Throughout the year of 2024, Riverton Press has been thinking about Rome and Russia, migration and exile. Both our upcoming books speak of migration. Sure, people have always moved around the planet, but today we have unprecedented levels of displacement. Mostly due of course to the same four old horsemen. (Do they never tire?)

Our two new books are very different, one the result of deep family history research, the other a personal memoir that examines the self through life in a “sandstone castle”. Both books are written by women born in Europe who have migrated to Australia, one via France and Canada, one via Italy and Kenya.

No Way Back, Revolution and Exile: Russia and Beyond by Nathalie Apouchtine spans three generations, three continents and more than 100 years. Her family left Russia following the 1917 Revolution, some travelled alone, some in groups, many lived in France, very few of them ever return to Russia.

Apouchtine has written a wonderful family history, including her own stories of the research process. Based on recollections, interviews, letters and travel, the book vividly illustrates the impacts of national histories on personal lives. Much of this story of course was made in other languages, mainly in Russian and French. The book includes 16 pages of photos of her family members.

The Legend of Busby by Vittoria Pasquini is also published as La Leggenda di Busby.

Yes! Riverton Press is releasing the books in two languages, the English version has been translated from the Italian by Gino Moliterno.

Pasquini’s memoir, written in the third person, is a journey inward, a journey through the rooms of the sandstone house, a non-linear telling of life experiences. We move around Rome, Nairobi, Sydney and Canberra via the table of family and guests, an unloved laundry, a shared bathtub. It’s a generous table. As Filippo la Porta says in his introduction, “a cosmopolitan space where diversity is fraternally welcomed”.

The Busby Legend and Leggenda will be released in late November, with a launch in Bondi. No Way Back will be released soon after.

The covers of the books are stories in themselves, the illustration of the Busby house and legend was made by one of Pasquini’s young granddaughters.

Some months ago, Voices of Women Inc called for texts by women about the Riverina. Not just any text, but 800-word stories to be read and acted in performance, short monologues by women of the Riverina on Wiradjuri Country. Themes were to be based on personal experience with something about resilience.

Voices of Women is a not-for-profit organisation that presents new work by Australian women writers by powerful women actors, and collaborates with artists and musicians. https://voiceswomen.com/

I’m a woman from the Riverina, so I thought I’d “have a go”, but when I finished my 800 words I realised that I had not written what you would call a story. I sent it off anyway by the due date, with a note saying I realised it wasn’t on cue, and sure enough, it was not what they wanted for personal monologue performance. So I’ve decided to post the text here as a blog, as Riverton Press was born in the Riverina.

the land I love

When I sit at the rowing machine in a Sydney gym, I imagine I’m on the Murrumbidgee. As a 10-year-old, I was never in the tinnie on my own because the river is treacherous but now I forget the gym and row, willows on one side, a gumtree woodland on the other.

When I go back to Wagga at flood time, I can’t get enough of looking at the lagoons and billabongs, I know the Library is sand-bagged and soggy, the caravan park at Wagga Beach has been moved off-site, I’ve had to drive around because Eunony Bridge is closed and Oura’s under water, but I love it, the water, the birds, the reflections, the green.

I also love it when it’s dry and the colours are those of dry grass and red sand or dusty loam. This also is a time of tension, of worry about fire and wind. My mother used to fret: Why haven’t the neighbours cut their grass?

When I hear the crows in Sydney, I hear their eternal lament (what is their trouble exactly??), and I miss the accompanying voices of the sheep. I was never any good at school choir, this was the soundtrack. I didn’t know then that laughing jackasses (as my father called them) and raucous cockatoos are unique, that the rest of the word has no idea of the scandal of yellow-crested squawking birds descending on your fruit trees.

I lived some years in Mexico City, I rode the busy subway, crowded buses, collective taxis, I attended large concerts and demonstrations. In short, I learned to be part of the masses, and while learning this I would remember the spaces where I grew up, the space many Australians take for granted. As a child I didn’t know that the Milky Way would not be with me every night, that those wide horizons and mirages on the roads would shrink in accordance with my urban choices.

My family knew of course that we weren’t the first on our patch of land, and our white fella history was brief. The old man (my grandfather) had moved there in 1927, he and his sons had planted willow trees all along the riverbanks. That’s an unfortunate choice in today’s knowledge, as the willow has proved a pest, but it made for a very pretty outlook and was enjoyed by the cows (another bad choice) who enjoyed the shade and ate all leaves within reach. We only had a few cows, milkers, our farm was defined as sheep and wheat. There was a stand of eucalypts along the river flat that suggested the original vegetation. Next door, a series of billabongs filled and emptied with the seasons. White fella had used one of these as a tip for tins and bottles (those days were pre-plastic), in a show of his feckless land and water management. There was a similar tip in a gully near the river on our farm, though we never used it. Obviously the plan of my grandfather’s generation was for the river to take their rubbish away…

Those eucalypt stands were full of the land’s past history, that of the Wiradjuri people, we commonly saw scarred trees and would hazard guesses about a canoe or shield being made there. Up on the sandhills was a spot with ash coloured soil, made I suppose, of sand and ash, my father called it a “blackfella’s oven”. I could feel the presence of the Wiradjuri, yet I wondered where they were, I was not told of invasion, massacres, discrimination and social exclusion. Yet I wondered, why is this water on the road to Narrandera called Poison Waterholes Creek? I could not understand that anyone could poison a water supply, when surely everyone of whatever colour needed that water.

My parents sold the farm in the 1970s, to a family, not a corporation, and I saw the place 30 years later. I was astonished at how it had moved to what I could only call agro-industry, with bigger machinery and irrigation installations, metallic silos.

Even when I was a child, we knew that hard-hoofed animals were bad for our soil. I could see on the farm how much land had been cleared for cropping, but at least we still had paddock trees. Today’s big farming and pivot irrigation don’t allow for trees. I have flown over the Riverina, and find it devastating to see the vast areas of cleared flat land dedicated to monocrops.

We all need food, but country will have to be very resilient indeed to survive our farming practices and the challenges of climate change. It is not improbable to imagine the Milky Way shining over an earth empty of all that which was given us.

Photos from Narrandera and Tumut, New South Wales.

Our next book is a family chronicle wrapped up in history: the Russian revolution and civil war, two world wars and multiple migrations. The story spans three continents and more than a hundred years, covering events that confronted three generations of the author’s family.

