Illustrated Verse Novel Book Review

The Dingo’s Noctuary – an illustrated verse novel : Judith Nangala Crispin

Published by Puncher & Wattmann, 18 November 2025

Hardcover (88 colour plates)

ISBN: 9781923099715

COVER IMAGE: Ascending Being 1 – Martin dreams a barn owl into being, over Mt Jillamatong, on a night of flying saucers and stars. Lumachrome glass print, chemigram, cliche-verre and drawing. Road-killed Eastern Barn Owl, sand, graphite, wax and ink on fibre paper. Exposed 32 hours in a geodesic dome.

In 2021 Judith Nangala Crispin was a judge for the 2021 Mullins Conceptual Photographic Prize, which I managed for the Australian Photographic Society. In our publicity, she was described as a successful poet and lens-based visual artist working between Yuendumu in Australia’s Northern Territory and regional New South Wales. Her photography was centred on Lumachrome Glass printing, a cameraless method she developed using elements of early photochemistry. She has two published poetry collections. Her visual art has been exhibited and published internationally.

Prior to that, Crispin also had a stellar academic career in music, winning international prizes for composition, and teaching internationally. Much of her writing is centred around the experience of searching for her Bpangerang ancestry, and her long-term friendship with Australia’s indigenous Warlpiri people.

I have previously reviewed this artist’s 2020 contributions to an outdoors ‘walk of art’ the Australian National University, and her 2022 sell out gallery show in Canberra which resulted in a Canberra Critics Circle Award. I’ve had the opportunity to hear at first hand some stories about her motorcycle journeys and a major accident, about trips into the desert, and about her dingo dog. I’ve read some of her blog articles which have made their way into her new novel.

The Dingo’s Noctuary, explores themes of identity, belonging, and the fragile threads that connect all living beings. “At the heart of the tale is a soul’s dark night, the flight of a lady motorcyclist, in the prime of her invisibility, and her mongrel Lajamanu dingo Moon (found alone in the desert at four weeks old and infested with mange), into the Tanami desert. She’s searching for a caravan of miraculous dog-headed beings, glimpsed in dreams and the dementia tales of an old desert lady.”

In the single-authored book the images and texts are equally weighted. It was written over thirty-seven desert crossings, sometimes on the motorcycle with the dog on the back. The entire second half of the book was written on a typewriter after a motorcycle crash (the unsuccessful 37th crossing) left Crispin unable to use a computer. She made a motorcycle blog about one of the journeys in this book here.

Warlpiri jarntu/warnapari, dingo-dog, wild born on Warlpiri lands, Kirndangi Jampijinpa, or “Moon”, on the motorcycle pillion (in K9 moto-cockpit)

Work from The Dingo’s Noctuary has received a number of awards and prizes including the 2023 Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the 2020 Blake Prize for Poetry. It was highly commended in the 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Milburn Art Prize, the 2023 and 2025 Ravenswood Prizes for Australian Women’s Art, and the 2019 Olive Cotton Prize. Images and texts from the book were included in the Lunar Codex time-capsule which was deposited on the moon as part of the Blue Ghost mission in 2024. A mock-up of the complete book was shortlisted for the 2023 Arles Luma Recontres Dummy Book Prize.

After an Author’s Note and a Preface, the list of Contents indicates there will be 43 Noctuary entries, interspersed with 10 Visions and 2 poems on a Murder at Wave Hill. All those chapters are set within three sections – Wormwood (which explains this is not a fairy story), Abyss of the Birds and Astreides.

There are many quotes throughout this book. An early one – in the First Noctuary (journal) Entry – sets a wonderful scenario for anyone investigating their family connections: “There are spider-strings”, she told me. In a strange arachnid lisp, “connecting us to everyone we’ve ever loved.” The author proceeds to tell us “When the lie unravels it takes your breath away.” The entry closes by telling us the journal will be a Noctuary, a record of things passing by night. Now we know what we have commenced reading – hopefully exploring the contents.

Ascending Being 18 – All the dead night spiders, flying around in new bodies, over a bioluminescent sea. Lumachrome glass print and chemigram. Eight dead huntsman spiders with copper chloride and acid on fibre paper. Exposed 24 hours with electric current.

The story unfolds through combinations of poetry and prose, alongside beautiful visual images – accurate hand drawn maps of the Australian central deserts, numerous pressings of rare plants, and forty-seven of the extraordinary lumachrome glass print creations, afterlife portraits of animals and birds, which many have already enjoyed in galleries, or her social media and website.

Cassini – Star Map 1

Ascending Being 5 –  After the highway, the lights, the cool dark wind that moved him, Murat, somewhere in that gigantic night, discovered a door. Lumachrome glass print, cliche-verre, chemigram. Road-killed Quokka, with ochre, wax, vegemite, pollen, bark, seeds and sand. Exposed 2 hours in WA, 26 hours in NSW in a perspex box.

Land Map 2 (Duck Ponds to Newmont Mine)

Ascending Being 23  – Mother lost to trucks, it was cold, and the night raining stars. Henry left the highway, following songlines across the great dividing range, to the sky country of kangaroos. Lumachrome glass print, chemigram. Frozen newborn joey on fibre paper, 36 hours in very cold conditions, mist and winter light.

All of this sets the pace of reading, causes us to pause, reread, review, consider the words or image or both – before resuming, continuing to absorb the story, recalling what we have previously read or heard about major events such as the Wave Hill walk-off. Sometimes a few dots or dashes – or a dividing line between sections of the story – cause us to review what we have just explored or to ask ourselves what else might have been included there. This is all good – pausing and contemplating should ensure we read meanings, not just words.

Pressed Plant 7 (Bats Wing Coral Tree, Erythrina Vespertilio)

Ascending Being 39 – Lily returns to Altair, the brightest of Aquila’s stars, wearing the body of a crow. Lumachrome glass print, cliché-verre. Roadkill crow, ochres & dandelion seeds on fibre paper. Exposed 32 hours in autumn light under brushed perspex.

Following the final journal entry, there is additional material – more pressed plant images, a list of desert birds, and chapter notes. The enormous task is completed – assembled comprehensively into a superb volume.

A shorter version of this review is available on the Canberra Critics Circle blog here.

This version has now also been published in the December 25 issue of The Printer (pp 16-22) here.

Below is information from Judith Nangala Crispin regarding a practical way in which you can assist her and her publisher to support the indigenous community who supported her whilst she was writing the book.

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Purple House Support

The author began writing the book seven years ago as a way of honouring the Tanami Desert and her Warlpiri family and friends. Now she has found a practical way to make sure the book supports the community who supported her while writing it. She is doing that by supporting the Purple House – an amazing organisation which saves remote Indigenous people from the heartbreak of leaving their homeland for life-saving dialysis, separated from family, culture and Country. They are beginning a new initiative in Lajamanu, training young Warlpiri people to work in dialysis – providing much needed jobs and also expanding Lajamanu’s dialysis capacity.

All author profits, matched by funds from her generous publisher Puncher & Wattmann, will go to support this initiative. It will ensure that elders can stay in Lajamanu to be supported by their families while undergoing treatment. A limited edition of 1000 signed and numbered hard cover volumes are being sold. They include over 100 colour plates – lumachrome glass prints, hand drawn maps, plant pressings, star maps, poems and prose. Stories of the desert and its miracles. Stories of the most the remarkable people the author knows. Those 1000 copies are only available through the publisher directly. If you buy the book through Amazon you get the normal edition. Crispin says, “please buy the book and help me to support this amazing cause.”