Indrani Perera

poet, publisher & mentor

Tag: fear

  • Being

    IP - Being

    Late last year I had not one, but two poems, long listed for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize! It was a huge honour to have my work recognised by the judges.

    Landline is a poem about old friends who you've know forever but hardly find the time to see any more. Life has moved you in different directions and you may not even live in the same city. But there's always the phone.

    Much to my amazement, the second poem, Notes From the Diaspora on Returning 'Home', ended up being shortlisted! I wrote this poem while I was traveling in Sri Lanka with my partner, daughters and parents. It was an incredible experience to hear my father telling us all stories about his childhood in the places where they happened. And at that same time feel a disconnection from a place that should be more familiar than it is.

    If you'd like to read my poems you can now buy this wonderful anthology where you'll also find the winning poem and other amazing poems fro the competition. This is an anthology to treasure and read again and again.

    Huge thanks to the University of Canberra for including my poems and recognising my work.

     

  • Heroine’s Anthology Shortlist

    Heroine's Anthology Shortlist

    My poem, pathika, has been shortlisted for the Heroine's Anthology Prize which means it will now appear in the forthcoming Heroine's Anthology of poems from around the world.

    I am so excited to be included in this global edition of poetry about amazing women from throughout Herstory, I can't wait to see who I will meet in its pages!

     

  • Heroine’s Anthology Longlist

    Heroine's Anthology Logo

    Herstory is a topic very dear to my heart. I am always looking for females voices, especially those that have been hidden or erased from the offical versions of accounts. I want to know about the stories of women who shaped past events. I want to hear about their ingenuity and inventions. I want to know what they were like, where they lived and who they loved. I want to look at the stories we tell ourselves about the world and I want to see myself reflected within its annals.

    I guess I've always been feminist in this regard but my quest for women's tales only grew stronger once I had two daughters. I wanted to share with them stories about the world that told them they could do anything that they set their minds and hearts to doing. If you're on this quest as well. I'd highly recommend the Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls series of books and the Little People Big Dreams picture book biographies about prominent female figures. Princess Smartypants is a wonderful picture book for young girls about a. sassy Princess who does not want to get married – she's too busy doing other things!

    All of this is to say that I am beyond thrilled to announce that my poem, pathika, has been longlisted for the Heroines Anthology Global edition Prize. 

    Pathika is about the lives and poetry of three famous Indian poets. These women are well known in India but not as familiar to most readers in the west. Being from South Asia, I wanted my poem to reflect my heritage. No Greek goddesses for me! I was originally wanting to write a poem about female poets from Sri Lanka but they were quite hard to find given that I don't speak Sinhala or Tamil. So I looked to our neighbours for inspiration and found a whole wealth of material.

    Big thanks to the Heroine's Anthology for choosing my poem!

     

     

  • Finding My Feet

    IP - Finding My Feet (INVITATION TO BOOK LAUNCH 12-02-2024)

    Melbourne Poets Union have been around for what feels like forever and they do amazing work to promote poetry and support poets in Melbourne and its surrounds. Last night I attended the launch of their brand new anthology, Finding My Feet. It features poems from some of Australia's most well known poets. And me! It's a huge honour to be included in this magnificent publication.

    IP - Finding My Feet

    The editors selected two of my poems, Seagrass Meadow and no good at sport, to appear in this excellent anthology.

    This extensive collection of poems feels like a wonderful representation of contemporary poets from around Australia. It's well worth buying if you'd like to know more about the current Australian poetry scene.

     

  • Places You’ll Never Go and Things You Won’t See

    Kalliope X Logo

    Any journal, especially an Australian one that is open to or dedicated to publishing poetry in languages other than English has my wholehearted support. English is not the only language and the more we learn from each other the better. We are a multicultural society with a majority of Australians being born overseas or having a parent who was born overseas. As such, our literary landscape needs to reflect our cultural diversity.

