UQP acquires poetry collection from renowned Wiradjuri writer, critic and poet Jeanine Leane
UQP is delighted to announce that we’ve acquired the third poetry collection from Associate Professor Jeanine Leane, Gawimarra: Gathering, a wide-ranging, powerful and lyrical work that was awarded the 2021 School of Literature Art and Media (SLAM) Poetry Prize from the University of Sydney. Leane’s poems are beautifully crafted, always richly palpable in texture, imagery and language – moving from tender mediations on Country, culture and kinship, to experimental archival poems dissecting the violence and destruction of the settler-colony. Gawimarra: Gathering is the product of decades of poetic, political and cultural work and reflection, and reflects on what must be regathered for survival and renewal.
Associate Professor Jeanine Leane says:
‘My poetry is a gathering of anecdotal and docu-poetry. The poems in this collection have been written across several years of critical and creative thinking. A combination of poetry and fragments of lyric essays, Gawimarra mounts a substantial archival interrogation and a searing critique of national symbols and icons as it seeks to disrupt the calcified historical discourse and settler hubris of Australia. It is also a tribute to unsung elders past and present, without whom there would be no Blak poetry today. It will be an honour to be able to bring this project to fruition alongside Ellen van Neerven, who will be my poetry editor, and to contribute to the ever dynamic and expanding Blak literary canon published by UQP.’
Publisher Aviva Tuffield says:
‘UQP is honoured to be publishing Gawimarra: Gathering, a necessary work of personal and collective history. Through poetry Jeanine Leane tells important, often-overlooked and silenced histories – her impressive storytelling skills are on clear display in many of the poems. Political and timely, Gawimarra: Gathering is a thematically rich and unified work, one that is set to make a significant contribution to UQP’s poetry list.’
About Jeanine Leane
Associate Professor Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from south-west New South Wales. Her first volume of poetry, Dark Secrets After Dreaming: A.D. 1887–1961, won the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry, and her first novel, Purple Threads, won the David Unaipon Award in 2010. Jeanine has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative nonfiction. Jeanine was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonucal Prize for Poetry twice. She is also the author of the poetry collection Walk Back Over, and edited the anthology Guwayu – for all times – commissioned by Red Room Poetry. In 2021 Leane was the recipient of the School of Literature Art and Media (SLAM) Poetry Prize University of Sydney. She has also been the recipient of a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and two Australian Research Council (ARC) Fellowships. She teaches Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature at the University of Melbourne.
For more information please contact Louise Cornegé on louise.cornege@uqp.com.au or 07 3346 7932.
