Daily Archives: February 22, 2021

There are two reasons why my latest book is called Sonic White Poise. First, as a straight allusion to Paul Celans poem Espenbaum. (Aspen tree your leaves glance white into the dark, in Michael Hamburgers translation).

The underside of an aspen leaf is so pale compared to its other side that it appears white. The leaves of the aspen tree are reputedly louder than the leaves of other trees when rustled, thus Sonic White Poise, adjusted from a locution to be found in my poem concerning trees, The Discoveries of Thomas Fynch.

Espenbaum is totemic to me. I first read it 41 years ago as a schoolboy attending a workshop presented by John F Deane. Celans poem is a masterclass in the presentation of a real, actual event through the language and conventions of European Surrealism; a lesson in how Surrealism can be a vehicle for the real. While it is an affecting account of a sons loss after his mothers murder, its enduring appeal to me is on the level of its aesthetic achievement.

The other reason for my books title is to own up to my whiteness. Some people assert their whiteness as an expression of White Nationalism I have no time for such eejits. As a person whose 1970s childhood was overshadowed by the unremitting bloodshed in Northern Ireland I have a developed, deep-rooted revulsion for nationalisms of every ilk. I choose to identify as white in my book in order to acknowledge that white is not the default colour of humanity.

In the western literary tradition the only protagonists who have the colour of their skin described are those whose colour is different from the white authors who created them. White characters are presumed to be white. The question of white privilege and white saviour complex was never far from my mind in the composition of many of the poems included in this book.

To my knowledge, in 1970s Cork there was just one solitary Irish black child. One home-grown black child in the second largest city of our country. The nation, in all practicality, was homogeneously white. As late as the 1990s American observers were irate that a film like The Commitments, about black soul music, could be made in Ireland without any black person. A correspondent was dispatched to Dublin from New York who reported that he traveled right out to the projects and could find only white people.

The past is a different country. Ireland in the 2020s is quite a different place again and all the better for it. It behoves its artistic creators to acknowledge that. Raised in a different country from my children (who have a sibling of colour) I have had a suite of world views to adjust and reset. I am a refugee, fleeing the mindsets of the 20th century.

My father was a big Johnny Weissmuller fan and with him I, as a child, would have watched most of the Tarzan films with Irish actor Maureen OSullivan front of screen, while a troupe of African extras provided anonymous local colour in the background. Teilifs ireann also broadcast its fair share of British movies of the 30s and 40s, extolling the putative virtues of imperialism.

I began my re-education by coming across Edward Saids Orientalism at the turn of the century. Said helped relegate the English adjective oriental to the description of carpets and not persons. My poem The Isle of Langette recounts the narrative of an explorer who seeks out a lost world, when he gets there he describes the occupants in the language of occidentalist exoticism. The story does not end well for him.

In Prayer Service (first published in an early version in The Irish Times) I recount my experience of attending the funeral of Nuala N Dhomhnaill s husband. Dogan was a Turk and his funeral service took place in a Dublin mosque, attended by half the poets of Ireland. One issue for me was the experience of a lapsed theist attending a structured prayer service, but other concerns presented themselves where a white Irish person, raised in the Catholic tradition, enters an Irish mosque for the first time.

In my life I have been fortunate enough to have, among the women who have shown me love, women of colour. Several poems in the book address questions of privilege and occidentalism in the context of one relationship. My poem Dinka had as its starting point a particular portrait of a man by Leni Riefenstahl. Possibly, in portraying Dinka and Nubian people as paragons of beauty and physical perfection, Riefenstahl was compensating for her earlier association with the Hitler gangs moronic assertion of Nordic bermenschheit; probably not. Either way her Afrika portfolio is problematic for its white gaze. And those problems are referenced in my poem, ambivalently, ambiguously, along with other efforts to sidestep white privilege and saviour complexes.

I loathe explaining or justifying my poems. I would wish to live in an aesthetic utopia where a Joycean silence and cunning remained the order of the day. I was never one for shrouding myself in artistic intrigue and mystery but in my ideal world every poem is consumed by an omnisciently insightful reader immersed in literary convention and non-convention. In this world the poet belongs to a priestly class whose liturgy is never questioned or justified, merely liked or disliked. We do not live in such a world.

