Earlier this year, five deaf writers presented Through Deaf Eyes at the Melbourne Writers Festival, a unique performance featuring deaf writers telling their stories in Auslan. Developed and directed by the deaf community, this groundbreaking work turns the tables and challenges the conventions, as Auslan interpreters translate this beautifully expressive language back to the audience. […]
For just a few seconds, Yoga believed that she was back home in Sri Lanka but then she understood she wasn’t. Four days ago their ramshackle fishing boat ‘Kumudu Kumari’ ran out of fuel and foundered in the middle of nowhere but an Australian Customs aerial patrol had traced them and a passing merchant ship […]
By Sandra Renew. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. In the moment he decides to go he knows…. He knows that if he does not go he will be killed. He knows that when he leaves the desert and high mountains he can never go back. […]
By Susan Adams. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. We try our lives, father says in mail from his Island of Christmas to Jakarta nothing will happen otherwise. With time to wind, dreams become hope, secrets are a burden in streets. The manifest left for later. […]
By William Pitt. This poem is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. The huts are falling on top of each other, all trying to find a bit of light; humanity […]
By Penny Gibson. This short story is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. The apartment smelt of stale cigarette smoke when Bedar arrived. He stared around him in silence as Jerry busied himself with bags of food. “Last fella was a smoker,” he said. “You a smoker?” Bedar nodded. What had […]
By Ellena Savage. A version of this article previously appeared on the Tharunka website, and was the winner of Tharunka Non-Fiction Writing Competition. It is May, 2009. A cold, clear night; frost will set over the tips of lawns before dawn. I wait at a bar for my new boyfriend, Ishmail, an attractive Eritrean-Australian I met though […]
By Emilie Zoey Baker. This piece is part of our September focus on Women’s Rights. See all of this month’s articles here. We were told it was a party, that there’d be heaps of people there. We were stoked ’cause they said the whole team was putting it on. Me and Michelle follow Carlton. We went […]
Luka Lesson is the current Australian Poetry Slam Champion and Co-director of The Centre for Poetics and Justice based in Melbourne. Luka has been active in utilising hip-hop and poetry as a form of self-determination and raising awareness for marginalised young people through community development projects for many years. He has also taught Indigenous Studies at […]
This article is part of our February theme, which focuses on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. Our first piece for our February theme, Prisoners’ Rights, is a moving audio work which reminds us of the humanity of those we […]
Blink is a short story inspired by the recent eviction of Occupy Melbourne from City Square. Click here to read an eyewitness account of the eviction by our Editor-in-Chief, Andre Dao, with an accompanying photo gallery. Adam didn’t blink from the high pitched screams. His eye simply pressed harder against the viewfinder, making sure the […]
Bloody regime If the key of paradise was in the hands of Sudan’s regime, I would reject it If the signing of peace accord save Sudan’s regime, I would dismiss it If religion was in the name of Sudan’s regime, I would be godless If prayers bring Darfuri people rights, I will practice it If […]