    So when I come across a fabulous journal like Kalliope X, I devour its contents and then start submitting my work. I am so honoured to have my poem, Places You'll Never Go and Things You Won't See in issue 5 of this fabulous digital publication. Thank you to the editors for selecting my work.

     

  • Migration

    Science Write Now Issue ImageI am pleased to announce that the digital journal, Science Write Now, has published two of my poems in Issue 9: Migration.

    Light Years is a poem about the migration of light from our distant sun to our home planet. In writing this poem I was imagining what it might be like to be a particle undertaking that epic journey. What could happen to it along the way?

    Yesterday is Today: the Migration of Memory looks at a different sort of migration  - that of thoughts and their journeys through our minds. It is a very different sort of poem to Light Years as it ponders what happens to us as we age and our memories start to fade.

     

  • Shortlisted for the University of Canberra Vice Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize

    IP - Shortlisted for the University of Canberra Vice Chancellor's International Poetry Prize

    I am now officially one step closer to winning a poetry prize! I had two poems longlisted for the University of Canberra Vice Chancellor's International Poetry Prize and Landline has just been shortlisted!

    Can you believe the company I'm keeping these days? Talking about rubbing shoulders with giants!

     

  • Poetry d’Amour

    IP - Poetry d'Amour

    WA poets Inc do so much to promote and support poetry both in Western Australia and Australia through their poetry competitions, the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize and Poetry d'Amour, and their accompanying anthologies. Back in 2019, I entered the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize and they publish my entry, Recipe for a Poem in the Brushstrokes anthology. It was a huge boost for a poet who was just beginning to flex her writing muscles again.

    I am so pleased that after entering this year's Poetry d'Amour competition, two of my poems – Liquefy and The Ocean of You –  have been published in the 2023 Poetry d'Amour anthology.It's a huge honour! Thanks to WA Poets for publishing my poems and to the judges of the prize for reading my work.

     

  • At the Foothills of the Dandenong Ranges

    IP - At the Foothills of the Dandenong Ranges 1

    IP - At the Foothills of the Dandenong Ranges 2

    I am so excited to be rubbing literary shoulders with Jill Jones in the latest issue of Jacaranda Journal.

    In this gorgeous literary journal you'll find works by some incredible poets as well as my poem, At the Foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. I thought about writing 'including my poems' but I don't know if I'm an incredible poet yet or someone who is still learning how to say in words what she is feeling. In fact, I suspect that no matter how many poems I manage to have published in journals I'll always feel like a toddler learning to speak!

     

  • Complicit: A Visual History of ‘Australia’ Since Invasion

    IP - Complicit

    Complicit: A Visual History of ‘Australia’ Since Invasion is my first foray into what I am calling text art.

    I've been thinking about Australia's history and the way it and any history warps and shifts over time depending on who is telling the story.

    When I was in primary school the official history was that the settlers discovered a fertile land inhabited by nomadic hunter gatherers who didn't farm or manage the land in any way. Those same settlers couldn't believe how fertile the soil was and I was taught that we got rich 'on the sheep's back'. What I wasn't taught was that the Australia's Indigenous Peoples had the world's oldest surviving Cultures and that they used sophisticated land management techniques to live in harmony with and care for Country. I also didn't learn at school about the massacres, the stolen generations and the brutal and bloody Frontier Wars.

    This poem was an attempt to rewrite the history I had been taught in a concise format. There are many layers to any story and I decided that a visual representation would carry what I was trying to say. I wanted the poem to look like it could hang on the wall of an art gallery so I also wrote design notes like you see hanging next to paintings at the NGV. 

    Axon: Creative Explorations is an online journal published by the University of Canberra and I was so excited when the guest editor, Caren Florance, choose this poem for Issue 13.2. I am huge fan of Caren's work and I own her poetry collection, Lost in Case, which was published by Cordite Books. Working with her to refine my poem and write the Contextual Statement that appears at the end of the poem was a wonderful experience.