More massive than the sun

Ania Walwicz was a poet, artist and performer of remarkable intensity. She wrote five books of poetry, one book of fictocriticism and taught at RMIT for 28 years. I knew her for 7 years. She was my teacher before becoming my friend and comrade. She passed away on Sept 29, 2020.

I was hoping they'd catch us near the border. But they didn't. And we travelled in the white snow that was nowhere. And in the blue ocean that was nowhere. To get to a place where we were less and had less and were less and less and grew smaller every day. – Excerpt from Ania Walwicz, ‘So Little’, 1982.

When Ania left Poland for Australia in 1963 she left a culture rich in theatre and poetry, a place where art was prophecy and artists were heroes. She arrived in a country she immortalised as big ugly. It was a devastating turn of events, the defining moment of her life and she had no say in it. Can you imagine our Ania aged 12, sharp as a tack, already poet laureate of her primary school, already hell bent on becoming a writer, already proving her genius, can you imagine her smuggled out of her homeland to the other side of the planet, arriving at this insular, shallow colonial outpost? A wog, a woman and a poet who didn’t speak English, Ania could see the continent for what it really was.

My parents were brought out here around that time too, same age, same part of the world. They had no say in it either, nor do I, but we live out the consequences. I try to understand why we came here, I try to find the spirit to make a good go of it. If we jump off the colonial steam train for a moment, not so much to look back but to look around us, we can only weep. It is not that we truly long to return to Poland or Turkey, they are in deep shit too, but that we ended up in an almost-Australia, a country beyond grasp, a country always falling short, a country of plenty built on theft and arrogance, a country carrying on like it doesn’t have a soul.

May 19, 1951. I always remember Ania’s age and birthday. Born in the same year as my dad and on the Children’s Day holiday in Turkey. The child was an easy association to make with Ania, not only was she small in stature but her name was the diminutive of Anna, meaning God has favoured me. At age 9 or 10 Ania communicated with God in her local Świdnica cathedral, had gone there alone on a feeling, the creator had a master plan, called her, she would be a poet and actress, famous. Did not mention Australia. She never returned to Poland but we went to that cathedral one day at RMIT, walked in via google street view, she sat at the same pew and said, Ah yes Ender this is it, gee, how strange, this is where it all began. There was a deep religiosity in her. She took her childhood insights and memories very seriously, maintained that awe, that playfulness and curiosity. You could see it in her. For one, she would always wear a kid-size backpack, often a deep green variety almost identical to the one I wore to primary school in the 90s. It would make me chuckle, was my kinda thing seeing a 66-year-old wearing a 6-year-old’s bag without a care. Ania was fond of psychological theories. As her friendly analyst I’d mentioned to her that the emotional landscape of child migrants is often dominated by the moment of rupture. There is something key in Ania which remains 12, in my mother which remains 12 or in my father which remains 15. In that psychic territory it is still 1963 and this place is still loveless. Oh yes, she agreed, I wrote about that. I find her poem Hospital, ...The dentist asks me. How old I am. I’m only twelve everywhere. In here. I’m always twelve. Or even less.

My propensity to recall her age startled her a bit, made her double take and say things like, You know you could be my son. And it felt true to me, I imagined her as a third parent, the artist one. Both my parents enjoy music but neither are deeply involved in the arts. They support my choices now but have always tried to caution me about my desire to be a writer. They are immigrants. They came with nothing, they want me to have something, they are pragmatic. Writers have something but usually not the something that immigrants want. It is hard for an immigrant to raise their voice, assert themselves. They never met Ania. The three of them are my superego. Mum and Dad sit on each of my shoulders and Ania is the voice from above, the realm of art. Like a dove on my bronze bust every now and then she visits and shits on my head for great luck. Good-oh! She’d say. Ah-well!