Nathalie Apouchtine is a print and broadcast journalist and historian. She worked as a news reporter, sub-editor and producer in radio and television for the Canadian and Australian Broadcasting Corporations and Australia’s SBS. Later Nathalie turned to history, focussing on media and immigration in the twentieth century. Her research culminated in a PhD and provided the foundation for No Way Back. Nathalie was born a refugee in France and now lives in Australia.

The book brings to life fascinating and critical events of the twentieth century. It is based on personal memories, diaries, letters, interviews, photographs and an extensive archive of official documents.

Just to read the “shortened” bibliography of the book shows a little of Nathalie’s thorough historical research, and gives a glimpse of the fascinating world of Russian émigrés. That world was with me the other day when I visited the Kandinsky exhibition at Sydney’s NSW Art Gallery, which was excellently if briefly documented, enough to give an idea of the disruption of world history on one personal artistic life. Wassily Kandinsky lived most of his life outside his native Russia, but was there during the First World War and the early years of Sovietism. Later he too lived in France, like many members of the Apouchtine family.

Riverton Press will publish a book next year by Italian author Vittoria Pasquini, a text that has been translated into English by Gino Moliterni. We have discussed the merits and demerits of bilingual publications as we prepare The Legend of Busby.

A friend and colleague of Vittoria has translated the children’s book Leonard the Lyrebird, written by Jodie McLeod and illustrated by Eloise Short, and a bilingual edition exists of Leonard, l’ucello lira. The translator, Mirella Alessio, told me I could contact that author – she lives in the Blue Mountains.

Riverton Press was there recently wandering the paths near the Three Sisters and saw a sculpture of a lyrebird perched on a railing. Not 20 metres distant was a real lyrebird sitting on the same railing watching the morning and cleaning her feathers. Then she changed her balance, spread the wings of her magnificent tail and took off.

This reminded me of the book and I decided to find Leonard the Lyrebird. I went to the bookshop near the food co-op in Katoomba and asked man behind counter, who immediately took me to Leonard and her companion Lilah the Lyrebird. He didn’t know about the Italian version. Suddenly a voice from man behind door, the one I hadn’t seen. He knows Jodie, he’ll text her. And he did, right then and there. The other man took my phone number and would be in touch. I resisted buying any book as I had a bush walk ahead.

I was sitting on a wooden bench in wonder at the flowering wild waratahs at Govetts Leap and checked my phone, there was a message, not from the bookshop, but from the author herself. She gave me her address and said she’d be going out but would leave Leonard on the verandah and I could leave money under mat.

The waratahs had pleased and amazed me, this message only compounded my joy, restoring a little of my damaged faith in human kindness and trust.

The one person I know in Katoomba gave me a lift to Jodie’s place in another act of generosity. Next morning, at a different bookshop (sorry, LITTLE LOST BOOKSHOP, but we were in another town!), this driver purchased three books, the lyrebirds Leonard and Lilah, and the one I’d resisted the day before, the latest from Jodie McLeod and Eloise Short, The Black Cockatoo With One Feather Blue. I bought this last one too, for Eileen.

One thing more: on my second early morning walk around Echo Point I saw the lyrebird again. I remembered my father‘s simple response when I made a comment one day about a willy wagtail flitting from tree to fence. He lives here, he said.

And now, back to the original question, bilingual books, do they work? They certainly do for students of language and of translation, and is wonderful in the case of Leonard, l’ucello lira with its rich onomatopoeic vocabulary, as the book has a QR code link to the audio version in Italian.

Pix from around Govetts Leap and Echo Point. As you can see, the lyrebird is not balanced on a railing! This sculpture is closer to Blackheath.

We relaunched our books in Newtown last week with Penny O’Donnell as launcher-in-chief, Ruth Adler, co-editor of the Journeys anthology, as the one who remembered to give thanks to all those who helped make Journeys happen, and Jacqueline as MC.

Jeanie Lewis told us about her friend Hector Caicedo, co-star of her contribution to Journeys, and sang us a Woody Guthrie song: the Deportees. Jenny Pollak also told us the back story of her poetry in the book and read some of her magnificent work.

Penny made the point that, for the Australian women who contributed to Journeys, living in Mexico made our lives bigger, and that’s true, Mexico amplified our experience and our understanding. That latter, the understanding, may have come after months or years of not understanding how Mexico works, but the opportunity for that search was invaluable. I am reminded of Mariko, my Japanese neighbour for a time in Tepoztlán, Morelos, who used to say: “It’s not a matter of trying to understand Mexico, you just have to get it.”

Penny quoted Nelson Mandela – There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

She acknowledged Journeys co-editor Jenny Cooper, still in Mexico, for her work establishing the Mexico National University’s gender and economics program, under the motto: Por una economía feminista que apuesta por la sostenibilidad de la vida – For a feminist economy that is committed to the sustainability of life.

Can I read another poem, asks Jenny Pollak, is there enough time? We poets have so few opportunities to speak…

I was MC, I had no idea if the clock gave us more or less time, but all the audience knew that yes, we had time for Jenny’s next poem, the one she’d written that morning.

It turned out we didn’t have much time and Lily of the bookshop sold some books and said we had to leave. That was a pity because the room was full of people who knew each other from different parts of our lives, which made for a great atmosphere. I was the last to leave, except for Lily of Better Read than Dead, who was left alone with the books, the wine glasses, the accounts, closing the shop. King street on Friday night was buzzing, the busiest place I’ve been since I walked the streets of Madrid the year before Covid.

Thanks to Elspeth and Conrad for taking the photos. Thanks to Ruth and the bookshop for helping organise the event, to our speakers Ruth, Penny, Jenny and Jeanie, to Raewyn Connell and Manon Saur, who contributed to the Journeys anthology and were there that night. Thanks to all the contributors who gave us their insights into their time in Mexico, and to you, our readers!

Riverton Press will be celebrating a re-launch night on Friday 25 August at the Better Read Than Dead bookshop in King Street, Newtown, Sydney.

Dr. Penny O’Donnell, senior lecturer in international media and journalism at Sydney University, will launch the travel anthology Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico and the poetry book, sprinting on quicksand.

Penny will be accompanied by Journeys contributors, singer Jeanie Lewis and poet Jenny Pollak, along with editors and contributors Ruth Adler and Jacqueline Buswell.

