Issue 3: Interview with Alisha Brown
“Storm is always a soft thing.
The sweet suck of moisture from dirt,
always tasting, always savouring,
the fountaingrasses stretching their skinny necks
to offer night’s damp to the daybreak. ”
~ A walk in the rain by Alisha Brown
In your poem 'A walk in the rain,' the discovery of a black cockatoo feather opens up a whole world of solace and possibility. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your piece?
Certainly! A big part of my personal story is that I'm living with severe chronic illness. At the beginning of 2020, just before the pandemic hit, I developed ME/CFS, which most people know as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I was bedbound for months on end, unable to even lift a hairbrush or stand in the shower. It was horrific. I experienced true, true suffering, and have spent much of the past two years reckoning with the big questions that arise when one loses everything and faces the possibility of death – why do I have a body? Where do I end or begin? Does the earth ever feel shame? Regret? Do the stars know they are stars? Who am I here to be?
Now, although I am far from recovered, I am extremely grateful to be improving. And one of life's simple pleasures that has opened back up for me again is walking. I wrote this poem on one of the rare occasions I've felt well enough to leave the house for a short stroll through the bush. Its title may seem quite unexceptional to most people, but for me, a walk in the rain is such an exquisite novelty. Every little detail provides a world of intrigue. The texture of bark; the rise and fall of earth under my feet; the sound of wattle birds fossicking through banksia bushes. Worlds within worlds within worlds! I truly treasure these rare moments of exploration, and your question tells me that you felt this in my poem, too, which I'm thankful for.
I found a black cockatoo feather on this particular walk (as you may have deduced). I was so struck by its beauty that I tucked it into my pocket and brought it home with me. It became my link to the outside world, a silky souvenir, tangible evidence that not only do birds exist (how wild is that?!) but so do animals, and people, and trees and ocean and sososo many more gorgeously bizarre and fantastic things. It's easy to forget the expansiveness of this planet when you spend so much time in bed. I was thinking, too, about how the rain felt on my skin. So cool and alive! "Storm is always a soft thing" is my way of reconciling with all I've experienced – finding peace in the knowledge that an incredible amount of love is born from suffering. And that the earth loves us, not despite its many violences, but through them.
There is a great sense of yearning and interconnectedness with nature in this piece. Is the natural world an important theme in your work?
Yes! So, so important. I grew up in a tiny town of 1,500 people in north-west NSW, right the middle of woop-woop, so I was extremely fortunate to have a childhood surrounded by wattle and farm animals and river red gums. I'm now living on Yuin country on the NSW far south coast, and although the coastal scrub is somewhat foreign to me, I am always struck by its wildness and muscle. The trees here are absolutely enormous! I feel so nurtured whenever I prop myself up against an ancient trunk, whose bark is still charcoaled and blistered from the fires. I can hear the earth humming.
The bush and the beach provide such potent spiritual anchors for me. No matter how my body is feeling on any given day, I know that they will still be there, grounded in their gentle fluctuations: the fall of a branch, the flight of a bird, the changing of the tides. I feel less alone in my non-linear recovery journey this way, as though nature and I are holding hands, getting each other through it all. The yearning you sensed in my poem is my eagerness to play more deeply in the world. Despite my best efforts to be patient with my healing, I am so ready to surf, to hike, to run through sand and camp beneath eucalyptus canopies. I keep reminding myself that all of these things will still be available to me, once my body is ready. And I will savour them more than ever.
What other creative projects are you currently working on?
I write whenever inspiration strikes and my body allows, which has been quite often, recently! I'm actually in the process of compiling a wee manuscript – a collection of my poetry which I would love to have published. I've also been dabbling in film photography (mainly capturing the small delights around my garden, the blooming fuchsias and spiky cocoons, or the play of shadow across different textures of stone), writing lots of music, sketching the odd piece of fruit, and experimenting with Ayurvedic cooking. I feel so many future projects, too, gestating somewhere warm, waiting for the right time to emerge.
Which writers or poets do you often find yourself turning (and returning) to and why?
I always come back to Mary Oliver. Her poetry is so lithe, so gentle, so unpretentious. It has such soul, but not in a way that requires seeking. It simply bares itself to you. This is how I want to write, but more than that, it's how I want to be. My favourite piece of hers, 'Wild Geese', opens with "You do not have to be good [...] You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves". Ooof! I feel this in my cells as a cascade of truth whenever I re-read it. What a gorgeous message of acceptance and forgiveness and how, when we strip back all the noise and distraction and overwhelm, life is so sweetly uncomplicated.
I also adore Tim Winton and his aptitude for breathing consciousness into landscape. Or, rather, for being the lungs through which we feel the landscape, breathing. Other writers I love include Toni Morrison, Anne Carson, Ocean Vuong, Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson, Jeanette Winterson, Khaled Hosseini, Virginia Woolf. Too many to list! And this is a blessing, really. We live in a world so abundant with big hearts and strong, tender writing.
Alisha Brown is an emerging queer poet living on unceded Yuin country. She recently placed second in the Judith Rodriguez Open Section of the 2021 Woorilla Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for the SCWC 2022 Poetry Award. You can find her words in the Australian Poetry Anthology Vol 9, Baby Teeth Journal, Art Collector Magazine, Block Party Magazine, and the SCWC anthology Legacies.