Slam poet Huda the Goddess wins the 2025 Les Murray Award

Huda Fadlelmawla is the winner of the 2025 Australia for UNHCR - SBS Les Murray Award for Refugee Recognition. She is an internationally renowned slam poet who goes by the stage name Huda the Goddess. 

Here, Ms Fadlelmawla shares her story in her own words:

I was born in Sudan, but I left when I was about four or five. A lot of my recollections from Sudan are around my family home, the streets, and the ritualistic things we did, like going to the bodega around the corner to get dessert.  

My mum decided to flee the dictatorship that was destroying our country so we could survive. She couldn’t work properly, put me through school, help the family or even move around freely as a woman. We lived in Egypt for five years, where poverty was a norm and a part of life.   

I was 10 when we came to Australia. I came with my mum, my stepfather and my younger brother. My mum had always given me the notion that this is the time when you can be what you imagined. If you want to be a doctor, you can. This was the coolest thing. I used to cry all the time about why I couldn’t go to school like normal kids. No kid really cries about wanting to go to school – it’s the opposite. But when your human rights are a privilege you have to earn, what you dream of is different.  

I was excited to prove what I could do. I thought, I’m gonna go to school and I’m gonna be the smart kid. I’m gonna be exactly what I imagined myself to be. I felt like I had to prove that I’m worthy of this chance, amongst all the kids that could have been picked to be in this country. But it came with a lot of challenges, because there was never a moment for me to just be a kid. 

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.  

“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.” 

After that, I started a nursing degree, and I also started getting involved in clubs – MCing the law society’s events, doing keynotes. I was doing an event, and there was a poet by the name of Anisa Nandaula there. She performed, and it was the first time I'd seen poetry like that. I thought, this is cool. She pushed me to come to an open mic, get on stage and do a poem. People cried. I didn’t know what it was, but I liked it. I started doing more open mics. Anisa got me my first show, where I was paid $80. I was so excited to get paid to do poetry.  

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.  

In 2021, I won the Australian Poetry Slam. I went into the event just to do poetry, because I love it. Then I made it to the second round. I did a poem about why I started to pick up the pen. When they said my name, I realised that you cannot run from what is meant for you.  

I’m an improvised poet. I make up my poems on stage. This is not pre-written, edited work. It’s deeply spiritual, it’s deeply ancestral, it’s deeply for me. I love that people can come on the journey, but winning a title was never a part of the plan.  

A lot of the things I’ve done are things I’ve had to do, and I believe that activists are not birthed out of choice, they are birthed out of urgency. We are birthed out of care. We are birthed out of obligation. I am my people. No matter how many oceans away I am, I have an obligation to them, because without their contribution, without their prayer, without their legacy, without their matriarchy, without their culture, without Arabic, without my mum and my grandmother and her mother and her mother, there would be no Huda.

I want to be able to speak for my country, to be able to advocate for the youth. There are people working hard to disrupt the image of the refugee globally. Refugees are not needing to be saved. Sometimes they just need people to get the hell out of their way so they can rebuild countries that were taken from them.

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.

Huda the Goddess will perform at Australia for UNHCR’s World Refugee Day lunch in Sydney on Thursday 19 June 2025.

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