[1][4] Whittaker's 2016 debut poetry collection Lemons in the Chicken Wire, which she has described as "a call to the humanity of Indigenous queer and trans mob".
fellowship from the State Library of Queensland, where it was described as a "highly original collection of poems bristling with stunning imagery and gritty textures".
[8] It has been described as a "discursively monumental collection [which] asserts unwavering pressure on the idea of 'Australia'", in "a voice seething with impatience, grief-stricken at the fate of this occupied place".
[2] The reviewer for the Sydney Review of Books said it was "a unique hybrid of poetry, memoir, reportage, legal documentation, fiction, non-fiction, satire, and social commentary" and "Written from a Gomeroi, queer perspective, BlakWork challenges the legacies of stolen land, systematic cultural genocide, forced removal of children, deaths in custody, persistent stereotypes about Aboriginal people and rural communities, and the ongoing 'divide and rule' trope of 'discovery narratives' by white Australia that contain Aboriginal peoples, our experiences, culture, her/histories and communities.
[10] Whittaker edited the 2020 collection Fire Front: First Nations Poetry and Power and presented a session of readings from it at the online 2020 Edinburgh International Book Festival.