Kevin Gilbert (author)

Kevin Gilbert (10 July 1933 - 1 April 1993) was a 20th century Indigenous Australian activist writer and artist.

Kevin Gilbert was born into the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nations in Condobolin, New South Wales. He had an unsettled childhood and was brought up by his maternal grandmother on an Aboriginal reserve. Leaving school at the age of fourteen he had various seasonal and short-term jobs. He received a life sentence in 1957 over the death of his wife during an argument. Despite the harsh and brutal conditions of gaol life he learned printmaking and began writing. In 1971 he was released on parole, a year after his first exhibition and three years after the production of his play "The Cherry Pickers".

He became involved in numerous Indigenous human rights causes, notably the Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Parliament house and, his chairing of the Treaty '88 campaign for a treaty between white and black Australia. In 1988 he was awarded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Human Rights Award for Literature for editing the Aboriginal poetry anthology "Inside Black Australia". He returned it citing the ongoing injustice his people suffered under. He also continued writing and exhibiting his artwork. He died in 1993, survived by six children and numerous grand- and great-grandchildren.

Particularly in his early verse, Gilbert uses the poetry as an apologia in respect to his own life whilst challenging the morality of the wider society as in "Think" (1971)

"My father was white
"He killed his wife
"She was a half-caste
"She was my mother
"I am a half-caste
"I killed a white"
"She was my wife"
"I stay on my
"side of the coin
"you on the other
"When it spins
"into the air
"next time
"who will come
"out on top?"

Bibliography

Poetry
*"End of Dreamtime" (Island Press, 1971)
*"People are Legends" (UQP, 1978)

Non-fiction
*"Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert"
*"Because a White Man'll Never Do It"
*"Black from the Edge"

Edited
*"Inside Black Australia"

For children
*"Me and Mary Kangaroo"(1995?)

External links

* [http://blackwebs.photoaccess.org.au/%7Ekevingilbert/index.html Kevin John Gilbert] home page, has images of his art-work

References

* [http://www.nga.gov.au/Retake/artists/00000004.htm Kevin Gilbert] at National Gallery of Australia

Persondata
NAME=Gilbert, Kevin John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Twentieth Indigenous Australian artist, writer and activist
DATE OF BIRTH=1933
PLACE OF BIRTH=Condobolin, New South Wales, Australia
DATE OF DEATH=1993
PLACE OF DEATH=Australia