The late American poet Tony Hoagland discovered that fact to his grief. In his 2003 collection What Narcissism Means To Me he included a poem called The Change. The poem had previously been published in the journal Agni, so it is a text which has been knocking about for quite some time. As you can guess from the title of his book Hoagland was an ironist.

Another of the poems in the book is called Poem in Which I Make the Mistake of Comparing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washerwoman. The Change concerns a white American protagonist who is observing someone like Serena Williams playing tennis against a European blonde. The protagonist of the poem describes the Williams-like character with tropes most enlightened people would find offensive and goes on to say:

I couldnt help wanting

The white girl to come out on top,

Because she was one of my kind, my tribe,

With her pale eyes and thin lips

And because the black girl was so big

And so black,

In the context of the full collection and Hoaglands inclination for mischief I read the poem as a self-aware account of unself-aware racism. My interpretation was that Hoagland did not endorse the opinions of his protagonist and was implicitly condemning them by exposing their existence.

Years after it was first published, Claudia Rankine came across the poem. She considered the possibility of a reading such as mine but seemed to settle on the opinion that it was an unselfaware account of unapologetic racism. She called Hoagland to account. But Hoagland made the mistake of believing that, like a mid-20th-century Beckett or Joyce, he should make no account of himself and his poem.

He learnt for himself, and for all of us, that we are at the wrong transection point in history to cultivate a position of aesthetic elitism or poetic priesthood. The affair left him out in the cold, interpreted as patronising and dismissive. He was loved to his grave by luminaries such as Terrance Hayes, but life was never the same for him after reports of his inadequate response to Rankine went viral.

Poems need to be ambiguous, sometimes ambivalent, nuanced. An art works relationship to generally perceived truth needs to be complex and complicated because people are. We consume art to discover how particular individuals struggle with asserting their individuality amidst a society which demands crowd conformity.

There is no point in producing a poem which is completely in tune with perceived moral correctness. Such a text would be mere agitprop or an essay in political philosophy or, at the very least, a performative exercise in virtue signalling. But while acknowledging that a poem should be nuanced, concomitantly the poet cannot be nuanced, cannot be ambivalent, cannot be ambiguous.

Whatever might be needed to be said on the page to be artistically truthful, in these troubling times, ( the word troubles of course has a particular understated connotation in Irish discourse) the poet must be clear and resolute in their support for progressive society off the page.

Sonic White Poise, a collection of poems by Patrick Cotter, has just been published by the Dedalus Press, Dublin

Read the rest here:

White privilege: I am a refugee, fleeing the mindsets of the 20th century - The Irish Times

Once upon a time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was unpopular, viewed by many as welfare redux. Barack Obamas promise that If you like your healthcare plan, youll be able to keep your healthcare plan, didnt exactly work out. By the middle of the 2010s, so-called Obamacare had cost the Democrats both houses of Congress.

Yet one great recession and one raging pandemic later, the ACA is liked, if not necessarily loved, by a majority of Americans.

The political process doesnt stop just because a bill becomes a law, according to Jonathan Cohn.

As if to prove Cohns point, the US awaits a ruling by the supreme court on another challenge to Obamacare, this one brought by the Trump administration and Republican state attorneys general. If they prevail, more than 20 million Americans may lose health coverage. Nearly a half-million have died from Covid. Markets dont always deliver what is needed.

The Ten Year War is a look back at the crusade for universal healthcare coverage, and a sequel to Cohens earlier book, Sick: The Untold Story of Americas Healthcare Crisis. Cohn is a senior correspondent at the Huffington Post. His take remains informed and nuanced, not breathless. The Ten Year War also captures acrid and tectonic shifts in US politics.

Cohn persuasively argues that the combatants in the healthcare fight operated with less than perfect knowledge, and that preconceived convictions too often clouded their judgment. Cohn aims at both policy wonks and political junkies. Laced with interviews and quotes from both sides of the aisle, his book is definitely newsworthy.

Obama and Tom Price, Donald Trumps short-tenured health secretary, speak on the record. David Axelrod, Obamas counselor, and Michael Carvin, a veteran conservative litigator who unsuccessfully argued against Obamacares constitutionality, also talk to the author. Years earlier, in the 2000 election, Carvin was on brief in George W Bushs winning supreme court gambit.

