CityNews’ arts critics are a busy lot, but none busier than visual arts reviewer, Barrina South.

As well as writing critiques of exhibitions, for which she has an academic training, South is a busy NSW public servant working in the protection and conservation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal heritage.

She is also a creative writer who in 2023 has a short story adapted for the stage by the Mill Theatre, and was commissioned to write an poem for the National Gallery of Australia responding to Eugene von Guérard’s north-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko.

This year she was awarded a Varuna First Nation fellowship and was appointed a judge for the 2024 ACT Book of the Year.

South has chosen a word from the language of her Barkindji ancestry in far western NSW — Makarra, meaning rain — for the title of her first poetry anthology, to be launched this weekend in Queanbeyan, where she lives.

Published by Recent Work Press of Canberra, in September 2024, South’s poems have been assembled, she says, from works written in riverbanks, hospital corridors, writers’ retreats, oceans, by the fire with her two dogs and in hotel rooms on her many business trips.

“Makarra is reflected in my poems, rain nourishes my words, water cleanses my thoughts and refreshes the path of the life journey ahead of me,” she says.

Makarra by Barrina South will be launched at The Hive, Queanbeyan, October 19.