Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Summer Reading List – available to borrow from the Diversity & Inclusion Street Library

In one of her last acts of service as the University’s inaugural Peter Steele Poet in Residence, Maxine Beneba Clarke has curated a selection of 12 books into the Diversity & Inclusion Street Library, currently located in the Medtech Linkway on the Parkville campus.

Of the 12 books (full list below), three are poetry collections: Anne-Marie Te Whiu’s Mettle, Evelyn Araluen’s The Rot and Nadia Niaz’s The Djinn Hunters. 

"Some of the works are by people I've come into contact with during my time as Poet in Residence, including Nadia Niaz," Maxine told me over Zoom.

Maxine ran a series of workshops and events with University House, including an event that featured Nadia, Lecturer in Creative Writing, and Maxine speaking about The Djinn Hunters. Other events in this series included an in-conversation with Dr Tony Birch about his poetry collections, and a poetry workshop based around Maxine's most recent poetry collection, Beautiful Changelings.

“The Djinn Hunters is a phenomenal debut poetry collection, speaking about the experience of growing up between cultures,” said Maxine.

Evelyn Araluen, co-editor of Overland and local force in literature, who won the Stella Prize in 2022 for Dropbear, is also at the University.

“[The Rot] is a meditation on girlhood, just as stunning as Dropbear,” said Maxine.

Make Something Beautiful 

During her time as Poet in Residence, Maxine’s intention was to inject poetry into as many aspects of campus and the broader city as she could. Maxine originally conceptualised and spearheaded the brilliant Billboard Poetry project, delivering haiku workshops that saw the best poems plastered up on billboards across Melbourne in a “kind of... anti-advertising initiative."

She taught into the Narrative Medicine subject, teaching medical students how to read and write poetry.

“The idea is that teaching medical students to write poetry, memoir and short fiction essentially makes them better doctors, by being able to...  tell stories, listen to stories, and kind of think outside the square,” she said of the innovative program, run by Dr Mariam Tokhi and Dr Fiona Reilly in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.

At the Faculty of Arts Graduation Ceremony in 2023, Maxine delivered a powerful poetic ode to the necessity of the humanities in times of crisis, Make Something Beautiful. In times of eroding funding and cultural infrastructure to support and exalt the humanities, her words were galvanising. She told us: there is a reason they come for the poets first.

It's the same reason they come for the libraries.

The Diversity & Inclusion Street Library

The Diversity and Inclusion Street Library is the brainchild of Dr Bao Nguyen, a neuroscientist and interdisciplinary research champion, who launched the library with support from a Faculty of Engineering and IT Diversity and Inclusion Small Grant . Bao's ‘vision’, it could be said, extends beyond her field of Optometry.

Bao launched the street library in 2024 because she is passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion.

“Books have the power to transport people to a different world, experience new things and see things from others’ perspectives,” she said.

“I am passionate about curating books that promote diversity and inclusion— stories of the lived experience of minorities and marginalised people, guidance on how to embed diversity and inclusion principles into the workplace [and] fiction and poetry written by people of colour, just to name a few...”

After receiving the grant, Bao cold-emailed Maxine, asked if she wanted to be involved, and together they have looked after the library since early last year. Maxine —also an illustrator— painted it.

From the recent selection, Bao is most looking forward to reading Stand Up and Speak Out Against Racism by Yasmin Abdel-Magied with her two kids over the summer holidays.

“They are still at an age (4 and 7) where I think they are blissfully unaware of racism, but are starting to identify differences in the people around them in their innocent and non-judgmental way,” said Bao.

“There is no better time than yesterday to be guiding our future generations, and giving them confidence, to call out when things are unjust and unfair.”

Street libraries are often a great place to find trashy novels, and hidden gems. Those who stumble across this Street Library are particularly blessed with the calibre of the selection. If you find yourself at pains to withhold your enthusiasm, the decorum is simply: give a book, take a book, share a book.

I’m looking forward to reading Gather up Your World in One Long Breath by S Shakthidharan, a Western Sydney writer with Tamil ancestry.

“This is a memoir about migration, about family, about fractures [...] in familial relationships, particularly between parent and child,” Maxine told me.

With works of fiction, non-fiction, and even a play, the library is a great place to guide your summer reading list. If it’s honesty you’re after...

“I often speak of poetry as the most honest art form,” said Maxine.

"I think people come to a poem or a poetry collection with a really different sensibility to when they open a novel or a book of non-fiction. They come wanting to learn something, wanting to be changed, wanting to have someone move something inside them.”

As Maxine’s residence comes to an end, the library is one way we can continue to be moved by her incredibly generous and far-reaching contribution.

The library is located in the Medtech Linkway in Building 169 (Engineering Workshops), which can be accessed via Gate 8 off Grattan Street, Parkville campus.

Follow the Diversity & Inclusion Street Library’s Instragram and updates via their linktr.ee