Launching IN THE ROOM WITH THE SHE WOLF by Jelena Dinic

In late October, we had the pleasure of gathering once again in the back room of the Wheatsheaf Hotel for the double book launch of Jelena Dinic's In the Room with the She Wolf and Kate Llewellyn's Harbour.

Supported by the brilliant team from No Wave poetry, helmed by Dom Symes, the event was an enormous success. We're pleased now to be sharing Mike Ladd's wonderful launch speech for In the Room with the She Wolf, as well as Jelena's thoughtful response.

Words courtesy of Mike Ladd and Jelena Dinic

Jelena Dinic’s In the Room with the She Wolf was the winner of the 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature Unpublished Manuscript prize. Unpublished no longer. Here it is in another handsome production by Wakefield Press. Congratulations Jelena, you’ve worked hard and long for this. It’s no small thing to achieve this level of poetry in a new language and a new culture.

I want to go straight to the title: In the Room with the She Wolf. We see here, straight away, the dynamic tensions in Jelena’s writing. Room – domestic, interior, protection. She wolf – wild, exterior, danger. But it’s not as simple as that. The she-wolf in East European symbolism also represents family, the matriarch, the pack leader, the protector. For the great Serbian poet Vasko Popa, who is a definite influence on Jelena, and whose poetry is full of wolves, the she-wolf is the Earth Mother, Nature abused by humans:

They catch the she-wolf in steel traps

Stretched from horizon to horizon.

They take the golden mask from her snout

And tear the secret grass

From between her haunches.

As a little girl staying at her Great Aunt’s house in the Serbian mountains, Jelena heard men calling out that the wolves were attacking the sheep outside the village. And she heard myths and fairy stories from her grandmothers. For her the she-wolf is many things: “the world itself, woman as survivor, protector of family, female freedom and equality.” But in the title poem of the collection, it gets another layer of complexity still. The room is a laundry where Jelena is sorting the washing and the she-wolf appears to be Time and Mortality.

What passes through my hands is an old dress.

And that’s when I feel best

the intimacy of death.

How it creeps into my head. Sets up a stage.

I am its guest and its host.

A thought quietly turns like a key.

Coming

closer

is this a girl who turned into me?

I circle like an opponent.

Her clothes are still delicate.

I want to invite her to dinner.

She will step into my shoes.

Sit on my chair.

Her body will take my shape.

I know her weak spots.

I can’t protect her from myself.

Older Jelena has devoured younger Jelena, and that process will continue inexorably.

She will hang

disembodied,

in the backyard full of sun

And one of us will laugh.

There is no going back.

This poem contains key images for Jelena: the dress as version of the self, fabric of the world, and the idea of stages, performances, games, where fairy tales and dramas are enacted in a private theatre within the domestic. And that playfully ambiguous line: “one of us will laugh” is so Jelena, so Popa. The collection is full of such double-edged play, for example this miniature poem:

Swing

When my country collapsed, I was on a swing.

My mother shouted from her window “hold on, hold on.”

Jelena was just seventeen when she arrived in Adelaide in 1993 after the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Balkans went up in smoke again. One of my favourite poems in the book is 'J like Y', which in fourteen concise stanzas absolutely nails the 'migrate to Australia, learn English' experience:

5.

Cross Cross.

Don’t you understand past tense?

You had a house.

You had friends

The book has some great imagery, worthy of filmmaker Emir Kustarica, for example 'The Burning of the Dining Table'.

One day hunting

she catches the dining table.

It's been a fair chase for decades

but now the four legs had no choice.

She wants it to be an honourable kill.

In the name of a family

she pushes the beast out in the paddock,

starts the fire for a bigger feast.

The sky takes the last look.

What a potent symbol of revolt against the domestic. There are elements here of deep and surreal explorations of objects, again, in common with Popa, and other East European poets like Rosewicz and Holub. Boxes, handbags, mirrors, and not to leave out her current life in the bushfire-prone Adelaide hills, rain-water tanks:

It is set in its foreign ways.

Will I know

to shout its language

when nature reignites.

In fact, the collection doesn’t have a linear structure of starting in Serbia and ending in Australia. It constantly interweaves the two, going back and forth both physically and in memory. Jelena grew up in Aleksinac, a coal-mining town where the coal ran out, and when she goes back to visit she finds:

only the water in the well

is still alive

Also she discovers that:

Divorced

from communism

the old street has taken back

its maiden name

And when she and her family have a swim in the blue caves of the Adriatic her children shout in English, 'How could you leave this place?' She doesn’t need to spell out that in an alternative history without the Balkan wars they would be splashing and shouting in Serbian with no sense of having left for anywhere else.
Unspoken ironies and double meanings are a strong feature of Jelena’s writing. When a Croatian doctor takes a blood sample from her:

We watch each other through needle eyes.

I am iron deficient and lack a plan,

but I sense we both have a fair share of bad blood.

Peter Goldsworthy is right to say this is a book of journeys from childhood to adulthood, Serbia to Australia and Serbian to English, and Kate Llewellyn is right too when she talks of Jelena’s strength in triumphing through these transitions. Jelena is the she-wolf herself, and as she said to me in an email:
'The she-wolf is all about her pack. She-wolf is fierce and protective and strong and wild and caring and free. The title carries the poem in the book and it is about a moment when I found an old dress. I felt like I met my old self. It was a strange meeting and complicated on many levels. But it was also a moment when I realised that there was no going back, but I could start again and change the ending. I think there is a she-wolf in all of us.'

