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Awards

SBS. (2005). Prizes for young writer. Retrieved from
Samuel Wagan Watson won both the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the 2005 Book of the Year for his collection of poems, Smoke Encrypted Whispers.

Why read First Nations Writings

Wright, A. (2017, July 5). Read, listen, understand: Why non-Indigenous Australians should read First Nations writing. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/read-listen-understand-why-non-indigenous-australians-should-read-first-nations-writing-78925
The time is well overdue for non-Indigenous Australians to engage with the First Nations of this country, and their narratives, on their terms. Interest in the experience and concerns of others is crucial to combating social ills like racism. Writing and reading literature can be acts of intimacy, and as such reading can be a vital form of listening. Where to start - Samuel Wagan Watson.

Introduction

Born in Brisbane in 1972, Samuel Wagan Watson is of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German, Dutch and Irish descent. He spent much of his childhood on the Sunshine Coast before returning to Brisbane to start a career. He was the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon award for emerging Indigenous writers with his first collection of poetry, Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight. Since then he has written four more collections; Itinerant Blues (2001), Hotel Bone (2001), Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2004), which won the 2005 New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, and The Curse Words (2011).

(Brennan, 2011)

Sydney Writers' Festival

Slow TV. (2008). Samuel Wagan Watson on his influences and inspirations. Sydney Writers' Festival [Television broadcast]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/I8cfof6wJz0

Samuel Wagan Watson's Perspective

Wagan Watson, S. (2016). Four perspectives on race and racism in Australian poetry. Retrieved from https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-222/feature-four-perspectives/
Scroll down this page for Samuel Wagan Watson's reflection on race in the world today and, specifically, on the ways that racism manifests in the intellectual and literary fields, particularly in poetry, where thought and representation are crystallised and magnified.

About Samuel Wagan Watson

AustLit (n.d.). Biography Sam Wagan Watson. Retrieved from http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A22192?mainTabTemplate=agentDefault
State and National Award-winning poet and professional narrator and storyteller, Samuel Wagan Watson has Irish, German, Dutch, and Aboriginal (Munaldjali and Birri Gubba) ancestry. He is the son of prominent Brisbane-based academic, writer and activist Sam Watson. Born in Brisbane Watson spent much of his earlier life on the fringe of the Sunshine Coast, but moved back to Brisbane to start a career.
Lorenzon, M. (2014). Samuel Wagan Watson: Smoke Encrypted Whispers. Retrieved from http://partialdurations.com/2014/04/03/samuel-wagan-watson-smoke-encrypted-whispers/
For the first concert of the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Australian Voices series for the year, 23 composers wrote two-minute pieces in response to 23 poems by Samuel Wagan Watson, one of Australia’s most important living poets. The composers were all chosen because they had some connection to Watson’s home town of Brisbane during the Bjelke-Petersen years of Watson’s youth. Watson’s poems follow him beyond his childhood, out amongst the hoons, Satan-worshippers and humming electricity pylons of the outer suburbs; deep into the last outposts of rural Queensland; then overseas to Wellington and the Berlin wall.
Brennan, M. (2011). Samuel Wagan Watson. Retrieved from http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/19572/15/Samuel-Wagan-Watson
Born in Brisbane in 1972, Samuel Wagan Watson is of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German, Dutch and Irish descent. He spent much of his childhood on the Sunshine Coast before returning to Brisbane to start a career. He was the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon award for emerging Indigenous writers with his first collection of poetry, Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight. Since then he has written four more collections; Itinerant Blues (2001), Hotel Bone (2001), Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2004), which won the 2005 New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, and The Curse Words (2011).

Critical Reviews

Rockel, A. (2005). Smoke encrypted whispers by Samuel Wagan Watson. Retrieved from http://jacketmagazine.com/27/rock-waga.html
The title of this collection of new and selected poems describes a series of permutations that drift through the work: the idea of language as smoke — shapeshifting product of combustion, transformed material; the idea of transformation as generator of language; the idea of language as breath, life.
Hill, B. (2005, September 24). Songs of two cultures. The Australian.
FOR the intelligent and sometimes tough poems in Smoke Encrypted Whispers, Sam Watson won the NSW Premier's and book of the year awards this year. The collection includes Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight, which won the 1999 David Unaipon Award. As that title suggests, Watson is a romantically inclined self-conscious poet of some ambition. Indeed, several poems in this book have making it as a writer as their subject matter. As they are only half-ironic and Watson has yet to really work out his ironies, you could say that aspects of his poetry may already be threatened by celebrity. Quite a benchmark for a man of 33.
Bode, K. (2011). ‘We’re not truckin’ around’: On and off-road in Samuel Wagan Watson’s Smoke Encrypted Whispers. Retrieved from http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p152901/pdf/ch071.pdf
Cars and roads traverse the poetry of Samuel Wagan Watson, a self-identified Aboriginal man of Bundjalung, Birri Gubba, German and Irish ancestry.1 The narrator/s of the poems in Smoke Encrypted Whispers are repeatedly on the road or beside it, and driving is employed as a metaphor for everything from addiction2 and memory3 to the search for love.4 Road kill litters the poems,5 while roads come to life,6 cars become men,7 and men have ‘gas tanks that can’t see empty’.8