I use the words art and poetry interchangeably because Ania embodied both. Here, art and poetry stand in for love, truth, sensitivity, fire and the sublime texture of life and death. Ania’s life stands as a beacon of hope, illuminates another way of being in Australia. Her’s was the life of an artist committed to her art, teaching and relationships. She did not seek wealth or middle-class happiness but the survival and flourishing of the artist. She did not have a steady job until she was into her forties but she had a cause. Struggle was not romanticised nor feared. She deeply understood the plight of the artist. As a teacher she inspired me to think poetically and write boldly. As a de facto immigrant parent she warned me off the arts. The arts are dead and culture is dying Ender, she would say and was cheered when I got a solid job doing maintenance at a school. You can always write on the side, she would say, You know I wish I had become a lawyer like Kafka, or I could have married a rich man too! There were plenty of offers you know. All of them odd. I could have gotten a good divorce settlement!

But like any parent, actions are louder than words. Our lamentations stemmed from the roles we played, immigrant artists in an inverted Siberian exile. I see Ania’s life now, her commitment to her art, to learning and teaching, to her comrades and students, and I see a way of being in Australia, I see the tributes flowing towards her and think, that is a life worth living.

But! I can hear Ania saying it now – a percussive Polish flavoured But! the clarion call of the dialectic – But! The problem for me is that the environment has changed, my generation is entangled in another set of conditions. Australia was given a new destiny when Whitlam came to power in 1972. Ania was 21. Suddenly multiculturalism and feminism were happening and there was free uni. The arts were getting funded. The zeitgeist allowed Ania to make her mark as an avant-garde artist and poet. Things opened up, Ania flew in. She was a local star. Government funding for the arts helped make Ania who she is, and helped make big ugly a place she could stay in. I often would say to Ania, Why did you stay in this diabolical place? You could’ve gone to Paris or New York or Timbuktu, they would’ve appreciated you more, you would’ve been bigger than Yoko Ono, bigger than John and Vlad Lenin put together, you would’ve been the Dalai Lama times two. But she would say, Oh no, it’s been not so bad, and anyway what would I do there? I have my friends here, you know, I go to Victoria Market, Cinema Nova... These words shook me. Until then I had felt condemned to Australia, still do at times. After RMIT I had gone to Istanbul for two years and wanted to move onto Berlin. I returned reluctantly to Melbourne, largely for family reasons, and felt immediately bogged down again in the smelly billabong of stagnant dreams. Ania and I began to meet up and listening to her gave me a new perspective. Travelling the world was well and good but the poet must find a place, a rhythm and a few comrades and get to work. In my writing practice I had been seeking new courses, new challenges and new masters far and wide. I thought that I had to leave Australia for Berlin or New York to get to the big time, to learn from the best, to open my mind. But if Ania had stayed so could I. She was big time.

After being my teacher Ania became my friend. It happened without a thought, easy. She was a giant to me but we were equals now, what an honour and joy it has been to call her my friend. We would chat on the phone, go for walks, go to a cafe and just be together. She showed me that I didn’t need any more masters, I just needed comrades like her, people committed to their calling and their friends.

Ania had been the master teacher I was looking for. You have to win an artist’s heart before you can win their mind. From the first class she stirred my soul. At RMIT I wasn’t a reliable student, but I never missed an Ania class, they were a religious experience for me. I came to the altar of Walwicz and she never disappointed. She was from another vein. She was the high priestess of Professional Writing and Editing straight out of 1920s Paris and Vienna. Her ship to Australia had taken a detour and she’d sparred with Freud, the Dada crew and the Surrealists. Ate an apple with John Cage. She was an intellectual familiar with the dark arts, had that mix of wicked humour and generosity. I would secretly record her classes and re-listen to them. She was little but her presence was huge, her voice was raspy and high but she could go low too, find that baritone for fun. She stood staunchly opposed to the force that haunts me, that dominant aloofness of white Australia. Fifty years in Australia had not changed her. She was incorruptible. The creeping barbarism of the university possessed by profit could not compromise her gift for inspiring students. I was one of the students who was ripe for her the moment I walked in but many came in wanting skills, wanting careers but she said, Ah-ahhh, not so fast. She converted many into believers. In a class with Ania Walwicz we got an education in the best sense, she awoke in us a sense of poetry, a student learnt to consider the depth of what it is to be a human being. She’d start a class by asking, Did anyone have a dream last night?

