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'Aboriginal women are the great gatherers of many things—food, of course, but also stories and inner strength. The women who raised me had vast reserves of inner strength, and to pass that on was a powerful act of activism. In particular, they taught me to listen to the past as it speaks in the present.
'This work is about listening to the past and walking back over it, step after step, to see what you missed the first time. It speaks to what has been left out of official records, recordings and documents—the emotions, the other sides of paper—and what is not said. These poems engage with the ongoing, interventionist nation-state and the crime scene that is Australia in the lives of Aboriginal people. In contrast to state archives, museums, libraries, universities and collection agencies—and their methods of 'recording the lives' of Aboriginal people—my work explores the body where memories are stored as an archive; anchored and etched. Writing is an act of remembering a dismembered past.
'The title WALK BACK OVER alludes to a bridge across the Murrumbidgee River where I grew up but, more symbolically, mirrors the need to revisit our past. Much was made of the 2000 Reconciliation Walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge—many settler Australians walked across this and other bridges, and I am not cynical about that—but there are many other spans in Australia that must be walked: not just once, walked back over."—Jeanine Leane' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
(Re)considering Australian Geography with First Nations Literature - Jeanine Leane’s Walk Back Over
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , 10 August vol. 23 no. 1 2023; In their introduction to Human Geography,, Derek Gregory and Noel Castree remind the reader that “if . . . theories and methods establish spaces of constructed visibility, these are also always spaces of constructed invisibility. The price of seeing this is not to see that” (xliv; italics in original). Such spaces of constructed invisibility are constitutive of Australian geography, where marginalised or discredited systems of knowledge offer alternative ways of perceiving the Australian territory. Hence, in human geography terms, “positionality” plays a central role, inasmuch as “[I]ndigenous or subaltern knowledges are often discounted in order to promote particular versions of ‘Science’ or ‘Development’” (Gregory and Castree, xxix). Without doubt, in the context of Australia, the colonial accumulation of geographical knowledge coincides with the dissimulation of Aboriginal geography. In this regard, Australian First Nations literature activates other spaces of visibility, those that have been rendered invisible through colonisation and succeeding settlement. As such, Australian First Nations literature responds and adds to postcolonial criticism by confronting different geographies of the same territory.1 The aim of this paper is therefore to reconsider the place of colonial-settler geography and to make visible another geography of Australia. To do so, our study of selected poems from the collection Walk Back Over by Wiradjuri poet, academic, and activist Jeanine Leane seeks to bring into the light another geography and, therefore, another history of the land. Through her fiction and essays, Jeanine Leane deconstructs the manner in which Aboriginal people are represented in non-Aboriginal narratives, while defending and promoting the place given to Aboriginal people’s voices and representations, by and for Aboriginal people.2 Jeanine Leane’s highly acclaimed fiction and non-fiction work gives presence to those made absent and a voice to those who have been silenced by past and present forms of colonisation.3 Concentrating most particularly on the section called Country, this essay aims to show how Leane’s poems bring together the explicit and the implicit of colonial and Aboriginal history, thereby provoking different readings and responses from both First Nations and non-First Nations readers. In this regard, the poems in Walk Back Over become the opportunity to consider a Wiradjuri geography perturbed by colonial discourse and action, but still positively and proudly acknowledged and admired by the poet.' (Introduction) -
A Deep Archive : the Docupoetry of Jeanine Leane & Natalie Harkin : Mark Prendergast Reviews ‘Walk Back Over’ by Jeanine Leane and ‘Archival-Poetics’ by Natalie Harkin.
