the image of grown men singing a song so well-known to children provides a tonal dissonance that illustrates the way British power has disrupted the natural balance of the Dharug people - a process of violence that pushes them to the margins of their own world, so to speak.

The ability of migrant identities to find a foothold in their new homeland may also inevitability lead to a process in which new, hybrid identities are formed. Against their best wishes, the people of the Dharug in 'The Secret River' find themselves subjected to the influence of their European invaders. This is perhaps best exemplified by the ex-convict Thornhill giving Ngalamalum the anglicised name of 'Jack'. Despite the insistence of his son Willy that the Dharug man's name is easy to pronounce with practice, Thornhill's self-assurance in his own culture results in his own choice of name being imposed on Ngalamalum, a metonym for the process of re-naming that has seen Aboriginal culture develop accordingly in times since. This process is explored in other ways by Chinese-Australian migrants too, with Chong's poem 'Chinese Ginseng' labelling the taste of the eponymous Chinese medicinal herb as 'bitter-sweet' - a paradoxical description that showcases her mixed emotions about the traditions of her mother and illustrates the complex ambiguity of being Chinese in the Western world. Conversely, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' resists the attempt of her housemate Michael to subsume her traditional identity completely. When Michael racistly asks her if Chinese people have to eat 'fried food' she hyperbolically retorts with a question of whether all Australians have to "treat their kettles like sweethearts," a simile that subverts his discriminatory question by turning it back on him. In considering each of these texts it becomes clear that the ongoing development of cultural identities is something that happens in connection to opposing identities that exist in the same space.

The creation of shared spaces is, in the case of Australia, a result of the 18th and 19th century practice of colonialism. In 'The Secret River', the settler Thornhill makes the claim that "dug-over dirt" is as "good as planting a flag." This simile references a belief that the British way of using land is the only true proof of ownership, and is used by Thornhill to discount the validity of Dharug pre-existence along the Hawkesbury River. This event is representative of larger historical events that impacted on Australia's Indigenous peoples and would have an ongoing ramification on their concept of identity in years to come. The violent impact of colonialism is also felt in more subtle ways, with Chong's persona in 'Burning Rice' sadly looking at her burnt rice and metaphorically describing it as "my ancestors' ashes in a bowl", an observation that illustrates the loss of connection to her previous homeland that has result from living in a nation still characterised by British cultural dominance. This dominance is also evident in 'The Angry Kettle', with the ever-present kitchen implement signifying the living spectre of British colonialism that still sits, 'shiny' and important, in the average Australian home. The narrator of this short story demonstrates this through the juxtaposition cause by her dirty 'fingerprint' on the gleaming kettle - an act that symbolises the intrusion of Asian identity into the homogenously white world that had grown from British colonisation of Australia. Each of these texts convey how composers use the voices and presence of these characters to explore the way identities change through experience.

The instability of language is another key component of literary texts that embody changing cultural identity. In Chong's poem, 'Winter Meeting', the persona describes a meeting with an older Chinese poet in Melbourne. As a suggested for her depression, Kim Booey Cheng tells the persona to read the famous traditional Chinese poets. She is, however, unable to, reflecting, "But where you go / I cannot follow... I lost the language years ago." This metaphor reveals the way in which a Chinese-Australian's changing command of Chinese language can affect one's sense of cultural connection. In contrast, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' is unable to grasp the finer nuances of Australian English, describing her housemates words as "pouring out", a verb choice that carries a connotation of natural force, of hot water from a kettle, of something that cannot be stopped so that understanding can be checked. It is at this point in the story that the reader first gets a sense that a division is appearing between the protagonist and her housemate, and it is a division created by a difference of language. The power of language is utilised in a different way by Andrew Bovell in 'The Secret River'. The Aboriginal characters speak in the Dharug dialect, which is used to allow the audience to experience the cultural barriers between the British and the Indigenous. At various points in the text there are moments of misunderstanding that result from Thornhill's ignorance of the language, and his unwillingness to learn it foreshadows that it is a language doomed to extinction.

Through examining 'The Angry Kettle', 'Burning Rice' and 'The Secret River', readers can get a sense of how cultural identity is fluidic, flexible process that happens in interaction the development of new 'homeland' spaces. Through a process of self experience, characters shift and resist and hybridise in the modern world, and authors present their voices so this can be better illustrated.

