For the Love of Literature

Stephen Milligan

Teacher - VCE Literature

Ella studied a range of poems this year that culminated in the study of the collection Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney. Ella used pathetic fallacy, symbolism, enjambment and sibilance, among many other devices she learned this year, to great effect in her poem. 

Ella found Heaney’s postcolonial and feminist critique of Irish and British society rich for a creative response and constructed her own poem that explored her female Asian identity. Ella explains her poem below.

Ella Davis

Year 11

I was influenced by all of the poems we studied but particularly Act of Union, Punishment and Limbo. Analogously, these pieces depict objectification and attraction as an act of violence or violation, due to the power dynamics and privilege inherent to colonialism and history. My poem reflects multiple different contexts. Firstly, there is an allusion to the ‘steeped’ tea, ‘silk’ and ‘sugar’ - key exports from China, which in some ways, cemented the value of the country in the eyes of some. 

There is also a reference to ‘opiate pleasures’, denoting not only the sexual exploitation of the Chinese in various points throughout history, but also the British use of opium throughout China’s multiple Opium Wars. Finally, the allusions to ‘policies’ and ‘prophecies’ culminate in the overt reference to the White Australia Policy, quoting a section of Former Prime Minister John Curtain saying "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race”. In this way, my poem responds to a broader context of racism whilst also placing a macro focus on the relationship between these two figures, who I believe could exist in almost any period of history: their relationship or those like it are ubiquitous, and most importantly, could happen today. Thus, perhaps it is most insightful to conceptualise my poem as set in the present. 

Foreign Fruit 

The gushing riverside snakes 

Around the prison where 

My affliction has blossomed. 

The cries of its water pierce the night, 

The scent of silk and sugar permeates 

The pergola wherein we share 

Our wretched history. 

Your veins are a twine of

Jade and gold that weave 

My unbridled tapestry. 

Your almond eyes sigh at me 

Whispering stories of silence 

And statutory submissiveness. 

Dragon Lady, Madame Butterfly, 

I dwarf your petite frame 

And dominate your existence. 

Magnolia, lotus, jasmine flower, 

I crush you between my fists

As your intoxicating perfume 

Leaks into the night air. 

An outcast on the outpost 

Of the British race, 

Your back is marred with 

Scrawled writing and ruin. 

Foreign fruit, escaper of policies 

And prophecies, 

My ancestors decried your being 

And desecrated your ferny soil. 

My legacy is the voyeur 

Of your sanctified destruction.

My steeped, opiate pleasures 

And your glimmering pain.  

Ella Davis