The Blue Tree in Lyons

the Yellow Box rattles in the wind 

dead branches entwined with sky

trunk brushed in blue 

at the turnoff drivers ask

why’s that tree  

got a blue coat?

passengers wonder

strollers and joggers pause

   ask why is blue so sad 

         a silence

           inside  

when it’s also sky and sea

why is it too hard to say

something’s really wrong?

socks paired face washed hair brushed 

we make ourselves look better than we are

so no one sees our shuddering shame

my thoughts are worried leaves

             in a storm 

my mind is bark eaten away

my job is too much I think I’m done

how will I make money to pay my rent

let alone my debt

my family was stolen and my land

my body doesn’t feel like me

thrashing limbs I can’t stop 

so scared I’ll be ripped away

I’m different to anyone I’ve ever met

they left me

I was hurt too much

where can I live

where can I be safe?

my love is not accepted

I asked for help but it’s too much

this pain has done me in

lopped branch after branch

the world has raced ahead of me

            I’m lonely

people will think 

why is that tree in Lyons blue?

ask have you seen that big blue tree?

people on the drive to work

to the shops to visit 

kids walking home from school

don’t know what to say

might make it worse?

ask why is that tree blue?

it’s a start to find a way to say

there’s something really wrong

this feeling it’s not leaving

or I am worried about our friend 

so why is that tree blue?

in the listening and speaking

here in Country

in Lyons right near Woden 

in the valley near the creek 

we might find a way to hear

to say

            yes I’ll  listen 

            we can try to talk 

            I’ll sit with you

            I’ll come    

Sarah St Vincent Welch © 2023

Last Monday I packed my blue plastic poncho and headed off to help paint a huge dead tree in Lyons a sky blue, and to read a poem I have been working on for over six months. The poem is about how the blue tree might affect our community. The Blue Tree Project began in Western Australia and was started by Kendall Whyte, whose brother, Jayden, took his own life. Please read the story of the project. It is gentle, organic, and has helped people find another place to put their grief and distress, and to communicate about it. As of today the blue tree count in Australia and around the world is 927.

In 2021 I travelled with my husband, Dylan, around most of Australia, 25,000 kms, to talk to people to try to understand my country more, and to reflect on suicide, mental health and illness, and the desperation that leads people to make this decision. I continue to reflect on the stigma I have keenly felt around discussions of suicide, mental illness, and crises of distress all my life. It comes from trying to understand the silence around my father’s death and the circumstances around it that involved me as a child. Attitudes have changed; but not enough. I tried to turn away from it, but I recognised I just couldn’t anymore.

The first blue tree we saw was on the Mitchell Highway near Barcaldine. And yes we had a discussion about mental health when we found out just why that tree was blue. I, of course, wanted to speak to Kendall, but I missed her in Perth, so we chatted via zoom, me in the car parked on the main street of Coolgardie (we were on the way to Kalgoorlie) and again I experienced the kindness and generosity of people like Kendall in the community working in suicide prevention.

This is way too complex a subject to completely address here in this post. I am still on this journey to understand more and to find ways to contribute. And I am still talking to people and writing. But I wanted to share this poem now.

Samantha Ning from TCCS Directorate was a driving force behind the blue tree being painted in Lyons, working with ACT Health, and Kendall Whyte. It has been years in the organising; El Nino and a pandemic intervening. Kendall Whyte spoke at the painting ceremony, and I at last met her in person and we hugged. I was honoured to meet Aunty Lydia George. And I was blessed to meet all the gentle people from the community and from government in the Australian Capital Territory who have worked together to get a very big tree painted blue on Hindmarsh Drive where so many people can wonder over it, and maybe start a difficult conversation. It has to be better than silence. And to my astonishment I read, at the invitation of Gabrielle Mulcahy, my poem to Minister Emma Davidson, on the following Thursday when she got up in the ‘The Tower,’ a crane or bucket lift, to paint the upper branches, followed by the TCCS Tree Protection team who finished off the job by spraying those top limbs and twigs.

If you feel you don’t have anyone to talk to and this post makes you want to connect with a capable listener you can ring Standby or Canberra Lifeline and I will respond here as well.

I have been thinking a great deal about libraries lately, for one reason and another. They closed during the shutdown period of COVID-19 in Australia, and have opened again (though all the while librarians were working behind the scenes, like the rest of our workforce, to adapt to the new situation and to provide what services they could). (Victorian libraries have had to physically shut down again, but I read that the librarians called every member.) I have jaunted around libraries all my life; school libraries, local libraries, national libraries, even private libraries; and their importance in my experience of the world rises in my mind like a brimming book itself, full of wonder and anecdote and hilarity, hope and learning.