Download Section 2 Response.

Ars Poetica

             Portrait of the poet Eileen Chong

I am, admittedly, a late bloomer when it comes to appreciation of poetry. 

In my first prac as a student teacher I remarked to my supervisor that I wasn't much into poetry. She told me, in good humour, that I needed to get my act together. Grasping for some kind of validation, I told her a few days later that I'd picked up a bargain copy of a Pam Ayres volume. She was less than impressed and I was confused. I was fairly green when it came to the idea of a poetry canon; I'd read Coleridge at school some 15 years previously and all I could remember was that he smoked a bunch of heroin and wrote the poem that inspired the classic Iron Maiden song Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 

It's been ten years since my practicum block and it feels like a lifetime ago.

I have had some time to read a bunch of poems since those days and the construction of effective poetry appeals to me a lot more now that I'm in my (late) 30s. I used to play in bands, write song lyrics, and have always loved a neat turn of phrase. Finding my way into poetry has been both a joy and a sadness. So far, the poets I've liked are:

• Ellen Van Neerven
• W.H. Auden
• Eileen Chong
• Dylan Thomas
• Tracy K. Smith
• Olivia Gatwood
• Kim Boey Cheng
• Anita Heiss
• Percy Mumbulla
• Oodgeroo Noonuccal

I find myself listening to singer-songwriters with a much more critical ear now too; Paul Kelly, Brian Sella, Francis Quinlan, Ted Leo, Wil Wagner - they're all pulling words from the ether to craft stories as song, and I find myself scanning them for swearwords to check if I can use them for junior English classes. 

I didn't post anything to this blog for December and as I'm currently working on some other writing projects I'm thinking my online output will probably slow down a little. So I wanted to post something... I wanted to put down some thoughts regarding 'Ars Poetica' too, and this seems as good an excuse as any to write something.  

'Ars Poetica' is a poem by the classical Roman poet Horace that offers advice on how to write poetry. The phrase 'Ars Poetica' (meaning 'the art of poetry') has become an emblematic term used to describe a metatextual work in which an author reflects on the why and how of literary creation.

I hadn't really heard of this term until about a year ago but, hey, I'm only about 2036 years late. Isn't that the way, though? That you hear or read a term like this and then suddenly you see it everywhere. I was reading The Tempest and doing some paratextual research and this is exactly what happened. In the midst of reading about John Dee's career as a spy, the doomed Virginian colony, and whether the Jacobeans were aware of their king's homosexuality or not, I came across W.H. Auden's 'The Sea and the Mirror'. This long, complicated, multi-perspective text features a series of interconnected poems in which the various characters of The Tempest talk to one another and the audience. Auden referred to it as his ars poetica, with the text acting as his own personal commentary about how we view art. In extension of this, Auden posited that The Tempest itself was Shakespeare's ars poetica.

Looking at Prospero's enigmatic epilogue, in which the magician implores directly for the audience to set him free, it's easy to see why so many academics have imagined an ailing Shakespeare speaking through the character. Whether this is really the case or not we will probably never know, but I can appreciate the romance and poetry of the Bard reaching the end of his career and wanting to create a final statement on his work in the theatre.

The Tempest as ars poetica is further supported by the play's thematic core as a narrative built around the motif of performance. Prospero 'performs' for his daughter, Miranda, by keeping certain facts from her. He uses metaphors relating to the stage to refer to his elaborate plans of manipulation and revenge. Ariel and the other spirits put on a masque as a symbol of Ferdinand and Miranda's union. The idea of performance is one of several keys to understanding the text on a deeper level.

Of course, the other side of this sentimental coin is that Shakespeare had no idea when he was going to die. The only real record of his cause of death is a possibly apocryphal tale told 50 years later that attributes Shakespeare's passing to a fever contracted after a wild drinking session. If this is even remotely true then it would make no sense to assume that he wrote The Tempest knowing it would be his last play. Any intention for it to serve as his ars poetica wouldn't be tied to his supposed retirement or demise.

Anyway. 

I've also been analysing Eileen Chong's Burning Rice collection in connection to the English Extension 1 Elective 'Literary Homelands' and pulling together any relevant paratext I can find that will support student parsing of her work. During this process I found the poem 'Burning Rice' referred to as Chong's ars poetica.

There's that phrase again.

