Renee Pettitt-Schipp (middle) with Minster for Culture and the Arts David Templeman (left) and Margaret Allen (right).
Camera IconRenee Pettitt-Schipp (middle) with Minster for Culture and the Arts David Templeman (left) and Margaret Allen (right). Credit: Supplied/Supplied

Premier Book Award winner warns of asylum seeker crisis

Ben SmithCockburn Gazette

FIVE years working with asylum seekers formed the backbone of Renee Pettitt-Schipp’s gritty and brutally honest Premier’s Book Award-winning entry.

The poet’s debut book The Sky Runs Right Through, written about her experiences on Christmas and Cocos Islands, claimed the Prize for an Emerging Writer.

Ms Pettitt-Schipp said the book represented almost 20 years of poems, although half were written during her time on the Cocos Islands.

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She said her time working with asylum seekers had opened her eyes to the horrors they experienced in detention and she wanted her poems to highlight it to the public.

“I watched children slowly robbed of their childhood after months behind bars and I had friends that were refugees try to commit suicide by drinking cleaning fluids,” she said.

“I don’t believe most Australians that I know would accept what goes on in our offshore processing centres if they could see it with their own eyes.”

The Coolbellup resident said the relaxation of the Border Force Act in 2017 aided her voice and allowed her to speak bluntly about her experiences in the poems.

“I have lived with the threat of a two year jail term if I spoke openly about what I witnessed in Australia’s detention system,” she said.

“To go from being largely silenced, to suddenly not only being given a voice, but that voice being recognised and celebrated, is an extraordinary journey.”

Ms Pettitt-Schipp said poetry had a way of distilling human experiences and getting to the ‘heart’ of the matter.

“I like to be completely present with something or someone, who may otherwise be invisible in society, and hope to draw the reader in with me, to push past our prejudices and experience the simple and profound humanity of another human being,” she said.

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