I remember holding my creased and crumbling library card at the Junior School library (the books teetering above my head in what I recall now must have been a small room in an old building with just a few bookcases). It was the Junior School Library! It was ours! It was mine! I remember coming home from uni on the bus with ridiculously heavy bags of books, taking up the room beneath my seat, the bags lumpy and precarious on my lap, and maybe even onto the person next to me! And making a mad dash over to Macquarie Uni to read from their shelves as all the books on reserve in Fisher Library at Sydney uni were already booked out. I remember touring the Bodliean in Oxford, siteseeing in the Morgan Library in New York City, and the experience of being the only woman reader when I visited my nearest public library to read the English language newspapers, in the city of Ahmedabad in India in the 1980s (though the librarians were women).

The libraries in Canberra, a newer sort of city (though it rests on ancient land) have been such a great part of my life too, a constant resource of information, entertainment, and community. This rainy weekend I popped into the ACT Heritage Library to check out its new location in Fyshwick (a light industrial suburb notorius for its legal brothels and sex-industry shops, but seriously everyone it is mostly light industry, hardware stores, car yards etc). It moved from Woden Library last year. I researched there for the project ‘The Pearly Griffin the history of the old Griffin Centre’ (co-edited by Lizz Murphy and funded by ACT Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services. I was delighted to be greeted by an inspiring exhibition about leadership, portraits by none of other than
Akka Ballinger Constantin of women leaders in our community, and their statements about leadership.  These included Justine Bamblett, Kerry Snell, Roma Lazio, Louise Bannister, Jenni Purkis, Sue Salthouse and Christina Ryan.

This all brings to mind the inclusion of my poem 821.3 in Old Civic Library published in my chapbook OPEN published by Rochford Press. It reflects the refuge of the library, what a library can provide on so many levels. A true story. It is set for me in 2002 the year before the 2003 fires. And since then, of course, we have known worse.


821.3 in old Civic Library

Look through the darkness
of light-sensitive glass
at the interchange
the missed connections,
takeaways and deals

hold your sweat wet
call-slip, and watch

while the infirm wait
for a kneeling bus,
the kids shove prams,
pull babies’ arms, out
in, like naughty dolls.
Police ask, ‘Where’s your Mum?’

Look down and turn the page.
Employment section rustles.

Look up. Outside a hand
hails a taxi and swollen
legs run for buses torn
from timetables. A boy
looks for coins in the gutter.
A woman and child sleep
they doze in the aisle
821.3 Australian poetry

under the blue fluoros
in the old Civic library
the air con sings
the librarian turns it up
the blades whirr and rattle
there’s fire in our skies
and a storm coming

When I took to watching late night TV in the 70s and 80s the broadcast would end at midnight with the song My City of Sydney and I remember the colour chart staring back at me from my parents TV (it was a solid box with a drawer underneath that contained a turntable – broken – by me playing with it many years earlier.) I felt I was leading the bohemian life being up so late, watching Debbie Reynolds and Jimmy Stewart in black and white on Bill Collins’ Golden Years of Hollywood. Sydney is still my city in many ways. Though the city centre changed physically very quickly soon after I left in the 80s, with Darling Harbour and the closing of main streets for pedestrians, it is the childhood city of my heart still, and many aspects of it are unchanging.

 

The water, the earth and stone, some places, and the friends and family I visit are like a continuing song (a bit better than My City of Sydney) inside my body and mind that rises up when I am here (there). Now I can eat Iraqi food in Auburn and catch a glimpse of people smoking bright green hookas on the footpath. Eastwood shops is abuzz with market garden veggie stalls and the pick of Asian cuisine. In the 70s and 80s it was Lebanese food in Surry Hills and Italian in Leichardt for me.

I am so honoured to be launching my first book of all my own work, a poetry chapbook called OPEN (Rochford Press) with Anna Couani’s thinking process (Owl Publishing) in The Shop Gallery (Anna and Hilik’s gallery) next Sunday 2pm March 10 at 112 Glebe Pt Rd Glebe (I used to live in Bridge St when I was at uni and worked at Sydney College of the Arts down the road in Personnel as a clerical assistant.) (I visited Anna on the way home from work, to home in Ashfield, the highlight of my day).  If you are in Sydney next weekend please join us and celebrate.

owlbooks@bigpond.com

Open by Sarah St Vincent Welch

Today I am heading up the highway (past Lake George/Weerreewa,) through the Southern Highlands, to Sydney, and along Parramatta Rd. It is such a familiar place, but also astonishing in its life and noise. I live in a city where we joke about our traffic peak minute that arrives somewhere around 8.30am. It is all about contrast and memories for me.

I lived in Glebe when I was a student. Went to Sydney Uni. Lived in Camperdown and Ashfield a little later. I have set a novel in Summer Hill. Hung round in Leichardt and  Annandale. All these inner city suburbs cluster around Parramatta Road. I visit Sydney often, my family and many dear friends are there. I am going to a book launch today, The End of the Line Poems by Rae Desmond Jones, published by Rochford Press (formerly Rochford St Press).

