My poem “Traveller” was published by Australian Poetry Journal, Volume 14, Number 1. Guest editor Jake Goetz begins his discussion of the theme “walking” with the imagery of Rainer Maria Rilke hearing “a voice calling through the wind” as he walked a short coastal path near Trieste, Italy, in 1912. “Who, if I cried out, would hear among the hierarchies of angels?” the poet mused.
Goetz proceeds to argue that, although walking is good for the body and the mind, it is a “privileged activity, one that in Western cultures has historically been dominated by white men with the time and/or means to engage in hours of aimless reverie”. Thus he is interested in challenging conventional conversations around walking and “shining a light on its inherent inequalities”.
Examples expressed through the poems collected in this journal include but are not limited to: the dangers of simply walking home at night as a woman, walking out of a war zone as a refugee, walking in protest against unjust and/or unfair laws and policies, walking of a glacier due to human-induced climate change, and walking that involves the use of a wheelchair or other technologies. Particularly in the Australian context, there is walking on the unceded lands of First Nations People.
It makes me reflect on my own poem, where the traveller is indeed privileged, “a tramper never content with here and now” because “money affords flights, friends and freedom”. To them, “return becomes dreadful like dying as an end, unfulfilled, unfinished, unexplained”. They can walk everywhere and fill their pages with vivid worlds and fantastical visions, but they forever remain cynical.
(Day 16 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 