The poem itself is a three stanza piece about memory, ancestry, and the preparation of rice. These fifteen short lines are so carefully poised and constructed, so central to Chong's writing in the rest of the volume, so metatextually ripe as a metaphor for creation, that they can indeed be seen as definitively representative of what her poetry is essentially about.

It's interesting and I can see Extension students, with further discussion of what ars poetica means, attempting to find examples of texts from other writers that metatextually represent what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.

Extension English: Elective 1 - Literary Homelands

The Literary Homelands elective asks students to explore how individuals and communities express their connections to place, ethnicity, and 'the other'. This is essentially an elective about diversity and voice, values and assumptions, and the impact of one culture on another. All the texts share this last thing in particular as a common thread - they portray worlds in which cultures overlap, intersect, and come into conflict.

There are three novels - two of which are set in India, albeit a century apart. One is written by an Indian writer, the other by a British one. The third novel is an Irish author's exploration of the Irish migrant experience in 1950s America.

The poetry option represents a Singapore-born Chinese-Australian's perspective on migration and cultural identity, and the drama option is an Australian-written exploration of the clash between European and Aboriginal worlds in the early 1800s.

The final text is a feminist one; a British film about London's Bangladeshi community.

Prose Fiction Options

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

What is it: Meet Balram Halwai, an impoverished Hindu who watches his father die unattended in hospital and thereafter vows to transcend the shackles of his caste. In his ambition to achieve financial security and independence, Balram becomes a driver for a wealthy Bangalore family engaged in dodgy political dealings in Delhi. His story, relayed in epistolary form to the Chinese Premier, charts his rise from extreme poverty to powerful business mogul. 

Scope for Study: In Balram, the author Aravind Adiga has created a complex and authentic voice that is representative of a class of Indian people often stereotyped or rendered voiceless. What's perhaps most engaging about Balram's narrative is that he is neither portrayed as a victim of circumstances or villified for his extreme actions throughout the novel. The line between satire and cultural expose become somewhat blurred as Balram's highly engaging second-person narration veers from the sharply comic to the brutally sobering and then back again. Students will be able to examine the significance of narrative voice, authorial intent, and literary value (The White Tiger won the prestigious Booker prize just a few years ago).

NESA Annotations: Notes can be found on The White Tiger in the annotations for the 2015-2020 syllabus, when the text was connected to the Extension 1 Elective: Navigating the Global. Most of these annotations focus on the novel's exploration of globalisation which, if you squint enough, can be co-opted to assist with reading the text in connection to the Literary Homelands elective (in that both electives allow for the examination of Adiga's depiction of India as a country shifting under a wide range of social and cultural pressures). The annotations also highlight Balram's role as an anti-heroic narrator.

Verdict: I think this would be a fantastic text to introduce to students. Adiga's novel is both very funny and quite confronting so there will be little chance for students to become bored, and the way the novel is constructed will also provide plenty of scope for lively discussion. In particular, there's a lot of mileage in examining the author's role in shaping his narrative as a complex but recognisable representation of a nation, a depiction that's familiar enough to the average student without losing a sophisticated depth of complexity that justifies the novel's critical acclaim. 

A Passage to India by EM Forster

What is it: Written and set in 1920s British India, Forster's novel concerns the tensions and misunderstandings that arise from the relationship between the British colonialists and their Indian subjects. Much of this is relayed through the friendship of Aziz, a young Muslim doctor, and Fielding, an independently-minded British headmaster - a relationship that is tumultuously tested when Aziz is falsely accused of sexual assault by a visiting Englishwoman who wants to see the 'real' India. 

Scope for Study: Forster's text remains highly relevant (despite its age) due to the complex commentary it offers on colonialism, imperialism, racial differences, and gender. At the time of its release it was considered inappropriate by Western audiences as it challenged and critiqued the concept of British superiority and flew in the face of contemporary Western views on Indian identity. From a 21st century standpoint, the text can be deconstructed from the opposite standpoint as ultimately reflective of Forster's inherent racism and other attitudes that have long since changed - something that students should have no difficulty picking up on.

NESA Annotations: Notes are provided in the new 2019-2023 Annotations, with emphasis placed on the novel's literary value as a key text written by a Nobel Prize-winning author. Opportunities for challenging teaching and learning include analysing the myriad forms that conflict takes within the text, looking at the way the author represents perspectives of different characters seeking a greater understanding of Indian society and culture, and examining the narrative's tripartite structure.

