S1 EP6 The Language of Poetry

Award-winning poets Bella Li and Ellen Van Neerven join fellow poet Lisa Gorton for a discussion on poetry, responsibility and poetry’s place in Australian public life. With readings from each poet's work, along with other poems from Australia and beyond, our panelists explore the balance between poetry as a private practice and its public impact, attending to the ways in which poetry can unsettle language, shaping and reshaping our sense of history. 

Lisa Gorton writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her awards include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Prime Minister's Prize for Fiction, the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry, and the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. Lisa studied at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, with a Masters in Renaissance Literature and a Doctorate on John Donne's poetry and prose. She has contributed poems to Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation (Perimeter Press) and to exhibitions such as This is a Poem at Buxton Contemporary Art Museum. Lisa's fifth and most recent poetry collection is the limited-edition chapbook Mirror Landscape (Life Before Man, 2024), written with the support of a Creative Australia BR Whiting residency in Rome. 

Bella Li is the author of Argosy (Vagabond Press, 2017), Lost Lake (Vagabond Press, 2018), and Theory of Colours (Vagabond Press, 2021). Her work has won the Victorian and NSW Premier's awards for poetry and an ABDA award for book design, and has featured in exhibitions, catalogues, and programs of the National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Recent work can be found in HEAT, Debris Magazine, The Saturday Paper, and Australian Poetry Journal.  

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers’ Prize. They are the author of two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize; and Throat, which won the Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Their latest book, Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2024. 

Readings 

‘Argosy’ read by author, Bella Li 

‘Constitute’ read by author, Ellen van Neerven 

‘Personal Score’ excerpt read its author, Ellen van Neerven 

‘An American Lyric’ from