A Quick Chat with Cooee

Tell us about Cooee - what inspired this collaboration?

Mark Chester Harding and I met while performing with Jack River for Triple J’s Like a Version. We're both visual artists so we got to yarning in rehearsals about our own painting and print making practices and I remember immediately feeling like Mark was the kind of person I’d love to create with.

That week I released my seventh book – a poetry collection titled Returning (Magabala Books). It’s a work combining poetry and illustration and Mark, the hype-guy he is, came along to support me at the launch.

He bought the book and later texted me to say he’d put some of my poems to music he had written, and offered to Whatsapp me the audios if I wanted to listen.

I've always wanted to translate my poetry to music, so I was blown away with this offering. I loved the audios and recorded a few harmonies over the top, and sent them back.

A couple weeks later, we were in his home studio, writing the bulk of an album with the birds on the balcony. And since we've recorded some of those songs with Simon Berckelman at Golden Retriever on Gadigal, bringing in wonders like Eric Avery on violin, Mudjingaal Yangamba - a First Nations Women's Choir, Broc Piazza on Yidiki, Dappled Cities’ drummer Allan Kumpulainen and Middle Kids’ drummer Harry Day. The singles are mixed by legendary Paul McKercher (Ball Park Music, Augie March).

These songs are based on Kirli's own published poetry. Do you feel that the poems have taken on any new meaning, now that they’re being delivered in this new format?

I think all the songs I love are actually poems, and all the song-writers; poets. So in some way, it feels like a natural extension of the work to give them this form. But I do pinch myself every time it works.

And everytime I feel so bloody lucky to have Mark there to do this creating with. He's always sending me the skins of songs, or little sound snacks he's written. And I'll send him back the lyrics to fit the music.

We also make all of our own cover art, fusing his print making with my painting.

Our way of collaborating on every element of the project kind of feels like we’re embodying that hand shake emoji.

Who are your biggest musical influences?

I remember listening to Uncle Archie Roach & Aunty Ruby as a kid, and crying knowing they had stories just like my Mums. And then hearing poets whose lyrics lingered, like Paul Kelly or Yusuf Stevens or John Lennon. And feeling the Ancestral wisdom of all of my blak Aunties, with Chrisine Anu, the Stiff Gins, Emily Wurramurra, Barkaa, Jem Cassar-Daley - and over and over again every time I get one of my sisters on my playlists. For me, it’s these influences that shape the way I write. I want to be a truth-teller like uncle Archie and Aunty Rubes. I want to write songs of peace, grief and love like the poets, songs that rattle you and move with you. I want to channel those precious women in my family, and celebrate and uphold the Mob’s stories, language and culture.

A lot of the production and arrangement echoes Mark’s influences, Blake Mills, Joni Mitchell, Sufjan Stevens, Neil Young.

Your latest single ‘Daisies’ explores connection to country and groundedness. Do you have any personal rituals or routines that help maintain this connection for you?

So many ha! I think as a salt-water woman, time with the sea is paramount. Surfing, swimming, fishing, dancing those saltwater songlines with my sissies in Ceremony, teaching and learning that knowledge within the community, eating the food from that salt-water Country, they all feel really important. They keep me grounded.

What is one thing you hope people gain from listening to Cooee?

We write songs about connection to Country, my Culture, about love and grief and homecoming. I hope the Mob feel loved, celebrated, heard and held when they hear us. And I hope our allies feel excited to come along on the journey.

What’s next?

Following the release of our second single, we’ll be playing at:

Blak, Bold & Deadly, Aug 23 - the Music Lounge Wollongong
National Poetry Month Gala, Aug 28 - State Library NSW
Sarah Belkner & Friends, Sept 29 - Butchers Brew Bar, Dulwich Hill
Thirroul Music Festival, Nov 29 - Various venues

We’re also recording our next single & celebrating the launch of a children’s picture book that Mark & I have created, Beyond the Shore (Scholastic 2025).