Category: news

 

People die. We die all the time. We know this. But recently several friends died over a period of a few weeks, and it seems… we must consider death.

In July, Mario Licón died, he was a poet from Mexico. Apart from writing his own poetry, he translated many contemporary Australian poets into Spanish. He had been an actor and a puppeteer, and because he was losing his sight (macular degeneration), he would recite his poetry from memory. This is always such a more powerful delivery than that provided by those of us who read our lines.

Mario was also a photographer, carpenter, cobbler, and potter, amongst other occupations in his 76 years. He reached that age a few days before he died, and posted in fb:

When I turned 25 I wanted only to get to 40, when I got there I was in Huejotzingo (in Puebla State, Mexico) with a group of puppeteers and eating mixiotes (meat wrapped in agave leaf, spiced, baked in a pit) and I only wanted to get to 50. When I got to 50, I was just back in Sydney from Barcelona and Karin and I, and I don’t remember who else, went to the Fishmarket to eat tiger prawns and drink beers Negra Modelo, and I quietly said to myself, I only want to get to 70. Today I’m six years past that point, and I only want to get to 97, and I know that when I get there, I will want to go to Isla Negra and live to 104, and visit Nicanor Parra’s tomb (if it’s still there), open a bottle of Castillo del Diablo, recite some of my verses, and some of don Nicanor’s, as well as some by a young poet whom I obviously haven’t met yet.

Salud! he concluded, cheers with Shiraz for Mahmud Darwish and for Hafiz, poets of the resistance and of love.

In August, Richard Barnard died. He was a musician, doctor, psychiatrist, lover of birds and grandchildren, enthusiast for life, for knowledge, for questions. He participated for many years with his wife Helen in an Italian class, where they were known as Riccardo and Elena. Of the two, he was the one who talked, she was the quiet supporter. He had been an opera singer in Europe, he practised psychiatry, he went bush, bird watching, he read fiction, non-fiction, science, history.

In September, Adrienne Leonard died, a few weeks before her 87^th birthday. She was a physiotherapist, a Feldenkrais practitioner and teacher. She spoke Italian, having lived in Italy. We met when we visited detainees in the Villawood Detention Centre in the early days of the 21^st century, days of “children overboard” and the Tampa ship fiasco. She was well loved by one particular Mandean family (three children with their parents), not least because they recorded her as the visitor who most visited them. When the family was released after three years in detention, Adrienne invited them to her home and gave a great welcome party.

Sydney-based English teacher, singer and Italiano-phile Valerie Long died suddenly in Scotland. Film critic David Stratton died.

As I think of these five people who meant something to me, I think of the grief in Palestine, where each of more than 60,000 people killed there since October 2023 have their stories and those who miss them. I think of the 250 media workers, the 1,500 health workers, the 19,000 children among those dead. I cannot think broadly enough to encompass all of the death and displacement and destruction ongoing with the grief.

Because Mario was a poet, I assembled a wee zine of poem extracts for his grieving partner Karin, some in English, some in Spanish, with even a few words in German. Soon after, I came to the Brahms Requiem. Philharmonia Choirs director Brett Weymark says Brahms’ Requiem is somehow for the living, and he quotes Walt Whitman, “those who remain suffer…”

Because Mario was a cobbler, I remember the story of some shoes he made in 1987 for Camilla, musician and member of the visiting Women’s Circus in Tepoztlán, Morelos. Here is the poem I wrote about those shoes in 2019.

 

And what were those German words included in the zine for Karin?

Hiersein ist herrlich.

I’ve taken these words to mean: To be here, is wonderful. Karin told me that herrlich means something more sublime, more divine, than what we currently understand by our perhaps over-used word wonderful. Another translation: To be here at all is a glory.

We’ve reached another theme of which I cannot think broadly enough: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies.

By Vittoria Pasquini, English version by Gino Moliterno

 

The idea of writing “The Legend of Busby” came to me immediately after having sold my beautiful house, or rather “the sand castle” as we used to call it in admiration of its thick sandstone walls.

In part out of nostalgia, because I was sorry to have left it and I didn’t want to forget it; in part it was out of regret, I already thought I had made a mistake in selling it and I wanted to try, pen in hand, to understand what had happened, what had led me to that decision.

