About Research Group
Promotional Video
Listen to project facilitator, Adelle Sefton-Rowston talk about the project and its benefits to the Northern territory.
Highlight Posts
A Charles Darwin University arts program that teaches inmates how to express themselves through creative writing is helping improve the self-image and hope of participants. The Ywrite project, delivered through a series of workshops in Darwin recently, sought to teach low-risk women prisoners how to express themselves through creative writing forms of prison prose, graffiti art and story-telling. Project facilitator and Communications Lecturer Adelle Sefton-Rowston said the women examined graffiti styles from around the world, much like one would analyse poetry. “Graffiti, as a genre of writing unconstrained by spelling,…
Read more
Junctures: the journal of thematic dialogue, Dec, No.20 https://junctures.org/junctures/index.php/junctures/article/view/377
Read moreThrough many years of researching stories from all over the world and through my own communities, which I have always felt I had to do to understand how to be useful in my work—including being a writer—I have grown more curious about what would impact on my ability to tell stories that might be embraced anywhere in the world. It has been a life’s work of growing increasingly aware of how other people were telling stories on behalf of Aboriginal people in Australia, and how stories are used in campaigns to…
Read more
Dr Tony Birch was a guest presenter at the Darwin Writers Festival in 2016 and, along with facilitating a writing workshop for the NT Writers’ Centre, he agreed to this interview before returning to Melbourne, where he is a research fellow at Victoria University. If you’re not familiar with Birch’s work, he has published a number of books, including Shadowboxing (2006), Blood (2011) and a recent book of poetry, Broken Teeth(2016). His novel Ghost River (2015) won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous writing in 2016, and tells of a growing connection between two boys and…
Read moreExclusive: Dylan Voller is 19. He sent these poems from Darwin Correctional Centre about his experience in Don Dale Detention. Additional writing by Zak Grieve. In recognition of January 26, Honi is dedicating its platform this week to prioritising the voices of Indigenous people. Find out more here. In 2016, Dylan Voller appeared in Four Corner’s episode ‘Australia’s Shame’, which exposed the mistreatment of Indigenous young offenders in Don Dale Detention Centre. For the first time ever, here is his poetry. JUSTICE FOR YOUTH By Dylan Voller When I close my eyes I feel the hits to…
Read more
Seven years, he says to himself, and at that moment a small silver rectangular speaker above his head comes to life and barks his name, ‘T______, T_______’, the sound of a tin can echoing through his cell. He simply replies, ‘Yes’. He’s been awake for hours just listening to the silence and waiting for the darkness to fade. In essence he’s been waiting for years. The tin can with the echoing robotic voice says, ‘Pack up your cell’. At first he’s confused: he knows the routine, he has to – it’s become…
Read moreBibliography Beasley, C 2015 ‘Teaching Behind bars: Challenges and solutions for creative writing classes in prison’, TEXT 19,2: (October): http:// http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct15/content.htm (accessed 12 October 2017) Bailer D (ed) 2017 Broken Silence: writing from NYU’s Prison Education Program New York: Gallatin School of Individualized Study Baird, J., & C. Taylor, eds. 2011 Ancient Graffiti in Context, New York: Routledge Behan, C 2014 ‘Learning to Escape: Prison Education, Rehabilitation and the Potential for Transformation’ in Journal of Prison Education & Reentry Vol.1 No. 1 October pp.20-31 Campos R 2015 ‘Youth, Graffiti and…
Read more
2019 Adelle Sefton-Rowston Conference Participation American Association for the study of Australian Literature The Idea of Freedom is Inspiring. But What Does it Mean? University of Alaska, Fairbanks 2018 Adelle Sefton-Rowston Conference Presentation The Literary Interface: Australian Literary Studies Convention, Trauma Etched on Concrete Walls: GraffitiǀLiteracyǀLiterature Australian National University 2018 Adelle Sefton-Rowston Conference Presentation American Association of Australian Literary Studies Conference, Concrete Etchings: Graffiti as Transgressive Poetry in the Decolonial Project New York University 2017 Adelle Sefton-Rowston Conference Presentation Australian Council for Adult Literacy 2017 National Conference, Graffiti as Literacy: reading and writing…
Read more