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, living on unceded Gadigal land, is poetry editor of Overland, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, and the author of eight books of poetry, including Sydney Spleen and Where Only the Sky had Hung Before. 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 8 July 20258 July 2025 · Fiction Off Jo Langdon Christa has gone off me, and it’s all I try not to think about—packing angles of chopped watermelon into tupperware, filling our drink bottles, walking with Lila towards the park. 3 July 20253 July 2025 · Fiction Harvard Estate is Aneeta Sundararaj Whispers of Ratna’s death on the morning of 8 December 1941 spreads throughout Harvard Estate. Policemen witnessing the lifting of her body out of the well are careful to side-step an agitated cobra in the undergrowth. Until her burial, Ratna’s eyes remain open, as though she’s looking at a ghost.
