Eileen Chong wins two Australian awards with a poem that can be read in any order
We Speak of Flowers takes the Premier’s Award and the John Bray Poetry Award; the official release is dated 6 November.
On 6 November the State Library of South Australia announced two awards for Eileen Chong’s We Speak of Flowers. At the 5 November ceremony in Adelaide, Australia, the book received both the John Bray Poetry Award and the Premier’s Award, for the best published work across the national categories. Released in 2025 by University of Queensland Press, the poem consists of 101 fragments with no prescribed reading order. Memories of Chong’s grandmother and connections with ancestors emerge through juxtaposition, leaving readers to choose their own route. At the same awards, Michelle de Kretser won the fiction prize for Theory & Practice.