- I thoroughly enjoyed Evelyn Araluen’s previous collection of poetry, Dropbear, which won the 2022 Stellar Prize.
- The Rot is similarly academic, philosophical, political and highly literary.
- But unlike in Dropbear, too many of The Rot’s poems are overly condensed and deliberately obscure, making it difficult to comprehend essential meanings. They are virtually closed to the reader and therefore fail to inform or persuade, much less please.
- The formal structures of most of the poems are rather meaningless and pretentious. One intensely annoying feature of many of them is the frequent blackout of names or words as if some political authority had ordered it. That may be Araluen's point but it's still very off-putting.
- However I did appreciate Araluen’s frequent condemnation of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. She clearly registers her anger and fury in many of the poems, and reveals how much it is affecting her not just emotionally but mentally as well.
- Most reviewers have heaped praise on the book. And of course it won this year’s Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Prize for Indigenous Writing.
- I was at first reluctant to post this review. All reviewers so far, mostly literature academics, highly commend it. But I studied Australian poetry at university so I don't feel I'm ignorant.
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