An unflinching, hypnotic collection of poetry; confronting the nightmares of colonisation, animated by tenderness and hope for the future.
The Rot confronts the wreckage of modern life head-on, balancing rage and hope as it traces broken dreams and unrelenting injustice with unyielding clarity. Structured in three movements, Holdings, Fragments on Rotting and Unfoldings, the collection charts an intellectual and emotional journey.
Araluen delivers searing commentary on aspects of contemporary life in late-stage capitalism, such as the impacts of the rental housing crisis, depicted in “Real Estate”:
“The best minds of our generation are
sourcing rent from mutual aid, are
inhaling mould knowing there
will be no old age to pay it back.”
The ethics of the billionaire class, viewed through the lens of grief for Country, are explored in “Billionaire Liturgy”:
“who could ever know how much a billion costs?
the weight of oceans, rates of miscarriage,
coal forests collapsing into desert.”
The anger that drives The Rot, is tempered with wry humour. The strikingly titled, “I’m summoning Sofia Tolstoy from the bath with a spell I bought off Etsy”, captures a modern writer’s lament:
“The algorithm knows all women
are born to girlmoss on a windy heath but
prefers us labouring forms and substacks
on just enough dexamphetamines to restrain
our violence in the classics aisle.”
Through it all, Araluen builds toward the possibility of resistance and justice to confront the relentlessness of settler colonial violence, as seen in the the urgent counsel offered in “Change Agent”:
“Be prepared
to be the worst
person at every party. …
You’ve been unravelling
since the steam engine,
the coming of those tall ships.
There’s no time
for complacency in the
age of rotting stars.”
Evelyn Araluen is a multi-award winning Goorie and Koori poet. Praised as ‘vulnerable, taut and uncompromising’, The Rot was awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature in 2026.
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