Poet Evelyn Araluen wins Vic literary award for work on Gaza ‘genocide’

Indigenous poet Evelyn Araluen was last night awarded the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature at this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for a poetry collection she says was inspired by being heckled on stage at Adelaide Writers’ Week 2024 for accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

The judges called The Rot “a work of remarkable poetic intelligence; formally bold, emotionally exacting and politically uncompromising” and “a vital intervention in this country’s cultural conversation”.

In accepting the award, Araluen said: “These poems were about witnessing a genocide and the feeling of inertia and grief and rage and passivity that sits in the body when you feel so powerless against our government’s complicity in that genocide.”

However, Araluen’s accusations of genocide appear to have begun barely days after Israel responded to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, before the ground offensive had even begun.

As a co-editor of the literary journal Overland, Araluen published an infamous open letter, dated October 21, titled Stop the genocide in Gaza. The letter, signed by hundreds of artists and other creatives, accused Israel of committing genocide.

At the time about 1200 people, mostly civilians, had been killed and 250 had been kidnapped by Hamas in the October 7 terror attack, while about 3,785 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli air attacks on Hamas strongholds in response.