IA Writing Competition Most Enthralling Creative Work 2024: Changing the words

By Karen Throssell | 21 December 2024, 7:45am | comments |

This outstanding poem by Karen Throssell, originally published in July, conveys the powerlessness of workers. It is the IA Writing Competition Most Enthralling Creative Work 2024 first prize winner* — read on to discover why.

Judge Jo Dyer's comments

Karen Throssell's 'Changing the words' is a stark invocation of the fraught existence to which Australia condemns its workers.

With spare, direct language, 'Changing the words' contrasts the monotony of the life of a wage slave with the dangerous precarity of the underemployed, posing confronting questions about the impotence of all workers in a system skewed against them, and the unhappiness, anxiety and risk such powerlessness engenders.

~ Jo Dyer

Changing the words

It takes most of our time,
shaping our days
for most of our lives —
relentless and constant as breathing…

And for most it’s a chore —
the black rock that hovers
like the threat of a storm,
at the tail end of Sunday

It’s the treadmill we plod
through five weary days
just hanging on
for the two-day respite

But always the thunder —
the thunder of Sunday
growling its warning,
relentless, constant as breathing

Luxury!
Five days! Weekend!
Constant hours, predictable life
I wish

Try and imagine
what life is like now
No constant pay slip
Same dollars each week

Meant to be spent on:
food rent petrol utilities
education (and they call it free)…
rego and doctors and RACV

Some aside for repairs
(and they all come together)
car plumbing
termites teeth

Even (god knows!) luxuries
a holiday, treats!
Remember —
we live in the Lucky Country!

And now, FLEXIBILITY!
How does it work? Helps me with childcare?
Come in when we need you
It may not be often and you’ll never know when…

But the bills are not flexible
They’re all too regular
and there’s the awful surprises —
and they all come together

Great for the bosses
Fits in with their needs
Their flexibility
Our precarity

* IA Writing Competition first prize winner Karen Throssell has won $1,000 cash and a 12-month Independent Australia subscription.

You can read the work of all the outstanding finalists in our IA Writing Competition Most Compelling Articles and Most Enthralling Creative Works HERE.

Karen Throssell is an award-winning writer and poet who has published seven poetry collections. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies. She is the author of The Crime of Not Knowing Your Crime: Ric Throssell Against ASIO.