Rob Kennard: Found In Translation
Our Writer's Resident on community, poetry and identity
Filipino-Australian poet Rob Kennard took our judges by surprise with his twin submissions to our Writer's Residency last year. Multi-layered works that explored the tension between urban grit, real and imagined natural spaces, they were unlike anything else out there and everyone wanted to see what he came up with next. He was awarded a Residency and has since spent time at over half our NSW locations, dreaming and writing various pieces.
Rob has a unique world view coloured by his upbringing in Western Sydney to parents from a non-English speaking background, all of which informs his work, while his involvement with Sweatshop aims to bring diverse voices like his into the mainstream. We caught up with him between stints at Das and Heike to ask him what poetry has given him, how he wants to share it with the world and the importance of silence and stillness for someone very much used to the opposite.
The poems you submitted explore the tension between city and regional life, nature and urban environments. Did you get the chance to get out into nature and away from it all growing up? Do you now? I grew up near Parramatta on Wallumettagal land but barely had any idea or language to connect to the nature around me. There were day trips to the beach and the occasional roadside motel in Albury or Goulburn, but life was mostly from fibro home to concrete shopping centre; brick Baptist school midweek to demountable Sunday school on weekends. Mum grew up with goats and rice and mangos in Pangasinan (northern Philippines), and she and my grandparents made a farm of their suburban backyard, growing chokos, bitter melon, chillies and strawberries. Dad wasn’t a green thumb by any stretch, but there was usually something in bloom at his house too. I remember passionfruit. Despite this, the overarching message from both sides of my family was that success and wellbeing was measured monetarily, not in connectedness to natural environments. A playstation, an LG fridge, a second-hand people mover, an easter showbag. Camping was a definite no, and we were never allowed to get “dirty”, or have our heads wet by the rain – a superstition that confuses me to this day.
You write in multiple Filipino dialects, as well as English and Spanish. What influences your decision to write in one language over another and are you interested in integrating more Tagalog and Ilocano into your English work as you did in your first poem for us? I write in Ilocano because it’s my first language and I’m trying to relearn words and make up the lost time. Raising kids in nineties Australia wasn’t the easiest for first-generation migrant Asian families, and so when I arrived in kindergarten barely speaking a word of English, my family quick-smart forced themselves to anglicise me. Within a year I could barely string a sentence in my mother tongue. Language is powerful identity-making for diaspora communities. That is why despotic leaders and insular communities fear sounds of foreignness. I am keen to pursue it. Write it louder. Tagalog is the national language of the Philippines, and even though it is not my family’s language, I include words in an aspirationally (I hope to learn it one day). It also allows for a wider Filipino audience to participate in and belong to what I am writing about. Spanish creeps in too, as it acts as a useful bridge between English, Ilocano and Tagalog, being both a romantic and colonising tongue. I enjoy the interplay of words on the page. It’s very pleasurable for me. I also hope to get to a point where I can write poetry where English doesn’t have to be the backbone. Or where grief is the belly.
Sitting on a foamy bed looking out at nature is some of the most productive time I have had all year.
You've been lucky enough to visit a number of our locations (pictured above) during your first few months as a Writer's Resident. How have you found the experience? As Annie [Te Whiu, another Resident] said, this is a gift. It is a privilege to have the space and time to detach, to silence the din. Grind coffee in slow-motion. Sawdust the shit and then stare at the canopy. It has begun to feel like a sacrament when I prepare for a retreat: leaving work early, preparing a shopping list, renting a car, taking a pile of books, downloading a podcast. To be honest, popping my unyoked cherry at Heike was unsettling at first. I am surrounded by so much noise and movement in my life, so it was startling to have the time and space. But it’s easy to get used to. I’m definitely paying more attention to trees now. And bird warbles. And good linen. I’m sappy with gratitude. In your regular work life, do you typically get time to switch off and step away from everything, or is this a nice change? I’m a letter writer by trade so I am pretty screen-dependent for a lot of my week. That said, I am fortunate to have a job that’s lite-n-easy on the life-work balance, allowing me to take time in my mornings or nights to write. Or just to be a better friend and lover. What have you been writing during your sessions? Or have you been using the time to sketch and collect your thoughts? (Or just staring out the window?) I haven’t always written, sometimes I sit dumbstruck for hours at how beautiful the environment is around me. Lush. Other times I am listening out for a lyre bird, or watching a yellow-tailed cockatoo couple mate as I chew muesli. After a storm in a rainforest, there’s always the fun game of looking down for leeches, or watching a echidna brown-nosing a feed. A dawn read with that slow-mo coffee is peak pleasure too. But yeah, I have written a little. I wrote something about my mum, and an epistolary poem to my sister. A haiku for an ex. Have you found this time productive - either in a creative sense or a mental one? You mean the cabin time? YES. Sitting on a foamy bed looking out at nature is some of the most productive time I have had all year. You mean lockdown? Not really. My mental and physical health have taken a beating over lockdown, but I feel fortunate to still find ways to write, even if it’s piecemeal and less habitual than I’d want it.
