Big Blak Poetry Read
Blak and Bright
Six of the fiercely best poets read three of their best poems. With Jazz Money, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Tony Birch, Kirli Saunders, Ellen van Neerven, plus International poet Tusiata Avia.
Free – booking essentials.
5.00pm—6.00pm @ The Wheeler Centre: Performance Space
Charmaine is a visual artist, poet and writer and began writing poetry in Mullewa in the late 1970’s. She writes under the name Charmaine Papertalk Green to honour both her parents. Her publications include Just Like That (Fremantle Art Press, 2007); Tiptoeing Tod the Tracker (Oxford University Press, 2014); collaboration with WA poet John Kinsella, False Claim of Colonial Thieves (Magabala Books, 2018); Nganajungu Yagu (Cordite Publishing Inc.’s, 2019); and numerous anthologies and other publications. In 2019 Charmaine was shortlisted in The Adelaide Festival John Bray Award 2020 and the ALS Gold Medal 2019 for False Claim of Colonial Thieves (Magabala Books). In 2020 Charmaine won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2020 poetry category, shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (2020) winning the ALS Gold Medal 2020 and short listed in the 2020 Queensland Premiers Literary Award Judith Wright Calanthe Prize for Nganajungu Yagu (Cordite Publishing Inc.).
Ellen van Neerven (they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land. van Neerven’s first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014), a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020), the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award, is now available. They are the editor of three collections, including the recent Homeland Calling: Words from a New Generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voices and are co-editing an upcoming collection of Blak + Black Visionary and Speculative fiction Unlimited Futures with Sudanese multilingual writer Rafeif Ismail. https://ellenvanneervencurrie.wordpress.com/
Jazz Money (she/they) is a poet and artist of Wiradjuri heritage, a fresh-water woman currently based on beautiful sovereign Gadigal land. Her practice is centred around the written word while producing works that encompass installation, digital, film and print. Jazz’s writing has been widely performed and published nationally and internationally. Their poetry has been recognised with the 2020 David Unaipon Award, the Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert Poetry Prize, the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, a Copyright Agency First Nations Fellowship and a First Nations Emerging Career Award from the Australian Council for the Arts, amongst others. Trained as a filmmaker and arts worker, Jazz specialises in story telling, community collaboration and digital production, working with First Nations artists and communities to realise digital projects. Jazz’s debut collection ‘how to make a basket’ is available now from University of Queensland Press. www.jazz.money
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