Jeanine Leane
Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey
'"You just don’t sound Australian." She tilts her head and looks me up and down now as Roberto steps aside. "You know…your accent! Doesn’t sound Australian!"
"It’s Aboriginal Australian," I say.
"Oh," she cocks her head, "sorry! Just didn’t sound like any Australian accent I know! That’s all. I thought I was the only Australian on the residency. Looks like I’m wrong!" she smiles.'
Cardboard Incarceration
The poem 'Cardboard Incarceration' was published as part of Australian Book Review’s States of Poetry ACT, in 2016. It is the opening, anchoring poem of Leane’s collection Walk Back Over, published in 2018 by Cordite Books. Its opening lines, starting, 'this cardboard prison', sit on the book’s cover.
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.
Guwayu – For All Times
The term ['interpretation'] speaks more faithfully to the complexity of each of our languages that are unique and refuse direct classification and translation into the coloniser’s introduced language of English. For some poets, too, the decision to craft their works in Aboriginal-English rather than Standard Australian English is a conscious and deliberate choice. It is also a testimony to our ability to make the introduced language our own and to make it work for our many communities, and is further evidence of the innovation and resilience of our First Nations peoples post invasion.