‘History Books’ Writing Competition Winners
The winner of the ’History Books’ writing competition is the one and only Andrea Louise Thomas!!
The task at hand was to write 8 lines on the theme of Australia’s colonial past and/or using the words ‘History Books’.
Andrea came up with this piece, visually relevant and well thought out:
History Books Us
History books us it prints us it puts us behind bars,
graphs and statistics, negligent ballistics, text tells
reducing some lives to fine print
while missing in action in this black and white faction
pressing on pages bound by spines on lines
are the coloured, the poor, the indigenous
the women and children. History books us or not but most people
live between the lines in divine skin and refined minds that define us.
Andrea wins 5 free downloads of the ‘Please Resist Me’ Album (worth $75) and a special sneak peek at the brand new ‘History Books’ video clip due for release tomorrow evening.
The ten other poems/writers who also receive one free download and a look at the video are:
Ally Vee
David Vincent Smith
Sally
Glenn Manga
Mary Marshall
Michelle Rao
Miriam Dale
Jacky T
Nour Abouzeid
Jessie Giles
With some special respects also going to Nicole Duchesne, Justine Eltakchi and Tupmaro MC.
See below for the top 10 entries and their amazing words.. it was so unbelievably hard to decide, and in the end I had to go with my gut on this one…
Many thanks to all of you for entering, I was and still am humbled by the response. It looks like some of us really do care!!!
For everyone else reading this, the video for “History Books” will finally be launched tomorrow, the 20th of April, the same date upon which Captain first saw this land in 1770, and the same date when, in 1939, Billie Holiday recorded ‘Strange Fruit’ – an amazing poem which soon became one of the most powerful political works of the 20th Century.
Let us hope that collectively our words can do the same, and open more and more people’s eyes to the often overlooked history of this nation we only just recently began calling ‘Australia’.
Big love and respect,
Luka
Top Ten Poems from the ‘History Books’ Competition
My history teacher, Mrs Freeman, lent against the staffroom trying to smoke the irony out of her name…
before she turned to occupy my class room
She laid papers on our desks about forgotten cultures, forgot to mention the culture.. So, we soon forgot
We watched her black marker mark our history time line on a whiteboard
Reality only began for us, when we saw a similar hand to hers
-one that highlighted only 8 lines of our dark history-
beat a friend senseless on a bus to the city. Rote learning.
- Jacky T
Aboriginal people
do
not
need
to
learn.
Everyone else
does.
- Sally
We plant our face in a book with no pages,
A terminal illness of the soul in its final stages,
Our mind wages war with our heart,
Puts the pieces of history together and gives it a jump start,
So that we.. may start learning,
About the oldest culture in the world left burning,
So we may read and finally hear the thousands of voices screaming,
This is no nightmare, welcome to the dreaming.
- Nour Abouzeid
It wasn’t me – I wasn’t here, when they stole your children, your land,
And poured out a darker red onto your deep dessert sand.
But if I claim a right to be here, then I must claim the history,
of massacres and perjury, that let my ancestors be free.
So I will say, I am Australian – with all that it entails,
And I will accept my history, with all of its pains,
And I will acknowledge what has happened; mourn alongside you if I can
And work to heal what was done in this, our land.
- Miriam Dale
The fuchsia jacket drew the African boy towards the Australian girl on the train.
They talked of colour and war, and he learned of what really happened on Australian shores.
He didn’t know at all about Indigenous Australians, let alone that they were murdered during ‘colonisation’.
And together their shock rose up-his on account of not knowing at all, and hers on account of not knowing enough.
One thing they both understood; that trauma does and trauma could,
leave it’s traces throughout lives and communities, and be passed down
-impacting all and future generations.
This is why healing needs to take place daily.
- Michelle Rao
1788 British Empire downunder
Decimating/splitting Aboriginal Australia asunder
In History Books pusridden words coat genocidal intent/plunder :
“Let us build our churches and civilise the natives”
“Let us utilise our convicts”
“Let us build a great White Australia nation”
(They built a police station)
1788 – 2012 prison cells/livinghells/cultural fragmentation.
- Mary Marshall
The felt fear of losing your own life and those of loved ones,
the pain, sounds and smell of screams, burning flesh and firing guns,
can’t be put on a page let alone the truth when a cursory look,
reveals yet another and another whitewashed colonialist history book.
Hundreds of massacres of Aborigines between 1788 to as late as 1926
in the Forest River killings, with cut up bodies fed to flames involving two policeman,
who were discharged with no trial for murder but promoted instead,
now today’s legacy for more deaths in custody, perpetrators free and their victims dead.
- Glenn Manga
this curriculum is a religion
because you need to have faith that this text is the truth
dispensed to the youth, and presented on page
but you forget that this country’s history was left in a cave
the same lesson remains…
you think we’re destined for change?
destiny requires real action; but the blood still spills
because we let the our leaders be elected in vain
- David Vincent Smith
Broken songlines
Stained with the blood of unremembered massacres
Washed away by the tears of grieving mothers-
for their suicide children
Paved over by concrete blocks-
flat – cold – grey – denial
Words are too small for this history
It must be danced
- Ally Vee
An apathetic nation, reading Australian history books, written by colonial crooks.
These books written in a language from distant lands, a language which is palatable and easier for us to swallow.
These books talk Of stories borrowed, of wars won and lands conquered, seeds sown of pastures, and treason.
You read books of colonial pride and aussie men who worked hard, their own hides sun worn and weathered.
While we forget those images of men tethered, slaves in their own land.
I ask of you one thing… Listen, listen to stories sung in a oral tradition, of a history and understanding of this land that which we stand.
These songs, sung in arrente, walpiri, barrara, yolunga matha, an honour it is to hear.
But be quick to listen to these histories, because we are stamping them out, our colonial pride, half hidden in shame, but not enough, to listen and help the rightful, reclaim.
- Jessie Giles
Luka