There were those who suggested that we shouldnt do anything other than the economy

Obama admits his surprise over Republicans not moving on after the ACA passed, unlike Medicare in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. We got no take-up on any of that stuff, he says. Left unsaid is that blue and red are more than just colors they are tribes.

By the same measure, Obama acknowledges that there were those who suggested that we shouldnt do anything other than the economy. That is an understatement.

One of those outsiders was Chuck Schumer, now the Senate majority leader. Even then, Cohn writes, the New Yorker grasped the political consequences of going all-in on healthcare amid a meltdown in the jobs and housing markets.

Indeed, after the Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, New Yorks senior senator unloaded on Obama before the National Press Club: After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs. Said differently, the ACA highlighted the inherent instability of the Democrats upstairs-downstairs coalition.

Instead, in Schumers telling, we took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem healthcare reform. Apparently, there are few things more gratifying in politics than telling a sitting president: I told you so.

Of course, political myopia is not the sole province of any one party. Price admits that Republicans too operated in their own universe.

I think there was a lack of appreciation on the part of all of us in the administration about how difficult repealing Obamacare would be, he says. Price is a physician as well as a former Georgia congressman.

Price criticizes Trump for fashioning policy to comport with the last voice to whisper into his ear, and for a fundamental lack of understanding of healthcare and insurance.

We would make concrete decisions about what we were going to do, he says, get presidential sign-off, and then within 24 hours the decision would change.

For Prices boss, pulling the rug out from under others was standard operating procedure.

According to recent reports, Steve Bannon, then ensconced at the White House, believed Trump was in the throes of dementia and ought to have been removed. That didnt happen but Price did leave government amid a swirl of controversy surrounding his use of taxpayer funds to finance travel on private aircraft.

No book on Obamacare would be complete without a retelling of John McCains late-night thumbs-down on the Senate floor. Here, Cohn definitely delivers. Adding to the legend, Cohn relays the Arizonans loss of patience with Senator Lindsey Graham, his longtime wingman who was already morphing into a Trump acolyte.

Hours before McCain dealt a death blow to ACA repeal, he appeared at a press conference with Graham to discuss the latest administration-backed gambit. As told by Cohn, McCain seemed not to be paying attention to what Graham was saying. One Republican aide saw what was happening, Cohn reports, and surmised that McCain had come to believe: This thing is so fucking stupid Ive got to kill it.

More than five in nine Americans believe it is the federal governments responsibility to ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage, a level of support actually smaller than 15 years ago. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, Joe Biden was the only top-tier contender who opposed both Medicare for All and efforts to abolish private health insurance.

He also understood the Democratic center better than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The core of the party wanted reassurance, not socialism or Massachusetts-style McGovernism. Neither senator would have beaten Trump.Utopia could wait.

When Biden, as Obamas vice-president, exclaimed that the ACA was a big fucking deal, he was tacitly recognizing that Obamacare had pushed the boundaries of what was practicable. To quote Cohn, In America, that is what change looks like.

Read more:

The Ten Year War review: Obamacare, Trump and Biden's battles yet to come - The Guardian

The collection, directed by Anna Himali Howard and Georgia Green, cover stories of estrangement and loneliness; of connection and redemption; of despair in confinement to hope found in life outdoors.

Paul Miller, Artistic Director, said today, As we emerge from a bleak Winter, its appropriate that the OT commits to new talent and new initiatives. Literary Associate Guy Jones has curated a beguiling and moving series of short plays from some writers familiar to the OT and some new to us, to reboot our theatre. And these will also be our first venture into live-streaming: we want to live-stream all our work in the future and this is our first step towards that. We want to be back to full-scale productions that welcome audiences when it is safe. Until then I am proud to present this new play project as the best possible way of platforming the new and emerging talent thats vital for the future.

Inside/Outside is part of OT On Screen, the Orange Tree Theatres digital project launched in January 2020 with Maya Arad Yasurs play Amsterdam, watched by over 25,000 people worldwide. The productions, filmed in collaboration with The Umbrella Rooms, mark the companys first live-streamed project, and the first live performances at the Orange Tree Theatre since lockdown began on 16 March 2020.

All rehearsals and filming will be conducted in a Covid secure environment in line with current government guidelines.

