Samuel Wagan Watson, 'jaded Olympic moments'
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| Cathy Freeman carries the Australian and Indigenous flags on her victory lap after winning Gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Image credit: Allsport va Getty Images: Nick Wilson. |
Samuel Wagan Watson was born in 1972, of Irish, German, Bundjalung and Birrigubba descent. His dad is novelist and political activist Sam Watson. Watson has published six books of poetry; 2004's Smoke Encrypted Whispers won the NSW Premier's Literary Award and the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.
Watson writes vividly of everyday experience in imagistic yet tactile language, is brilliantly intertextual and postmodern, with a sharp understanding of postcolonial politics and the nature of the Australian identity. He is also my favourite contemporary Australian poet.
Many of Watson's poems are easily accessible to high school students, and allow scope for talking about the Big Issues of contemporary Australia. His is a richly textured voice that is nevertheless relatable - a voice kids can talk to, rather than just about.
'jaded Olympic moments' takes place on the eve of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, and juxtaposes a recent break-in and theft with the pageantry and patriotism of the Opening Ceremony to make a point about the place of Indigenous Australians in the Australian identity and its history. A good comparison text is unofficial Olympic poet's Mark O'Connor's 'Coming Home Strong', written for Cathy Freeman after her Gold medal win at the Games. I've included links to questions, a scaffold of themes and an annotated copy of the poem below the text.
jaded Olympic moments
for Jennifer Cullen
they made their way through the
sliding-door
and stole the lot
video,
mini-disc equipment, fly-fishing reels, my
son’s
piggy bank
and my literary award
all
on the eve of the Games
capping off a sterling period of post-funeral melancholy
after my young cousin’s passing
then, sitting on Jen’s couch
as the ochre-kissed women came out
and did their thing in the center of
the stadium
we had tears in our eyes
thinking,
that’s our mob!
but no,
only a romantic would think that
it’s still very much an US and THEM
kind of deal in this
modern
dreaming,
we’re city people without a language
and
some of us have even less
but then the coppers rang
said
they’d caught them
three
smack-head white boys
18, 19, 20
the gear was gone without a trace
the
video, the piggy bank, the literary award
and it made sense
‘cause if blackfellas had broken into the
house
they would have taken Dad’s 10ft
Landrights flag
‘cause it was worth just as much
as Cathy Freeman’s gold
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| Questions |
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| Annotated poem |
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| Themes scaffold |