It took several years to bring this memoir to fruition, more than ten years with various interruptions, the most tragic and glaring being the death of my son, Valerio. For him I coordinated the publication of his two diaries; for him I created a non-profit association; for him I despaired and so, clearly, no longer concerned myself with my memoir, considering it irrelevant in the face of the drama I was experiencing.

With the arrival of Covid, time had passed and a lot of time and solitude were available to me to rethink myself and my life. So The Legend of Busby magically resurrected itself from the drawers in which I had confined it. Having dusted it off, I began to reread the little I had written, to think about it and to try to start writing again.

At that point, however, the enormity of what had happened, namely the death of my son, weighed like a boulder on my memory, obfuscating it. I couldn’t remember what had happened before the annus horribilis; my life at Busby seemed shrouded in a heavy blanket of fog, everything seemed insignificant compared to the Great Tragedy.

It took a lot for me to reconnect with the Vittoria who was living, working, feeling and writing before the disappearance of her beloved son. It was a long process, and yet, the attempt to remember, among other things, the time when Valerio was still small, then a teenager and finally a young man, the wonderful and unforgettable time when he was still alive, became a process of treating and healing my broken heart. Little by little, year after year, the memoir took shape and I re-embraced my past, the memories giving me joy and enthusiasm for writing.

That’s how the Legend of Busby was born.

The book moves through various intersecting levels (I love complications):

the main character is the castle, which is described in all its smallest details: each place has a different energy, each place evokes memories of something else.

In the first part of the book the castle falls to pieces. It should have been renovated but the sudden unexpected lack of money forces the inhabitants to live there as it is; charm and decadence remaining its major characteristics. In the second part the castle is renovated and is again described in all its new features.

The second level is the story of the family who begins to live in Busby when the man/father is already gravely ill. This is the short Prologue, followed immediately after by The Return: mother and son leave Canberra, where she worked for six years at the Australian National University after the premature death of her husband, and return to Sydney where her daughter has remained in the castle with a family friend. The daughter’s boyfriend joins them shortly after.

Thus begins the life together of this small group, a sort of community linked by affection.

The third level consists of the “Voices Off “, the numerous friends and acquaintances who come and go from the house, some stopping for a coffee or a meal, others staying for a weekend, others for longer.

This chorus of multiple voices appears four times in the book and narrates the desires, the dreams and the reasons why many Italian expatriates decided to settle in Australia in the early 1980s, the ups and downs of their sojourn Down Under and the influence that the politics of the time had on their decisions to stay or return to their homeland.

The last level is that of memory, a sort of “stream of consciousness” that emerges here and there in connection with various situations, images, some odours, the particular light of a room. Memories of the narrator’s (the woman/the mother/she) other lives in Rome, her political activity, her feminist involvement, her other work as a photographer, the other houses in which she lived in Kenya, in the USA, in Algeria.

The book is written in the third person, I have always written like this, I find that this choice allows me to distance myself from myself and in this way I can be quite objective.

The woman describes what happens in the house, in the family, inside her, her many mistakes, her insecurities, her difficulties in being a good mother with two children and two absent fathers. At the beginning of the memoir she carries out a lot of self-criticism, then, little by little, as she deepens her reflections, she begins to understand herself and understands the reasons for being who she is, and in the end she is able to look at herself with a certain tenderness.

The style of the memoir alternates concise descriptions of what happens in the house and in the lives of the main characters with flows of emotions, memories, dreams and thoughts, in long paragraphs with minimal punctuation to give the reader space to choose when to stop and catch her breath.

Vittoria Pasquini

 

M’è venuto in mente di scrivere “La leggenda di Busby” subito dopo averla venduta Busby, la mia bella casa, anzi “il castello si sabbia” come la chiamavamo ammirando le sue spesse pareti di pietra arenaria.

In parte per nostalgia, mi dispiaceva averla lasciata e non volevo dimenticarla, in parte per rimpianto, già pensavo di aver fatto un errore a venderla e volevo cercare, penna alla mano, di capire cosa era successo, cosa mi aveva portato a quella decisione.

Ci sono voluti vari anni per portare a compimento questo memoir, più di 10 anni con varie interruzioni, la morte di mio figlio Valerio la più tragica ed eclatante, per lui ho coordinato la pubblicazione dei suoi due diari, per lui ho creato un’associazione no profit, per lui mi sono disperata e ovviamente non mi sono più occupata del mio memoir, considerato irrilevante di fronte al dramma che stavo vivendo.