The impossible task of teaching creativity in a big institution cannot be understated. Ania didn’t teach us as much as she liberated us. As we listened to her share her dreams and her knowledge we began to loosen up, we began to laugh and play, we could find our voice. What a paradox finding one’s voice in a course turning us professional in the mammoth neoliberal profit-seeking uni, now almost better known as a real-estate corporation. PWE was my gateway to so many wonderful people and moments, but how could it escape the pressure placed on it to rationalise, corporatise and commodify? Ania the teacher heroically kept these forces at bay for her students, gave us the courage to find our own voice, find our way.

Ania never got a mobile phone. Why would she? It made things less poetic. There is poetry in waiting for someone to arrive, wondering if they’ll turn up, the joy in their eventual appearance. I see her now thumbing through her address book at home, finding my number and pressing it into her landline phone still with a cord. Hullo, Ender!

Ah Comrade Walwicz, good to hear from you!

Let’s meet up at Fitzroy Gardens Ender, you know near Cook’s Cottage, 2 o’clock.

Ok Ania.

Good!

She stood as a towering moral figure to me. People would say she was irascible and infuriating at times but really it was Ania who was absolutely sane and reasonable, it was the rest of the world which was mad. The last thing she was going to do was adapt to a crazy world. We got on well largely because I was just as furious and apocalyptic in my assessment of the state of things as she was. We made a sport of it, we were prophesising coming crises, we were bound to be right one day since the poet, like the animal, can smell catastrophe before anyone else.

Sometimes Ania would call and after hullo’s she would lead off with And what about everything that’s going on now, scary, isn’t it... I would agree, but would put a positive spin on it, tell her I was writing, we were publishing things, there were new projects, collaborations, forms emerging, the revolution was coming.
We are finding new economic models Ania, we won’t rely on grants and governments anymore, we are gonna do it ourselves, us artists and writers and poets, we just have to get together, strength in numbers... we will start a new Bauhaus...

But the Nazi’s closed it down! She cried.

We will start a new Black Mountain College…

But that went bankrupt!

It lasted 24 years!

Ye-es that’s true I guess.

We must work collectively and ethically, we can do it!

Well I hope so...

Maybe my romantic tenacity was getting her to come around.

Today more than ever Ania gives me the strength to say, To hell with Australia’s colonial mentality, to hell with the death of arts and culture, to hell with the late capitalist hellscape we inhabit. Today this so-called lucky country, this big ugly, seems like nothing but a huge casino built on stolen land. We squat and plunder with manic glee. Modern day slaves build our appliances, make our clothes, deliver our food. Nice and shiny. Under late capitalism everything is reduced to commodity. Poetry is absent, the arts are destroyed, social life is distorted, fundamental rights like housing and education and health care are turned to profit-engines. Humans are not being emancipated but increasingly bamboozled and enslaved by new and novel means. Yes we came to a country with material abundance for those who fit the bill and complied. But this colony was built in bad faith and the blood is still flowing. The soul is in question. There’s something grotesque about our best-country-in-the-world triumphalism that Ania’s work usurped. Her voice was electric and cut through the ugliness like no other. A truth-teller. Her life was a defiance of the dominant modes. She was anti-patriarchal, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist and pro-art. The last time we met she said Sooooo, things are really terrible, aren’t they? To paraphrase Tarkovsky, Art exists because the world is not perfect. We talk now of a return to normal which means a return to environmental doom, perpetual war, poverty and exploitation. We were already suffering widespread alienation, anxiety and depression. We should be starting a revolution. It sounds big but it starts simply and in good faith. We get our energy up, we reach out, we get together with our comrades, we play, we dance, we sing, we plan, we scheme, we articulate our dreams, we practice poetry, we find our voice, we keep Ania in and on our heads.

Ania Walwicz is dead, long live Ania Walwicz!