Go tell the bees
dul abair leis na beacha …*

*Telling the bees is an old Celtic custom, that is particularly important when someone dies, or is born, or goes or comes, because if you don’t keep the bees informed they will fly away. Palestinians have been keeping bees for over 7000 years and the Israeli army has attacked the hives of this ancient industry in the occupied Westbank in the Hebron hills.

**

Linda Adair is a poet and a publisher of Rochford Press, and co-editor of Rochford Street Review and a (re)emerging artist. Her Irish ancestors arrived at Port Jackson from the early to mid 1800s to escape the English occupation of Eire and then the food shortage which was weaponised and rebranded as the Great Irish Famine. Born on Darug Land in the era of ‘The Great Australian Silence’ about what was really occurred during colonisation, Adair writes about women and men marginalised by history in her poems. Her extended family includes First Nations people and she pays her respect to the Traditional Custodians of the land and Elders past, present and emerging. 

Her debut poetry collection The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering was published in 2020 by Melbourne Poets Union.  Her poetry has also been published in various journals, both in Australia and internationally. She has featured at La Mama Poetica, The Bergy Bandroom as part of both Sonic Poetry Festivals, Don Banks, Poetry at The Wickham, Cuplet, Reading the River at Brooklyn,  Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives,  Back to Newnes Day, and read at Newcastle Writers Festival. 

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents

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