Cirrus@Austlit

Delivered by Red Room Poetry and developed by Gunai poet Kirli Saunders, Poetry in First Languages (PIFL) celebrates, shares and preserves knowledge of First Nations languages and culture through poetry, music, dance and art. PIFL aims to support students to find strength in their cultural identities through language learning and connecting to Country, Culture and Community with the intention of enhancing overall wellbeing and knowledge.

In addition to published poems (indexed below), the series also including workshops in classrooms and the development of curriculum resources.

'Do not be afraid to think.

'Test form, renew form, or defy it.

'Know there is a new permission to speak, and for more voices.

'Not to censure, censor our inheritances—in which there is still the cherishable, the followable—but to question, yes, that. To make that effort, with caring, love, and as needed, fierceness.

'To write, read the self, which can also be multiple, as are our inheritances, and also within if wished for, community.

'When I first devised the idea of this New Series two years ago, it was intended to be celebratory, motivated by the current flourishing which is occurring in poetry and poetry publication in Australia. In it, another poet/critic or poetry community associate is ‘allied’ with a new or recent Australian poetry collection, be that an individual volume, or an anthology, or another platform. Some books go back a little (there is one from 2017), but most are of the past 12-24 months; the impetus was to make tribute to a splendid range of contemporary Australian poetry publishing.' (Jacinta Le Plastrier, Introduction)