Tonight will mark the third instalment of the Black Wallaby Indigenous Writers Night, where poems written by Aboriginal inmates from the Junee Correctional Centre will be read aloud at the Wollongong Art Gallery.
The event is a collaboration between the Black Wallaby Indigenous Writers and the South Coast Writers Centre, a relationship that started in 2009. The South Coast Writers Centre secured Arts NSW funds to hold annual creative writing workshops for inmates at the Junee Correctional Facility. A positive response from the participants and their tutors over the years resulted in the publication of a collection of the inmates’ best work, titled Dreaming Inside.
Tonight, the third instalment, Dreaming Inside III, will be read by the inmates’ tutors, who will also reflect on the experience of working with the authors of the poems.
South Coast Writer’s Centre Director Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis said writing poetry empowered inmates.