A century is nothing for boabs

Judith Nangala Crispin, a brilliant and distinguished part-Indigenous Australian artist, poet, composer and thinker-about-poetry and the natural world will be reading her poems and showing/discussing her visual art on Wednesday , October 2nd, at 7:30 pm in Room 190, the new auditorium in the Stewart Center. She’s written three books of poems and has shown her astonishing lumachrome prints widely in Australia and around the world. She comes to Purdue following a major show at the Princeton University Museum and an exhibition in NYC . This is her first trip to the US.

The organizers thank the Native American Center, in particular Director Felica Ahasteen-Bryant; the Department of English; The Honors College, especially poet and letterpress printer, Peter Moore; the Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts, its Art & Design faculty especially artist Jung-un Choi, and art librarian, artist Kathy Evans.

Here’s an excerpt from the poem “The Boabs”:

On these banks, boabs hold stars between their fingers like splintered bone– their torsos are globes, carved with images of snakes and the names of those shot while dancing ceremony, on a night just like this, a night split by rifles– the first crack erupts the egrets from the river’s still surface.