"Imagine travelling week in and week out to places you never even knew existed" Yvette Holt reflects on Poetry Object 2018

Having lived and worked in the greater Central Australian region for over eight years, I have travelled many, many thousands of kilometres zig-zagging over three Australian borders including; Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, servicing some of the most extreme remote communities on the continent. The ethereally ancient landscape which canvas these long remote journeys is truly a gift of supreme blessing. Imagine travelling week in and week out to places you never even knew existed, with names you have never ever heard of? Combine these feelings of excitement and awareness with contouring, ever-changing hues and archaeological dreaming wonders.

--

Read yeperenye notes here
Register for Poetry Object 2018

--

Nowadays I am based in the outback regional town of Alice Springs or as it is known to the local Aboriginal people Mpwernte (pronounced em-bart-a-wah). Surrounding Mpwernte we are enveloped in the MacDonnell Ranges – local Aboriginal lore depicts these ranges as Yeperenye (pronounced yep-a-ren-ya), sleeping caterpillars. The poem I composed for ‘Poetry Object’ is titled, yeperenye notes – this poem reflects my own personal mapping of local cultural observations, my own writing methodology including insomnia through needing to write in the midnight hours, as well as saturation of landscapes i.e. waistcoat in the first line of the poem is the sun setting upon the ranges – the Yeperenye, each time I looked at the sun setting upon those ranges it reminded me of how the reclining desert sun also disrobes through the ever-changing hues and saturations of colours.