Interviews

A key motif in Ali’s work is the dev, or demon, which is used to reflect critically on the experience of marginalisation.

The original meaning of the word novel meant to bring news, and I cling to the old-fashioned, realist, meaning of the novel: bring news.

It fascinates me how young Edison was able to develop a love of books. Picturing the world he described, I can’t see how he could grow to become such an avid reader. He tells me, ‘the only thing I could see in my village was a radio…but then not everybody owned one…’

This interview is from Diversity Arts Australia’s Pacesetters Creative Archives project, a chronicle of the histories of creative practice of migrant, refugee and culturally diverse communities in Australia.

For me, the fact that Boey exists as a poet at all, and that he continues to write poetry, is a miracle altogether.

Science thrives when it is open to anyone who has the talent for it, and the taste for the hard work involved. And society thrives when our institutions are seen to be fair. But my argument is that the case for diversity is epistemic as well as moral. I’ve never heard a scientist say, Yeah, it’s really great that the feminists pointed this out because once we understood the epistemic benefits of diversity, we realized that we could do better science.” My goal is that, in the future, scientists will say that.

Māori culture is the taonga, the treasure vault from which I source my inspiration. How could I not pay tribute to the people and stories of the iwi? Without them I wouldn’t exist. The genealogy of my work can be traced back to Waituhi, my father’s kin place. The pito (umbilical) is there, where the stories were all being spoken, sung and acted around me. It’s the turangawaewae, the place where my work began to stand. My Māori self has its history there, and it’s where all its reo (tongue or language), ihi (energy), mana (strength) and wehi (dread) comes from; there, I am my own king. All I’ve ever done is move that literary whakapapa, that living world and its orality, its aurality too, into a written world in a different language, English.

‘The when-and-where of my initial reading was this wildly unstructured but avidly associative scramble through historical and imaginative space-and-time.’

‘I think it is important for women of colour to know that we are not objects or tokens to be used and dispensed.’

‘It’s amazing how far your poems may reach even in a country with censorship.’ An interview with celebrated translator of Chinese literature, Bonnie S. McDougall.