Jacqueline’s second book of poetry, sprinting on quicksand, was launched beautifully by Eileen Haley during the Covid lockdowns to a restricted public, yet deserves a chance before a bigger audience. The book Journeys, on the other hand, has been launched in Mexico, Canberra, Melbourne and on zoom, though never in Sydney, hometown of several of its contributors.

Penny O’Donnell, winner of the Anne Dunn Scholar Award in 2020, taught radio journalism in Nicaragua and completed her MA in Communications at the University Iberoamericana in Mexico City. While she was present during the early planning stages of Journeys, her contribution to a Riverton Press anthology is still in the making. That’s because she’s very busy teaching Media and Communications at Sydney University.

Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico is a collection of prose, poetry and correspondence by 13 Australians about their days or years in Mexico. Their stories range from the early 1970s to the present day. Contributors include academics and poets, a diplomat, a singer, a model, and women who went to Mexico to accompany or meet a partner. One set up a business, another established a children’s refuge and surfing project in the southern state of Chiapas.

Other contributors to the volume will also be present, although our third editor, Jenny Cooper, has lived in Mexico since the late 1960s. And yes, we edited the book thanks to modern communications possibilities!

sprinting on quicksand is Jacqueline Buswell’s second volume of poetry. Her themes include biography, social commentary, a Japanese travelogue and reflections on art.

Jacqueline is a poet with a strong Irish background, a nomadic mind and sharp eyes and ears. This collection is written in a wide range of tones and forms, offered to the reader in precise language and dynamic cinematic narratives. A very sincere desire for a world of love and justice runs through her poems.

As we’ll be meeting in Newtown, the graphics today are from Sydney’s inner west.

We hope you can join us at the Better Read Than Dead bookshop, 265 King St Newtown, NSW, on Friday 25 August 2023 at 6.30 pm.

https://www.betterreadevents.com/

I was a bit productive during the lockdown time and started writing my father’s book. Jack Bewes had written a memoir “Lucky to Be Here” about his experiences as a bomb aimer on Lancasters in WW2. I was lucky enough to have his combat and personal diaries as well as training diaries, newspaper clippings, letters between airmen and social letters.

With such a treasure trove of primary material I set about writing the memoir. My aim was to show war from a personal perspective, definitely not a textbook version. I wanted to show the black humour, the mateship, the acceptance of a life that you were only sure you had today. The reality of being in a cold metal plane for eight hours as you flew to a target that consciously or sub-consciously you knew you may not come home from. It might be your letter sitting on your bunk that would be posted to your family, the last missive they would receive from you.

I am writing to invite you to the launch of this book.

Date: Tuesday 9 May, 2023

Where: The Rag and Famish Hotel, 199 Miller St, North Sydney

Time: 6pm – 8pm.

What to expect:  WW2. A drink. Fish and chips. Vera Lynn. Benny Goodman.

The Lyn and Jan show (Lyn with writer, singer, actor Jan Cornall) as we recount some of the hilarious stories from these young men – their humour that saw them through. The book, LUCKY TO BE HERE.

I know we will have as much fun as we had at the launch of Behind the Bar Room Door.

Lyn

I try to talk mainly about words and books when I write for Riverton Press, so this comes with a warning: today I’m going to talk about weaving. Soon enough I’ll be telling more about Lyn McGettigan’s new book Lucky to be Here, now in the design process, and about Vittoria Pasquini’s upcoming work, The Legend of Busby, now perfecting its text and translation.

It’s not a deviation from theme to talk about weaving: text and textile, line and word count, line and stitch count, not to mention yarn and yarning. It’s the same vocabulary so there must be some connection. In one, structures are made of warp and weft, in the other, they’re based on verb and noun.

Just as we might tell you, we’ve published a book, today the news is, I’ve made a basket. When I began, I had in mind a basket big enough to serve as a fruit bowl, say three or four mangoes.

I attended a series of workshops at the Museum of Sydney’s Weaving Room. Indigenous women came from various parts of New South Wales, exhibited their work and taught and talked with anyone who came through the doors. I began in December when Kodie Mason from La Perouse gave me a small circle of woven bone-coloured raffia and a yellow plastic needle. This was a “starter” and you proceed, basically, with blanket stitch. I sat at the table with other learners, we swapped stories as we worked, or worked companionably in silence. Sometimes groups sat around the two circles on the floor, their central point being a mountain of coloured raffia.

Visitors included schoolchildren and their parents, tourists from abroad, Sydney locals. Probably the most enthusiastic learners were the museum staff, who started weaving during their turns in that Museum space, then saw no reason to stop. Their managers have no problem with that, and now you might be greeted at the entrance by staff with a weaving project in hand.

My basket began with Kodie and Tarli Mason, two sisters from La Perouse, on 23 December. On 9 January I retuned with my friend Eilean, and Tarni Eastwood from Darug country showed me how to join new raffia to the growing basket. Eilean worked with raffia and made a bracelet, then chose some paper raffia to start making a circle. She worked quietly, waiting, she said, for the meditative state.

The following Monday I returned and met the Gomeroi women from the Yinarr Maramali cultural hub at Tamworth. This collective has made a magnificent large turtle that hangs on the Weaving Room wall: many small woven pieces of various patterns were cleverly joined together. I loved these women and their laughter but that day I had a struggle with raffia as a material. This is not my medium, I thought, and the more I thought that, the more the raffia tied itself in knots.

On 23 January Tegan Murdock of the Barkindji and Yorta Yorta peoples showed me how to move from the flat floor of my basket to start building its walls, this was an exciting moment for a novice weaver. I told Tegan she has a special place in my heart for that bit of teaching. Now I became more enthusiastic and did more weaving during the week, building up the walls so the basket would be ready for (what I thought would be) my last workshop. I needed to learn how to finish off the work.

The wonderful women from Bundjalung country were at the Museum on 6 February and Kylie Caldwell helped me complete the basket. It turned out to be a flimsy lightweight affair, but it’s a basket, and I made it! Then I tried my hand at the lomandra grass that had been dried then dampened again and lay in strips on the table in a wet towel. Auntie Margo Torrens and Kylie helped me create a small piece much the same size as others on the table, these were going to form part of an installation to be assembled the next day.

