Bundanon

Alison J Barton is a Wiradjuri poet whose work is widely published in Australian and international journals and anthologies.

With academic credentials in Gender, Social Work and Psychoanalysis, themes of psychoanalytic theory, race relations and Aboriginal-Australian history are central to her poetry.

In 2023, she was the inaugural University of Cambridge Writer-in-Residence and won several fellowships and international residencies. Alison’s poetry appeared in the Best of Australian Poems 2022 and 2023, and she has been recognised in numerous poetry prizes.

Alison has undertaken speaking engagements including poetry readings and workshop facilitation in London, Cambridge, Paris, Berlin and Melbourne. She headlined the 2024 Daylesford Words in Winter Festival and featured at the 2024 Melbourne Emerging Writers Festival. Alison has discussed her poetry on numerous podcasts and radio shows (The Guilty Feminist, Poetry Says and 3CR Melbourne Radio).

Her first collection of poetry, Not Telling, is out now with Puncher & Wattmann.

In Residence at Bundanon

Having researched relations between German Lutheran missionaries who travelled to Australia in the mid-1800s and the Indigenous populations interned on their missions, I will use Bundanon to complete my second full-length collection of poetry. Written in narrative verse, the collection explores the efforts the Germans made in trying to establish missions and convert Indigenous people as well as the varied experiences of Aboriginal people affected. As a Wiradjuri woman with German heritage, this is particularly personal subject matter. I hope to condense historic theory into poetry to generate new knowledge of Australian history.