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , no. 28 2020;
— Review of Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry ; Archival-Poetics 2019 selected work poetry -
Remembering a Disremembered Past : Brenda Saunders Reviews Jeanine Leane's Walk Back Over
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Verity La , May 2019;
— Review of Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry -
Silhouettes
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2018;
— Review of Dirty Words 2015 selected work poetry ; Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry ; Broken Teeth 2016 selected work poetry -
May in Poetry
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , May 2018;
— Review of Brink 2017 selected work poetry ; The Naming 2017 selected work poetry ; Subtraction 2016 selected work poetry ; Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry
-
May in Poetry
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , May 2018;
— Review of Brink 2017 selected work poetry ; The Naming 2017 selected work poetry ; Subtraction 2016 selected work poetry ; Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry -
Silhouettes
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2018;
— Review of Dirty Words 2015 selected work poetry ; Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry ; Broken Teeth 2016 selected work poetry -
Remembering a Disremembered Past : Brenda Saunders Reviews Jeanine Leane's Walk Back Over
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Verity La , May 2019;
— Review of Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry -
A Deep Archive : the Docupoetry of Jeanine Leane & Natalie Harkin : Mark Prendergast Reviews ‘Walk Back Over’ by Jeanine Leane and ‘Archival-Poetics’ by Natalie Harkin.
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , no. 28 2020;
— Review of Walk Back Over 2018 selected work poetry ; Archival-Poetics 2019 selected work poetry -
A Deep Archive Flows
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 21 no. 2 2017;'As a lover of poetry, family history, rivers and archives, it is not easy to stay afloat when immersed in the torrent imaginings of Wiradjuri poet Jeanine Leane’s latest book, Walk Back Over; best to surrender, ride with the undercurrents and open up to savour it all. This work extends her first chapbook, Dark Secrets After Dreaming (AD) 1887-1961, which ‘moves from campfire to captivity to confinement and through colonialism’ (2010). Over time Leane has fine-tuned a poetic rage juxtaposed with love from her sovereign Wiradjuri woman standpoint, as deep and layered as the rich sediment of her ancestral Murrumbidgee River – grounded, yet never still.' (Introduction)
-
(Re)considering Australian Geography with First Nations Literature - Jeanine Leane’s Walk Back Over
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , 10 August vol. 23 no. 1 2023; In their introduction to Human Geography,, Derek Gregory and Noel Castree remind the reader that “if . . . theories and methods establish spaces of constructed visibility, these are also always spaces of constructed invisibility. The price of seeing this is not to see that” (xliv; italics in original). Such spaces of constructed invisibility are constitutive of Australian geography, where marginalised or discredited systems of knowledge offer alternative ways of perceiving the Australian territory. Hence, in human geography terms, “positionality” plays a central role, inasmuch as “[I]ndigenous or subaltern knowledges are often discounted in order to promote particular versions of ‘Science’ or ‘Development’” (Gregory and Castree, xxix). Without doubt, in the context of Australia, the colonial accumulation of geographical knowledge coincides with the dissimulation of Aboriginal geography. In this regard, Australian First Nations literature activates other spaces of visibility, those that have been rendered invisible through colonisation and succeeding settlement. As such, Australian First Nations literature responds and adds to postcolonial criticism by confronting different geographies of the same territory.1 The aim of this paper is therefore to reconsider the place of colonial-settler geography and to make visible another geography of Australia. To do so, our study of selected poems from the collection Walk Back Over by Wiradjuri poet, academic, and activist Jeanine Leane seeks to bring into the light another geography and, therefore, another history of the land. Through her fiction and essays, Jeanine Leane deconstructs the manner in which Aboriginal people are represented in non-Aboriginal narratives, while defending and promoting the place given to Aboriginal people’s voices and representations, by and for Aboriginal people.2 Jeanine Leane’s highly acclaimed fiction and non-fiction work gives presence to those made absent and a voice to those who have been silenced by past and present forms of colonisation.3 Concentrating most particularly on the section called Country, this essay aims to show how Leane’s poems bring together the explicit and the implicit of colonial and Aboriginal history, thereby provoking different readings and responses from both First Nations and non-First Nations readers. In this regard, the poems in Walk Back Over become the opportunity to consider a Wiradjuri geography perturbed by colonial discourse and action, but still positively and proudly acknowledged and admired by the poet.' (Introduction)