Con l’arrivo del Covid, tempo era passato e molto tempo e solitudine erano presenti a mia disposizione per ripensare a me stessa e alla mia vita. Così La Leggenda di Busby è risuscitata magicamente dai cassetti in cui l’avevo rinchiusa, tolta la polvere ho cominciato a rileggere quel po’ che avevo scritto, a pensarci e a cercare di ricominciare a scrivere.

A quel punto però, l’enormità di ciò che era accaduto, la morte di mio figlio cioè, pesava come un macigno sulla mia memoria, l’offuscava, non potevo ricordare ciò che era successo prima dell’annus horribilis, la mia vita a Busby appariva avvolta da una coltre pesante di nebbia, tutto sembrava insignificante rispetto alla Grande Tragedia.

C’è voluto molto per riconnettermi con la Vittoria che viveva, lavorava, provava emozioni, scriveva prima della scomparsa del suo amato figliolo. È stato un lungo processo, eppure, il cercare di ricordare, tra le altre cose, il tempo in cui Valerio era ancora piccolo, poi adolescente e finalmente un giovane uomo, il tempo meraviglioso e indimenticabile in cui lui era ancora vivo, è diventato un processo di cura e guarigione per il mio cuore spezzato.

Piano piano, anno dopo anno, il memoir ha preso forma e io ho riabbracciato il mio passato, i ricordi mi hanno dato gioia ed entusiasmo per la scrittura.

Così è nata La Leggenda di Busby.

Il libro si muove attraverso vari livelli intersecati (amo le complicazioni):

il personaggio principale è il castello, che viene descritto in tutti i suoi più piccoli dettagli, ogni luogo ha un’energia differente, ogni luogo evoca memorie di qualcosa d’altro.

Nella prima parte del libro il castello casca a pezzi. Avrebbe dovuto essere ristrutturato ma l’ improvvisa inaspettata mancanza di denaro costringe gli abitanti a viverci così com’è, fascino e decadenza rimangono la sua maggior caratteristica. Nella seconda parte il castello viene restaurato e descritto di nuovo nei suoi nuovi cambiamenti;

il secondo livello è la storia della famiglia che comincia a vivere a Busby quando il l’uomo/il padre è già gravemente malato. Questo è il breve Prologo seguito subito dopo da Il Ritorno: madre e figlio  lasciano Canberra dove lei ha lavorato per 6 anni alla Australian National University dopo la morte prematura del marito e ritornano a Sydney dove la figlia era rimasta nel castello con un’amica di famiglia. Il fidanzato della figlia si aggiunge a loro poco dopo.

Comincia così la vita insieme di questo piccolo gruppo, una sorta di comune legata dall’affetto;

il terzo livello sono le “Voci fuori Campo”, i numerosi amici e conoscenti che vanno e vengono dalla casa, alcuni si fermano per un caffè, un pranzo, altri per un fine settimana, altri più a lungo. Questo Coro di voci multiple compare quattro volte nel libro e narra i desideri, i sogni e le ragioni per cui molti italiani espatriati decidono di stabilirsi in Australia all’ inizio degli anni ’80, gli alti e bassi della loro permanenza Down Under e l’influenza che la politica del tempo ha nelle loro decisioni di stare o ritornare nella madrepatria;

l’ultimo livello è quello delle memorie, una sorta di “stream of consciousness” che sbuca qua e là in connessione con varie situazioni, immagini, alcuni odori, la luce particolare di una stanza. Memorie delle altre vite della narratrice (la donna/ la madre/ lei) a Roma, la sua attività politica, il suo coinvolgimento femminista, il suo altro lavoro di fotografa, le altre case in cui ha vissuto in Kenya, negli USA, in Algeria.

Il libro è scritto in terza persona, io ho sempre scritto così, trovo che questa scelta mi permette di distanziarmi da me stessa e in questo modo riesco a essere abbastanza oggettiva.

La donna descrive cosa succede nella casa, in famiglia, dentro di lei, i suoi tanti errori, le insicurezze, le difficoltà di essere una buona madre con due figli e due padri assenti. All’ inizio del memoir fa molta autocritica, poi man mano che approfondisce le riflessioni su se stessa, comincia a capirsi e a capire i perché del suo essere quella che è e alla fine può guardarsi con una certa tenerezza.

