The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith

Mapping worlds, moving cities 257

active and changes with the seasons: ‘The river shrinks’, ‘Jackfruits burst’,
‘black crows gorge’ and ‘Pepper vines snake up electric poles’. The land-
scape exceeds its own boundaries, spilling and bursting in all directions.

An implicit sense of place

Roy’s description of Ayemenem is very explicit. But sometimes a sense of
location is implicit and arises out of the activities, thoughts or feelings
which occur within that place. Many of the stories in The Penguin Book of
the City (Drewe 1997) involve events that take place in the city: they are
consequences of urban life. They do not so much evoke the cityscape as its
ethos. In the poem ‘Taxi’, by indigenous Australian writer Lisa Bellear, the
urban environment is implicit in the image of passing car drivers who will
not stop for a black person. The poem does not describe the city so much
as convey the indigenous experience of being marginalised within it, of
being excluded from the city community:

Example 12.2

(For Joan Kirner)

splashed by a passing cab,

and another and another

there’s rules you see;

don’t. stop. for.

black women. accelerate

past black men

and pensioners on pension day

can’t trust,

trash

got no cash

we’re all nuisances

reminders of an unjust

world, where the poor,

people of colour

are at mercy

of even taxi drivers.

‘Taxi’ (Bellear 1996, p. 70)

For Exercise 1 create three short pieces, one of which creates an explicit
sense of place, one of which creates an implicit sense of place, and one of
which is a mixture. Which seems to you to be most successful?