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Watson’s poetry has received significant critical attention and acclaim: his ‘haunting, uncanny, layered poetics of history’ and depiction of ‘colonial degradation’ have been explored, and his poems—including those featuring cars and roads—have been analysed in relation to such themes as the sacred,9 locatedness,10 and creative processes.11 Given the extent to which cars and roads dominate Watson’s poetry, it is notable, however, that his use of both to explore and resist ‘colonial degradation’ has not received sustained attention.
McCredden, L. (2007). Contemporary poetry and the sacred: Vincent Buckley, Les Murray and Samuel Wagan Watson. Australian Literary Studies, 23(2), 153-167.
The article offers poetry criticism of works by poets Vincent Buckley, Les Murray, and Sam Wagan Watson, focusing on the theme of sacredness in poetry. The author analyzes poems including "Golden Builders," by Buckley," "Nocturne," by Murray, and "The Dingo Lounge," by Watson. Topics include ambivalence, arrogance, and humility in the poems, as well as the themes of prophecy, sorrow, and Christianity.
Heiss, A. (2004). Larissa Behrendt’s novel Home and Samuel Wagan Watson’s poetry collection Smoke Encrypted Whispers. Retrieved from http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2004/08/01/review-home-and-smoke-encrypted-whispers/
A rare talent for the spoken and written word, Samuel Wagan Watson’s new collection brings together the best of his previous published works and some new unpublished poetic prose. Obviously autobiographical, the work follows the journey of Watson as a writer, a traveller, a lover, and as an urban dweller in Brisbane. His journey covers miles of bitumen, observes numerous muses, includes a number of writer’s festivals and delves into the poet’s life as a child.

Interviews

Ulman, J., & Stapleton, R. (2005). On the road (Part 1): Samuel Wagan Watson and Martin Harrison. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/legacy/features/pod/poets/harrisonwatson1.htm#transcript
In 2005, these two writers got together to read and discuss their work, both privately and with an audience at the Sydney Writers' Festival. Their readings form a conversation, a dialogue of poems, as they travel through urban and outback landscapes, noting the imagery of life on the road from their different perspectives.
Brennan,M. (2011, October 1). Interview with Samuel Wagan Watson. Retrieved from http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/cou_article/item/20790/Interview-with-Samuel-Wagan-Watson/en
In this interview Michael Brennan asks Samuel Wagan Watson when he started writing and who and what inspires his work. As well as what Samuel thinks ‘Australian poetry’ is and whether he sees himself as an ‘Australian’ poet?
Magee, P. (2015). Australian poetry journal. Retrieved from http://www.australianpoetry.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/APJ-5.1-TEXT-final_proofs.pdf
Paul Magee interviewed Samuel Wagan Watson in September 2014 at the University of Canberra. Samuel was poet-in-residence at the time, a guest of the university’s International Poetry Studies Institute. Samuel Wagan Watson’s publications include Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2004) and Love Poems and Death Threats: A Collection Of Poetry (2014).

Locatedness of Poetry

Vichnar, D. (2012, July 6). The poetics of unplacement. Retrieved from http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/cou_article/item/22434/The-poetics-of-unplacement/en
Neither here nor there? On the anti-landscapism of displaced poets and the disappearance of setting in the poetry of Louis Armand
McCredden, L. (2009). The locatedness of poetry. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature : JASAL, Special conference issue: Australian Literature in a Global World, 1-10.
Often in the work of Sam Wagan Watson too, we find the insistent voices of local knowledges which can and must be traced. Watson often calls up the figures of ghosts or spirits, the murmur of long dead voices, which are resurrected into the contemporary world.

Indigenous Australian Poems

Arieh-Lerer, S. (2014). Poems from a Young Indigenous Australia. World Literature Today, 88(5), 48-50.
Several poems from Australian poets are presented. "The Crimson Divide" by Yvette Holt. First line: beneath the monkey's mask; Last line: mirroring her body against the darker side. "True Colours" by Yvette Holt. First line: The camera never lies; Last line: Because nobody ever mentions colour. "brunswick st blues" by Samuel Wagan Watson. First line: Brunswick St; Last line: can't bite back.