So I went back on the morrow to see that. It was the last day of the workshop season. As in all yarning circles, things don’t happen in an instant, one waits. I sat at the table talking with the weavers and had a look at the Visitor’s Book. I hadn’t planned to do any weaving but when I closed the book, I saw my hands were holding some raffia threads. I swear I didn’t pick them up! Well, I thought, I’ll have a go at starting a new piece, I saw how Margo did it yesterday. Soon I showed the teachers my progress and Kylie taught me how to make a stronger basket. Which is now in stages of becoming, and I have made my peace with raffia.

The phrase, where nothing was before, from I poem I used to know, floated into my mind as I thought about creating books, baskets, works of art, and it seemed appropriate to describe the results of creative process. Then I remembered more words and found the full poem. The poet wasn’t talking about making, but about first contact between cultures.

It’s a sonnet by JC Squire, on the first sighting of foreign ships on waters (where nothing was before) from a shore where there was an Indian, who had known no change. The poem is about that moment just before first contact between an indigenous community and sailing ships from Europe: the man on the beach sees for the first time, Columbus’s doom-burdened caravels.

The Museum of Sydney is all about that first contact in Sydney Cove. You hear voices as you pass a set of high standing timber on your right as you enter the museum. These speak to me of ancient culture, ancient forest, and remind me of that beautiful installation of didgeridoos at the National Gallery in Canberra. The Museum is built over and around the remains of Governor Phillip’s Government House, and exhibits reflect stories from both cultures in the early years of the English invasion.

The Melbourne book launch of Journeys and Operation Pedro Pan was all it might have been, with many encounters of friends and colleagues who hadn’t seen each other in ages, and many interesting things to learn about stories told in the books. Real life stories, I’m talking about. The staff of Readings bookshop in Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn were wonderfully welcoming, as were the good people of Melbourne who helped me find my way there on public transport. (I prefer to ask for personal directions, so much more fun than using the phone.)

Ralph Newmark of the Department of Spanish & Latin American Studies at the University of Melbourne was our amiable MC, and editors Ruth Adler and Jenny Cooper spoke about compiling and editing Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico. It was great to see them, especially Jenny who had come all the way from Mexico. It was Jenny who co-ordinated the Journeys publication process with the Australian Embassy in Mexico City and our designer and printer there. The Embassy financed the design and printing costs, and then we were able to donate our profits from that print run to Mission Mexico, an Australian charity operating in Chiapas.

The Embassy staff who worked with us in 2020-21 were Bernard Unkles, then Deputy Head of Mission and Lorena Zapliain, who was Public Diplomacy Officer. Well, what a surprise it was to see Lorena at the launch. She is now studying in Melbourne, and guess what, she came to the book launch with Bernard’s parents!

I was pleased to meet one of Journeys contributors, Heidi Zogbaum, and speak with her about the subject of her studies in Mexico, the author Bruno Traven. I had read and enjoyed Traven’s books and I was able to tell Heidi how surprised I was to discover her negative opinion of the author. She was happy to tell me why she’d formed her opinions about the subject of her thesis.

Manon Saur, another excellent contributor to the book and creator of the image on Journeys cover, was unable to attend the launch, but her work looked fantastic on display in the crowded bookstore. It’s very colourful and suggestive of Mexico, and sits so well on the cover designed by Ricardo Gallardo of Mutare in Mexico City.

It was lovely to meet Deborah Schnookal, author of the book about a stolen generation of Cubans – children taken from Cuba to the United States in 1960-61 “to escape communism” – and to hear some details about Operation Pedro Pan. Around 14,000 children and adolescents were airlifted to the US under this scheme, purportedly to get an education, and many were never able to return. Shnookal also spoke of the literacy programme established by the Revolution, when some 100,000 youths went to rural areas in Cuba to teach reading and writing skills.

This literacy programme was echoed by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and in other parts of the globe, including Australia, where even today Cubans are teaching literacy skills in remote parts of our country. I have met one of these teachers, and I can assure you that adapting to life in Bourke or Brewarrina, New South Wales, is no easy task for anyone from Havana.

Operation Pedro Pan and the Exodus of Cuba’s Children by Deborah Schnookal was published by University of Florida Press, 2020.

In 1989 Deborah Schnookal, together with David Deutschmann, established Ocean Press, a publishing company focussing on Latin American politics and culture. Their first big hit was The Motorcycle Diaries, the memoir of Che Guevara, later made into a successful movie starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal.

Our amiable MC proved himself to be a conscientious fellow, and not only because he performed his duties well and observed agreed time constraints. I say this because Dr Ralph Newmark declined our invitation to join us for dinner as he had a busy 10-hour day ahead – he was to run the conference Food and Society: Latin America, Iberia and Australia, at the University of Melbourne. He was also to present his talk on Soundscapes of Sustenance: Music & Food in Latin America, a multimedia analysis of how music and songs about Latin American foods can both internally celebrate and externally denigrate Latin American society and culture. Dr Newmark has developed two methodologies, “Aural History” and “Tasting History”, to explore political, economic, social and cultural aspects of history.

Finally, thank you to the people who sent us photos of the event and whose work I post here without permission. Please let me know if you would like some acknowledgement. You can write to: info@rivertonpress.com

Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico

Edited by Ruth Adler, Jacqueline Buswell and Jenny Cooper

Riverton Press, 2021

I think there was perhaps a glass of wine or two in our hands when our book Journeys was born – as one of those ideas that you might or might not do something about.

It was December 2017 when we sent out our first convocatoria, our call for writings about experiences of Australian women in Mexico. We started to write our own, and stories, poems and photos slowly began to make a book.

We formed an editorial team with members in Mexico, Canberra and Sydney. We produced an interesting and heart-felt book with contributions from very different people, who wrote about experiences in Mexico funny, sinister, exasperating, exotic, loving. We wrote about friends who had been with us in Mexico and have since died. We spent hours in online conversations discussing things large and small of an editorial process.

Even without Covid, it would have been an online process because of our geographical distance, but Covid gave us time and taught us patience. The idea we had in 2017 became a book in 2021 with contributions from 12 Australian women and one male to female transgender person.

The book was designed and printed in Mexico. Then began the logistics of launches, and Covid made things more complicated. Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico, has already had three launches – one online, directed by the Australian Embassy in Mexico City, one in a garden in Tepoztlan, Morelos, which morphed into a birthday party for editor Jenny Cooper, and one combined live-online launch in Canberra, organised by editor Ruth Adler with the Centre for Latin American Studies of the Australian National University (ANCLAS).