Lo stile del memoir alterna descrizioni concise di quello che succede nella casa e nelle vite dei personaggi principali a flussi di emozioni, di memorie, di sogni e pensieri attraverso lunghi paragrafi con punteggiatura minima per dare spazio alla lettrice di scegliere quando fermarsi e riprendere fiato.

 

By Nathalie Apouchtine

 

Every family has fascinating stories from the past. Unfortunately many of us do not become interested in them until it is too late and the relatives who could tell us those stories have passed away.

In exploring my family’s past for No Way Back I have been both unfortunate – and fortunate. I never knew my grandparents: three died before I was born, the fourth lived on another continent. But I have been lucky in that several relatives in my grandparents’ generation left behind accounts of their lives and times: diaries, memoirs, letters, photos… Not a replacement for being able to speak directly to my grandparents, but a treasure trove nonetheless.

I was able to interview members of my parents’ generation, in Canada, France and Russia. They described their own experiences and witnessing of historic events and they also told me more about their parents’ lives and experiences.

While wanting to know more about my predecessors, I have always wondered how people experience turbulent times – how they cope and survive. The twentieth century was not short of dramatic world developments and my relatives found themselves in the middle of some of these: world wars, revolutions, civil war, multiple migrations; in Russia, France – and eventually Canada and Australia.

I travelled to many of the locations where these events occurred to try to get a sense of places which held so much significance for my family.

My goal was to tell about what they lived through and saw through their words, to bring to life these major events. In my own reading of histories, I have always felt a greater understanding and connection to the events being described when there is personal involvement and reflection on what happened: how it played out, how it affected ordinary people, how they coped and moved on – and whether the impacts echoed down the generations.

Of course memory is fallible and often unreliable. Everyone remembers events in different ways. Besides, some record their memories with ulterior motives: to address their descendants specifically, to commemorate a place or time, or sometimes to try to justify their roles in the events. But their experiences and the impacts of them have a truth of their own.

If I occasionally questioned the “facts” in my relatives’ memoirs, I did not question the validity of their memories. At the same time, I wanted to place them firmly within the historical record. This meant searching archives and extensive research in historical texts. But then historians also often disagree – especially on the interpretation of events: why they happened, what they meant, their ongoing significance.

This can be particularly problematic where part of the past one is exploring is of a country where there has been systematic altering of history for propaganda purposes. Still, working in the post-Soviet era, I was able to access archives that had been closed for decades and to consult the work of Russian historians finally able to research more freely. They added to a broad range of sources in the West, on the Russian Revolution, Civil War and the birth of the Soviet Union.

Researching French history of the twentieth century had a different set of complications: the decades of re-examination and debate over events in the Second World War. French historians, and society more generally, have grappled with questions of collaboration, guilt, revenge and punishment – or non-punishment. The discovery of new information about the past, and analysis through the prism of the present, mean many issues in history are hard to put to rest.

I also conducted extensive research on the movements of people, whether as refugees or migrants. While the Russian exodus after the Revolution made up the first major refugee wave of the twentieth century, such mass migration is now something all too familiar, amid the political and social upheaval around the globe. The experiences of migrant countries like Canada and Australia over the twentieth century are part of my family’s story too.

While trying to reconcile differing accounts of the past is challenging, the variety of tellings means history is not frozen – the understanding of any period is dynamic. Keeping in mind the fluidity of history and the pitfalls of eyewitness accounts, I embarked on my task: to blend all these sources into a coherent account of major events in Russia and France in the first half of the twentieth century that would be informative and as accurate as possible. And engaging and interesting for the reader.

Researching and writing No Way Back has been a fascinating journey. I have learned more than I can quantify – both about my family and the crucial events through which they lived. I hope readers of the book find the results of my work equally fascinating.

Migration is the theme of our times. Migration and displacement. On the news daily, and central to the two books launched by Riverton Press earlier this year. In one case, the family members carried the title refugee, in the other, the protagonist is a voluntary migrant.

At the launch of Nathalie Apouchtine’s No Way Back, Revolution and Exile, Russia and Beyond, a member of the public questioned the author about the book title: is there really no way back?

