natalie Damjanovich-napoleon
WRITER - POET - songwriter

Award-winning poet Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon releases a new visual poetry collection that challenges both forgotten histories and poetic form

In her third full length poetry collection—The Commonwealth of Amnesia—Fremantle/Walyalup-based poet Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon defies social and creative conventions to ask whose histories society chooses to forget and why. 

For five years Natalie scoured the historical records and archives researching the legacies of Croatian immigrants in Australia. Each poem within The Commonwealth of Amnesia is a bespoke creation, handcrafted using white-out, blackout pen, scissors, and glue. This process poignantly highlights how history has been written, erased and rewritten. Playful, dynamic, and satirical, the resulting visual poems echo the work of Sappho, M. NourbeSe Philip and Travis Macdonald. In breaking new creative ground in Australia, The Commonwealth of Amnesia presents an innovative take on documentary poetry.

Natalie uncovered a myriad of forgotten and little-known stories that shaped the cultural climate of the time. The callousness of the internment of civilian men deemed ‘enemy aliens’ at the height of WWI anti-foreign war paranoia. Racial tensions came to a head in Kalgoorlie-Boulder in 1934 with mob violence and destructive riots. Then in 1942, 14 people were killed during a bombing in the Western Australian Goldfields. The lasting effects of xenophobic, nationalist and white supremacist ideologies directed upon a minority population are examined in this unflinching collection.

Poet and artist Judith Nangala Crispin applauds The Commonwealth of Amnesia as ‘a highly inventive and moving account of the historical diasporic experience in Australia … It’s rare to find a book like this—impossible to ignore, as clever as it is courageous.’

The Commonwealth of Amnesia asks Australians to examine the history they refuse to face and, in the process, to reconcile with its historic absences and segregation to create a united future.

The Commonwealth of Amnesia will be released in July 2026 through the Rabbit Poets Series.​

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