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borrow or rob
An outstanding collection of poetry examining art and appropriation, from the winner of the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize.
borrow or rob examines themes of place, appropriation and extraction through cross-disciplinary considerations of Margaret Preston’s printmaking and contemporaneous writing. The graceful and assured lines mount an incisive and astute intervention into the history of ‘Australian’ art. An impressive and dexterous synthesis of theme and form, borrow or rob implicates the reader in a compelling journey over the ethical topography of making art on stolen land.
With precise control of language and voice, Eva Phillips gives rise to a work that cannot be easily defined or contained in anything but poetry. Probing, meditative and insistent, each poem hums with insight, crystalline imagery and consummate skill. Above all, they implore us to look and then look again.
borrow or rob is a superbly crafted and important poetic tool that interrogates its own history.
borrow or rob examines themes of place, appropriation and extraction through cross-disciplinary considerations of Margaret Preston’s printmaking and contemporaneous writing. The graceful and assured lines mount an incisive and astute intervention into the history of ‘Australian’ art. An impressive and dexterous synthesis of theme and form, borrow or rob implicates the reader in a compelling journey over the ethical topography of making art on stolen land.
With precise control of language and voice, Eva Phillips gives rise to a work that cannot be easily defined or contained in anything but poetry. Probing, meditative and insistent, each poem hums with insight, crystalline imagery and consummate skill. Above all, they implore us to look and then look again.
borrow or rob is a superbly crafted and important poetic tool that interrogates its own history.
120 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2026
About the author
Eva Phillips
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Eva Phillips was born and raised in Magandjin and now lives and teaches on unceded Wangal land. Her debut poetry collection, borrow or rob, was the 2024 winner of the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize.
Eva Phillips was born and raised in Magandjin and now lives and teaches on unceded Wangal land. Her debut poetry collection, borrow or rob, was the 2024 winner of the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize.
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September 15, 2026
Outstanding. 2025/26 has been an amazing period for Australian poetry and this collection (released last week) for the winner of 2024 Thomas Shapcott Prize is up there with the prime examples of top notch work we are seeing.
Each year the Thomas Shapcott Prize is awarded for an unpublished manuscript, the winner getting prizemoney, a publishing deal with UQP and editorial assistance. So the 2024 winner is released in 2026, next year we will see the 2025 winner etc etc. Winners have included well known names like Shastra Deo, Stuart Barnes, Rae White, Felicity Plunkett, Sarah Holland-Batt, and apologies to the sixteen other winners I haven’t mentioned.
This book is a remarkable example of what poetry can do, blending essays, interviews, Ekphrastic poems, even personal travelogue to reflect on the work of Australian artist Margaret Preston.
Primarily a print maker this style of art is reflected in the style/format/execution of the poems, some like they’ve been crafted as woodblock prints, some in mirror image (as though they’re the carved wood), others in many layers (application of ink but in a way erasure), some feel as though they’re seeping through the page.
Broken into geographical sections and spanning a period where Preston engaged with Aboriginal art (but not Aboriginal people), the questions of cultural appropriation is forefront, did she “borrow or rob” (a palindrome)?
It’s really interesting to see the National Gallery of Victoria has just opened a major retrospective of Margaret Preston’s work & the vast majority of the material on the website “celebrates” her “connection” to Indigenous art, with scant (if any) mention of her stealing motifs, desecrating or demeaning them (for example, sacred objects become decorations for cushions etc) and no mention is made of her treatment of Aboriginal people, just her use of their art.
A whitefella questioning a whitefella’s standing, more of this please, acknowledge the wrongs, question those on pedestals, don’t leave it to Blak spokespeople to carry the load.
I’ll leave you with a quote, by Preston from 1930, which appears in one of the poems in this fabulous, thought provoking, innovative and important book:
“Tapa is a primitive, he is a developed primitive and in advance / of our own aborigines (sic).”
Each year the Thomas Shapcott Prize is awarded for an unpublished manuscript, the winner getting prizemoney, a publishing deal with UQP and editorial assistance. So the 2024 winner is released in 2026, next year we will see the 2025 winner etc etc. Winners have included well known names like Shastra Deo, Stuart Barnes, Rae White, Felicity Plunkett, Sarah Holland-Batt, and apologies to the sixteen other winners I haven’t mentioned.
This book is a remarkable example of what poetry can do, blending essays, interviews, Ekphrastic poems, even personal travelogue to reflect on the work of Australian artist Margaret Preston.
Primarily a print maker this style of art is reflected in the style/format/execution of the poems, some like they’ve been crafted as woodblock prints, some in mirror image (as though they’re the carved wood), others in many layers (application of ink but in a way erasure), some feel as though they’re seeping through the page.
Broken into geographical sections and spanning a period where Preston engaged with Aboriginal art (but not Aboriginal people), the questions of cultural appropriation is forefront, did she “borrow or rob” (a palindrome)?
It’s really interesting to see the National Gallery of Victoria has just opened a major retrospective of Margaret Preston’s work & the vast majority of the material on the website “celebrates” her “connection” to Indigenous art, with scant (if any) mention of her stealing motifs, desecrating or demeaning them (for example, sacred objects become decorations for cushions etc) and no mention is made of her treatment of Aboriginal people, just her use of their art.
A whitefella questioning a whitefella’s standing, more of this please, acknowledge the wrongs, question those on pedestals, don’t leave it to Blak spokespeople to carry the load.
I’ll leave you with a quote, by Preston from 1930, which appears in one of the poems in this fabulous, thought provoking, innovative and important book:
“Tapa is a primitive, he is a developed primitive and in advance / of our own aborigines (sic).”
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