Nam Le on Sidney Nolan’s Quilting the armour

Celebrated author and poet Nam Le and Rebecca Edwards (Senior Curator, Australian Art) have a conversation focused on the intersection of poetry and art. Commissioned by the National Gallery in partnership with Red Room Poetry to respond to a work of art in the national collection, Nam Le selected Sidney Nolan’s painting, Quilting the armour (1947). The work is one of a series of paintings by Nolan on the theme of the nineteenth-century bushranger Ned Kelly. In this special Art Talk, Le reads his new ekphrastic commission and shares insights into the writing process.

Le’s debut poetry collection 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem was published in March 2024 in Australia, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Poems from this collection were published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic, BOMB, Lana Turner, HEAT and elsewhere.

Le’s work has been translated into over fourteen languages and has received major awards in America, Europe and Australia, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship. Le’s work has appeared in modern classics series and is widely anthologized and taught.

This Art Talk was presented in partnership with Red Room Poetry as part of Poetry Month 2024.

Art Talks are a free weekly program. Hear from artists, curators and experts on the works in our collection and exhibition program. This Art Talk is part of a series focused on the intersection of text, poetry and art.