Sonali Bhattacharyya was 2018 Channel 4 writer in residence at the Orange Tree, where she wrote Chasing Hares, winner of the Sonia Friedman Production Award. Her credits include Megaball (National Theatre Learning for Lets Play), Slummers (Bunker Theatre), 2066 (Almeida Theatre), The Invisible Boy (Kiln Theatre) and White Open Spaces (Pentabus Theatre South Bank Show award-nominated). She was one of three playwrights selected for the inaugural Old Vic 12, and is currently under commission to Fifth Word and Kiln Theatre, writer in residence at National Theatre Studio and recently shortlisted for the Womans Playwriting Award for her play Deepa the Saint.

Deborah Bruces theatre credits include The House They Grew Up In (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Distance (Sheffield Theatres/Orange Tree Theatre finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Joanne (Latitude Festival/Soho Theatre), The Light (Live Theatre), Same (National Theatre) and Godchild (Hampstead Theatre). As a director, her credits include Pride and Prejudice (Regents Park Open Air Theatre).

Zoe Coopers Out of Water had its world premire at the Orange Tree in 2019 and was a finalist in the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was also shortlisted for the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Awards 2019, and nominated for the Best New Production of a Play Award in the Broadway World UK Awards. Her playwrighting credits include Jess and Joe Forever (Orange Tree Theatre/Traverse Theatre/UK tour Off West End Award for Most Promising Playwright Award 2017, longlisted for the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award) and Nativities and Utopia (Live Theatre).

Joel Tan is a Singaporean playwright based in London. His credits include Love in the Time of the Ancients (Shortlisted for the 2019 Papatango Prize), Tango (Pangdemonium Theatre nominated for Life Theatre Awards Best Original Script), Caf (The Twenty-Something Theatre Festival), The Actors Tour (international tour), Mosaic (M1 Festival) and The Way We Go (Checkpoint Theatre). He is part of 503 Five, Theatre503s residency scheme and an associate artist with Chinese Arts Now and Singapores Checkpoint Theatre

Kalungi Ssebandeke was selected for the BBC Writersroom London Voices, and Soho Theatres Writers Lab. He was also selected for the Lyric Hammersmith Ten Week Writers Programme and has written for the Young Vic, Bush Theatre and Talawa, his credits include Assata Taught Me (Gate Theatre). As an actor, his credits include Blood Knot (Orange Tree Theatre).

Joe Whites debut play Mayfly premired at the Orange Tree in 2018, for which he won Most Promising New Playwright at the OffWestEnd Awards and was nominated for Best New Writer at The Stage Awards. He has written work for The Old Vic, Lyric Hammersmith, Bush Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Birmingham REP and BBC Radio 3. In 2014, he was selected for the BBC Writersroom 10 and won the Channel 4 Playwriting Award. In 2015, he was the Writer in Residence at Pentabus Theatre Company, and in 2017, he was selected for the Orange Tree Writers Collective and the Old Vic 12. In 2019, he was selected for the BBC TV Drama Writers Programme, through which he is developing a pilot with STV. He is currently under commission with Sheffield Theatres, Audible and Carnival Films.

Georgia Green directs. Her previous credits include The Mikvah Project (Orange Tree Theatre/BBC Radio 4) for which she was nominated for Best Director at The Stage Debut Awards.

Anna Himali Howard directs. Her forthcoming work as a director I STAND FOR WHAT I STAND ON (Strike A Light). Past work includes I Wanna Be Yours (Paines Plough/Bush Theatre), A Small Place (Gate Theatre), and Albatross (RWCMD/Paines Plough/Gate Theatre). Howard was Associate Director for Fleabag (Soho Theatre, international tour). She was Paines Ploughs Trainee Director in 2016 and is an alumnus of the Birmingham REP Foundry. She was recently a Staff Director at the National Theatre, London.

