Phillip Hall – September 19 2021

Phillip is a poet, editor and educator. His poetry has been published in numerous literary journals including Antipodes, Meanjin, Quadrant, Southerly and Overland, where he has worked as a poetry reader. Phillip holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong. His work in Indigenous education included moving to Borroloola, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where he collaborated with the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation and the Northern Territory Writers’ Centre to establish poetry festivals and the Barkly Poetry Wall as well as Indigenous poets’ groups such as the Borroloola Poetry Club, Diwurruwurru, meaning ‘message stick’, used by permission of the Traditional Owners. During his time there, Phillip was adopted into the Rrumburriya clan and made a Gudanji man. He is Jungkayi (custodian) for Jayipa (Catfish Hole) and is known by the skin name of Jabala and the traditional or bush name of Gijindarraji, given to him because it was the bush name of his nana’s pop. In 2015, Phillip published a book of his collaborations with the Borroloola Poetry Club, Diwurruwurru: Poetry from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Also in 2015, he experienced some medical issues and retired to Sunshine in Victoria but he continues, through his writing, to honour First Nations in the Gulf of Carpentaria where he still has family and friends.

Fume by Phillip Hall
UWA Publishing, 2018; ISBN 9781742589695
Phillip Hall writes from the edge: the edge of language; the edge of mental illness; and, from the perspective of a non-Indigenous poet and teacher standing at the edge of Indigenous culture and community carrying generosity and love alongside the ongoing trauma of dispossession. This is a volume intensely interested in language and the self-care required in precarious lives.
‘Continuance of cultural protocols, investment, respect and reciprocity are the bedrock of Aboriginal societies. The amount of protocol, investment and reciprocity culminating in this work is substantial and essential. Very few non-Aboriginal people could produce a work such as this.’ – Jeanine Leane, Verity LA

Sweetened in Coals by by Phillip Gijindarraji Hall
Ginninderra Press, 2014; ISBN 9781740278584
This is poetry that dances like the brolga: in praise of wading waist deep in the mountain river’s ‘nourishing brown flow’; of parcelling freshly caught barra in paperbark before ‘sweetening in coals’; of a campfire crackling in ‘plumes of rising heat’. Hall raises the flag to Indigenous survival, listening to Country in a way that esteems the traditional owners and interrogates colonialism’s crooked paths. This is poetry that keeps us sensitively engaged and committed from beginning to end.
‘We like Phillip very much. We like his poetry. We like him teaching our kids. They love him like big brother so he’s ours – Jabala – family.’ – Aidie Miller, Gudanji Elder