Saturday

[Donald Q.]

I occasionally (more than occasionally) run across people who have a prejudice against rhyme and structure altogether, and basically demand a different poem.  I call them many names -- under my breath of course, because this isn't the place to call out morons

Sometimes restraint is a must when showing poetry to vocal idiots 

I was working on assonance more than true rhyme and I'm happy to run with that so long as it keeps the meter intact.  The chant is important to me as I really want to keep the feeling of an oral narration.  Not far from where I grew up there is a suburb called Windradyne, and barely anyone knows why.  There is a disconnect between black and white history, and I'm not Indigenous so I don't feel I have the right to appropriate their feelings in this matter.  It's a difficult thing for me to write, as I know for sure that my ancestors had Aboriginal blood on their hands: Wiradjuri, Eora, Yuin and Ngarigo.  Perhaps I don't, in the end, have the right to try.

Yeah, I 100 percent agree that you should draw on the idea of oral narration, it suits well. You have indeed taken on a very difficult topic to write about, good for you. As you say, it makes it difficult to position yourself as an author; there are always people who cry appropriation when someone writes about different cultures. To my mind you always have the right to try and you clearly respect the topic. Treading that middle group between representing the historical fact and bringing your own writerly perspective is super hard.