Poem by Jack Davis: the Writers

 Jack Davis
The Writers

They say
we are the makers of history
we inspire others
to laugh and to cry and to kill
They say
we are the sages
we write the pages
and out of the figment
of what they imagine
men come steel clad
over the brow of the hill.

Jack Davis  (1917-2000) was a distinguished Noongar playwright, poet, author and campaigner for Aboriginal rights and is arguably Western Australia's finest poet. 

Other blog pieces featuring his poetry are here.

His poetry calls out to us to remember the unwritten and forgotten history of Western Australia (and Australia).

Davis's poem John Pat  is perhaps WA's most renowned poem and was written about the death in 1983 in a Roebourne police cell of John Pat, a 16 year old Aboriginal boy who died of head injuries caused in a disturbance between Aboriginal people and Police.

Four police were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. John Pat's death was the catalyst for the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Jack Davis and WA's forgotten history

"Write of life
the pious said
forget the past
the past is dead.
But all I see
in front of me
is a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat."

Jack Davis
John Pat

Jack Davis  (1917-2000) was a distinguished Noongar playwright, poet, author and campaigner for Aboriginal rights and is arguably Western Australia's finest poet.

His poetry calls out to us to remember the unwritten and forgotten history of Western Australia.

Davis's poem John Pat  is perhaps WA's most renowned poem and was written about the death in 1983 in a Roebourne police cell of John Pat, a 16 year old Aboriginal boy who died of head injuries alleged to have been caused in a disturbance between Aboriginal people and Police.

Four police were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. The death was the catalyst for the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Davis’s poem One Hundred and Fifty Years was written in protest at the non-inclusion of Aboriginal people in the celebration of 150 years of European settlement in Western Australia 1829-1979.

One Hundred and Fifty Years
by Jack Davis[1]

I walked slowly along the river.
Old iron, broken concrete, rusted cans
scattered stark along the shore,
plastic strewn by man and tide
littered loudly mute on sparse growth
struggling to survive.
A flock of gulls quarrelled over debris,
a lone shag looked hopefully down at turgid water
and juggernauts of steel and stone made jigsaw
patterns against the city sky.

So now that the banners have fluttered,
the eulogies ended and the tattoos have rendered
the rattle of spears,
look back and remember the end of December
and one hundred and fifty years.

Three boys crackled past on trailbikes
long blond hair waving in the wind,
speedboats erupted power
while lesser craft surged along behind.
The breeze rustled a patch of bull-oak
reminding me of swan, bittern, wild duck winging-
now all alien to the river.
Sir John Forrest stood tall in stone
in St George’s Terrace,
gun across shoulder,
symbolic of what had removed
the river’s first children.

And that other river, the Murray,
where Western Australia’s
first mass murderer Captain Stirling,
trappings flashing, rode gaily
at the head of twenty-four men.
For an hour they fired
and bodies black, mutilated,
floated down the blood-stained stream.

So now that the banners have fluttered,
the eulogies ended and the tattoos have rendered
the rattle of spears,
look back and remember the end of December
and one hundred and fifty years.
 [1] Davis, J (1988) John Pat and Other Poems, DENT, Melbourne 1988.

In memory of John Pat

photo courtesy of Deaths in Custody Watch Committee

This Friday October 8 the WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee is holding John Pat Memorial Day 2010, to remember John Pat and all the other Aboriginal people who have died in custody in Western Australia. The ceremony will be held at Fremantle Prison, this Friday between 11am-12.30pm.

John Pat was just 16 years old when he died in a Roebourne Police cell in 1983. He  died of head injuries alleged to have been caused in a disturbance between Aboriginal people and Police, and subsequent beatings by Police. Four police were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. The death was the catalyst for the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.  

The terrible death of Mr Ward in the back of a prison van and recent Aboriginal deaths in custody remind us that thirty years later little has changed in Western Australia.

WA poet Jack Davis wrote what I believe is one of the finest Australian poems of all time about the death of John Pat.  Jack Davis's poem has been put into song by Archie Roach and Mark Bin Bakar.

John Pat
by Jack Davis (from the book John Pat and Other poems, published 1988)

" Write of life
the pious said
forget the past
the past is dead.
But all I see
in front of me
is a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

Agh! tear out the page
forget his age
thin skull they cried
that's why he died!
But I can't forget
the silhouette
of a concrete floor
a cell door and John Pat

The end product
of Guddia* law
is a viaduct
for fang and claw,
and a place to dwell
like Roebourne's hell
of a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

He's there- where?
there in their minds now
deep within,
there to prance
a sidelong glance
a silly grin
to remind them all
of a Guddia wall
a cell door
and John Pat

* Guddia is a Kimberley term for the white man

WA's best ever poem by its greatest poet

Roebourne is a uniquely Western Australian town. Situated 1200 km north of Perth in the Pilbara Region, it lies in the traditional lands of the Ngarluma people. White settlement dates back to the arrival of pastoralists in 1864.

It is one of my favourite places in Western Australia. It was events in Roebourne in 1983 that inspired Jack Davis, arguably, WA's finest poet to write what I reckon is the greatest poem ever written in WA. For me this is what poetry should be about- engagement with the social and political issues of the time.

Jack Davis's poem was written about the death in 1983 in a Roebourne police cell of John Pat, a 16 year old Aboriginal boy who died of head injuries alleged to have been caused in a disturbance between Aboriginal people and Police. Four police were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. The death was the catalyst for the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Here we are nearly 30 years later and little has changed.

John Pat
by Jack Davis (from the book John Pat and Other poems, published 1988)

" Write of life
the pious said
forget the past
the past is dead.
But all I see
in front of me
is a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

Agh! tear out the page
forget his age
thin skull they cried
that's why he died!
But I can't forget
the silhouette
of a concrete floor
a cell door and John Pat

The end product
of Guddia law
is a viaduct
for fang and claw,
and a place to dwell
like Roebourne's hell
of a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

He's there- where?
there in their minds now
deep within,
there to prance
a sidelong glance
a silly grin
to remind them all
of a Guddia wall
a cell door
and John Pat

Jack Davis's poem has been put into song by Archie Roach and Mark Bin Bakar

Guddia is a Kimberley term for the white man term