Each migrant, each refugee, each traveller will have their own answer to this question, though a brief glance at world population patterns shows that there is rarely a way back.

Nathalie considered the question in the context of her family, who belonged to the group known as Russian émigrés, who left Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Some members of her family did go back to the Soviet Union, believing that the social experiment in the 1920s was worth contributing to, but for most, a return was probably not possible, for political reasons. New regimes are unforgiving, then as now.

Dodging politics, Nathalie replied: In theory, I suppose you can go back, but in practice, people are leading their new lives and have to concentrate on that daily life. And then there are the children born in the “new country”…

In any case (time travellers excepted), you can’t go back to the past.

In The Legend of Busby, Vittoria Pasquini also ponders the lives of migrants from Italy and other places, and their motivations for leaving their home country. While her book is a very personal memoir based around her sandstone “castle” and the life of a single mother, migration is part of her story, and the thought Could I? Should I? Go back? occurs occasionally.

She considers the migration stories of her friends:

(VOICES OFF)

… that they had left Italy because they had become disillusioned with the fractured dreams of revolution and wanted to venture to a place as far as possible from the place of political defeat, that they wanted to live in the natural wilderness and wanted to learn about Aboriginal culture and the Aborigines, that they had met their great Australian love somewhere … that Australia was less homophobic than their country, that they had come for work and then remained, that they felt free to do and be whatever they wanted …

At the launch, a friend of Vittoria’s, teacher Cesare Popoli, read – nay, declaimed – this segment, with the public slowly beginning to laugh as contrasts become more evident:

…that here it was easy to find work and a place to live … that the beaches were all free  … that here everyone, from the worker to the billionaire, went to the pub all together in thongs … that the dole was easy to get and enough to live on, if only modestly, that a city like Sydney, where the sea was pristine even with four million inhabitants, had parks available every few steps, public swimming pools cheaply accessed, always good weather even in winter, how wonderful it all was!

Vittoria’s book launch was held at the Italian Cultural Institute in Sydney and introduced by Institute Director Paolo Barlera. Translator Gino Moliterni spoke of how he loves Vittoria’s writing. As I didn’t take any notes, I’ll have to quote Italian editor, Oliviero Toscani, who read the Italian book, La Leggenda di Busby, and wrote:

“Vittoria Pasquini’s novel opens up a small world, almost an Australian Brideshead, with its own intensity and a warm gaze, attentive to colour, to small detail. She makes a strong choice in her style, almost a renunciation of a classic plot. We hear a voice with character…”

Nathalie Apouchtine’s launch was held at the NSW Writers Centre in Callan Park, and we enjoyed a Q&A session with her friend and fellow Russian-Canadian-Australian, Lucy Godoroja. Lucy is also an author and historian – she has written a history of buttons titled All Buttons Great and Small. They say their family stories have many parallels – and many differences.

Nathalie’s book examines varied migration stories, as she relates the experiences of many family members. She says that refugees often retain hope of going back to the place they fled – but in the end, that’s usually impossible.

When I was a child, I often heard the phrase “sitting on their suitcases” in reference to Russian refugees in France between the world wars. It was a strong image in my young mind: my relatives, most of whom I knew only from photos… sitting on bulging cases, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice and hurry back to the homeland they had fled …

The loss of nation they suffered was accompanied by loss of citizenship. Nathalie’s parents lived in France for many years, but were not granted something they would have liked: French citizenship. This was an important factor behind their decision to move to Canada. Nathalie (born in France) writes in the book:

When I was born, my papers identified me as a refugee. By the time I was old enough to have any inkling of what that meant… I was a Canadian – and my parents often reminded me to be grateful for this. After more than thirty years of not officially “belonging” anywhere, they had been granted citizenship… they never forgot that [Canada] had let them finally grasp that bit of paper taken for granted by so many, which signified they could stay as long as they wanted, that they had somewhere they could call “home”. 

Poet Colleen Keating says the book No Way Back is “a wonderfully traced family history, interweaving personal stories with world history in an engaging and captivating way. It is a scholarly work, personalised by memoirs, diaries, recorded interviews, eye-witness accounts, old photos, keepsakes, letters and postcards from throughout the 20th century and enriched by the author’s visits in the 1990s to trace the footsteps of her ancestors.”