I recall a time in 2016 when I was visiting my Mum in hospital in Sydney. It was around my birthday. My husband was taking a short course in lighting at AFTRS. I was aware of a callout for a project by Spineless Wonders for their Little Fictions series. We were staying in the Marco Polo Hotel, one of the cheapest hotels we could find. Aeroplanes rumbled overhead, the lights of cars streamed by as we leaned over the edge of the roof one night. A fellow guest sang loudly all into the early morning  on our last night there. After many hours and at about 4am the management kindly asked him to sit outside. He was trying to stay awake so he wouldn’t miss an early plane apparently. 

During that time I became aware of the wedding dress shops in Leichardt on Parramatta Road, the cluster of hope and glamour, in the grind and bump of the busy streetscape. I glimpsed them from the bus. Lingered as I walked past. Took photos. I wrote a piece for Little Fictions that was later performed at the Knox St Bar in Chippendale by Joel Douglas.

Here it is.

 

 

 

 

The Wedding Dress

When the shop door opens I hear the sea. The rumble of the waves rises to the sky. The sea must be close by. I dream of it. I wake to the sound of its swell, rising with the day. The beams of a lighthouse sweep across the floor at night.

The brides-to-be, the mothers-of-the bride, the bridesmaids, glide in with smiles and acumen, with flourishes and secrets. They know their measurements. I swim in their expectation, hope for their attention, their touch, to lead me to my day. 

I have heard whispers of a harbour, a bridge of fireworks, of gliding ferries and an Opera House with white sails. Is it a ship? Will I sail on it?  Will I clasp my bride, enfold her as we waltz, dance in the spray? I glimpse the blue of the sky through the shop window. I am white like the summer clouds, organza edged.

I wait for my day like a butterfly. My tulle is a wing. It flutters as she walks past, brushing my skirt, and she pauses before me. The groom waits outside, smoking. Ash falls on the pavement, sparks scatter.

She touches my bodice. Lifts me to the mirror and presses me to her heart, smooths me down, fluffs me out. She tries me on. Steps out of her shoes, unzips. I slip and rustle and slide and hold her tight. She adjusts herself into me. We look at ourselves in the mirror. Unsure.

The bridesmaid runs to the door. Shoo! Shoo! The groom strides off. Crosses the road. The bride-to-be wants to see us in the sun. Our wedding will be outdoors. Out west. By a river.

We stumble out the door. The waves crash around us. Parramatta Road surges, rolls. I am cream as pearl, as bright as molten gold. Whipped in the wind. I will fly. A truck blares its horn.

The Humans of Parramatta Road performance night was wonderful, and I experienced it with dear friends. Bronwyn Mehan is a publishing  genius.

Humans of Parramatta Road  is now on a podcast. You can hear Joel’s resonant performance and all the other wonderful actors and stories. A casting coup, a male voice for a female subject for the The Wedding dress, I believe (thank you Bronwyn). Rozanna Lilley shared her incredible Parramatta Road project with me recently, check it out!  https://flic.kr/s/aHskroy4CS

What will I find near Parramatta Road this time? I will tell you soon.

(Thanks to Dylan Jones for the beautiful photos of the event.)

 

 

 

 

One of the dreams of my life has been to assist in hanging an art exhibition, and that dream was realised this last week at Belconnen Art Centre in Canberra, with the exhibition Postcards from the Sky. I have two pieces in it. As a writer and image maker, I am often working away creating, selecting and arranging words and images, but I have never exhibited visual work in this traditional context and never expected to.

I worked in Film Preservation for ten years at the National Film and Sound Archive, with physical film, mainly pre-1951, so I have a love and affinity for handling precious objects (and also honour their strength, fragility and physical qualities). I also get off on counting things, checking things, placing things, naming and numbering things, and caring for objects.

I have been fascinated by collections since childhood. (What makes a collection, what is left in and what is left out?) I loved natural museums as a child. And as an adult an art exhibition is great fun, is often moving, surprising, and an exhibition opening is a wonderful celebration. An art exhibition is a sort of collection to me, a special place and time that has been curated.

I often say I grew up in a house that was like a museum, my mother the curator of  objects collected by relatives who may have been borderline hoarders. She inherited the treasures of a father-in-law who died in the Spanish Flu pandemic just after World War 1, who had brought back from his time  in Egypt, Gallipoli and France, hundreds of objects. (Our door stoppers were shell casings, and we had cannon balls in the garage.) Some objects ended up in the Australian War Memorial, ( a collection of signs from the trenches and weapons and more) and recently the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney accepted a collection of Egyptian artefacts that we stored in a cabinet on top of a cupboard. It wasn’t opened for a hundred years. As children we were warned off it, though on occasion I climbed up and tried to peer into the darkness of the coffin-like cabinet. I could just see tiny amulets and statues. We were told there was a cat mummy in there. Poor Mum, we discovered also that her mother-in-law lived near a clearing house and her favourite pastime was to peruse the catalogues and warehouses for ‘finds,’ and Mum had those things to care for as well.