Verdict: If you count Bangladesh as a part of India (and it was at the time of A Passage to India's writing) then there are three texts in this Elective that focus on this multi-religious, multi-cultural country. I don't think I would teach all three of them but I think you'd have to be working very hard to avoid them altogether if you were doing this elective. A Passage to India is probably the most divisive and deconstructable of the three texts if you were choosing to utilise just one Indocentric work. Forster's novel challenged me at several points due to the backwards attitudes of its era, however, it also remains highly pertinent in that it offers a outlying critique of its time that was entirely apart from the common attitude of the 1920s British readership.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

What is it: Eilis is a young woman living in sleepy 1950s Ireland who finds herself presented with an opportunity to relocate to New York. Using her connection to a Catholic priest, Eilis moves into a boarding house filled with other Irish girls, gets a job in a department store, and goes to night school to become an accountant. She begins a cautious relationship with a young Italian-American man, however, when tragedy strikes back home in the village of Enniscorthy, Eilis is confronted with a difficult and life-changing decision.

Scope for Study: Brookyln's placement as part of the Literary Homelands elective makes a lot of sense as it provides students with ample scope for examining the notion of a cultural and physical homeland and the effect this can have on a person's sense of loyalty and growth. Eilis is a strange character in that she manages to come across as paradoxical in that she is both strong-willed and unassuming, and students can examine this as a symbolic representation of the way an increasingly divided cultural identity can manifest itself. The dichotomy between 1950s America and Ireland also provides scope for examining the increasing complexity of the modern world; with Brooklyn's social modernity acting as a counterpoint for the cultural decline of the 'village' represented by the rural landscape of Enniscorthy and the backwards attitudes therein.

NESA Annotations: Brooklyn was introduced in 2015 as an Advanced English novel for the now defunct Module C Elective 'Representing People and Landscapes'. As such, notes on Toibin's text can be found in the 2015-2020 Annotations, and concern themselves with the Advanced module rather than the new Extension Elective. That said, there are some useful pointers on the differences between Enniscorthy and Brooklyn, and what Toibin's authorial choices for his character might represent in relation to the novel's themes.

Verdict: Brooklyn is one of a couple of 'new' texts from the 2015 text prescriptions that have been shifted from Advanced into Extension (another that comes to mind is Melissa Harrison's Clay), which may leave a few English faculties across NSW expressing frustration after recently purchasing large class sets. That aside, Brooklyn seems a much better fit with the Extension Elective in comparison to the previous Advanced one. I would be careful about selecting this text; the themes and characters are the sort that would traditionally appeal to a middle-aged literature-conscious crowd, and some teenagers (yes, even the ones who choose Extension) may be significantly alienated and resistant to Brooklyn as a matter of taste.

Poetry Options

Burning Rice by Eileen Chong

• Burning Rice
• Mid-autumn Mooncakes
• My Hakka Grandmother
• Shophouse, Victoria Street
• Chinese Ginseng
• Winter Meeting
• Singapore

What is it: Eileen Chong is a Singapore-born Australian poet who has attracted a diverse array of accolades for her work. The selected poetry from the volume Burning Rice focuses on Chong's migrant and cultural background, straddling her Chinese ancestry and Singaporean upbringing with particular attention paid to the importance of food as a ritualised expression of identity.

Scope for Study: The seven poems selected here offer portraits of captured moments fraught with the emotional charge associated with memory and self-awareness. Chong's use of structure is fluid and free-form, allowing for word placement to slip into unexpected places via the joys of enjambment and split clauses, thus providing scope for students to examine the effect of representing moments in this stylised fashion. In relation to the elective, Chong's hyphenated identity (China / Singapore / Australia) allows for a relatively straightforward examination of the rubric provided in the syllabus. 

NESA Annotations: Featured in the newest annotations, NESA's advice on the selected suite of poetry highlight "the poet's exploration of the tensions of the diaspora" - calling to mind years past when a lot of NSW English teachers taught Peter Skrzynecki's Immigrant Chronicle as part of the 'Belonging' Area of Study. Attention is paid to the poet's use of narrative, imagery, and intertextuality to explore the impact of the past on the shaping of the present.

