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Throat
by Ellen van Neerven

Irreverent and courageous, Throat is a fierce cry that fights to be heard. This is van Neerven’s most powerful work yet.

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Overview

I am not aware of my power

you watch me build my weapon

Throat is the explosive second poetry collection from award-winning Mununjali Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven. Exploring love, language and land, van Neerven flexes their muscles and shines a light on Australia’s unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart. Unsparing in its interrogation of colonial impulse, this book is fiercely loyal to voicing our truth and telling the stories that make us who we are.

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Reviews

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Sydney Review of Books

‘Throat is a brave and radical work. A work that deserves an equally radical and considered reading position. One that requires a suspension of western realism, history, temporality, literary conventions and values, binaries and expectations. Its potency leaves an aftertaste to savour as it lingers long.’

Yvette Holt

‘A national poetic deliverance of what it means to be Aboriginal, proud and resilient - yesterday, today and tomorrow.’

Omar Sakr

‘In this brilliant, witty collection, van Neerven puts a finger to the world's jagged pulse and measures out the beat across time and country, love and loss.’

Nakkiah Lui

‘Van Neerven's ability to challenge and expand politics is thrilling, their flair for language exhilaratingly intimate.’

Hannah Kent

‘This exceptional collection of poetry burned into me: it is necessary reading. Van Neerven's work speaks to deep reflection - on language, on Blak queer identity, on pain, on resilience - and is, in and of itself, profoundly, powerfully beautiful.’

Quentin Bryce Award 2020: Ellen van Neerven in conversation with Quentin Bryce and Sandra Phillips

Ellen van Neerven

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. 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 highly anticipated second poetry collection.