Olga Kotnowska

The fight was over, his dog stayed still and nothing else. He grabbed the hose before rage infected the whole of him. The cold water sluiced hard across the red-raw knot of the dog's gash, tight as a Buntline Hitch. 
 
Mandy Paterson

Wing healed, feathers strong
Practise flying
Time to go home

 
Mandy Paterson

$20, $100, $200
The price to adopt
A perfect friend
 
Meera Atkinson

As the Life in the Anthropocene conference has concluded so too conclude the Writer in Residence responses to papers. I hope you have enjoyed them, or that they might at least have provoked a response in you of a different order. It was an interesting exercise to sit in on papers, not with my scholarly hat on, as I have done for some years, but with my creative writer hat on (although it's perhaps more accurate to say that they're the same hat and that one just turns it by degrees depending on the context). I myself was often surprised by what was generated, and occasionally I simply took the opportunity for a moment of light relief. So take the conference Writer in Residence journey by scrolling down and back through previous pages. It was lovely to get to meet and chat to many of you and I thank you for the inspiration. 
 
Meera Atkinson

What who what who what who
birds Vincent, Jimmy, Bruce
what who what who what who
cat Whiskers, wolf and snake
what who what who what who
says what is who that makes
what who what who what who
decides the seeing face? 
 
Meera Atkinson

Is there a question? 
Are there animals?
Is there a judiciary?
Why are we failing?
What was the question?
How are we failing?
How are the animals?
Where is the judiciary?
What is 'objective seriousness'?
What are the principles? 
What is our purpose? 
Why was the joey tortured? 
Why was the joey killed? 
What is our purpose? 
Will the answers be heard?
Will the answers be heard?
Will the answers be heard? 
 
Olga Kotnowska 

" Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter." (Annie Proulx)
 
Olga Kotnowska

The Betrayal.

The dog fights, and he will leave this fight either dead or alive, and these are the only two options. The dog is starved. Across the blood and urine stained carpet the dog runs, and he clenches his jaws shut, jams his opponent's thick muscles between his teeth, and this is all he knows now. In this pen surrounded by the harshest of human noises, the dog knows nothing else. 
The dog is starved and he is weakened now but he fights, and all he sees is the face of his master, across from him, towering over it all, and for his master the dog fights. But when his jaws are now being swallowed whole by the opponent that today is stronger, the dog looks across the pen and he searches for the face of his master, he searches for his force. And when the dog's head is crushed against the floor, when his blood paints lines thick and dark across the surface, the dog looks up, frantically he searches for that face, the face of his master because it is all for him, it was all for him. 
 
Meera Atkinson

*A series of playful somewhat ironic cut-ups (being based on Simone's paper and the following discussion so not exactly the original thought that defines aphorisms)

A philosophy of being is the question of nature asked through the flesh that we are. 

Carnal being: man (sic) is not a transcendent being but a being in the circle of the world of non-mechanistic, non-vitalist lizards. 

Humanity emerges not as another substance but as another being; my body is the field in which my sensations are localised; I am the place from which I see. 

If the subject/object relation is blurred in my body it is blurred in the world=the theory of the flesh=the flesh of the world. The flesh is human, the flesh is animal, the flesh is inexplicable=inexplicable. 

The very openness of sensible being is dimensionality: forces of encroachment and interweaving with animality and nature. We anticipate through who we are. The flesh is the realisation of that engagement. Interwoven.

 
Meera Atkinson

Market seller: the turtle, the frog, this market is my culture, my home.
Turtle: the other/Other another o/Other IS a grieveable life. My shell is my culture, my home.
Outraged non-Chinese, non-activist citizen: THEY are cruel! They ARE cruel! They are CRUEL! WE are good and kind! [obvious denial - just hides it better].
Frogs (in unison): we are grieving, we are grieving. 
Fish (with voices breaking): they say we have no feelings.
Scientists: we were wrong.
Market seller: we are grieving, we are grieving.
Animal activists: we are cruel, they are cruel, we are grieving. 
Judith Butler: gender is performative.
Student who speaks from behind her: gender creates culture; so then culture is performative.
The optic of racism: you have no right to criticise Chinese culture. You have had enough power. You persecuted us. You persecute us still. You're guilty and you know it. 
Animal activists: it has nothing to do with race [obvious denial - how can anything have nothing to do with race?]
Billy Bear, the fighting dog: I never wanted to fight, never wanted to die. 
The optic of racism: you have no right to criticise a black man, whom you have treated like a dog. 
Judith Butler (or rather, an avatar of Butler): His dog fighting is a nightmare of performative masculinity, a staging of rage and shame. 
Student: the transgenerational transmission of the trauma of slaves.
Fighting dogs (together): we are slaves. 
Turtles, frogs, fish and birds (all together, almost yelling): we are grieving, we are grieving.
Whisperings inside the hearts of all players: oh/ the grief/ so many lives.