Jacqui Malins
GERT
“Placing her focus on an ‘unremarkable’ Tasmanian settler woman of last century and the one before, Jacqui Malins has made a delicious and surprising multilayered work, melding history, geography, documentary, poetry, imagination and visual exploration. This book is informed by the gaps in Gert’s story as well as what is known. Malins makes the land itself, and its rivers, speak through these gaps in unforgettable ways, in addition to undertaking a more traditional feminist re-voicing of the past. The result is a deftly honed, closely observed, radical paying of attention.”
Recent Work Press, 2025
It is 1924, near Queenstown on the west coast of Tasmania. A boy holds a double-barrelled gun with a bright-eyed black cockatoo perched on the barrel. A young woman with short curly hair stands beside him in the button grass, a dead black cockatoo dangling from each hand.
When artist and poet Jacqui Malins saw this arresting image in a photograph, she was captivated by the woman’s face and intrigued by the scene. What is this place? Who is this woman, and what is she doing?
GERT is a non-fiction narrative collection of poetry and images. It tells two inseparable life stories: one of a place, and the other of a woman who lived there.
About the Author
Jacqui Malins is a writer, performer and visual artist based on Ngunawal and Ngambri country in Canberra. She is fascinated by the dynamics and relationships of social and natural environments, and the patterns and forces shaping them over time. You can find her work on page, stage, in galleries and online.
Jacqui has created poetry-theatre shows 'Matter of Life', 'Words in Flight' and 'Cavorting with Time' and performed at events including the Poetry on the Move and National Folk Festivals (ACT), the Woodford Festival (QLD) and the 2022 National Poetry Month Gala (NSW). She co-founded Mother Tongue Multilingual Poetry Events (Canberra), and directed and produced the 2021 and 2023 Poetic City Festivals. and organises Mother Tongue Multilingual Poetry events in Canberra.
