Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Bruce Pascoe, Black Inc., $34.99.
Pascoe’s Salt is a wonderful eclectic collection of new works and earlier short fiction, literary non-fiction and essays written over two decades. Structured thematically across six themes – Country, Lament, Seawolves, Embrasure, Tracks and Culture Lines – Salt moves between the past and the present with Pascoe’s distinctively poetic voice.
While the style and subject matter will be recognised by readers of Dark Emu and Convincing Ground, there will still be surprises with newly-released or reworked gems.
The title speaks to memories and ghosts triggered by the smell of salt; its ability to clean, to render flesh and skin from bone, to preserve evidence, to signal cumulative impacts on country. The prevalence of salt speaks to the power and closeness of sea, country and our dwindling salty river systems, increasingly threatened by human intervention.
Pascoe’s characters are richly drawn from this salted earth and exposed to the light and the elements. Whether presented as fiction or the voices of shared histories, his characters are grounded within the seasons and Country. So, too, in Pascoe’s view, are their possibilities of reviving this salted earth through heeding Indigenous knowledge and experience.
Bruce Pascoe is an award-winning writer and a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man and a board member of First Languages Australia and Professor of Indigenous Knowledge at the University of Technology Sydney.
Salt cleanses the intellect, passion and mastery of his work.
