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)
Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch is not afraid to play with the form and shape of fiction. Her dazzling début, Swallow the Air (2006), is a short novel in vignettes that moves quickly through striking images and poetic prose. Her second book, After the Carnage (2017), a wide-ranging short story collection, is set in multiple countries. Winch’s new novel, The Yield, is partly written in reclaime ... (read more)
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
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It seems I'm always walkinginto the scene of a crimemoustached copperand fuck-off tapedon't look too closelyyou won't be able to sleepI'm new to this buildingI live now by the river wherethe ducks look like shoesin the waterI go to the department storewe used to frequentI look at grocery receiptsto see how I'm savingand sometimes I get so lonelyI can barely stand ittonight I wanted youlike the rai ... (read more)
Suck until you burn the roomand the heat numbsreduced to a soundwetlike the come and goof the oceanwater entersmy hand in your hairmy handif you leave me childlessthis will be yours alonethese marks you makeopenings, persuasionsof the woman I will become
Ellen van Neerven
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Can I saywhite people really bore me sometimesto be exactI grow tired with what's unmentionedidling in surf club bathroomsnothing wrong with the chipsbut they're talking about Tasmaniamy thoughts haunted by islandsmaybe I'm dyingI've too many chipsteeth like stonestake me to be flossedand cleanedI need new solessticking to the floorwhat is happeningwith the dialogue of this countrythey are killing ... (read more)
for Aunty Nancy Bamaga
rising seatakes andbreaks into backyardsto trouble families
we cannot livewith the seas in our bellieswe cannot restwith the sea at our legs
the tideis comingto strokeour dead
we want to knowwho unpluggedour islandof childhood
islandof love and traditionlet them seewhat has gone under
Ellen van Neerven
Recording
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