Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Nakata Brophy Prize: Judges’ notes Jeanine Leane and Toby Fitch All five poems on this year’s Nakata Brophy Prize shortlist – Jazz Money’s ‘as we attack’, Kirli Saunders’ ‘A dance of hands’, Laniyuk Garcon’s ‘Remember’, Raelee Lancaster’s ‘haunted house’ and Susie Anderson’s ‘revolve’ – are testimony to the diverse work of emerging Indigenous poets, not only in the Nakata Brophy Prize submissions, but more broadly across the country. Congratulations to the shortlist and the three following poets. Runner-up ‘A Dance of Hands’, by Kirli Saunders, is a sensorial retrospective love poem best read out loud. The other runner-up, Susie Anderson’s ‘revolve’, is a subtly evolving prose poem about the moon and the speaker coming-to-terms with events. This year’s first-placed poem, Raelee Lancaster’s ‘haunted house’, whose speaker reworks an old trope unflinchingly in the face of scepticism, was a clear winner. Its organically formed structure across three parts allows it to express multiple traumas experienced and inherited by Australian Indigenous peoples, individual and collective. This prize is sponsored by Trinity College, University of Melbourne. Read the rest of Overland 231 If you appreciate Overland’s support of new writers, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Jeanine Leane Jeanine Leane belongs to the Wiradjuri people from the Murrumbidgee river. She is a poet, teacher, author and essayist who is well published in the areas of Aboriginal writing, writing difference and literary criticism. More by Jeanine Leane › Toby Fitch Toby Fitch (he/they) is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, former poetry editor of Overland, and the author of eight books of poetry, including Sydney Spleen (2021) and Object Permanence: Calligrammes (2022). A ninth collection, Or: An Autobiography, will be published in 2026 by Upswell Publishing. Toby lives on unceded Gadigal land with his partner, their three children and a staffy. More by Toby Fitch › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 22 May 2026 · Friday Poetry Judas goats Caitlin Maling Because goats can climb / and cave, clamber to find cover / in the bushes of what they can’t eat / which isn’t much. 20 May 202620 May 2026 · Reviews Are you experienced? Louis Armand Pam Brown’s poetry has been described as both conversational and deeply layered, its historical consciousness seemingly belied by a fragmentary, diaristic style. An easy comparison might be drawn with the work of her long-time friend Ken Bolton, which often achieves a sense of over-arching unity of vision expressed in monologue form. Bolton’s work can appear exhaustive — long prose-like stanzas — where Brown’s seems to flicker down the page like dawn through the mangroves on the drive to Cronulla.