We are pleased to announce the fourth launch, to take place in Melbourne on 17 November 2022. The big thing for us is that all three editors plan to be there, live and in person, at Readings Bookshop, 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn. We haven’t been physically together since that day when we casually thought “it would be a good idea”.

This will be a double book launch, as Deborah Shnookal’s book Operation Pedro Pan and the Exodus of Cuba’s Children will be launched too. Deborah examines the airlift of 14,000 Cuban children to the United States in the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

Thursday 17 November 2022 at 6.00pm-7.30pm

Readings Bookshop, 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, Victoria

RSVP:              https://www.readings.com.au/events/latin-american-stories

                                                            or

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing?eid=954979&

This event will be held in conjunction with the conference Food and Society: Latin America, Iberia, and Australia, at the University of Melbourne on Friday 18 November, organised by the Department of Spanish & Latin American Studies at the University of Melbourne.
Enquiries: Dr Ralph Newmark – r.newmark@unimelb.edu.au

Riverton Press plans to publish a translated book with the translator’s name on the front cover. It’s not new to have a translator’s name there, but it’s not common either. Probably most translators of books would say they should be recognised as creators of new versions of texts with their name in a prominent place. In this case, we met a translator who said he did not want his name on the book cover. So we’ve had to consider the question.

There are a couple of main arguments posed against putting the translator’s name on the front cover of a book, firstly, an imagined or real prejudice by the potential reader against “foreign” works: fear of the foreign will hurt sales. This argument is surprising today, we’re always being encouraged to enjoy our diverse multicultural societies, yet some publishers hide the foreign, assume we don’t like it, and “protect” us from it!!

Even literary translators such as David Hahn say that a jacket is there to sell a book, not to list credits. I think that’s a limited commercial view of the book cover, which should make a book aesthetically pleasing per se. This brings us to the second point, design. Graphic designers can argue that adding the name of a translator on a cover is a challenge. But they are often asked to accommodate words of praise by famous persons or other promotional material. The European Council of Literary Translators Associations (CEATL) believes that a book cover with the translator’s name on it does not have to be ugly, and has taken the trouble to make a collection of book covers from Europe to demonstrate that point. Sometimes these covers also mention the name of the source language, sometimes not. One cover even says “translated from the Spanish (Cuba) by…” 

Publishers who agree to put the translators’ names on the front cover believe that translators create new versions of an original text, they create work that is their own, and deserve due recognition. In the best of cases, in the world of books, that recognition is their name on the front cover. More commonly however, their name will be on the title page.

Translators aim to be invisible in the text, that is, they aim to make their language flow, to write like a native, I suppose we might say, even as they convey ideas and behaviours from other languages and societies. But that doesn’t mean translators should be invisible or hard to find in the presentation of their product.

Readers might WANT to know about the translation. Why not tell me straight away that this book by Jose Saramago has been translated by Margaret Jull Costa, that this book by WG Sebald has been translated by Michael Hulse or by Anthea Bell? That this book in Spanish has been translated from Basque or Catalan or Nahuatl?

In the case of our upcoming book, a translation from Italian to English, the author was always happy to share cover space with her translator, he was the one who didn’t want his name there. After some time, the author told me that the translator had reluctantly agreed to have his name on the jacket. At least I think that’s what he said, I’m told that he agreed with “malincuore”. This word sounds to me like he feels bad to the heart if his name is on the cover. Well, we don’t want that, so there’s a conflict for Riverton Press!

The Society of Authors (UK) believes translators’ names should appear on book jackets. They say:

Translators are the life-blood of both the literary world and the book trade which sustains it. They should be properly recognised, celebrated and rewarded for this. …. From now on we will be asking, in our contracts and communications, that our publishers ensure, whenever our work is translated, that the name of the translator appears on the front cover.

It’s fun to browse through the book covers collected by CEATL, you’ll find a link on this page: https://www.ceatl.eu/book-covers-mentioning-the-name-of-the-translator

I should add that David Hahn writes in the excellent online literary translation journal Asymptote.

The photo shows part of a door in Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona.

Riverton Press has two books in the making, one about a house and its people, the other about a bomb aimer with the Australian Air Force in WWII. The first is evidently about life and love, family and friends, yet the other book is too, even while it tells of the aerial bombing of Germany and France. For the only hope of an Australian crew dropping bombs from a Lancaster aircraft would be to survive this mission, live tomorrow, dance and drink tonight, get a letter from home…

It’s different to think of the Second World War while this violent sudden Russian invasion of Ukraine continues. Watching old re-runs of Foyle’s War is no longer the simple comfortable consideration of its moral dilemmas. I know wars are always raging, I know I haven’t paid sufficient attention to those in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, that the current one is considered shocking by our Western media because it’s Europe and Europe was supposed to be over it. Not true of course, remember Chechnya, Georgia, Kosovo?

I have written a poem about learning ethno-geography through news bulletins from war fronts. How did I learn of the existence of a country called Chad, called Timor Leste, called Rwanda? Of people called Saharawi, called Mapuche?

Wars haunt us, and that’s one reason Lyn McGettigan is keen to publish her father’s memoirs from WWII. Wars haunt us, just read WG Sebald. As I prepare to publish Lyn’s book I think of the history of aerial bombing, of Guernika, the Blitz, the napalm in Vietnam, today’s missiles hitting Ukraine.

Lyn McGettigan wants us to know how it was for her father to fight the war he was sent to. We follow Jack Bewes as he moves from young man keen to learn and travel to the man five years later who realises – in his understated prose – that he “was not quite right” when he got home. His dancing and singing, his caring for others, his notes on 35 flying missions, his humour, carry us through the miracle of his survival.

The other book coming soon… I’ll tell you about in a separate post. It’s a translation!

Some reviews have come in about sprinting on quicksand and it’s surely time to share them here, along with a photo from my bookshelves, a miniature from my world.

“I have a new way of starting my day – with my early morning cup of coffee I savour your poetry and it’s such a joy! I’m taking Jan’s advice to go slowly, which I can also apply to my activities after reading a few of your poems. I’m sure this is good for my blood pressure.

