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'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.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication:
To Mum and Dad, it's an honour to honour you.
For J, every word. Before or after, and no matter what survives us, be it horizons, highways, poems or stars. Every word, and every place it came from.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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From Alexis Wright to Tony Birch and Evelyn Araluen: Powerful Books by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers
2024
single work
review
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , January 2024;
— Review of Praiseworthy 2023 single work novel ; Edenglassie 2023 single work novel ; Women and Children 2023 single work novel ; Firelight 2023 selected work short story ; Harvest Lingo 2022 selected work poetry ; Close to the Subject : Selected Works 2023 selected work essay interview ; Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay ; The Yield 2019 single work novel -
Weird Is In
2023
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , May 2023;'Australian fiction has long been dominated by the realist novel. A new wave of writers continue the avant-garde tradition—but are experimental and offbeat stories always destined to be relegated to a literary niche? '
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Drop Bear
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: English in Australia , vol. 56 no. 3 2022; (p. 69-70)
— Review of Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay''Moving Day' captures slanted light, anxiety, understanding and love amid the minutiae of a relationship. There is so much intensity in these poems, such vivid imagery such caustic hurt, such clarity about great loss that they drill down into the reader. Drop bear is poetry that stays with you, beauty and power, anger and wit, pain and love, long after you have closed its pages.' (Publication abstract)
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Blak Writers Spell Hope on Bundjalung Country
2022
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 7 September no. 784 2022; (p. 10-11) 'If festivals are any barometer of culture then the recent Byron Writers Festival should have readers and creators of First Nations writing feeling pretty good about things.' -
Australia in Three Books : Maks Sipowicz
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022; Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 26-28)
— Review of Kenneth Slessor Selected Poems 2014 selected work poetry ; Horse 2018 single work prose ; Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay
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Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen Review – a Stunning Scalpel Wielded through Australian Myths
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 26 March 2021;
— Review of Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay'Araluen’s first collection repurposes Biblical themes, Australiana kitsch and settler-colonial tropes to astonishing effect'
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Books Roundup Dropbear, Emotional Female, Friends & Dark Shapes, Monsters
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , March 2021;
— Review of Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay ; Friends and Dark Shapes 2021 single work novel ; Emotional Female 2021 single work autobiography ; Monsters 2021 single work autobiography essay -
Staring Back
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , June 2021; Critic Swallows Book : Ten Years of the Sydney Review of Books 2023;
— Review of Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay'Since the invasion of Australia in 1788, First Nations Peoples have been forced into the literary images of the colonisers. We have been described as noble savages, vermin, half-castes, temptresses, and problems, just to name a few. Our entrapment in the literary canon of the invading settlers is what constructed and maintained the colonial mythscape of the modern nation of Australia.' (Introduction)
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Timmah Ball Reviews Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 26 2020-2021;
— Review of Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay'Multiple modes and literary disciplines weave through Evelyn Araleun’s first collection Dropbear, shifting between poetry, prose, micro-fiction and essay seamlessly. The taut threads are a reflection of her interdisciplinary work where writing and social justice intersect. There are no metaphors instead resistance is displayed through her piercingly accurate understanding of the flawed settler nation we inhabit. As she describes in the collections notes ‘our resistance, therefore must also be literary’ an acknowledgment that the social, environmental and political change being sought must also engage with the literary culture we inherited such as May Gibbs problematic Australian classic Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. A much loved children’s book series where the bush is represented through terra nullius. As a scholar, poet, teacher, activist, editor, essayist and fiction writer Araleun resists and defies imposed colonialism, which is most fiercely embodied through Dropbear. The collection speaks back to defunct systems and shows that Aboriginal Sovereignty is crystalline.' (Introduction)
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Poet Finds Neat Ways to Send Political Message
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 7 August 2021; (p. 14)
— Review of Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay 'To a reviewer old enough to remember the publication of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s collection, We Are Going, the recent emergence of a whole new group of young(ish) female Aboriginal poets is a matter for celebration.' (Introduction) -
Australian Storytellers Share Favourite Shows, Books and Films That Are Breaking New Ground in Terms of Representation
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , October 2021; 'Seeing yourself, or aspects of your identity, represented or reflected in storytelling can be powerful and affirming. But our media and entertainment culture continues to under-represent some while over-representing others. We asked 12 professional storytellers from different backgrounds and lived experiences to share favourite books, TV shows and films that made them feel seen, or affirmed their experiences and perspectives.' -
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Evelyn Araluen : On ‘Dropbear’
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23450370
2021
single work
podcast
interview
'Evelyn Araluen is the coeditor of Overland, as well as a poet, educator and researcher working with Indigenous literatures. 2021's Dropbear is her first collection.
'Her shorter works have won the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize and a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship. Born, raised, and writing in Dharug country, she is a Bundjalung descendant.' (Production introduction)
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Translating the World
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , September / Spring vol. 80 no. 3 2021; (p. 61-71) 'In the summer of 2019–20 I worked in the customer service department of an Australian zoo. I was used to cycling to work, gliding past traffic and cutting through parklands in my khaki uniform. But I found myself driving much more than usual. Cycling resulted in weariness and respiratory irritation, as I breathed in toxic particulate matter. Bushfire smoke smothered the city, forcing us indoors. With the smoke settling for days at a time, I relied more on my exhaust-spewing vehicle to get to work. The dark irony was hard to miss.' (Introduction) -
Writing as Return : Dressing in Translation in the Imperial Space
2021
single work
essay
review
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , October vol. 40 no. 3 2021; (p. 41-44) -
Watch Out for Prize-Winning Dropbear
2022
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 14 May no. 776 2022; (p. 37) 'First Nations poet Evelyn Araluen has taken out the 10th annual Stella Prize with her debut collection of poetry and prose, Dropbear.'
Awards
- 2022 shortlisted ASAL Awards — Mary Gilmore Award for a First Book of Poetry
- 2022 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
- 2022 winner Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year
- 2022 winner The Stella Prize
- 2022 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Indigenous Writing