Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Seven
November- December 2025
On seeing ‘My Country’ through Emily Kam Kngwarray’s eyes,
poem by Alexandra Balm.
On seeing ‘My Country’ through Emily Kam Kngwarray’s eyes
The Alhalker Suite 1993
After seeing Emily Kam Kngwarray’s exhibition
and this 22 panel work in particular.
Cultural pilgrims
we flew to London
to visit the grand tower
of Tate Modern
solely to witness
Emily Kam Kngwarray’s works
At the entry we
drink in Anmatyerr language
listen as her descendants sing
about Alhalker Country
to the belly of the beast of Empire
just east of Shakespeare’s Globe
Smiling in our hearts we encounter
ancestoral stories vegetation surveys
vibrant ceremonies — secrets almost shared
with our acquisitive white fella eyes
ten rooms of brilliance at scale
hung on vast white walls
The womens’ songs
wash over us
resound under soaring ceilings
amid voices of Kam and her family
a gift of seeing and knowing
bestowed from their ancient land
This narrative of presence and respect
a song of Country, plants, animals
drawn from sand and women’s dancing bodies
ritual patterns morph onto silk batik
flow on to canvas of increasing scope
and majesty.
Art lovers venerate
The Old Woman’s oeuvre
we glimpse the sacred beyond
our pale Western point of view
in a realm of culture and spirit
embodying thousands of generations
Truth being told becomes beauty
this is a celebration of survival
suffused with ceremony and intent
— 40 years ago this Elder began
mark making to tell Alhalker Country’s
story to future generations
One huge gallery wall holds
22 uniformly-sized canvas panels
billowing clouds of colour release
blooming textures and meanings
embedded in layers of paint
reciprocity of respect for land and people
We feel deep time’s pulse
of Kam’s beloved landscape
we are seduced by her alphabet of dot and stroke
as the coloniser’s official language
English translates for those of us
tongue-tied to the ‘Butcher’s apron’.
Thousands of works created over two decades
the epic examples shown vary in style
defy assimilation in practice and theory
swirling colour or vibrating textures challenge
paradigms of knowing
and something inside me shifts in joy.
As our putative nation ‘Australia’
continues to debate its identity
some wish to silence voices from the heart
we descendants of Empire’s boat people
should read the way the wind blows
in this institution a timeless breeze
muffles colonisation’s last gasps.
© Linda Adair
Co-editor of Rochford Street Review, Adair is a writer, artist, and activist descended from several Irish refugees, most of whom came from Counties Roscommon and Galway. Two of her great-great-grandmothers were sent to Australia as teenage orphan girls on the Earl Grey Scheme in the wake of An Gorta Mor. Their overlooked stories have inspired many of her poems, and she was honoured to feature in September at Poetry Plus in County Tipperary and to participate in Ireland’s National Culture Night reading at Charlie Byrnes Bookshop in Galway. She was privileged to be a guest poet at the launch in Glasgow of the collection She’s Some Woman by The Wonderlust Women Glasgow.
Adair’s poems have been anthologised in OysterCatcher One; To End All Wars; Messages from The Embers; Poetry for the Planet; and published in international journals including Live Encounters Poetry & Writing; FemAsia; The Blue Nib as well as various independent Australian journals. She has been interviewed for 3CR’s Spoken Word program, and has exhibited her poems together with her paintings in both solo and group shows in Sydney, Australia.