Download the booklet/zine featuring four of the poets work here.
The Dirty Word is a space for creative writing, original poetry and spoken word.
We started in Mparntwe in 2013 and remain operationally unfunded and grassroots.
In a world where arts are underappreciated and underfunded we seek ways to source money for poets where we can. We wanted to use this opportunity to support women and non-binary poets, platform and champion their work.
The theme of the 2026 International Women’s Day is “Equality for All”, women, trans and non-binary people.
As the gender pay gap widens – it is importnant now more than ever to not shy away from conversations about it.
This may not be the largest offering but it’s heartfelt and important work from women and non-binary people living in Central Australia.
We recognise and acknowledge that we live, work and create on unceeded Arrernte Land and acknowledge the traditional owners, past, present and future.
This project was supported by the Northern Territory Government
All works © their respective authors
I Am Arrernte/Warlpiri Woman
by Marie Elena Ellis
She stands where the ground remembers her name,
feet reading the earth like an open book.
Knowledge moves through her – not loud, not rushed –
a river carried in bone and breath.
She knows when the stars lean closer,
which wind brings rain, which brings warning.
Her hands hold stories older than fences,
older than the questions she’s been asked.
She learned from grandmothers, from silence,
from fire that cleans without destroying.
Each scar on the land speaks to her,
and she answers with care, not conquest.
Strength is not her shout – it is her listening.
It is the way she carries grief without dropping joy.
It is the way she teaches without taking,
protects without closing her fists.
When she walks, Country walks with her.
When she speaks, ancestors nod.
Knowledge lives because she does –
alive, unbroken, and still becoming.
sideways slant
by Emma Trenorden
hitch your skirt
let water press against your hairy legs
rushing past your knees
sink wide feet into soft mud
stay a moment, be stuck
before you slide back up
wade the shallow crossing
to washed up silty sand
a makeshift beach left in a torrent’s wake
hear pebbles crunch as you step
then take a seat, dwarfed by granite boulders
cross-legged, upon tidal creases folded in brown clay
wet toes crumbed in coarse sand
rub the quartz grains, irregular, angular
find tiny bugs biting at your ankles
while you unknot your brittle frizz
a cool breeze brushes under your chin
blowing ripples on the water’s silky skin
ignore a whining drone overhead
pay no attention to tourists hurrying
instead, turn to the river’s murmuring hum
turn to diamond ribbons of light that scatter
to a raucous of zebra finches who chitter chatter
their stripes zigger zagger the water’s edge
silence notifications, mute the buzz in your pocket
pause growing lists with asterisks
oh, listen to that river hum, drum, thrum
and turn to perfumed notes of minty rain
eucalypt crushed between your palms
pale green sprouts of ancient gum
now, two white faced herons, a third close behind
as they follow the riverbend in slow bouncing flight
turn to their deep guttural cry
and, like clumps of sedge combed over
may you turn to the day’s sideways dance
not in defeat, detachment, nor defiance
but as sunlight
across the surface
slants
Is My Gender Just a Case of P.D.A.?
by Rosie Wild
“I think you have Pathological Demand Avoidance,” he said.
I said: “No, I don’t.”
“Case in point,” he replied.
“I don’t accept the premise,” I told him.
“Of course you don’t,” he said, punctuating papers I could not see.
“But ‘pathological’ implies there’s something wrong with me.”
“Indeed,” he said.
“But what if the demands disenfranchise me?
What if they spin me into deep dissociation?
What if they’re deleterious?
What if the demands delete me?”
“Your questions demonstrate a practiced propensity for a most dogged demand avoidance,” he said.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe you have P.D.A.
Pernicious Disease Associations.
Puritanical Dispossession of Autonomy.
Pugnacious and Detrimental Assumptiveness leading to diabolical demonisation of identity.”
“Ma’am, you need not be rude,” he said. “I note that you have not completed this form, which cannot be done until you select a gender under these norms.”
“My gender is not supplied on the form,” I said. “And do not call me Ma’am.”
“Apologies, Ma’am.”
There is fire in my lashes.
He pulls a new form from a file.
“The irony won’t escape you that your resistance
to this diagnosis underscores its accuracy.
I believe you only defy categorisation as female
because its social demands make you furious.
You become irrational. You experience rage, do you not?
Rage, young lady, is a dangerous basis for identity.”
“Well, then make me dangerous,” I said. “In the face of dispossession, rage can be
a divine kind of danger.”
“So, your gender is rage?”
