Gold Digger, by Lisa Collyer, Gazebo / Life Before Man 2025

I ain’t sayin’ she’s a …:  so goes the chorus of Kanye West’s catchy, yet thoroughly misogynistic 2005 hit which bears the same name as Lisa Collyer’s second poetry collection, Gold Digger. It’s impossible to not makes these associations with such a proverbial phrase, which I suspect is the poet’s intention. Layered meaning, and revealing raw truths that ride under the kind of offending tropes West employs in his song, are very much the game here. In this case, the ‘gold digger’ from the titular poem is a literal female gold prospector, who “turns up dirt, sieves wealth from toil”.

 And there we get a subtle location tag for the collection too, where “wealth from toil” echoes the Australian national anthem. It’s likely no coincidence that this central image of a woman attempting to scrabble gold from the earth in such a tactile, personal way speaks to its West Australian setting, a state that is deeply associated with mechanised, large scale resource mining – gold being one of the most prominent of those local resources.

Gold digger is a nuanced journey through the world of women’s labour. We don’t just meet a small-scale prospector here, but a range of female workers across domestic, civic, and commercial spheres. Though many poems sit comfortably in the confessional tradition, and likely reflect Collyer’s personal history with work, characterization and storytelling are important techniques in the collection too. A lens of imagination and referenced research brings us into the orbit of women that swing from jam makers to agricultural workers, as with the gorgeous preface poem, ‘The Grape Pickers’:

Perth Launch speech: Bron Bateman on Gold Digger for Rochord Street Review

'The pervasive themes of Collyer’s collection are patriarchal power, female work and experience, class and ethnicity and female agency. Her protagonists are articulate, unapologetic, angry, wryly humorous, embodied and come from all walks of life. Collyer stuns with the vividness of her imagery, the pared-back urgency of her language and the compulsive readability of her poems.'

Dr Bron Bateman on Gold Digger at Astral Weeks

Sydney Launch speech: Willo Drummond on Gold Digger for Compulsive Reader

'Gold Digger is a bristling invitation. A challenge and a call to attention. It demands an opening of the eyes and ears to lives lived vivid and vital despite the social context in which they are lived. This is a collection as galvanising as it is refreshing, and I congratulate Lisa and Gazebo Books on its publication.  If you identify as a woman, you will feel seen in these pages. If you neither identify as a woman nor have spent any of your life socialised as one, prepare to have your eyes unpeeled. I commend this fierce collection to you. With Lisa, I invite you to bear witness to these bold women, being and doing, but no longer waiting to be seen.'

Willo Drummond on Gold Digger at Better Read than Dead Bookstore.

Reviews of How to Order Eggs Sunny Side Up

'Throughout the book, the poems manage that delicate and tricky balance between being moving and meaningful, wry, humorous and esoteric while still remaining grounded in the everyday.

How To Order Eggs Sunny Side Up is a brave and sophisticated debut and it’s easy to see why the book was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award.'

Magdalena Ball reviews, How to Order Eggs Sunny Side Up for Compulsive Reader

'This first book attracted many well-deserved opportunities for development and workshopping, which pays off in a debut that is bound to become an Australian classic.'

Elizabeth Walton reviews, How to Order Eggs Sunny side Up for Arts Hub

'These are poems with a sharp outline. They...are clever poems written for the curious and intelligent reader.'

Jane Frank reviews, How to Order Eggs Sunny Side Up for Stylus Lit

'A major theme of Collyer’s work is the female body. Her collection includes wry poems about female physical beauty that come from a posture of acknowledged complicity with social expectations.'

Miriam Wei Wei Lo reviews, How to Order Eggs Sunny Side Up

Read reviews of Women of a Certain Courage

'In particular, Lisa Collyer’s ‘Prolonged Exposure’ stood out to me for its experimentation with form and fragmented storytelling, which results in a unique and emotionally raw exploration of what it means to be courageous.' Nilab Siddiqi reviews, Women of a Certain Courage

Collyer review Bathypelagia by Debbie Lim for Mascara Literary Review

Collyer reviews, Love Like This Isn't Harmless, a poetry performance by Bron and Javier Bateman.

Collyer reviews, The foal in the Wire by Robbie Coburn for Compulsive Reader

Collyer reviews, Freedom, Only Freedom by Behrouz Boochani and The Flirtation of Girls by Sara M Saleh for The Writers' Collective

Collyer reviews, G-d, Sleep & Chaos by Alan Fyfe for Compulsive Reader

Collyer reviews, Carapace by Misbah Wolf for Mascara Literary Review

Collyer and Noske review, Moon Wrasse by Willo Drummond for Sydney Open Journals

Collyer reviews, Ghosts Struggle to Swim by Jane Frank for Westerly Magazine

Collyer reviews, Under the Tattered Roof by Jerome Masamaka for Westerly Magazine