Bio:
Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay writer, musician, composer and educator from North West NSW freshwater plains. A founding member of Indigenous folk duo Stiff Gins, Nardi has been performing nationally and internationally for 20 years. Her debut novel, Song of the Crocodile was a 2018 winner of a black&write! writing fellowship.
Why do you tell stories? I really feel that story is my first language, I definitely think it is the lingo I am most fluent in! I have always sought opportunities to sing, move, speak or write in narrative form. I particularly love doing it because I feel that in story, you are as close as you are ever going to be to someone.
Nardi, who is your mob? My people are the Yuwaalaraay mob from north west NSW and southern QLD. We take in the towns of Lightning Ridge, the eastern edge of Goodooga and up to St George in QLD. The history of our people’s movement means we also have a lot of families in Brewarrina and Walgett as well.
Describe your debut novel, The Song of the Crocodile, in one sentence. Song of the Crocodile is part of an ongoing Yuwaalaraay storytelling tradition that encompasses water, star, landscape, creator, language and historical dreaming.
The novel is set in the fictional town of Darnmoor, the gateway to Happiness. This town could be representative of so many small rural Australian towns, but it is also specific, inhabiting a particular cosmology and layout. Can you tell us about the setting of your novel. Darnmoor is freshwater river country and is a long way from anywhere else. I think the mentality of a town disconnected and overlooked in a way shapes the way people interact and perceive themselves. It’s a harsh place that demands toughness. Yet it is also floodplain, the most fertile and excessive country when in flood. These two opposing identities give Darnmoor huge headaches in an understanding of itself. The people that live there are extensions of that dichotomy. I invented the name Darnmoor as an anglicisation of the Yuwaalaraay word ‘dhunmurr’- which means graveyard or burial place
The women in Song of the Crocodile are absolutely awesome: strong, clever, funny, entrepreneurial, but they are each beset by (a similar) tragedy almost to the point of seeming cursed. Can you comment on the inheritances these women pass on to each other? These women are surrounded and bound to each other by tragedy and trauma, and it is my hope that it is this experience that makes their generosity and love so remarkable. While there are many instances of sorry, no good things happening to the women of the Campgrounds, the cumulative effect has an unforeseen outcome. While we suffer alongside them, we also experience their strength. At times they pass on their sorrow and grief, but remarkably at times they find a way to share and impart love. I think it is a very human thing, to find a way to deal with the most terrible of things. These women are even more remarkable because the only resources they have to do this are each other.
'The Blue Shed' (the town's laundromat) scenes are among my favourite passages of the novel. Was there a Blue Shed in your life? Great question! The kitchens of my Grandmothers and Aunties and mother are my Blue Shed. Even though they are shared spaces they are intimate and personal, you are often undertaking private acts in a kitchen- a meal for a family member, a perfectly brewed cup of tea…so the series of kitchen tables and stoves and fire pits were my equivalent growing up.
Can you tell us about the significance of Mili's eyes-- not brown as they were supposed to be, but turning a 'greening sky blue' upon her birth. I wanted to distinguish Mili from the characters that came before her as well as those that would follow. Her eyes changing colour just before she was born was a way of me signifying that. She was a product of her parents, and the town itself later in life, yet her eyes were the signal that she had an ability to transcend the rules. I hope went some way in liberating her from being merely a victim. The coming together of Mili and Garriya in the end of the book directly references a point in a significant Yuwaalaraay dreaming story – the Creator’s wives were swallowed by crocodiles. The first wife (who in my mind is Mili) survived to become the mother of all Yuwaalaraay people, a very powerful clever woman and the guardian of all the freshwater on the plains. The Yuwaalaraay word for eye is ‘mil.’
Is the Crocodile of the story a force for good or bad, or is it that transformation encompasses both of those elements? I don’t think I really know. The crocodile, as I mentioned earlier, is a creator being in Yuwaalaraay country responsible for the creation of a beautiful inland lake outside of Walgett. So, in that sense he has given us beauty. He has given us a landscape unlike any other. Narran Lakes – the lake I am referring to- in the past and still today, is a place we share and care for many other tribespeople. It brings us together, yet its creation was forged through jealousy and violence and death. Garriya, to me, is undefinable, perhaps this is his reason and his power in this story.
The interweaving of the stories of the living and the dead, and the ways these (living & dead) characters exist alongside each other is exquisite and instructive. Can you comment on this interconnectedness? I laugh when someone talks to me about the ‘magical realism’ in the story. To blackfulla’s its non-fiction! My mob are socialised to believe if someone has passed on, it just means we can’t see them. They continue to live and think and talk and act and play an active a role in your life. They are in the sky camp waiting for us to join them. We have been taught this is the way it is and we often seek guidance or interaction from our family and ancestors in the stars. And this is supported by the fabric of the dreaming- we call it ‘Burruguu,’ the time where all time exists and all people commune
When and where do you write? I find I look for two very different types of places when I write. When I’m searching for or exploring ideas or writing characters, I plonk myself in busy, noise filled spaces like cafés and parks and trains. The noise around me helps me write with vigour and life. When I edit, I think of it as dreaming time. I think of what I am doing as hovering above the story, similar to the perspective of much Indigenous artwork – hovering over the landscape nearer to the skycamp. For this I usually lock myself away in my room. I like to write during the day so I can feel earth and time progress. It makes me feel connected and part of the world.
What are three things that sustain you as an author, or while you are writing?Cups of tea, singing (usually an 80’s song- Madonna or Whitney Houston or Cindi Lauper or Roxette) really loud when I feel tired or stuck and my diffuser with eucalyptus or lemon myrtle oil.
Name three books that you couldn't live without. My People’s Dreaming by Uncle Max Harrison, Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay/Yuwaaliyaay Dictionary and That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
Can you tell us how music informs your writing or vice-versa? For me to do writing well, I need to couple words on a page with a physical form, whether it is melody or image or movement. So, I speak them to edit them. I inject movement into its speaking, and I search for the contours words and their spaces create. This enables me to feel tempo and dimension and to create a melody on the page. I thought I was moving away from singing and towards writing but now I realise and seek the true beauty in the moment’s words become music and writing becomes song.