Monument
Title: Monument
Author: Bonny Cassidy
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
Shortlist: Non-Fiction
An important literary memoir which views white settler family history against the impacts on the Indigenous people with whom they interact.
A powerful and timely work of non-fiction, Monument traces the complex consequences of colonial settlement across the generations of an Australian settler family of Anglo-Irish origins, and the impacts on the Indigenous people with whom they come into contact. Bonny Cassidy’s fourth book moves seamlessly through genres in its recovery of the past – part poetry, part prose, microhistory, memoir, travel writing, and sometimes imaginative speculation.
A poet and critic, Cassidy follows the threads and detours signalled by research, historical objects and testimony, to make a case for the value of ‘collected memory’ against the tide of settlement and silence. Monument considers how non-Indigenous Australians might absorb First Nations truth-telling, and what this means for acts of speech and writing. Should our memories serve the living or the dead, the past or the present? Why do we need new monuments in Australia, and where should we expect to find them?
Judges’ report
‘Their story isn’t mine, but I’m standing by it.’ Bonny Cassidy’s Monument is an audacious and complex act of historical recovery. It combines poetry, memoir and speculative historical narrative as the author reckons with her own family’s settler past and attempts to construct a white Australian remembering that is adjacent to First Nations' experience. There is a precise richness in this remembering and reconstruction, set down with a poet’s ability to weigh each word and position them with care and attention. Monument examines an occluded, violent past and assembles a point of adjacent, lyrical witness.
About the Author
Photo by Laura du Ve
Bonny Cassidy
VPLA book photography by Sarah Walker
The 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are proudly supported by the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund and Creative Victoria.