Orange Tree Theatre Listings1 Clarence Street, Richmond, TW9 2SA

INSIDE/OUTSIDEBox Office: 020 8940 3633orangetreetheatre.co.uk

Inside: Thursday 25 Saturday 27 March 2021Outside: Thursday 15 Saturday 17 April 2021Performance Times: 7.30pm (Evenings) & 2.30pm (Saturday Matinees)Tickets: from 10 on sale 23 February to OT Members and 25 February public sale

Audio-described performancesInside: 26 March at 7.30pm and 27 March at 2.30pmOutside: 16 April at 7.30pm and 17 April at 2.30pm

Captioned performancesInside: 27 March at 2.30pmOutside: 17 April at 2.30pm

Read this article:

Orange Tree Theatre announces Inside/Outside - London Theatre 1

Representative image  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

Imagine this scenario: Concerned about Joe Bidens new Middle East policy and the International Criminal Courts decision to investigate war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel decides to get on everyones good side and announces that it will vaccinate the entire Palestinian population against COVID-19. Such a decision would be an instant public relations victory. But dream on. While Israel is among the leaders in the world in inoculating its population, it has shown no inclination toward taking care of all of the people under its control the Palestinians being the excluded class. Worse, it appears to actively seek to be an impediment to good sense, going so far as to turn away a truck bound for Gaza last week with the vaccine the Palestinian Authority had secured from Russia. The situation in Israel-Palestine, however, is not unique in vaccine un-diplomacy. The pandemic has not been an advertisement for the claimed moral superiority of the West over the Rest.

But first, back to Israel and bear in mind here that it claims to be the only Western, or at least Western-styled, nation in the Middle East. Admittedly, under international law Israels obligation to vaccinate the Palestinian population living under military occupation is unclear. As the occupying power, Israel has specific responsibilities for the occupied populations medical needs. But a global pandemic is a unique situation that isnt specifically addressed. Nonetheless, youd think there would be moral grounds for helping out, as well as enlightened self-interest Israels population interact with Palestinians on a daily basis in many cases, after all.

An apologist might argue that Israel doesnt have enough vaccine to spare. And this, in fact, speaks to the wider unsavoriness of the vaccine-grab among specifically and exclusively Western nations. In their rush to secure vaccines for themselves, wealthy countries in the West, like the United States and some members of the European Union, have turned their backs on large areas of the developing world. Canada has vaccines on order for more than five times the number of its population, even as South Africa has been able to secure only one million doses for its 55 million people (full disclosure: I live in Cape Town).

Access to vaccines reinforces power dynamics between the developed and developing world. While the rich vacuums up any vaccine they can find, the rest are left wondering if they will get access to any doses at all.

And lest you think the G-7 has now pledged to change all that, remember that Britain, for example, promises only to donate leftover vaccines (eventually).

Then there is the issue of the vaccines themselves. Western-designed vaccines such as those from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca have generally been perceived as the gold standard in quality and effectiveness. But what of the Russian and Chinese versions? The implicit prejudice against inferior vaccines made by these non-Western countries has resulted in The New York Times opinion piece this month pleading that Its time to trust Chinas and Russias vaccines. The fact that such a plea had even to be made to the Times liberal readership speaks volumes.

Despite (mostly unfounded) concerns about the quality of Russian and Chinese vaccines, new geopolitical alliances are being formed along national vaccine lines. The UAE, Egypt, Serbia and Pakistan are among the countries to have approved the Sinopharm vaccine from China. Bolivia, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil have approved another Chinese vaccine, made by Sinovac. The Russian version has been approved across more than a dozen countries in the developing world.

As the world becomes more fragmented along the lines of access to vaccines and to which vaccines, its instructive to consider just how far it has veered from the globalization put forward in the West over the last 30 years. The Flat Earth utopia advanced by the journalist and best-selling author, Thomas Friedman, for whom humanity is linked by Western-led and -styled peaceful global trade, digital communication and strong institutions, has proved a farcical myth during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Instead, international institutions are under attack, and vaccination efforts that would enable countries to gain control over the virus are disjointed and viciously national. Benevolent American leadership a key to Friedmans Flat Earth hypothesis has all but evaporated.

The West, essentially, asserts that it is more important after all than the rest and is more deserving of the available Western vaccines. While globalization is indeed a sound idea, the shame is that the West was never committed enough when it mattered most.

For developing nations, abandonment by the West when the chips are down is going to prompt a reevaluation of who their friends really are. This, after decades of exhortation by the West, to be more like the West economically, through the Washington Consensus on trade, economics and property rights, and more like the West politically, through the adoption of Western values of elections and human rights.

At a moment of existential peril of the highest order bigger than any economic meltdown or inflationary run-up or monetary crisis it was China and Russia (but mostly China) that rode to the rescue of the poor. Regardless of Chinas motives, the pandemic now has recast power and influence in Beijings favour.