“I loved your searching for Haiku! You can see I’ve jumped to the back of sprinting on quicksand, but I’m also into Bedrock. I love the images in the shearing shed, as I have memories of visiting sheep properties in rural Queensland years ago, and the little girl watching the re-invention of clouds – magical! (I used to lie on the ground and look at the sky watching clouds, even several years ago when I had my cottage in Tassie, but never thought of them being re-invented). And then there’s the contrast of the modern counting of “sheep” at the train station. Such different worlds.

“I look forward to continue reading your poems that create perfectly the images and stories that can lead me gently into a new day. Thank you for sharing your gift through words.” Annaxue

“Your gift: I read with recognition, reflection, curiosity, delight and wonder. I haven’t proceeded apace, I want all these experiences and more to continue. I want to spin out, be languid in, let your words, their placement play in my mind and create images, thoughts, ideas.  How special. Truly, who receives a book of poems from the poet for their birthday. Thank you, thank you. I’m honoured.” Sue

“Thank you so much for sending me a copy of your extraordinary new book of poetry.  It arrived on Friday and I have snatched some brief moments to look through and read some of your creations.  In that short time I have come to this conclusion: from book title to photography; publishing to personally signed book; exquisite wordsmith and ordinary poem titles that capture the extraordinary, you have created a masterpiece.  Congratulations!” Maureen

“I have just finished a first reading of sprinting on quicksand, and like the collection a lot.  You cover a tremendous range, and the book is full of surprises (among them, the line that the title comes from), but I can always hear your voice. 

I think Taking down the shingle got to me particularly. But I also loved the sequences, including the haiku adventure.” Raewyn

thoughts on the brumby wars

As a poet I find it interesting to reflect on a poet’s role in giving wild horses a prominent place in Australian imagery, and thus indirectly leading to current debates:

heritage of the brumby VS environmental destruction by the brumby

It seems people are inspired by the story of The Man from Snowy River by AB Paterson when they argue that the feral horses known as brumbies have social/cultural heritage value for this nation. Others argue that the proliferation of feral horses in the Snowy Mountains is destroying soil, vegetation, native fauna and their habitat, and ultimately the health of the Murrumbidgee and Murray river systems.

When has a poet been behind such impassioned conflict?

As I child I knew Banjo Paterson’s poem off by heart and recited it. I’ve never seen the film, I imagine it’s a blokey thing with all those crack horse riders from the stations near and far… Harrison, Clancy, the stripling on the small and weedy beast and the rest of them. I know that this kind of man on a horse starred in the inauguration ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, so the image was obviously seen as a significant national symbol. Which is funny, when you see today’s urban society, full of people who may have met a horse rarely or never.

I read Paterson’s poem again now, and I’m still moved by its rhythmic energy and movement, especially when I reach the climax and denouement, when I break:

And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam.
He followed like a bloodhound on their track,
Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home,
And alone and unassisted brought them back.
But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,
He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;
But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,
For never yet was mountain horse a cur.

Andrew Barton Paterson. The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1896

This is not an honourable ride among the noble animals, it’s a merciless hunt, man against animal, man having to see the animal cowed and beaten so it bends to his will. Spurs, for those who don’t know, are cruel pointy metal things attached to the rider’s boots specifically for the purpose of sticking them into the horse’s sides. Any rider who wears spurs mounts the horse with intent to hurt the animal. And why? Paterson has already told us the rider let the pony have its head to find its own way down that terrible descent, where the wild hop scrub grew thickly, hiding a terrain full of wombat holes.

Perhaps the wild hop scrub was the creeping hop bush, Dodonaea procumbens, native to the Monaro region. It is now a threatened species. It grows along with the Snow Gum, Eucalyptus pauciflora (pictured), in alpine woodlands.

Dr Clare Buswell, chair of the Australian Speleological Federation’s Conservation Commission, says that visitors go to the Kosciuszko National Park to see and experience the uniqueness of its flora and landscapes. To put it another way, you can see Eucalyptus pauciflora niphophila in all its glory only in the Australian alps. You can see horses in paddocks all around the country.

The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service recently accepted submissions on the management of feral horses in the Kosciuszko NP and the 2018 legislation that allowed for increased numbers of brumbies in the park. The Speleological Federation, referring specifically to the karst area around the wonderful Yarongobilly Caves, was one of many concerned groups and individuals to make a submission.

An excellent documentary film has been made recently: Where the Water Starts, by the hard-working and grand-hearted film makers Mandy King and Fabio Cavadini. It’s available from fan-force.com

The film examines the campaign to reduce numbers of feral animals that are damaging water sources, the habitat of native species, and Indigenous cultural heritage in the Kosciuszko region. Neglect and contempt for Aboriginal land management practices has certainly played a part in degradation of the natural environment.

Feral horses directly impact 23 threatened flora and 11 threatened fauna species in the Kosciuszko National Park. Brumbies disrupt natural habitats by trampling and wallowing, track creation, soil compaction, erosion of stream banks, overgrazing, and destruction of sphagnum bog and wetland, where, as Banjo put it,

the reedbeds sweep and sway to the breezes…

Where the river runs those giant hills between.

The Snowy Mountains ecosystems cover a tiny region of the continent yet are vital to the health of land and rivers in Victoria, NSW and South Australia. Think: food production, vineyards, watermelons, backyard gardens, think: town water supplies, think: Gundagai, Narrandera, Echuca, Mildura, the Hay Plains, the Coorong.

The Snowy alpine region was a grand setting for a good yarn in the 19^th century. A poet might say, Don’t let the facts stand in the way of a good story. But if we’re concerned about survival in times of climate change, let’s turn the phrase around: Don’t let a good story stand in the way of the facts. And here is a fact: large numbers of feral horses are destroying the very environment in which they are allowed to roam. We should care for the Snowy Mountains, for what they are, for those magnificent contorted snow gums, for the wonderland that is found in the Yarongobilly Caves, and because we depend on them.

The poet created the myth, brumbies are doing the damage, but it’s women and men today who must resolve problems created by introduced species that have gone wild. Think also: camels, cats, deer, cane toads, bindiis, asparagus fern, garden escapees. Decisions have to be made on complex environmental and ethical questions. Let there be movement at the station!

