AustLit

'This article is a fictocritical exploration of the Port-Yarta Puulti River which runs through Kaurna Country in South Australia. Since the establishment of a shipping port in 1837 the river and the land that surrounds it have been heavily industrialised. This use/misuse of land and water exemplifies the human capacity to become socially dependent on the objectification of non-human environments. Such objectification both informs and limits how we use language: we find ourselves calling a river by its ‘resource’ name (Port River) rather than its living name (Yarta Puulti River). The repetition of this framing (in colonial/settler historical archives, policy, road maps, media, planning documentation) makes it easy to forget that this is not a port; it was made into one. In turn, this limits the kind of narratives that consequently emerge from and about a place. This article is composed of a series of experiments that creatively and theoretically engage (via image prose, image, and poetry) with the following question: how might we unhinge the intentional/unintentional censorship of the stories we write and learn from Country?' (Publication abstract)