Aboriginal poetry

‘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 of Indigenous subjectivity’ (108).

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 "art of the possible". As Kath Walker, Oodgeroo made Aboriginal literature possible in 1964 with…

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 a pool looking thoughtfully past the fixed frame of the photograph. Her…

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 for granted. Because they are a minority group Aboriginal people's history was, until the 1960s…

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 painting, storytelling, song and ceremony.

Pre-invasion stories and songs tell of the paths of the…

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 the purpose, character and future of ‘Aboriginal literature’. The first part of the document assembled…

Interview conducted on 1-2 November 2014 in Canberra.