Does that matter? The West feigns concerns for all; but in times of stress, it still believes itself to be more important (hypocrisy be dammed). Its claimed values are not, after all, unqualified. China, on the other hand, does not hide its self-interest, and its unashamed ambition for superpower supremacy should be a cause for wariness. Neither the West nor China is an ideal partner if youre poor. However, China is even less of a model for the world, and even more risk in the aggregate to the individuals that make up a state. Just check with the Tibetans, Uighurs, and the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Israel, in its recent engagement or maybe disengagement with the Palestinians under its control, provides a stark example of what might happen if the West (or near-West) does not live up to its idealized promise. The vaccine that was stopped while on its way to Gaza came from Russia. China cant be far behind.

In arrangement withSyndication Bureau

Joseph Dana is a guest contributor. Views expressed are personal.

Continue reading here:

Israel, the West and vaccine inequality - Times Now

Edging through the logjam of traffic along Ewingsdale Road, a car horn offers an unlikely reprieve from the tedious hum of engines.

"Welcome to Byron Bay," reads a wooden sign in the distance. "Cheer up, slow down, chill out."

It is, in many ways, an apt reflection of the Byron dichotomy a city both trapped and liberated by its own reputation.

With roots in the counterculture movement, the coastal paradise is renowned as a mecca for backpackers, the rich and famous and everyone in between.

A place, as one Vanity Fair writer offered, where "nomadic broods" come to "find their tribes on life's journey".

But with Byron's visitor numbers eclipsing its permanent population, the local community has found itself at a crossroads, struggling to reconcile this "free-living" ethos with the inexorable costs of tourism.

And as "van lifers" increasingly seep into the suburbs, it is ordinary residents who have suddenly found themselves bearing the brunt of tourism's ugly side: motorhomes lining residential streets, human waste on front lawns, and authorities trying in vain to keep it under control.

"As an area, we're too open to contradiction," muses Alison Drover, who has lived in Byron for 10 years.

"We're known as being free spirited and open to everything, but it doesn't really serve us in some ways.

"We're being sort of trampled on."

At a quaint cafe off Marvell Street, just a stone's throw from the world-renowned Main Beach, Drover gestures across the road.

A row of nondescript vans lines the nature strip bordering a luxury guest house that bills $500 a night.

Tourists are setting up camp in residential areas, she says, "and they're just not paying anything to be here".

"The reason why it's getting worse is because there's no recourse."

Drover is, of course, referring to the "van life" phenomenon: a bohemian social-media movement underpinned by the ideas of minimalism and freedom.

Peruse the nine million-odd posts dedicated to the hashtag on Instagram, and you might come to understand the appeal.

Between images of slick van conversions are shots of nomads opening their back doors to the kinds of views most only dream of waking up to ("Home is where you park it," one post reads).

And increasingly, that home is Byron.

Between December 24 to January 2 alone, a total of 1,454 infringement notices were issued by the local council the majority for illegal camping and parking.

Camping in streets, parks and reserves in Byron Shire is prohibited, and those who flout the law risk on-the-spot fines of between $110 and $2,200.

"It's not pleasant for the guests to wake up anywhere in Byron and see people out the front of their accommodation when they're paying good money to stay there," says Jack, a local gardener who emerges from the guest house.

"It's not just here, it's all of the hotels around here."

On the surface, it could be easy to dismiss the problem as a simple case of the haves vs the have-nots young backpackers trying to pursue an Australian rite of passage in a town marred by a jarring wealth inequality that's hard to ignore ("It's not like anyone can afford to live here anymore anyway," one local quips).

But look a little closer, and it's not hard to understand why the issue is proving so divisive.

"We don't feel safe," says Julia*, a single mother, whose street has become a haven for travellers, many of whom "use the front yard as a toilet". (Julia asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.)

"Especially when there's people out the front in the night-time, you know, [the kids] wake up and they go, 'Mummy, what's that?'

"I get woken up at three o'clock in the morning because [people in vans are] arguing sometimes it's because they're drunk, sometimes they're arguing because they're having a domestic."

For those left grappling with the fallout, these problems have become a sticking point.

It's not that they're anti-tourism. For the most part, the community appears to have embraced its nomadic reputation and the kind of people it inevitably attracts.

But for long-term residents, who are concerned that growing tourist numbers are outpacing infrastructure, it boils down to a simple question: How would you feel if, night after night, a group of strangers called your front lawn home?

