Dropbear

Author(s): Evelyn Araluen

Poetry

* WINNER OF THE 2022 STELLA PRIZE *An innovative collection of poetry and prose from a vibrant new Indigenous voice on the Australian literary scene.I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers. This fierce debut from award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation with biting satire and lyrical fury. Dropbear interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history with an alternately playful, tender and mournful intertextual voice, deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality. This innovative mix of poetry and essay offers an eloquent witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future.

Review by Fantine;


A breathtaking debut collection that tears apart the nostalgic facade of Aussie kitsch culture. Drawing from their academic background Araluen weaves and twists through time and literary structures, peeling back classic Australian iconography to reveal the complex violence in which so-called Australiana is forced upon and attempts to erase the landscapes of First Nations people. Righteously angry and resiliently tender each poem packs a punch, unrelenting until the very last page. Writing through Bushfires, BLM and the pandemic this is a collection for the now that is destined to become a classic, I feel changed by these words.


- Fantine, Bookseller at Collins Moonee Ponds


Product Information

Winner of the 2022 Stella Prize

Evelyn Araluen is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her widely published criticism, fiction and poetry has been awarded the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship, and a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant. Born and raised on Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation.

General Fields

  • : 9780702263187
  • : University of Queensland Press
  • : University of Queensland Press
  • : 0.114
  • : February 2021
  • : 1.1 Centimeters X 12.9 Centimeters X 19.4 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Evelyn Araluen
  • : Paperback
  • : en
  • : 96
  • : DCF