The Wan’diny Poetry Project aims to open up spaces for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
elders, poets and artists to share their work and collaborate with research team members,
creative writers, school teachers and immigrants using a call and response method.
This is the third biannual gathering (2020, 2022, 2024) which involved both Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander elders and young poets, singers, artists and storytellers sharing their work
in a public forum (‘the call’), and the audience, consisting of school students, teachers,
university students, academics and immigrants responded by writing poems and narratives and
reflections (‘the response’). We have gathered these calls and responses below.
The project has arisen out of the need for ‘dadirri’ (deep listening), sharing experiences of
Country, and finding ways to untangle the colonial divisions that have separated us. Our work is
based upon the methodologies and approaches developed by Denise Newfield and colleagues
at Witwatersrand University in South Africa in their internationally funded project ZAPP – South
African Poetry Project