Page 25 - Luce 2023

S enior C o mmon Ro om

Power, Prayer, Promise, Peace

Literature Dinner with Evelyn Araluen

On 16 December 2022, students, staff, and Fellows gathered
for our first Literature Dinner since 2019. In the weeks leading
up to event more than 80 members of the College had
collected their copies of Evelyn Araluen’s debut collection of
poetry and lyric essays, Dropbear, which had been awarded
several honours: the 2022 Stella Prize; a 2022 Australian Book
Industry Award; shortlisting for both the Victorian and NSW
Premiers’ Literary Awards; and shortlisting for the Queensland
Literary Awards.

Born and raised on Dharug Country, Evelyn is a descendant of
the Bundjalung Nation, the original custodians of the northern
coastal area of New South Wales. She is a poet, critic, and co-
editor of the literary journal, Overland, currently completing
her doctoral studies on contemporary indigenous literature at
the University of Sydney.

During a forum event earlier in the month, around twenty Many of the poems in Dropbear articulate and confront the
students met to discuss their favourite pieces of poetry, and complexities of Araluen’s colonial and personal inheritance
to help their peers develop their comfort and confidence as as a young indigenous writer. Evelyn’s voice in these poems
readers of poetry. is urgent, uncompromising, and unabashedly confronting.

On the night of the Literature Dinner, after an ‘Pyro’, a searingly articulate prose poem burns with a rage
Acknowledgment of Country by graduate student, Sidney hotter than the bushfires it recounts. Despite being written
Ruthven, Evelyn was welcomed and introduced by our Artist- entirely in capital letters, this is no keyboard warrior’s
In-Residence, Alice Pung OAM, and spoke with a panel of emptily performative diatribe. Evelyn deftly juxtaposes
students, Elise Penney, Lizzie Kefaloukos, and Matthew Alizzi. images of death and destruction – ‘I READ IT WILL TAKE
The panellists’ insightful questions revealed not only their TEN YEARS FOR FLOWERING TREES TO AGAIN SUSTAIN
deep appreciation of Evelyn’s volume, but also their own WORKING BEES’ – with those of political indifference
capacity for critical interrogation of their country’s complex – ‘SCOTT MORRISON SITS SANGUINE IN A WREATH
First Nations and settler history and Australian classics OF FRANGIPANI’ – and the glib corporate opportunism
like May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie books, lines that trails human and ecological disaster – ‘INSTAGRAM
from which are ‘found’ and cleverly ventriloquised in ‘Mrs PROMOTES A SNEAK PEEK PRE-COLLECTION OF
Kookaburra Addresses the Natives’: ORGANIC COTTON WOMENSWEAR IN WHICH THE
THIN WHITE MODEL LEANS DOUR AGAINST A FIRE
Humans! Please be kind TRUCK IN THE TRICE-BURNT CHAR OF A HOMELAND’.
to all Bush Creatures™️ There is anger in these poems, but there is a grace, too, both
and don’t pull flowers up by the roots. lexical and philosophical: as Evelyn writes in ‘Dropbear
And please be gentle Poetics’, ‘I am rage and dreaming’.
to Little Ragged Blossom
of blessed tender heart With this fiercely intelligent and wickedly humorous debut,
loved beloved by Bush and its Folk Evelyn has boldly stepped into her power as an exciting
a wee speck of blushing babe new literary disruptor, and we are grateful for her generosity
of lovely important sadness© in sharing her time and truth with us at this event. Alumni
can hear edited highlights of Evelyn’s address and the panel
discussion in the first episode of our new podcast series, (RE)
VERBO, available on the College’s website. We look forward
to welcoming more writers and creators to Janet Clarke Hall
in the future.

Dr Eleanor Spencer-Regan
Principal

Graduate student, Sidney Ruthven, with Evelyn Araluen

J anet Clarke Hall 25