Brenda Saunders – November 6 2016

Brenda is a Sydney artist, poet and activist of Wiradjuri and British descent. She has published three collections of poetry, the other being Skin Deep. Her poetry and articles have been published in journals like Thylazine and Poetrix as well as being broadcast on ABC Radio National and published on the web. Brenda has been a recipient of the Dorothy Hewett Poetry Fellowship at Varuna and a Resident Fellowship at CAMAC Arts Centre in France. She has been a member of the Poets’ Union NSW and the Round Table Poets, and was selected for The Red Room Company’s Poetry Crimes, and Poetry Without Borders (National Poetry Week 2007). Brenda has read in several poetry events with the Sydney Writers’ Festival and is a member of DiVerse poets, who present their ekphrastic poetry at public art exhibitions in Sydney. She is also a member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative. Brenda holds a master’s degree from Wollongong University.

‘Rich with insight and sensuous music, the sound of red radiates real power and authority.’ – Deb Westbury
‘The strength of Brenda Saunders’ work is her ability to place you, absolutely, at a point of seeing. Beyond ekphrastic, these poems describe the palette of being, in exceptional ways. Herself a fine artist, Saunders creates small poetic masterpieces which respond tautly to place, the train wreck of life and art.’ – Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

Looking for Bullin Bullin
Hybrid Publishers, 2012; ISBN 9781921665905

Embracing her Aboriginality has given Brenda Saunders both a focus and a purpose in her recent poetry collection …. [She] has, as she herself says, “a lot to say about the urban Aboriginal experience.” The poems in Looking for Bullin Bullin are organised into four sections, reflecting aspects of post-1788 Aboriginal history: Stolen, Caring for Country, Living Blak, and Drawing the Landscape …. Looking for Bullin Bullin stands as a requiem for Jack Davis’s “dark proud race” (‘The First-born,’ ca. 1970). Whether we choose to see it that way, or to take hope for a future “in unity” remains with the reader. – Margaret Bradstock