Refugia
‘in ember and ash / the heart of the Noongar Nation beats buried...’
Refugia is an unparalleled work of vision and political fury from Noongar and Yawuru poet and scholar Elfie Shiosaki. Inspired by the beeliar (Swan River) and the NASA James Webb Space Telescope’s first year of science, this collection draws on colonial archives to contest the occupation of Noongar Country.
As the bicentennial year of the colony of Western Australia approaches, Shiosaki looks to the stars and back to the earth to make sense of memory and the afterlife of imperial violence.
Elfie Shiosaki is a Noongar and Yawuru writer. She is an Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Her research and teaching explore Indigenous desires for human rights and self-determination. She was Westerly magazine’s inaugural Editor for Indigenous Writing (2017–2021), and her debut poetry collection Homecoming (Magabala Books, 2021) was winner of the Western Australian Premier’s Prize for an emerging writer, as well as being shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards among other prizes.
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