So from such origins my relationship with things, with objects and collections developed, and the dream of helping hang an art exhibition arose. Now, I can’t claim too much. I held measuring tape. I stood with my arms above my head holding unframed paper against a wall, I sorted and handed pins, I held hammers. Lizz Murphy (powerhouse facilitator behind the living studio and exhibition that developed so quickly from it) and I thinking we knew what we were doing, measured up my piece As Above, So Below 1 – Where Are You? got it skewiff and I marked the wall. There we were with gumption scrubbing the wall, our hands way over our heads, a wee bit ageing, me at least feeling my aches. Ann McMahon let us have our way, then glided in after we cleaned up our mess, and kindly showed us how it worked. I love to learn.

It was a group effort of the artists in the exhibition, but the main people hanging the show were of course the staff of Belconnen Arts Centre, especially Ann McMahon, Dianne Libbke, Damien Hicks, and Skye Rutherford, overseen by co-CEO and Artistic Director Monika McInerney. We were overwhelmed at the generosity of being given the whole foyer for a start, the glorious space by Lake Ginninderra, with the views and light, and the interest of the construction site next door beginning the extension. To experience the space transforming into an exhibition was a gift.

Akka Constantin Bellinger and I unpacked the art that arrived during the first days and laid them out on tables. I observed Jenni Kemarre Martiniello’s keen visual and storytelling sense as she devised the layout of the exhibition, the eyelines, how pieces might talk to each other, and Ann, Damien, and Skye brought their own aesthetics and knowledge to the process, and also how to interpret Monika’s vision. ‘Clean eyelines are important.’ ‘Monika likes grids.’ But there was no rigidity, ideas were tested. We were all honoured and our work treated as precious expressions.

I love the physical cooperation of doing a task with another person or people. It is unusual to stand so close to a stranger arms above your head on tip toe in the summer heat, for me, usually a keyboard sort of worker these days. I love taking the physical instruction of another, ‘hold your hand this way then slide it down, I will do this, then you do that.’ The process. Lizz related Ann’s knowledge of knots and her clear instructions (a skill begun with fishing with her father), to hang mobiles. I love knots myself, from Girl Guide days, making gadgets out of sticks, instructed by my mother. And there is conversation. Wonderful conversation about art, family, observations, work, and laughter.

Also there is cleaning (cleaning is life is it not?) Kindness. Politeness. Care. Even emotion in all our body’s heat and fatigue. Everyone turning up. And turning up. As they could. Helping each other.

Can I volunteer, Moni?

Postcards from the Sky Belconnen Arts Centre Foyer February 8-March 17 2019. Exhibition of words and images (new work and works in progress) by 10 artists and poets with an ongoing living studio.

I will be writing more soon about the experience of the Living Studio that developed this exhibition.

 

Evangeline (or, the grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break)

never did I ask if you were you

were one

then
as you are many as you are

many
many, a
room full of
people watching each other
listening
moving

underneath

in front

griefs of the body, bodies,
writhing (my shame)
split
twitch twitchy tic tic tic
hot leaky, of this

after we asked
after we asked
if you were one, again,
it was a way to understand
yes –
her fluid arms the past
decisions
of a dance, dances, dancers
anger and pain right upfront
upstage
who knew what?

how to stand with this
how to be with you
how to touch
how to respond
how to leave you
as one
as two
as us
as many

A smoky room, gulping a dacquiri, tongue wrenched with lemon, I waited and relaxed and chatted and listened to the music in the Canberra Theatre Centre Studio Courtyard, (train – oh oh oh train – I remember, I remember, take me b –ack, take me– back) knowing I was in Chenoeh Miller’s Theatre of Love, a place I didn’t entirely know I was entering until I was there, it was so familiar. I will just leave the images I took and my poem at the beginning of this post, to evoke the experience. And to also say, never miss Miller’s work, try to get there. I also wanted to honour the artists Peta Ward, Alicia Jones, Erica Field and Ruby Rowat, whose extraordinary performances of intense physicality joined with the audience in ways I have only experienced in Little Dove Theatre.

After Evangeline I realised my own grief has stirred, surprised, I carry it in me calling it something else, as it pops out like a small disturbed snarly animal, but it is calming down, healing a little, getting used to its new name. Time. Love and kindness. Being with. And expressions and experiences like Evangeline, help.

Evangeline was on for three nights. In my opinion, so far, reviews have reflected what I experienced and I am linking them here so you if you missed out you can feel a little connected, and watch out for Miller’s next production. I never want to miss a Little Dove Theatre Art performance since I saw ‘From this.‘