Alison Whittaker and law
Hello poets and readers,
I came across a fascinating interview with Indigenous poet Alison Whittaker in a recent issue of the Melbourne-based journal Rabbit. Whittaker is both a lawyer and a poet. She believes that poetry and law have much in common, since they both “litigate meaning and try to persuade people,” and both have rules and codes. They differ in their degree of formality, and Whittaker’s progress in both domains has become less about balancing and more about harmonising. This has resulted in the emergence of an intriguing process at work in some of her poetry.