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Blakwork

WINNER, 2019 QUEENSLAND LITERARY AWARDS, JUDITH WRIGHT CALANTHE AWARD FOR A POETRY COLLECTION

WINNER, 2019 MASCARA AVANT-GARDE LITERARY AWARD 

SHORTLISTED, 2019 PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARDS, POETRY

SHORTLISTED, 2019 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS, INDIGENOUS WRITING PRIZE

SHORTLISTED, 2020 ADELAIDE FESTIVAL AWARDS FOR LITERATURE

SHORTLISTED, 2019 AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS, SMALL PUBLISHERS' ADULT BOOK OF THE YEAR 

LONGLISTED, 2019 AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE SOCIETY (ALS) GOLD MEDAL 

 

A stunning mix of memoir, reportage, fiction, satire, and critique composed by a powerful new voice in poetry. Alison Whittaker’s BLAKWORK is an original and unapologetic collection from which two things emerge; an incomprehensible loss, and the poet’s fearless examination of the present.

Whittaker is unsparing in the interrogation of familiar ideas – identifying and dissolving them with idiosyncratic imagery, layering them to form new connections, and reinterpreting what we know.

$27.99

Praise for Blakwork

"Whittaker literally and figuratively demonstrates the subtle – yet radical – ways in which poetry may influence perceptions." 
– Autumn Royal, Overland Literary Journal

"It is a virtuoso collection and one that I already think of as an indispensable addition to the ongoing work of redefining the truth of Australia’s sound and circumstance." 
– Gregory Day, The Australian

"Blakwork expands horizons of possibility beyond instrumentalized domains, and, in its own brilliant ways, this book is an act of war, its sounds and shapes acting as both chthonic echoes and epistemological landmarks."
– Dan Disney, World Literature Today

"Writing this powerful makes the world afresh and urges for a complete decolonisation of the mind... Blakwork has a vital, musical pulse that connected such a varied array of poems — this is such essential reading: experimental but accessible, hopeful but hard-hitting."
– Queensland Literary Awards, Judges Comments

Alison Whittaker
Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi poet life writer and essayist from Gunnedah and Tamworth north-western New South Wales. She now lives in Sydney on Wangal land where she studies a combined Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws at the...

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Listen to Alison Whittaker's interview with Rudi Bremer on Radio National 

 

 

Other titles by Alison Whittaker

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Lemons in the Chicken Wire

Alison Whittaker