"There is some friction between people living here and people free-living, because the respect is different, says local resident Sally Miller, who says she's watched tourists hop out of their cars and urinate in front of children in the street.

"I'd never walk away from the car and leave a plastic bottle of, you know, bodily product."

For Simon Richardson, the mayor of the Byron Shire Council, it's a topic that evokes mixed feelings.

He, too, spent part of his youth as a "van packer" travelling through Europe and America.

"I'd like to think I cared about the community and did the right thing," he offers, "but I was a 19-year-old with his mates, you know I was probably a bit loose."

Like many in the community, Richardson struggles to reconcile Byron's "free-living" ethos with the reality of burgeoning visitor numbers, but says "different locals have different perspectives" on the issue.

That division, he adds, is symptomatic of a much larger tug-of-war taking place.

"At what point do we open ourselves up as that ... relaxed type of atmosphere and community without getting the mickey taken out of us for that?" he says.

"People coming in and free loading, to a certain extent, you know there's an uneasy tension over that."

As the "van life" phenomenon explodes in popularity across the globe, the Byron community has found itself up against a wall.

The local council has, and will continue to, enforce restrictions on illegal camping, says Richardson, who points to the challenges of trying to catch people flouting the law in the act: "If someone's been drinking, for example, we can't get them to drive away and leave," he says.

But in many ways, they are hamstrung. Councils in New South Wales are prohibited from wheel clamping something Richardson believes "could change things tomorrow" if they had the power to do so.

"Our hands are sort of tied, we literally have to have paid staff to go around to write fines ... knowing that a whole chunk of them aren't going to get paid," he says.

"So while that's the case, people take the piss, really, and do what they want and worry about it later.

"There are some things where we're kind of left to our own devices, but without having the powers to actually influence behaviour."

Compounding the issue is the problem of homelessness. Beneath Byron's facade of a sun-drenched utopia lies a social inequality that would be remiss to gloss over.

The median house price in Byron Bay has been reported in excess of $1.8 million, while rental stress across the shire remains above the state average.

When Ilona Harker began looking for a new place to live she expected to spend a few weeks couch surfing but never four years.

And as the nation comes to grips with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, locals fear the problem is going to get worse.

"The price explosion and the rental explosion across all these areas is only going to mean more people are going to find themselves [living in their cars], especially when there's no social housing," Richardson says.

It's a complex issue with no easy solution, he adds, and one that locals see "very differently" to the illegal camping debate.

On that point, Drover concurs. Her concern is palpable: she cares about her community, and fears for those who have found themselves dislocated.

But she cautions against "blurring the lines" between the two issues, which she says require separate and targeted responses.

"We need to make sure that the people who are living here are living in safety, and as a council and as a government, we need to be doing something to make sure this doesn't happen," she says.

"But the problem is, if we just don't talk about illegal camping because of [homelessness], it's not helping it either."

Drover is keen to turn the conversation to solutions.

While she believes van hire companies bear some responsibility for regulation she suggests travellers could be required to disclose where they intend on staying she says there are also more practical fixes that could be implemented overnight.

Self-contained carparks, she says, could easily record car registrations as they come and go.

"Down at Main Beach there's a carpark there that could easily be enclosed, then you're using technology like vehicle recognition software, where it's timed and you're charged," she says.

"And the benefits are not only for illegal camping and parking; it means you're getting 100 per cent return on your tourism."

Sitting at her cafe table, she becomes philosophical about the situation.

At face value, it's a story of a community struggling to enforce its way out of a problem that is rearing its head up and down the east coast.

But beneath the surface, it speaks to a growing sense of resentment amongst locals, who feel they are being forced to watch on as their town is used and abused by those who aren't giving back.

"I like to use the analogy of your home: if there was free coffee, milk, and muesli on the table, and the door was open, you would have a stream of people coming in and out," Drover says. "Some of them will be your friends, some of them wouldn't be.

"If you start to close the door, and put the goods away, and you say you have to buy something every week, you'd see a natural attrition of those people coming to your house ... a change in behaviour.

"It might be time to really put our energy into changing the way, or guiding the way, that people interact with us."

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As 'van lifers' flock to Byron Bay, the town is struggling to reconcile its reputation with the costs of tourism - ABC News