Immigration Triction

James Stanwix: At the launch of your most recent collection, Commonwealth of Amnesia, you spoke about an erasure technique you developed that involves leaving some words partially blanked. 

In this poem, this technique seems to have the effect of underscoring the erasure with a consciousness of the written atrocities of the manipulated document. 

What else do you see this technique communicating, and more broadly, why do you think erasures are so suited to non-fictional poetics such as yours?

Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon: With Immigration Triction I used liquid white out and then would wipe across words with my index finger so that the “ghost trace” of some words would appear to hover underneath the white out. 

I developed this original technique myself, inspired by many erasure poets like Jen Bervin and Travis Macdonald who fade some words more than others in texts, but who use a graphics program, rather than hand-making the erasures.

To me the traces of words seeping through the white out show metaphorically that many histories exist underneath the over-riding or dominant narratives. 

Creating the erasures is also a way for someone from a minority group, in this case Southern Europeans, which includes Croatians, to reclaim this narrative. 

My ancestors were affected by this policy, which fed into the racism and xenophobia that gripped Australia from before World War I and past World War II. 

Erasing words and letting them seep through the page allowed me to show that people can create their own response to the White Australia Policy, or Immigration Restriction Act. 

I’d like to see other groups affected by this policy to do the same and re-write and re-cast this policy in ways that speak to its last effects and the words that are trying to break through or seep through the page to appear on the surface of the text.

Hannah Reynolds: This piece foregrounds the term ‘Act’. 

In the context of the original document, ‘Act’ is a legal term, and one that carries an enormously violent weight – a fact you emphasise, particularly in the closing lines, “a person/fails/against this Act.” 

Here, an ‘Act’ is an ‘Act’ in the sense that it performs an action which has material, embodied consequences. 

But I’m wondering if your erasure brings out another facet of the word ‘Act’; that is to act, literally, to perform or feign. 

If the law can only be ‘enacted’ by declaring itself the law, do you think that language – even and especially the language wielded by such declarations – helps to bring out the inherently performative and contradictory character of authority?

NDN: Spot on Hannah. Yes, when I create an erasure poem my process is more akin to doing a Word Search puzzle rather than writing a poem from scratch. 

What that means is I am “looking” for words on a page that are repeated or show some pattern of language that I can playfully bring forward for the reader by using erasure. 

When I first looked at the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 the word “Act” leapt out at me. 

I used that as an anchor to create the erasure and highlight the fact that these laws were “enactments” of racism, exclusion and othering. 

All laws are performances in themselves, performances of the state against the lives of people living in that state, against our bodies, minds and sense of self. 

Through lines like “an Act to pla / y King / Commonwealth” I was trying to particularly highlight the meaning of the word “Commonwealth” as well. 

How can a union be called a “common” “wealth” when laws are created to exclude certain peoples? 

How does a King hold authority other than by playing a role that the majority of people accept as real? 

Language is powerful and erasures are a way of showing how powerful words can be and that they have real, lasting effects on people’s lives. 

If the illusion of the “act” is revealed then maybe, it opens the possibility for us to write a new “play” that includes rather than excludes.

READ MORE:

HEM: In coversation with Nandi Chinna