2024 Red Room Poetry Fellowship recipients announced
In partnership for their inaugural Fellowship program, Red Room Poetry and Varuna are delighted to announce the six poets selected for the 2024 Red Room Poetry Fellowship.
Selected from an unprecedented 91 applicants (via a long-listing and short-listing process), applications were de-identified from the poets’ personal information and selected only via the strengths of the project proposal, poet goals for their time in residence and work sample.
The 2024 Fellows are:
Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon (WA)
Aloma Davis (VIC)
Ella Jeffery (QLD)
Gabrielle Journey Jones (NSW)
Theresa Violet Sainty (Pakana) (TAS)
Aunty Kerry Bulloojeeno Archibald Moran (NSW) and Phoebe Grainer (Djungan) (NSW) - Anywhere Remote Residency
The Fellows will receive a $1000 stipend each, a one-week residency at Varuna (Monday 26 August - Monday 2 September 2024) with all meals and accommodation provided, a one-on-one on-site mentoring consultation and group workshopping session, a public reading opportunity as part of Poetry Month 2024 and online publication of a poem as part of Poetry Month 2024.
Anywhere Remote Residency
One residency is offered to be undertaken remotely during the same week. These Fellows will also receive a $1000 stipend, a one-on-one online mentoring consultation and group workshopping session, an online public reading opportunity in 2024, and the online publication of a poem in 2024.
In their statement, the 2024 Fellowship judges, Andrew Geoffrey Kwabena Moss, Charmaine Papertalk Green and Thuy On, noted that submissions to the Red Room Residency roamed far and wide, and that they were deeply impressed and moved by the volume of submissions received speaking to the personal narratives from developing, emerging and established poets.
“Successful submissions have enlightened us with poetry as memoir of immigrant dislocation and unknown stories of Croatian settler women in WA; complete cycles of poems challenging transphobic parental views and misplaced protection; lyric and prose poetry exploring overconsumption, environmental degradation, examining Australia’s present rental crisis and housing insecurity; to collaborative poetics interrelationships between arts, language, landscape and revival of endangered languages such as Tasmanian Palawi Kani. “
To read more about the judges statement and the Red Room Poetry Fellowship program, please visit the website here.
From top left to bottom right: Phoebe Grainer (Djungan), Theresa Violet Sainty (Pakana), Aunty Kerry Bulloojeeno Archibald Moran, Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon, Ella Jeffery and Aloma Davis.