Now THIS is something different for Monday Musings. Yes, it is Australian, but it’s not a literary award. Its full title is The Australia for UNHCR – SBS Les Murray Award for Refugee Recognition and, according to Australia’s UNHCR website, it “recognises and celebrates the contribution of refugees who are shining a light on the situation of forcibly displaced people”. The winner receives $10,000, which is donated by SBS, as part of their goal to promote positive awareness and understanding of refugees.

The site explains that the Award, which is supported by Murray’s daughters, Tania and Natalie Murray, is “offered in memory of Les Murray AM, the iconic sports broadcaster and much-loved host of The World Game on SBS television”. In other words, NOT Les Murray the poet. This Les Murray (1945-2017) was born László Ürge in Hungary, but fled Hungary with his family as a refugee in 1956, arriving in Australia in 1957.

Wikipedia’s page, linked on his name, says that he began work as a journalist in 1971, and was also lead singer of a small rock music group, The Rubber Band. He joined the Australian television station, Network Ten, as a commentator in 1977, which is apparently when he changed his name to Les Murray. He moved to Australia’s multicultural broadcasting service, SBS in 1980, initially as a Hungarian language subtitler, but soon turned to sports commentary – football, primarily. In 2011, he won the inaugural “Blogger of the Year” award at the FFDU Australian Football Media awards.

UNHCR says he used his public profile and his own refugee experience to advocate for refugee rights, and this, of course, is what’s behind these awards. To be eligible for the Award nominates must “have settled in Australia as refugees”; “demonstrate significant contributions to raising awareness of refugees and forcibly displaced people in Australia”; “be committed to continuing to engage the Australian public in support of refugees”; and be willing “to engage in Australia for UNHCR and SBS events” including participating in media coverage as requested.

The award was first made in 2022, and the winners have been:

• 2022: Danijel Malbasa: former Yugoslav refugee, now “a powerful advocate, writer and lawyer”
• 2023: Anyier Yuol: former South Sudanese refugee, recognised for “her diverse achievements across sport, women’s empowerment and refugee advocacy”.
• 2024: Hedayat Osyan: a former refugee from Afghanistan, founder of a leading social enterprise that employs refugees in the construction industry

So, as I said, not a literary award per se. However, the 2025 winner, whom I read about in With You (Australia for UNHCR’s newsletter), is Huda Fadlelmawla, otherwise known as Huda the Goddess. She is an “internationally renowned slam poet”, hence her relevance to my Monday Musings.

Huda the Goddess

Fadlelmawla tells her story in With You (Issue 1, 2025, p. 7). I’ll provide a quick summary, but you can read it at the link. Her mother decided they should flee Sudan when Huda was 5 years old, because, under the dictatorship, her mother couldn’t work properly, put her daughter through school, help the family, or “even move around freely as a woman”. They spent 5 years in Egypt, living in poverty, before coming to Australia, when Huda was 10.

She writes of her mother’s telling her this was her chance to be what she wanted to be, and she was determined to take it. But, school wasn’t easy:

In school, I wasn’t good at English at all. Writing was just not my subject. But I had a very, very good teacher in Grade 7. She was the one who motivated me to master verbal language. She also asked me to do the graduation speech. It was the first time I was properly on stage. I thought I was going to throw up. I don’t even remember what I said, but I got a standing ovation from everyone.

After school, she started a nursing degree, but also started attending events. It was here that she saw/heard/met a poet named Anisa Nandaula, who encouraged her to do an open mic. She writes of the impact of the experience of doing open mics:

That was a time in my life when I didn’t know who I was outside of being smart and being a good oldest daughter, a good refugee. It was the first time it wasn’t about how good I was. It was about how I made people feel. I wanted to make people feel better – that was now my objective.

She must have been “good” because in 2021 she won the Australian Poetry Slam. She describes herself as “an improvised poet”, meaning she makes up her poems on stage. They are “not pre-written, edited” works. What she does is “deeply spiritual … deeply ancestral”. She talks about her activism as things she’s “had to do”, because, for her, “activists are not birthed out of choice … [but] … out of urgency … out of care … out of obligation”.

She wants to speak for her country and advocate for the youth. Refugees, she points out, do not need to be saved. Indeed, “sometimes they just need people to get the hell out of their way so they can rebuild countries that were taken from them”. She ends on this:

I am here for every Black girl who does not get to dream out loud. I have to stay in the room so that, when they step through the door, there is another Black face waiting for them.

That of course is the critical thing – for there to be role models, for us all to see people like us on the stage, in print, on TV, in art, and so on.

She will perform at Australia for UNHCR’s World Refugee Day lunch, Sydney, Thursday 19 June 2025. Click here for more info.

In the meantime, here she is on a UNHCR-published YouTube – and doing a TedX talk/improvisation a few months ago:

Art has been my greatest gift.
It is my greatest privilege.
It is my greatest weapon.

Have you either heard, or heard of, Huda the Goddess?

PS Oops, this is late. I scheduled it and then forgot to press the green button!