Colleen continues: “Nathalie makes us, the readers, feel we are unravelling the story together, as she fulfils her father’s aim of being a citizen of the world.  No Way Back is a valuable addition to our Russian history.”

La Leggenda di Busby and The Legend of Busby by Vittoria Pasquini and No Way Back, Revolution and Exile, Russia and Beyond by Nathalie Apouchtine are available in print and electronic formats through usual retail outlets. You may also contact Riverton Press at info@rivertonpress.com

The shipping image is from the National Migration Museum https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-07/Yr10_MigrationExperiences_4.jpg

We arrive, we thought to lunch, but instead of tables and chairs we see just chairs in two sets of rows, facing each other in a long wide oval. We mill around, we sit, we see the musicians who wait, like us. For someone to arrive. In due course, the musicians begin, and they play with each theatrical presentation of each dish.

Two sisters speak in Arabic and English about making bread. They sit by a doorway. Talk is part of bread making for women as they form and pound the dough, talk about the kids, the neighbours, and beating harder when they complain about their husbands. “Careful, you’re beating my bread, not your husband!”

Alissar speaks of Za’atar, she paces along the centre and hands out some of the herb, then works with a mallet-sized wooden pestle to grind some. She tells us the wild herb that grows among rocks was declared “protected” by the Zionist colonialist project in the 1970s. Possession of za’atar effectively became illegal. Yes, a wild herb, verboten!

We are served small squares/rectangles of toasty folded bread with za’atar, salt and oil. Several volunteers carry large trays, and we wait as they go back and forth to the kitchen. We wait, and I think of recent TV images: groups of people in Gaza waiting for food handouts because their homes and economies have been destroyed, because aid trucks can’t get in. People who have always put their own food on their tables, now forced to hold out an empty saucepan in the jostling hungry crowd.

Waraq zanab, stuffed vine leaves. The sisters are now behind the kitchen bench, laughing about technical problems with microphones amid accusations of going off script to say things about Mum. For their cooking is all about what they learned from Mum.

Maqloubeh, Miriam speaks at length and with love and smiles in Arabic about this dish, and though we are given what seems like a very short translation, I am charmed by Miriam. The dish is baked, the baking dishes are overturned on a table placed in the centre for us to see each baked rice and eggplant dish come out cleanly. Some are vegetarian, some have chicken, they are served with yoghurt and roasted nuts. Delicious, it’s all yummy.

The violinist speaks to us about the stealing of culture by the Zionist invasion, for instance, Palestinian songs are taken, translated and sung in Hebrew, with no acknowledgement of their Palestinian origins. He plays a beautiful violin solo for us.

Two of the three sisters of the 3Tomatoes Café are back in the kitchen, this time talking of Fattoush. They tell us how their mum made them help in the kitchen, how they hated that as kids, how grateful they are now. Fattoush is a salad with tomatoes, cucumber, radish, herbs and spices and crumbed bread.

We are given a final gift, Kamouneh, a spice mix with rose petals. Everyone is given a small jar, it’s a scent for calming the nerves, for strengthening the spirit. Paula tells us that women used to go out even during military curfews to find the ingredients.

Then the musicians perform Ya Bahriyeh, a song by Lebanese oud player Marcel Khalife that, we are told, has come to represent resistance, and we dance. Some of the Palestinian women had danced earlier, but this time we dare to join them. And we sing too, as we had been given copies of the text, and we manage at least the chorus.

Riverton Press was very fortunate to attend this excellent RedSeeds and Third Space Production of food, theatre, music and dance, presented by chefs, cooks, story tellers and musicians at the Community Refugee Welcome Centre in Callan Park, Sydney.

Today, images of Gazan people trying to return to what might be left of their homes in northern Gaza impose themselves upon similar images from 1948, when they fled during the Nakba, and from 2023, when again, they were forcibly displaced.

Photo, 1948, from the Middle East Institute http://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/2021-05/Palestinian%20refugees%20fleeing%20their%20homes%20near%20Haifa%2C%20June%201948%20Credit_%20Corbis.png

Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza walk towards the south. Photo, Reuters, November 2023. https://i.tribune.com.pk/media/images/image_2023-11-09_21_58_191699549216-0/image_2023-11-09_21_58_191699549216-0.png

And today, people who left northern Gaza after October 7, 2023, heading back there:

Photo, Reuters, 27 January 2025.

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.