I am surrounded by so much noise and movement in my life, so it was startling to have the time and space. But it’s easy to get used to.
Poetry really came out of the woodwork this year, comprising over half of our entries. As someone that works in this space, do you think something about the tenor of the past few years has influenced our openness to poetry? That pleases me! I think poetry stubbornly resists much of what we’re told should give us meaning. It’s a yarn that doesn’t always rely on traditional narrative structures, and can easily hold worlds in a few lines. I’m not so sure I can speak for others, but poetry over the last two years has provided breathing space: to start the day, to silence things at night. To let other things rumble along dissonant, or work out ways to harmonise. It is deeply personal. I can’t help but empathise and project my own stories and experiences (imprints) when I read poems. I find poetry economical. It has helped me economise pain, addiction, desire, where before I may have always relied on consumption. During Covid, I also fell in love with a person who deeply loved poetry too (yes, Love In The Time Of Covid!). It made for a virulent writing-puddle. But I guess that doesn’t really answer your question. Maybe feeling more detached from community and intimacy made us hungry for authenticity. I find poetry does that. At least the poems that really dig in, scratch and sniff. Your work is embedded with a number of overt and subtle references to hip-hop, interpolating lyrics of Frank Ocean, Kanye and Tyler, The Creator. Talk us through your interest in using these artists to convey meaning. I’ve always considered rap and hip-hop as poetry. I also grew up in the pentecostal church in Sydney (both mainstream and Filipino congregations), and these communities were deeply influenced by Black American culture: gospel and r&b, fashion and speech. Being a part of “the church” meant music was always there and was used to wield power – a sort of emotional harvester. If you need to feel up, you get the band on stage for a pop jive; if the preacher is getting ready for an altar call (the part where people put their hand up to ask Jesus for salvation and be born again), you get the keyboard player to play a few suspended chords; if you need more non-white representation, you get a hip-hop break dance crew on stage for something before the tithe. Frank Ocean remains an ethereal, otherworldly genius. That poem started as a fan boi prayer to my pin-up. His lyrics and melodies stick to me. I also enjoy Tyler as wordsmith and dirty beatman. Love his queer journey. Flower Boy has to be one of my favourite albums.
As a nature company, we're kind of obsessed with the natural wonder and diversity of The Phillipines. Have you spent much time there? Yeah, it is S-T-U-N-N-I-N-G. And whoever coined that slogan, ‘it’s more fun in the Philippines’ knows what’s up. I’ve been to Palawan and Cebu, and explored northern Luzon, where my family’s from. But at the end of the day, I still know so little. I’d love to spend time in the Cordillera Mountains up north, and also explore the many islands and cultures of the Visayas region. It pains me that so many Australians have seen more of the Philippines than the majority of Filipinos. But I guess that’s the hangover of colonisation. Being mixed-race (Filipino-Anglo Australian), I also have a complicated relationship going ‘home’. Being whiter and more westernised, I am at once othered and exoticised, including within my own family. All that said, I can’t wait to return.
--
Rob is one of our winning Writer's Residents and is published in our first Anthology, out now. He has access to our locations for deep creative work for the next 6 months. Read more about the program - and meet all the finalists - here.