Traffic Saga

Read Lucy Van's introduction to Traffic Saga.

ISBN: 9781764449106

Among trans people, decals on logistics trucks have been a long-standing joke. Taking a selfie beside the TransExpress truck suggests an odd comparison: the queer person as a sort of infrastructure, carrying weight, essentials, the convenience of modern living. The burdens of normality placed upon the marginalised. Ironically then, to be trans often means a restriction of movement. When I finally got a decent job as a trans person, I knew I wanted to travel. I did some soul-searching about my paternal lineage in South Asia, and wanted to learn more about Partition.

The contradictions of Indian society threw light on back home Australia; both colonised by the British, India is humiliated by its recent history while much of so-called ‘Australia’ remains deeply in denial. Here I envisage poetry as a form of reportage, compressing this complexity into something digestible. What unfurls from these years of work-then-travel are wandering verses, across both continents, at bus stops and on planes, filled with the voices of other travellers and migrants, and our collective experiences of being stuck in-between …

–Lia Dewey Morgan