“No. Rage is the result of erasure. It’s not a gender.”
“Well then what is your gender?”
“I don’t know… I can only say that when I reach back for a trace of identity euphoria, I find myself kneeling at the silver trail of a snail. Did you know they have no binaries? They’re both. They’re all. Male and female parts together in one soft body. Art and mathematics in one curved shell, their slow silver, glittering the ground. I was compelled…
“And then there’s this other feeling… of a swing… back and forth… So high, the chains slackened. Frame thumped in and out of the ground. I thought my toes could tear open the bellies of clouds and water would go from floating to falling to flowing, changing, changing, changing… fluid between the supposed separation of heaven and earth.
“And when I try to think of who I am or who I was or what it’s all about, I dissolve into that. A silver trail. A soft body. A curved shell. A chain gone slack. A cloud. Rain… Phenomenal. Dreamy. Alive…”
“That is all very well. But I am afraid none of that is on the form,” he said.
“Well, alright,” I said. “Let’s say my gender is P.D.A.
Persistent Dedication to Autonomy.
Playful Deconstruction of Gender Assignment.
Proud and Delighted to Accept I cannot explain
the joy of having no more gender than the rain.”
Woman, Woman
By Tisha Carter
Woman, woman
The strength you hold
in your statue of great power
as a giver of life – through childbirth
a mother taking care of a baby
making sure he;
or she
becomes a man,
or a woman.
Your soft warm kisses
to make sure
it’s ok when there’s hurt.
Your soul food makes us feel good inside –
and out.
To hold the hands of someone you love.
To have love in your eyes for that special one –
to be yours,
To be the one to catch the tears when they fall.
To make sure every hungry belly is full.
Woman, woman
Work so hard
Your tired hands and your tired feet
have no room to rest your weary head.
The whispers of gossip around the corner,
hold your head up high.
The pain of sadness and grief
the silence when you’re alone.
The flowers you grew to smell on a windy day.
The oppression and depression tries to break you down –
but can’t.
Woman the good times – you see
makes the hard times your great existence.
Being battered and bruised,
hiding the pain of the wounds,
that you hold inside
The silent tears,
that roll down your face,
when no one’s around
The cries for help –
But,
No one hears
Beautiful woman.
Strong lady.
Resilience –
quietly is the power of the woman
Untitled
By Anisha Pillarisetty
rocks brighten the horizon
lighthouses, to say, watch where you’re going and remember where you stand/
Bedside eagle in washed-out 70s tones laminated on wood/
against pale blue/the moon outside is multiple exposure
photo– torn from a plastic sleeve
family albums are a shrine of empty pockets
the moon is a photo
turn it over and over
to build a museum around a faded timestamp
a caravan that doesn’t move
but swells with tinny rain
how many words for shelter
are on the surface of our tongues?
Que tells me about Irretye dreaming on Arrernte country
the laminated eagle in the caravan out back
watches as i turn in my dreams
to the smell of unlabelled medication in
my grandparents’ unit in the outskirts military compound.
nanamma’s voice swats thatha away from stale biscuits
saved in a jar for an occasion that’ll never arrive.
eagles in this dream sound like masjid calls folding into the wings of the toppling sunset
the story of the Mughal prince crossing the river
to reach his forbidden lover drench the fort in fluoro lights
but the sounds of
the Indian army rolling in and seizing the city by force
are buried in an unmarked tomb –––
the rocks remember the blood orange moon is a laser.
in storybooks, the moon is chanda mamma
mamma – an uncle
that comes and goes, frantic knocks on doors,
and spilling onto the tiles
after severing the night
our dhuniyas too small then to keep turning the photo round and round
chanda mamma can be a stranger too.
The moon is burnt rubber on the Stuart Highway
The first thing Tanya says to me is ‘didn’t see you there sister!’
I say thank you too much but i don’t say you were the first people to stop
her brother says, nah, this is just what we mob do
the bridge is collapsed
and the roads are closed
but i still cross this border freely ––
returning to the hum of a roadhouse generator
a timezone ahead.
a sign opposite the bench says something like ‘No picnicking, patrons only’
the sky is big and quiet
except for i’m guessing british accents behind me
The world has gone to shit, and the toilets are blocked
The roadhouse pub is empty too empty for this time of year
You know where the American base is? Just down the road from here.
I imagine them pointing towards the dirt where ants will crawl up and down our legs later
The low hum of news on a 3g network swallows
the last of the pint, foam settling on the glass
The moon is in hiding.