The book is launched. The she-wolf is in the room.

Response from Jelena Dinic

Warm thanks to Mike for launching In the Room with the She Wolf and for being my mentor over the years.

This little beast has been released by the wonderful team at Wakefield Press during these most challenging of times. Special thanks to Michael Bollen and Julia Beaven for making this happen.
I am privileged to say a few words on the country of Kaurna People – the original storytellers of this land who have been sharing their stories for thousands of years.
Sharing stories is about connecting, it is about deep listening and the nurturing of voices as we walk together with respect, one step at a time. On this walk I recognise the influences of migration and the way a myriad of cultures interlace and reflect their own dispossession and search for identity and a sense of belonging.

South Australia and Southern parts of Serbia are like two rivers running parallel in my life and I had to learn how to swim in both, at the same time. But I do remember the moment I fell in love with Adelaide, and I haven’t looked back.

It is a great honour to be sharing this book launch with the remarkable Kate Llewellyn. Kate’s knowledge and experience, wit and advice, have been instrumental to my outlook on life and writing in the last few years. Many years ago, when I by chance discovered Adelaide Writers' Week, and wandered into a book tent, I came across Kate’s poetry collection and her poems spoke to me in a way that I thought – Yes, I can do this!
Well, I am still trying.
Writing this book was about a search for my own voice. Some poems in this book are my first poems in English.
Most of the poems have been read and tested at poetry readings and I thank these gatherings for being so welcoming – Friendly Street Poets, Lee Marvin readings, Poetry at Halifax, and here at No Wave.

I chose poetry because I felt I was good at one-liners. Indeed, I may have thought it would be quicker to write a book of poems rather than a novel, but here we are, ten years later ... finally.

There are some prolific writers in this room that have had a profound influence on me, and a few who haven't been able to come tonight. You know who you are. A heartfelt thank you for all your support over the years.
She wolf is all about her pack. I thank dearly my parents and my sister and her family for their support. Michael, who is waiting for me to write a bestseller, and Dimitrije and Katarina, my first and often reluctant audience.
The poetry of Vasko Popa remains a major influence on me – I have always admired his elliptical style and minimalist approach to writing and I have read his poetry before at gatherings like this, but tonight I will read a Southern Serbian folk poem called 'Stojan and Ljiljana', a love poem, that almost sounds a bit Macedonian. And I will say a few words in Serbian.

Dobro vece i hvala vam sto ste veceras ovde.

Sa vasom podrskom, osecam se malo hrabrije, ovde na pozornici!

S obziron da je film o Tomi Zdravkovicu trenutno aktuelan kod nas, probudila se u meni nostalgija za juzno srpskim dijalektom koji je, kao sto znate, brz i ostar kao neka sablja, vekovima stara, na cijoj se ostrici balansira komedija i tragedija naseg naroda.

Tako se setih Kostane, i gazda Mitketa, ali i narodne pesme Stojan i Ljiljana.

Procitacu delove iz pesme.

Stojan i Ljiljana

 

NARODNA PESMA

Stojane, sine Stojane!
Poslušaj majku što zbori:
kupi si sivi volovi,
poori njivu golemu,
posej si belu pčenicu,
namoli mobu golemu –
sve ćev devojke da dođev,
Ljiljana moma će dođe!
Stojan si majku posluša:
kupi si sivi volovi,
poora njivu golemu,
poseja belu pčenicu,
namoli mobu golemu;
sve mu devojke dođoše,
Ljiljana moma ne dođe!
Stojane, sine Stojane!
Poslušaj majku što zbori:
napravi crkvu u selo; –
sve ćev devojke da dođev,
Ljiljana moma će dođe!
Stojan si majku posluša:
napravi crkvu u selo,
sve si devojke dođoše,
Ljiljana nema da dođe!
Stojane, sinko Stojane!
Poslušaj majku što zbori:
polegni, sine, te umri,
majka će prostre pokrovi,
majka će sveće upali,
pa će da vikne da plače:
tag’ će Ljiljana da dođe!
Ljiljana dvori meteše;
frli si metlu iz ruke,
pa si ulezi u kuću;
„Oj bože, bože, božice,
ovakog mrca ne videh,
što su mu usta na podsmeh,
što su mu oči na pogled,
što su mu ruke na pothvat,
što su mu noge na poskok!“
Tada si Stojan ripnaja,
pa si uhvati Ljiljanu:
„Pušti me, pušti, Stojane,
da si otidem kod majke,
da ti donesem darove,
da ti darujem svatove!“
Stojan Ljiljanu ne pušta!
This collection is dedicated to my grandparents. I will finish with a poem dedicated to my grandfather:

The Silence of Siskins

For my grandfather
 
He circles my arrival
on the calendar.
 
It is late November
and it doesn’t snow.
 
A wooden pallet
hardens his bed.
 
He dreams of grandmother.
He doesn’t want new dreams.
 
Two siskins in cages –
their song frozen like the air
 
that other November
when she lost her heart
 
cleaning and baking
for those who might arrive.
 
Above the fireplace a few flies
are nervous company.
 
‘Not easy on earth,’ he says,
‘not easy below.’