Late Murrumbidgee Poems

(Paperback)

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*Highly Commended Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2021*

Burke is a poet who has shed many masks and is the better for it. He revels here in the godawful, funny, earthy business of being alive on Country. There is always death, of course, and worse, for 'we people who have walked at midnight have seen a great delight of pain'. Proudly Wiradjuri after battling his white skin for years, now openly gay after decades of closeted torment Burke's pen crackles with energy.

It is twenty years sinceNight Song and Other Poemswas published. That was a poetic recording of my journey from childhood, through adolescence, marriage and a return to Australia from twelve years in Aotearoa New Zealand. The foci in that book identity, family, childhood were deliberately occluded. My sexuality, in the 1980s of its writing, was presented as though I was at the time a straight man coming to terms with my Wiradjuri heritage. I skirted around Aboriginal politics and identity.

'No more. The journey continues in this book and I, as tour guide, take you to unvisited, secret places that were definitely not seen to be acceptable or proper to visit in the past. The Mabo judgement informed much of my thinking inNight Songand there is no doubt that the same-sex marriage debate of 2018 and its outcome inform these poems. They are less tentative and far more certain in my expression of Aboriginal and sexual identity and acceptance.

My real life experiences are here expressed guts and all far more honestly than before, and hang the consequences in the open. For me, wholly healthy. A long-time friend has often said, 'It's amazing how death changes you.' Not living authentically has been a living death for me. Like the Ancient Mariner, I have unshackled multiple albatrosses from my being, and have finally blessed all those facets of myself once believed to be slimy, ugly and at all costs to be avoided. The Murrumbidgee is a river I was born next toand now, seventy and more years later, am returned to.' John Mukky Burke

Author Bio

John Mukky Burke is a proud Wiradjuri man who lives in Wagga Wagga. Retired from a varied life of working for payment, he now devotes his time to thinking, writing, voluntary teaching, caring for family and friends and encouraging others to more or less do the same. His degrees in English and philosophy have shaped his approach to life and thinking. For him, writing is a passion, and he believes it takes almost forever to learn two things: what to say and how to say it. He has two adult children and three granddaughters.