Petrichor

This July the Wagga Wagga City Council building will premiere a collaboration that reflects on the role the surrounding region has played in inspiring creative work.

Poet Derek Motion spent much of his life to date living and studying in Wagga Wagga and the landscape has influenced many works in his published collection Lollyology.

Motion, a former director of Booranga Writers Centre, was winner of the 2009 Overland Judith Wright Prize and his work has appeared in journals, including Cordite, Meanjin, Otloliths and Overland.

“In many ways I am a product of Wagga Wagga and so is much of the poetry in Lollyology,” said Motion. “This project was an opportunity to link passages with the landscapes that inspired them and visually show the creative work within an environmental context.”

Working with filmmaker Jason Richardson, a video was produced for Wagga Wagga City Council that reflects on the region and its influence in Motion’s written work. “The idea was to link the landscape, particularly writing on the landscape, with the idea that it writes itself on the individuals who reside within it,” said Richardson.

Richardson is a graduate of Charles Sturt University’s Television Production course and lived in and around Wagga Wagga for about a decade. During that time Richardson became increasingly interested in the role of landscapes as an influence in creative work.

“It was rewarding to explore our shared experiences of the Riverina region, through the environment as well as educational institutions,” agrees Motion. “Thank you Wagga Wagga for the inspiration and thank you also to Wagga Wagga City Council for the opportunity to reflect, both within ourselves and now on a site at the heart of the region.”