Rabbit Launch: Pantsis, Pearce & Damjanovich-Napoleon

You are warmly invited to the Melbourne launch of our newest books in the Rabbit Poets Series:

Helena Pantis's Cosmodog & Sarah Pearce's Silt & Ash & Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon's The Commonwealth of Amnesia

Where: Aces Bar Brunswick, 124 Weston Street, Brunswick, VIC

When: Wednesday 4th November, 6pm for 615pm sharp start

What: Q&A with the authors and short readings from their new books

About the authors and books:

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is an editor, writer and artist from Naarm, Australia, with a fond appreciation for the weird, the dark and the experimental. She recently won the 2026 Steele Rudd Award for the short story collection Mother Salad (UWAP). More can be found at hlnpnts.com.

‘Captivating from the get-go, cosmodog is a well-researched and deeply heartfelt cluster of poems. Pantsis’s variation on form creates a poignant juxtaposition between cosmos and earth, offering a new perspective on our planet and of the canines that liven our deepest, darkest spaces.’ - Svetlana Sterlin

Sarah Pearce is a poet, editor and researcher living and working on Kaurna Country. Her poetry appears in various journals and anthologies, including TEXT, Overland, Rabbit, Cordite, Grieve and Best of Australian Poems. She is Deputy Editor of The Suburban Review. She was awarded a 2024 Literary Fellowship at the State Library of South Australia, which formed the genesis of this book. She writes about embodiment, intimacy, mental and physical health, and the environment.

'Silt & Ash is a stunning debut collection of found poetry by Sarah Pearce. Sarah excavates the archive to activate visceral scenes from early colonial diaries to algal bloom data records to tourism media and weather reports, spanning two centuries. Every poem holds an intimate story, carefully curated with precision and urgency to reveal and interrogate attitudes, intentions and ideologies that shape and shadow our lives. This ecopoetic collection is both love letter and provocation to wrench your gut and break your heart and ultimately bring us closer to Country. Brace yourself to confront the storm, parch with heat, seek the shade, and yearn for green. These terrifying truths compel a collective relationality-led responsibility to our future—to actively reckon with colonial spectres, listen to the howling, and to rework and regenerate this world anew.' - Natalie Harkin

Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon is a writer and educator working in erasure, cut-up and free verse poetry. Her work has appeared in Rabbit, Cordite and Australian Book Review; and in the anthologies The Best of Australian Poems 2025 and Dear Human, alongside US Poet Laureate Ada Limón. She has won the Bruce Dawe and KSP Poetry Prizes and has been shortlisted for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. The Commonwealth of Amnesia is her third collection, exploring xenophobia and the forgotten histories of Croatian Australians through the medium of erasure poetry.

‘The Commonwealth of Amnesia is a highly inventive and moving account of the historical diasporic experience in Australia. Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon unflinchingly calls colonial culture to account, restoring erased voices to the historical canon, in this compelling and intellectual exploration of the artform. It’s rare to find a book like this—impossible to ignore, as clever as it is courageous.’ - Judith Nangala Crispin