Aboriginal poetry

Elliott examines the Jidyworobaks' appropriation of Aboriginal culture, particularly a 'religious', or 'metaphysical' connection to the land. He argues that 'spiritual bondage to the land…

In his introduction to the anthology of Aboriginal poetry, Inside Black Australia Kevin Gilbert writes: 'Aboriginal poetry rattles, flings and bends the chains and…

‘In this essay, I examine the ways in which Moreton’s literary oeuvre figures Indigeneity through the trope of sovereignty while also foregrounding the gendered nature…

Amongst contemporary Australian poets there are those whose work can be classed as overtly religious, whose poetry adheres to older, transcendental models of signification, to…

Politics has been described in many ways, most of them unflattering and all of them seemingly opposed to whatever poetry may be. Politics is the…

My copy of My People—a 1986 reprint—has a photograph of Kath Walker on the cover. She sits on a rock at the edge of…

The past and history have been foregrounded in Aboriginal consciousness as issues that demand attention whereas the history of white Australia has often been taken…

Long before the British invaded Australia our people expressed their emotions, our history, the sacred and secular events of our lives, via the medium of…

In 1983, a decade after the establishment of the Aboriginal Arts Board (AAB), the Australia Council published a report that presented two competing accounts of…

Interview conducted on 1-2 November 2014 in Canberra.

Lionel Fogarty’s difficult, urgent verse is universally accepted as an ‘activist poetry’, yet the very axiomatic nature of this characterisation has ironically obviated critical engagement…