how to make a basket

the end of the world was marked with beautiful light we should have known Simmering with protest and boundless love, Jazz Money’ s David Unaipon Award-winning collection, how to make a basket, examines the tensions of living in the Australian colony today. By turns scathing, funny and lyrical, Money uses her poetry as an extension of protest against the violence of the colonial state, and as a celebration of Blak and queer love. Deeply personal and fiercely political, these poems attempt to remember, reimagine and re-voice history. Writing in both Wiradjuri and English language, Money explores how places and bodies hold memories, and the ways our ancestors walk with us, speak through us and wait for us.

Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and artist based on Gadigal land, Sydney. Her practice is centred around poetics while producing works that encompass installation, digital, performance, film and print. Their writing has been widely published nationally and internationally, and performed on stages around the world. Jazz’ s first poetry collection, the bestselling how to make a basket (UQP, 2021) was the 2020 winner of the David Unaipon Award. Their second poetry collection, Mark the Dawn, and their first illustrated children's book, Bila, a river cycle, are both forthcoming from UQP.

gulgandara, before sweet smoke gadi as we attack gununga to fanny cochrane smith gully song listen we rise if I write a poem ngargan guray-dyu-ngi-nya, longing redbellyblacksnake false gods dripping banksia pods touchable heaven sent yirawulin stormgirl moreton bay fig phosphorescence old scars our weak constellations needles ripples echoes into the moonlight, away from me pepper a blue morning gudyi guwiiny-ngali-gin-dyi, away from here bila, a river cycle through the moon scatter gems my grandmother’ s spirit / unprecedented times / 2020 a case study of the colony keep in touch my hand is a bird smoke of the middens a woman quaking galaxies and nothing at all salvation of the new world let us suppose bushfire love a cab, early morning, in the rain oil afloat at birrarung marr I don’ t sleep anymore ngulumunggu, endings digital native time travel the transit of venus on sun-days desert places prayer is electric the young men are singing hot and cold the space between the paperbark apathy that shore which is a cliff how to make a basket notes mandaang guwu, thank you