Ellen van Neerven
Introduction to Jeanine Leane’s Walk Back Over
With Leane, we walk back over history pages, walk back over the night and find what was always there, trip over the wires of dissent and denial. It’s a walk we need, a good one for the legs, across a country whose landscapes are haunted and fragile and tragic; there is no place that is benign. 'What piece' (what peace)? – the question asked in the second poem, 'Piece of Australia' – becomes an echo in the reader’s mind throughout the collection.
No Limits: Trans Sporting Lives
In this essay about being trans and loving sport, Ellen van Neerven identifies the regulations and attitudes that bar trans people from the fulfilment to be found in athletic activity and sport communities. Included are conversations with Maddee Clark, Zakaria Shahruddin and Louis Blake.
My utopia isn’t a trans utopia. My utopia is a utopia where everyone gets to find pleasure and joy in moving their body, be aggressive and be strong and be together in that space despite their gender. Which in itself is a trans utopia. It’s my utopia and I happen to be trans. This is what I hope for the future.
(Note: Thank you to Griffith Review for granting temporary free access to this essay.)