Bellbird vernacular
By Alisha Brown
“I tell it to the ducks, who have / no dialect beyond the lightness // of their bodies.”
Alisha Brown
Alisha Brown is an Australian poet living on unceded Gadigal land. Her debut manuscript, A Bird is a Small God, was shortlisted for the 2026 Dorothy Hewett Award. She won the 2025 Finding Beauty Poetry Prize and the 2022 Joyce Parkes Women’s Writing Prize, placed second in the 2021 Woorilla Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2026 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her work in Best of Australian Poems, Westerly, Griffith Review, Island, Cordite, and Meanjin, among others.