AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 1
A Collaboration by Sarah St Vincent Welch and Melita Dahl
Selected by Coral Hull
 
[Above] Photo of Sarah St Vincent Welch by Neville Minch, 1991. Photo of Melita Dahl by Melita Dahl, 2000.
I TOTEM: You leap. Claw to skin,.... I
touch the Shadow.... I
glance in a window.... I
The diamond eye opens.... I
We are animal. Nose, mouth,.... I
I dream the totem.... I
I am the Cat Mother,.... I
I am the Cat Child..... I
Where is your rough tongue.... I
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 | You leap. Claw to skin, fur to breast, through my bones, my heart. Inside me is night, where you can see. Mice run along the skirting boards, glare from my pillow. I hiss. You shift inside me, stretch. |
 | I touch the shadow paths and taste the ground. Creatures dance away from the edge of sight, I smell them. The wind travels through my home, bringing strangers, and friends. Their houses grow, I pace around them, draw them in. |
 | I glance in a window. The light on his cheekbone, her round eye, his tattered mane.We recognise each other. I sleep in their arms, they stroke my hair. Her muscles twitch, dream hunting. He purrs into my chest. But we are human, fingers interlaced, holding each other in the centre of a mirror. |
 | The diamond eye opens to the dark, trapping night. Exposed, we balance in the opening. We leap into the portraits. Soul pictures with eyes that follow. A gift, a decoration, an exhibition. Markings stretched over skull, hair tangled and petted. Try to catch us watching. |
 | We are animal. Nose, mouth, cheek, bristle. Mesmerising prey. We lie close beneath a tree, sharing meat. The sun loves us and we love the sun. We sleep. |
 | I dream the totem. Cats wend around us, rub our electrical skin. Circling, we search the dark world. A silver ankh pulses, warm on my throat. A whisper of storms. Moon eye, Sun eye. We pace, salt lick, devour, drink. The day rests at the gateway. We lead out, we lead in. |
 | I am the Cat Mother, poised at the gate. A snake twists in my claws. My swollen womb hangs, the Tiger children awake. |
 | I am the Cat Child. Lost in blind streets, howling for your dark body, soft fur shadow, prowl, flex, play, your strange voice. You were comfortable against me. |
 | Where is your rough tongue kiss, tail twitch, black pelt? You walk through my closed door. You pause at my bed, and leap into me, returning to the calm night, where you can see. |
"Totem" was produced for a group exhibition titled Interaction held at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, November 25- December 17, 1995. It dealt with the theme of interpersonal relationships. Melita uses the cat as a metaphor for the totemistic notion of the clan. This work describes how like people come together to form intimate friendships; thereby extending the conventional notion of intimacy. For this series, Melita worked closely with the writer Sarah St Vincent Welch. |
About the Poet Sarah St Vincent Welch
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Sarah St Vincent Welch's stories have been published in: Telling Ways: Australian Women's Experimental Writing (Australian Feminist Studies), Body Lines (Women's Redress Press), and She's a Train and She's Dangerous (Literary Mouse Press). Her as yet unpublished novel, Islands in Lakes, Lakes in Islands, won the Jessie Litchfield Award for Literature in 1995. It is set around the mysterious disappearing Lake George in the Southern Tablelands of NSW and our relationship to landscape. Excerpts from this novel appear in Eat the Ocean (Literary Mouse Press) and There is No Mystery! - An Artistic Response to Lake George/Werriwa (Ginninderra Press). She teaches writing in the community and earns a living at ScreenSound Australia, preserving films. |
[Above] Photo of Sarah St Vincent Welch by Neville Minch, 1991.
About the Artist Melita Dahl
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Melita was born in Australia in 1966 and graduated from the Canberra School of Art in 1991 where she majored in photomedia. Melita now lives in Germany, and has studied at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, since 1997. Melita has exhibited her photographic works within Australia in group and solo exhibitions since 1991, and more recently, video works have been screened in Europe. Her photographic work can be found in Australian public and private art collections. "Museum of Silence", 1991, are manipulated images taken at the Australian Museum in Sydney from their collection of preserved native animals. This work uses taxidermy as a metaphor for the lack of awareness of the needs of animals, and draws on the similarities between taxidermy and photography. "Biohazard" 1993, was conceived as a joint project and grew out of a shared concern about land degradation by recreating an atmosphere of a degraded environment, and by showing the fragile and fading nature of other animal species. |
[Above] Photo of Melita Dahl by Melita Dahl, 2000.
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Thylazine No.1 (March, 2000) |