While Riverton Press has its origins along the Murrumbidgee River, it has strong links to Mexico and the Spanish language. I’ve been thinking recently about the Mexican shawl known as the rebozo and simultaneously heard comments about la mexicanidad, the essence of being Mexican. I have always seen a similarity between weaving and writing, and Riverton Press accepts that this post is relevant to the business of words, as in spinning a yarn.

The rebozo is finely woven cotton and/or silk, in varieties of black and white / grey and white / grey and silver, it belongs to the rural working woman, la campesina. The soldaderas wore it when they rode the trains and tramped miles with guns and kettles for the Revolution in the early 20^th century. You could say the rebozo has marched for Mexico.  Women carry babies in those shawls, at front or back, and today you can watch videos on how to use a rebozo during childbirth.  

The shawl is sold in the market place, no-one said you, foreigner, can’t wear this, for Mexico is always generous and a merchant happy to sell. I wear it gladly, though it feels too big, I don’t have broad industrious shoulders and carry no baby there, but fold it around me, wrap myself in Mexico.

Mexicans abroad might say that you don’t have to dress like la china poblana to express your mexicanidad, but I used to wear my rebozo like that, a statement of my acquired-something-Mexican, and my shawl seemed stiff and new for a long time.

Just so you know, la china poblana wears a white blouse, a full coloured skirt and a woven silk shawl, with beads, embroidery, floral motifs, often with colours of the Mexican flag (green, red and white) and indeed the very flag might be embroidered there sometimes.

I think of a certain Señora at the Sunday market who doesn’t pay for a stall but places her avocados and wild mushrooms on a strip of plastic to one side of the square. Her rebozo is a faded old second skin across her back. She lends no thought to any mexicanidad.

Of course the idea of quintessential Mexican-ness is contested. On social media someone recently posted a short video of a young woman singing La Llorona at a taco stall. The workers served the food, the clients ate, no-one seemed to pay her much attention, except for the person behind the camera and those of us caught up in the “video-went-viral” moment.

No sooner had I watched the clip when a comment was posted by a person known to me, praising the singer’s talent and declaring that she and the taco stall were more Mexican than a well-known singer who flaunts una mexicanidad que no tiene (a Mexican-ness that she doesn’t have). I thought that was a bit unfair on the famous singer, who has done a great job expressing things Mexican, including a fantastic version of that same song.

There are words so Mexican I can’t happily translate them into English, as you will have noticed while reading this text. I am never content to translate campesina as peasant, because I see too many socio-economic shades of difference. I see I have not translated la china poblana (the Chinese woman from Puebla) or told you her story. I can translate an expression I just heard on the radio: bigger than Ben Hur, without knowing who or what was Ben Hur and how big he or it was. All this brings us to the question of translatability and the transfer of meaning, which we can leave for another day.

Let me just say, millions of shawls are woven in Mexico and around the world, but when I use the word rebozo, I’m not thinking of all the coloured varieties, only of those in tones described above. And, to me, the rebozo is quintessentially Mexican.

Riverton Press usually takes its images from personal photo collections but our photo of a rebozo was definitely dull compared to the one borrowed from http://cineclubeva.blogspot.com/2015/05/centenariodel-technicolor-en-el.html

It shows an image from the Mexican magazine Revista de Revistas (1910-2005), with Mexican actor Maria Felix in a film called La China Poblana. Apparently all copies of this 1943 movie have been lost.

The free street libraries are one of the best things in our cityscape.

There are treasures to be found, books I’ve always wanted to read, authors I’ve heard about, books that look interesting, and all for the taking! Then of course, it’s wonderful to be able to clear out our own bookshelves and give old books a new life by “returning” books to a library.

I’m in the business of making and therefore selling books, but I am delighted by the proliferation of free books. I have managed to curb my initial enthusiasm of “it’s up for grabs, seize the day” in an effort to prevent stockpiling.

Most street libraries have at least two shelves, some even have compartments and categories, books for children and books for adults. The library called “Free French Books” has at least four well stacked shelves. Book for adults seem to be just that, not as in “adult fiction”, “adult movies”, expressions which seem to mean pornography. When I see libraries labelled with more than three sections, such as fiction, travel, cooking, youth, I think, OMG they’ll be using the Dewy system soon!

I have begun to notice the architecture of street libraries. They imitate other city buildings, and a plain square box, which might be adequate, is rare. Most libraries have arched rooves, and indeed, they have to let the rain fall down and away, just like a house. Some are old and the wood is cracking, the paint is chipped, the doors have fallen off. Some are free standing, others, I suppose you might say, semi-detached. By far the most beautiful local one glitters with its polished wood and even has a miniature staircase, also in wood. Somehow it reminds me of the old wooden houses in Michoacán, Mexico, called trojes. And anything that takes me off today’s suburban street to the beautiful (though troubled) lands of Michoacán is very welcome, so that particular street library has tripled in value.

Riverton Press has not placed any of its publications in these libraries and is still open for business to sell you our books. Plans for new editions are also being slowly cooked.

The launch of Journeys in Canberra on 16 July was a hybrid event – pandemic style – live and via zoom. Not a fortunate coupling without adequate technical support, but “we’re all in this together” and “we are constantly having to adapt”. Those of us on zoom could see the speakers, and hear those with louder voices. At times the camera turned to the audience and from zoom we saw them and heard fragments of their questions / comments.

Photo: Manon Saur, Ruth Adler, Remo Moretta, Caroline Schuster

The Australian Ambassador to Mexico, Remo Moretta, spoke about elements the two countries have in common, one of these being indigenous populations and history. It’s not all about trade and money, he said, we could grow and learn by sharing indigenous experience, past and present.

At least that’s what I think he said, I was a bit distracted because a dear friend and colleague was urging me in the chat room to put my hand up and say something. She tried several times, and finally wrote “think of your mother” (founding force behind Riverton Press). So I did, and I remembered something about her that related to one of the questions, about the book’s cover image. In the end I didn’t get a chance to speak, so I’ll tell you here.

Manon Saur’s painting for the cover has a skeleton in it, why is that? someone asked (I think). Obviously both the question and the skeleton are pointers to speak about the annual major happening in Mexico that is the Day of the Dead. Manon was one of the launch speakers, so she related some of her experiences of el día de los Muertos. Thanks to Penny’s urging, I remembered when my mother Nita visited Mexico and we went to Oaxaca.

