Alison Whittaker

Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi writer and a senior researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.[1] A review in World Literature Today called her "Australia's most important recently emerged poet".[2]

Early life and education

Whittaker's mother is Gomeroi and her father was not an indigenous Australian. She grew up on the floodplains of Gunnedah near the Namoi River in New South Wales.[3] She has a BA in writing and cultural studies and an LLB (2016), both from the University of Technology Sydney, and an LLM from Harvard University (2017) where she was a Fulbright Scholar and was named the Dean's Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law.[1][4]

Work

Whittaker's 2016 debut poetry collection Lemons in the Chicken Wire, which she has described as "a call to the humanity of Indigenous queer and trans mob".[5] For it she was awarded a black&write! fellowship from the State Library of Queensland, where it was described as a "highly original collection of poems bristling with stunning imagery and gritty textures".[6][7]

Her second poetry collection, BlakWork (2018), won the 2019 Judith Wright Calanthe Award.[8] It has been described as a "discursively monumental collection [which] asserts unwavering pressure on the idea of 'Australia'", in "a voice seething with impatience, grief-stricken at the fate of this occupied place".[2] The reviewer for the Sydney Review of Books said it was "a unique hybrid of poetry, memoir, reportage, legal documentation, fiction, non-fiction, satire, and social commentary" and "Written from a Gomeroi, queer perspective, BlakWork challenges the legacies of stolen land, systematic cultural genocide, forced removal of children, deaths in custody, persistent stereotypes about Aboriginal people and rural communities, and the ongoing 'divide and rule' trope of 'discovery narratives' by white Australia that contain Aboriginal peoples, our experiences, culture, her/histories and communities."[9] Whittaker was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing for Blakwork.[10]

Whittaker edited the 2020 collection Fire Front: First Nations Poetry and Power and presented a session of readings from it at the online 2020 Edinburgh International Book Festival.[11] A review in ArtsHub Australia said that it gave "insights from some of the most original and talented First Nations writers and thinkers in our country".[12] Writing in The Canberra Times, Geoff Page said that with one possible exception it was "the most ambitious attempt to update and/or replace" Kevin Gilbert's 1988 Penguin Inside Black Australia: an anthology of Aboriginal poetry, and that "The 53 poems in Fire Front do much to illustrate the variety of contemporary Aboriginal poetry in English".[13]

Her academic research interests include: indigenous peoples and the law; critical legal and critical race studies; and death in custody. She has published a number of articles, chapters, and conference contributions.[1] She has written several pieces for The Guardian.[14]

Selected publications
  • Whittaker, Alison, ed. (2020). Fire Front : First Nations poetry and power today. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 978-0702262722.
  • Whittaker, Alison (2018). BlakWork. Magabala Books. ISBN 9781925360851.
  • Whittaker, Alison (2016). Lemons in the Chicken Wire. Magabala Books. ISBN 978-1925360103.

References
  1. "Alison Whittaker". University of Technology Sydney. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  2. Disney, Dan (14 December 2018). "Blakwork by Alison Whittaker". World Literature Today. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  3. "Lemons in the Chicken Wire – Alison Whittaker PLUS bonus poet interview". Messenger's Booker (and more). 9 June 2017. Retrieved 22 August 2020. Includes extracts of poems
  4. "Alison Whittaker". Roberta Sykes Indigenous Education Foundation. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  5. "Q&A: Alison Whittaker". Feminist Writers Festival. 2018. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  6. "black&write! publications". www.slq.qld.gov.au. State Library Of Queensland. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
    "Past winners". black&write!. State Library Of Queensland. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  7. Randall, Sarah (4 June 2016). "lip lit: lemons in the chicken wire". lip magazine. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  8. "Queensland Literary Awards 2019 winners announced". Books+Publishing. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  9. Leane, Jeanine (5 February 2019). "Ultima Thule: BlakWork by Alison Whittaker". Sydney Review of Books. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  10. "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2019 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 2018-12-12. Retrieved 2020-12-09.
  11. "Fire Front: First Nations Poetry and Power". www.edbookfest.co.uk. Edinburgh Internation Book Festival. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  12. Murphy, Rashida (19 May 2020). "Book review: Fire Front by Alison Whittaker". ArtsHub Australia. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  13. Page, Geoff (1 August 2020). "Poetry and power leap off the page". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  14. "Alison Whittaker". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
    Whittaker, Alison (7 September 2018). "'Dragged like a dead kangaroo': why language matters for deaths in custody". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
    Whittaker, Alison (24 April 2020). "First Nations people have faced moments like this before. We can learn from the poems that sprang from them". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
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