Poems
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Changing Tides
By Zachary Bennett-BrookFrom a First Nations perspective poetry is not just written or spoken word, it is found in all creativity - song, dance, art, breath, Country and relationship.
Zachary Bennett-Brook's work is a visual poem on how he sees and feels Country, its meaning, shape, pattern and colour. It is a map of our connections to each other, to our kin and to C… -
Nyuwili (tears)
By Charmaine Papertalk GreenI am kin to colonial archive violence
Ngayamanmanha; Ngayamanmanha; Ngayamanmanha flogging
Family stories of removal, genocides, and social experiments of eugenics
Bumanha; bumanha; bumanha; bumanha; bumanha killing -
What Pathways and Songlines?
By Charmaine Papertalk GreenIn this country of milk and honey
Contemporary mechanical dreamtime mine time animals
Land stolen from traditional owners
Vomiting our precious earth on foreign shores -
We Not Strangers or Visitors
By Charmaine Papertalk GreenFirst Nations peoples connecting to land they are not strangers or visitors.
Yamaji nyinayugundi
Old ground our country with ancient ones deep within
Winja barna -
Nyarlu Malga (Strong Woman)
By Charmaine Papertalk GreenABA a women’s daily dance for good BARNDIMANMANHA
JUGARNU Spirits move within the memory ground NHANGANHA
JURDU Country bush broom stirs dust and land WINDI-WINDIN
NYARLU Universe sweeping with grandmothers hand JUNDANMANHA -
Batha Batha Winjarnu
By Charmaine Papertalk GreenBATHABATHA; incompetent
Assimilation Policy
What a name!
Government should be ashamed -
Desert is a body
By Judith Nangala CrispinI’ve walked here before, in the shadow of old Limbunya Station,
Lingiari’s heartland, where Wickham River veers toward the western sea
but never makes it—fraying instead to threads that vanish in blue clefts,
where the desert lifts in scrub and towering sandstone cliffs, then drops -
a poem in which two indigiqueer hotties definitely do not overshare about anything featuring big-fish, big-birds, and revolutionary violence
By Raelee Lancaster, essa may ranapirithe bleeding sky &
the boiling earth
the call from my dad i left to go to nothing
but a missed notification -
nhariya bubarawulali (there are mountains)
By Nicole SmedeDharawal translations provided by Aunty Jodi Edwards
nhariya bubarawulali there are mountains where I was born
where ancestors welcomed new life -
Tadra / Buar (To Dream)
By Bebe Backhouse-Oliver, Peter SipeliI write to you my brother
I am weary
I write from the liquid salted landscapes
I write from within the confines of colonial borders -
Etched in My Mind
By Charmaine Papertalk GreenI am still thinking about you mother
Slapping me awake 40 years on
New space time moving thataway -
Mangrove Girls
By Lulu HoudiniPotato scallops from the takeaway that always smells like a camel station
but that my sisters and I can't get enough of.
Pimples show up on our faces because of it.
Tell Mum there was a price increase and that's what happened to the change. -
The stars
By Melanie MununggurrAppeared out of nowhere
They came from every direction
Erupted through surfaces
And dove from blackened skies -
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Lost in Translation
By Teela ReidI’m bewildered by you
You’re bewildered by me
The difference is
not the colour we see. -
Today I Was Archiving a Review
By Declan Fry, Craig Santos PerezToday i was archiving a review
Of the anthology Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia
Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia is a potent lyrical lamentation from over two thousand islands in the vast Northern Pacific. In this inaugural volume of the New Oceania Literary Series from the University of Hawai’i Press, islanders address centuries of st… -
[tree bark whorled by fissure]
By Declan Fry, Craig Santos PerezThe gradient of wood is slow, and knows
the work before we do. I press my thumbs to each corner,
ready to arrive
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Stark as Empty Hands
By Declan Fry, Craig Santos Perezstark as empty hands
the tree without leaves
is the first image I grasp after leaving
my home to walk the streets at night,