We didn’t particularly plan it that way, but it was THAT time of year. Oaxaca was dressed for the occasion and the streets were full of performers dressed as skeletons. I found it a bit mono-thematic, given that Oaxaca is so rich in history, art and social currents. Of course, we visited the archaeological sites of Monte Alban and Mitla, were gold-struck in the church of Santo Domingo, tried the mezcal and ate the mole, but each evening we were pursued by noisy and colourful skeletons. I think Mother was a bit frightened, she had asked if it was safe to go out at night.

At the end of the weekend her comment was, I was chased by death, I was nearly grabbed by death, and when I got back to the hotel, death was waiting for me (in the form of miniature you-know-what on the dresser). I’m still alive, hurrah!

Later when she talked about what she liked of Mexico, she would say that she loved that it was not a materialist society in the way of money-loving, real-estate-hugging Australia. She admired Mexicans for having the spirit to look death in the face, play games about death, and not hide it away. Nita appreciated that in Mexico there was space for magic.

Journeys: Australian Women in Mexico

Compiled and edited by Ruth Adler, Jacqueline Buswell and Jenny Cooper
(Riverton Press, 2021)

The Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies (ANCLAS) is pleased to invite you to the Canberra launch of Journeys: Australian Women in Mexico. The event will be hosted by Dr Caroline Schuster of ANCLAS and the book launched by Australian Ambassador to Mexico, Mr Remo Moretta. Other speakers include Mr Eduardo Martínez Curiel, Minister/Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Mexico, Dr Ruth Adler and (via Zoom) Ms Pamela Skuse.

Friday 16 July, 2021, 10:00am – 11:00am
Level 1, Lecture Room 2, RSSS Building, 146 Ellery Crescent, ANU

If you are able to attend in person, RSVP Liliana.Oyarzun@anu.edu.au  by Wednesday 14 July.

Copies of the book available for sale. Price: $25 (Cash sales only)

All proceeds go to Misión México, a refuge for children in Chiapas, Mexico, established over 20 years ago by Australians Pamela and Alan Skuse. Their project also includes teaching children to swim and surf, and the photo (taken from Pam’s chapter in the book) shows us that it’s a very good thing.

Join Zoom Meeting if you are unable to participate in person:

https://anu.zoom.us/j/82551310998?pwd=bjdJSE9MSmRVUDdzVXFuVUR5dzBqQT09 
Meeting ID: 825 5131 0998 Password: 12345

Or an H.323/SIP room system:

Dial: +61262227588 (AUCX) or 82551310998@zoom.aarnet.edu.au
Meeting ID: 82551310998      H323/SIP Password: 12345
Join by Skype for Business     https://anu.zoom.us/skype/82551310998

The book sprinting on quicksand includes a poem about the Australian crane known as the brolga. Well, really it’s about the near extermination of the brolga in the Riverina, New South Wales, and it concludes:

until I see the brolga dancing

I swear

I’ll write no poem about the crane

More than one of my critics/readers have contested that last line, they say, “Well, you have” and I say, no, I’ve written about their absence.

Those of you who know Wagga will know the Wollundry lagoon, one of many billabongs along the Murrumbidgee River that rise and fall / fill and empty according to floods and water flows. Mary Gilmore talks about the Eunonyhareenyha waters in her book Old Days, Old Ways (1934). The original Wiradjuri name for the Wollundry lagoon was Walangduray, according to https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/AboriginalPlaces/

Now in Sydney’s inner west, in Covid lockdown, condemned to endlessly walking the local streets, I saw a mural high on a house the other day and had to get closer, muttering, they look like brolga. And so they were, two brolga dancing!

You can listen to the poem here.

Proceeds from sales of journeys go to Misión México, a charity based in Tapachula, Chiapas, in southern Mexico. Founded by Australians Pam and Alan Skuse, it works with and for children of all ages who have been abused, neglected, orphaned or abandoned. It provides food, housing and education for children and also runs a surfing programme for them. And as Pam says, before you teach anyone to surf, you have to teach them how to swim! You can read about Misión México on their website http://lovelifehope.com/

One of the editors of journeys, Jenny Cooper, recently organised a book launch, a live one, in Mexico. We had had a virtual launch in March, but this was our first live presentation, at the bookshop La sombra del sabino in Tepoztlan, Morelos. Bernard Unkles from the Australian Embassy in Mexico commented: The venue and turnout were excellent, people asked interesting questions and all the available hardcopies sold out.

We are planning a launch in Canberra for July, this is being organised by editor Ruth Adler. Details are still being confirmed, so I won’t say anything more now!

And talking of printed copies of the book, we have some available for sale through this website, please contact us if you’re interested.

Riverton was the name of the farm purchased by my grandfather in the 1920s and farmed by my father when I was growing up. That is, it is my childhood place called home. It was on the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales between Wagga Wagga and Narrandera. There were river flats and sandhills, orchards, sheep, a few cows, horses, dogs, chooks, cats and possums, the river provided fish and yabbies. You’ll learn something about Riverton from my mother’s poems in Me in the Middle, and in the Bedrock section of sprinting on quicksand.

It was too the place where I developed a reading habit and a love for music. I used to sneak off from daily chores with a book and sit on a log under the shade of the gum trees. The kookaburras would laugh at me as I scratched mosquito bites, the neighbour’s heavy red Hereford cattle would stare, sometimes the grey cat joined me. I read the Australian childhood classics of the time – Ethel Turner, Henry Handel Richardson, the bush poets, as well as Enid Blyton, of course!

When I decided to publish Me in the Middle, I found I had to register as a publisher. The name Riverton came to me quick as a flash, I was thinking of Riverton Publications but my friend Eileen suggested Press, and I was immediately convinced, Riverton Press it is!

Riverton Press began with my mother’s poetry book, Me in the Middle. We had a publisher but when they sent the draft of the ready-to-print book, Nita Buswell said, in her decisive no-two-ways-about-it fashion, “the font’s too small, I can’t read it, that’s no good”. As the editor refused to change his “house style”, and under pressure from Nita: “we’d better hurry up with this book, I’ll be dead by Christmas”, I decided to publish it myself. This was September, 2017. In October Nita saw we had control of the product and said, “I always wanted illustrations with my poems, I’ll ask Denise”. My cousin Denise McKenzie responded nobly with wonderful colour drawings by November, and we had a wonderful book launch in Wagga Wagga on a hot air-conditioner-melting day in January 2018.