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y separately published work icon Fire Front : First Nations Poetry and Power Today anthology   poetry   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Fire Front : First Nations Poetry and Power Today
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Contents

* Contents derived from the St Lucia, Indooroopilly - St Lucia area, Brisbane - North West, Brisbane, Queensland,:University of Queensland Press , 2020 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Introduction, Alison Whittaker , single work essay
'It licks at the edges of the colonisers' language. It hems it into a workable, imperfect shape. It tears through the settlers' plantations, their arrangements of the trees and their form. It takes its restorative heat to the right flora, which release their seeds and bear down hard for the burn. It loosens and enriches nutrients from the top of the ecology. It brings them down to bring other things up. Fire Front, a thin and precise incision into the colonial Australian imagination, is ready when the wind changes. When the wind changes, everything that is burning becomes the front. Big. Bigger and more powerful than we could have ever envisioned.' (Introduction) 
 
 (p. ix-xiv)
Dear Ancestor, Chelsea Watego , single work essay (p. 3-8)
Hey, Ancestor!, Alexis Wright , single work prose

'Hey ancestor, you talking to me?

'Country time everyday.

'I know, I know, but wouldn’t you know it, it’s the 26th of January again, old Whitefella Day.

'Party time for some, sad day for others.' 

 (p. 9-14)
Beautiful Yuroke Red River Gumi"Sometimes the red river gums rustled", Lisa Bellear , single work poetry (p. 15-16)
The Colour of Massacrei"As a new century dawned white Australians were urged", Jeanine Leane , single work poetry (p. 17-18)
Unearthi"let's dig up the soil and excavate the past", Ali Cobby Eckermann , single work poetry (p. 19)
Domestici"The great need in dealing with the girls", Natalie Harkin , single work poetry (p. 20-22)
Took the Children Awayi"This story's right, this story's true", Archie Roach , single work lyric/song

'Although not the first song about the enforced separation of Indigenous children from their families, Archie Roach’s song, based on his own life and experience, was released at a time when there was increasing public focus on the Stolen Generations. The significance of the song also resonated outside the Indigenous community with Roach winning ARIA Awards for Best Indigenous Release and Best New Talent in 1991. Took the Children Away received an international Human Rights Achievement Award, the first time that the award had been bestowed on a songwriter.'

Source: NFSA (https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/took-children-away-archie-roach). Sighted: 21/02/2019)

 (p. 23-25)
The Children Came Backi"I'm Fitzroy where the stars be", Adam Briggs , single work lyric/song (p. 26-28)
Yúya Karrabúrai"I'm standing by this fire", Alice Eather , single work poetry (p. 29-32)
Bilya Kepi"Nitja ngulla bilya-kep koorliny.", Deborah Moody , single work poetry (p. 33)
Black Womani"I am every black woman who's ever been loved.", Ruby Langford Ginibi , single work poetry (p. 35)
A Letter to the Shade of Charles Darwini"We sincerely wish to thank you", Jack Davis , single work poetry (p. 35-36)
Too Little, Too Much, Evelyn Araluen , single work essay
'Aboriginal poetics have always existed. Or, at least, they fulfil every sense of always that we have access to: yaburuhma, the kind of eternal that spirals out a constant across time and space; forever, the kind of promise we make to spread between every time. Since the land, since the land made us shape, since the land gave us voice, since we had learned enough to inscribe it back, since we took up tools tossed here by the uninvited. We sing it back as it is sung back to us in every bird song, every branch ache, every wave heave. The form has changed, as have we, but the songlines still hum in the soil while we read and write upon it.' (Introduction)
 
 (p. 39-45)
The Grounding Sentencei"It has been an eternity of dispersal, Knowledge, secret and", Samuel Wagan Watson , single work poetry (p. 46-48)
Caused Us to Be Collaboratori"Their minds in times is what rhymes", Lionel Fogarty , single work poetry (p. 49-52)
Connoisseuri"They are excursionist on our culture", Lionel Fogarty , single work poetry (p. 53-54)
Darkinjung Burningi"begin with a circle facing a fire aunty", Luke Patterson , single work poetry (p. 55-56)
Many Girls White Lineni"no mist no mystery", Alison Whittaker , single work poetry
Judges Report : In Alison Whittaker’s ‘MANY GIRLS WHITE LINEN’, which placed equal first, the plight of First Nations peoples is front and centre. Through its torsional rhymes and rhythms, the poem eviscerates the iconic whiteness of Picnic at Hanging Rock and stuns with its own iconic imagery: ‘amongst gums collecting grit / where blak girls hang / nails’. The poem is, to quote Whittaker, ‘raw rousing horrifying’.
 (p. 55-56)
Municipal Gumi"Gumtree in the city street,", Oodgeroo Noonuccal , single work poetry (p. 59)
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