Evelyn Araluen, Dropbear
The Rot is a recalcitrant study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world. A liturgy for girlhood in the dying days of late-stage capitalism, these poems expose fraying nerves and tendons of a speaker refusing to avert their gaze from the death of Country, death on Country, and the bloody violence of settler colonies here and afar. Across sleepless nights, fractured alliances and self-destructive coping strategies, The Rot is what happens when poetry swallows more rage than it can console, quiet or ironise – this book demands you ready yourself for a better world.
‘Biting, anguished and revelatory.’ Melissa Lucashenko
‘Evelyn Araluen’s poetry and prose is created with a passionate intensity, razor-sharp intellect, beauty and compassion as she turns her mind to the broad sweep of history and a dynamic engagement with the spirit of our times.’ Alexis Wright
Evelyn Araluen is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her widely published criticism, fiction and poetry has been awarded the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship, and a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant. Born and raised on Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation. Evelyn's debut collection Dropbear was shortlisted for the 2021 Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection and the 2022 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and won the 2022 Stella Prize. It was Highly Commended for the 2021 Anne Elder Award.
