Cirrus@Austlit

'This chapter lays out the reasons that the verse novel has been unusually prominent in Australia, considering key examples such as Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey’s Mask (1994), a lesbian detective thriller, and the four other significant verse novels she composed, to the late 1980s trio of Laurie Duggan (The Ash Range), John A. Scott (St Clair) and Alan Wearne (The Nightmarkets). It then goes on to discuss Indigenous and Asian-Australian practitioners of the verse novel form such as Ali Cobby Eckermann and Ivy Alvarez.'

'Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai Woman and award-winning international writer of poetry, plays and picture books. She is a teacher, cultural consultant and artist. In 2020, Kirli was named the NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year.

'Kirli created Poetry in First Languages, delivered by Red Room Poetry. Her debut picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and CBCA notables. Her poetry collection, Kindred was shortlisted for the ABIA 2020 Book Awards. Her verse novel, Bindi was the inaugural winner of the WA Premier's Book Awards and the Daisy Utemorrah Award.

'Kirli has been shortlisted for the Nakata Brophy prize in 2018 and 2020. She is an esteemed judge for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, QPF Val Vallis Award and Blake Poetry Prize.

'As a playwright, Kirli is co-creating Dead Horse Gap with Merrigong Theatre and South East Arts. Her first Solo play, Going Home has been supported by Playwriting Australia, and will take the stage in 2022.' (Production introduction)

'Ali Cobby Eckermann is one of Australia's finest poets. In this interview, she talks at length about Ruby Moonlight, her massacre verse novel exploring colonisation in Australia.

'Ruby Moonlight received the black&write! kuril dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowship and the Deadly Award Outstanding Achievement in Literature in 2012, as well as the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize and Book of the Year Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary and History Awards in 2013.

'In 2020 Ali is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. To listen to Ali speak about her other works, listen to this interview on The Garret, recorded in late 2019.'

Source: The Garret.

'In Too Afraid to Cry: Memoir of a Stolen Childhood (Norton, Mar. 2018), Ali Cobby Eckermann, one of the Stolen Generation--the Aboriginal children taken from their birth mothers to be raised in white families--describes in heartbreaking detail the unjust, racist treatment of her people by the Australian government. The book, written in both prose and poetry, came to be only after Eckermann's decades-long search for her Aboriginal family resulted in a transformative reunion with the mother she didn't know and numerous other relatives she didn't know existed. [...]I was out there with family and community members who were saying, 'Ali, you've got to write about this and stick up for us.'' (Publication summary)