This was published 3 years ago
Dropbear essentials: Indigenous poet Evelyn Araluen’s debut collection simmers with rage
By Madeleine Gray
Poetry
Dropbear
by Evelyn Araluen
I’m not usually a poetry reader; something to do with my year 8 English class taking it in turns to read aloud and absolutely butchering Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, I think. But now I work in a bookshop, and it turns out that poems are the perfect length to read between asking customers if they are a member of the store and if they want a bag.
This year, poetry and non-poetry readers alike have been abuzz about one debut collection: Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear. I cannot count the amount of special orders I have had to make for this book, as it continually sells out and punters get desperate.
Araluen is a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation and, as well as being a poet, is a lecturer and course co-ordinator at Melbourne University and an honorary fellow at Deakin. She’s also co-editor of Overland literary journal, and during her editorship, its pieces have become more and more relevant, progressive and engaging.
Dropbear is about being a young Indigenous woman living on colonised land today. It simmers with rage for what has been done, but also glistens with a truly lovely softness when it reflects on land and family. Some poems are written in prose, some in more experimental forms, but crucially they are all linked by a sense of play, of satire, of barbed wit: Araluen is funny.
As a PhD student, I cry-laughed reading Playing in the Pastoral, a poem that deconstructs bullshit colonial academic discourse. I cry-cried when Araluen writes of clinging to family when so much has already been taken: “If all we get from history/is each other, isn’t that plenty?” The collection ends with a young woman preparing to harness all her might: “I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers. I told you I was prepared to swallow.” Did you want a bag for that?
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