Join poet and 2025 Creative Arts Fellow for Australian Writing, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, to discuss their recent Fellowship at the National Library which has focused on laying research groundwork for a new poetry collection titled RISE RALLY REST.

As a member of the LGBTIQA+ community, Scott-Patrick Mitchell has come to appreciate how queer archives “swell with the complex measures of our joys and our struggles against annihilating silence” (Morris) and “are often ‘archives of feelings’” that “create…emphatic links to enigmatic pasts” (Latimer). They allow researchers “to think critically about systems of oppression and the interlocking mechanisms of the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’” (Alexander and Rhodes). For Mitchell, archives are points of potential, bodies through which we move and comprehend. From them we can empower future generations by bringing with us the past’s resilience, strength and necessary compassion.

During their Fellowship, Mitchell has delved into some of the Library’s queer archives and begun work on the poetry collection RISE RALLY REST. This collection explores the roles celebration (RISE), activism (RALLY) and aging into queerness and suburbia (REST) play in the LGBTIQA+ community. This collection honours the past while inspiring the future.

Caption: Scott-Patrick Mitchell (photo credit David Cox Media)