States of Poetry - Poems

'Roo Tails' by Ellen van Neerven | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

by Ellen van Neerven •

States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

States of Poetry - Poems

'Roo Tails' by Ellen van Neerven | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

by Ellen van Neerven •

States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

The ground felt like it did when it's about to storm. My feet were brown and my big toe blistered. My grandmother was talking to my grandfather. A wet patch on my grandmother's back. Her hands roping those tails along the fence.

She turned to me and I saw her. Grey. A little heavy. Everything I came here for. A magpie flew lower.

Ellen van Neerven

Recording

Ellen van Neerven

Ellen van Neerven (born in Meanjin (Brisbane) in 1990) is an award-winning writer and editor of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen’s second book, a collection of poetry, Comfort Food, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize and highly commended for the 2016 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. Throat is Ellen’s second poetry collection, a May 2020 release.

(Photograph by Anna Jacobson)