Verdict: I really love Burning Rice, and not just the poetry selected for the elective. My three favourite pieces from the volume are Chinese Ginseng, Bathhouse Ritual, and Mid-autumn Mooncakes - two of which are featured in the prescribed suite. It's worth noting that this text doesn't just focus on cultural heritage; it's a lot deeper in that it also deals with very personal issues such as infertility and family relationships. A lot could be done with this text in the Extension classroom.

Drama Options

The Secret River by Andrew Bovell

What is it: William and Sal Thornhill are pardoned convicts who, upon hearing that anyone can claim land for themselves by the Hawkesbury River, decide to head into the un-colonised bushland west of Sydney. William finds a few fellow settlers along the river, all battling hardship to make a new life for themselves, but doesn't bargain on the fact that the area is already inhabited by the Dharug people, whose close connection with the land challenges William's concept of what constitutes ownership and civilisation. 

Scope for Study: The foreword before the play goes into Bovell's process of adapting Kate Grenville's iconic novel into play-form and therefore provides great scope for discussing the necessities and strictures associated with crafting a story bound by the dramatic conventions of the stage. Students will also be able to draw connections between the text's content and their own personal context as Australian citizens, perhaps in relation to family histories with a basis for contrast and comparison. Bovell's extensive use of indigenous language is also a unique gift for teachers and students to explore within the totality of prescriptions available across all the English syllabuses.

NESA Annotations: Notes can be found in the 2019-23 Annotations. These outline the clash between European settlers and the Dharug people as representations of conflicting worldviews. Mention is also made of the Thornhill family as a symbol of the fledgling Australian identity, the author's use of parallels to demonstrate ideological similarity and difference between the two races, and the significance of this dramatic adaptation of a novel in that it gives the Dharug characters more defined identities and voices.

Verdict: It's worth carefully reading all the text that preludes the main bulk of the play in The Secret River as it describes Bovell's writing process as a partially collaborative one. His use of the Dharug language is probably one of the most engaging aspects of the text and reflects the input of Dharug performers, making this play at least partially representative of an Indigenous perspective (and in a way that Grenville's novel is not). I really like Grenville's novel and I can understand completely why she would not include the first person perspective of the Aboriginal characters, however, Bovell's pared-down version of the narrative is highly evocative of a lost era and I think there's a lot to be gained through its bi-cultural examination of interracial conflict on Australia's 19th century frontier.

Film Options

Brick Lane, directed by Sarah Gavron

What is it: Set in East London's Bangladeshi migrant community of the same name, Brick Lane tells the story of Nazneen, who leaves behind her home in the rural heart of the sub-continent to raise a family in England with her husband, Chanu. Their marriage is an arranged one and therefore not particularly loving, and Nazneen's isolated life and the increasing racial tension following the 9/11 attacks sees her begin to explore her individuality with a much younger Muslim man.

Scope for Study: In a reversal of A Passage to India, Gavron's film shows the West through an Eastern lens, and can be examined quite easily with multiple readings - a gender-based reading could examine Nazneen's sexual awakening and burgeoning independence as a reflection of the Western values that her daughters have adopted, and a historical reading could examine the significance of using the 9/11 attacks as a backdrop for a story about assimilation and integration. Gavron's direction is also of note in that she represents a female viewpoint in a profession (film directing) where women are few and far between.

NESA Annotations: Annotations can be found in the 2019-2023 Annotations document, where particular attention is paid to the film's context as an exploration of challenges faced by Muslims in the post-9/11 world. Note is also made of the concept of 'home' in relation to the migrant experience, and the director's use of visual metaphor and flashback to portray complex cultural perspectives and the impact of the past/memory on the present.

Verdict: A moving and beautifully-shot film, Brick Lane manages to tell a relatively straight-forward story about cultural dislocation without sacrificing the complexity that comes with living in the interstitial places afforded by close-knit migrant groups such as the Bangladeshi-British community based in East London. Pairing this film with a study of A Passage to India would be a valuable use of the elective in that both texts deal with Indian culture from near-antithetical standpoints. Brick Lane also contains a powerful and heartbreaking portrayal of the impact that 9/11 had on long-integrated Muslim communities in Western countries such as the UK, which links to the unassessable 'values' part of the syllabus in that it allows for exploration and expression of varied dimensions of the human experience.