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A review by jaclyn_sixminutesforme
Comfort Food by Ellen van Neerven
4.0
Ellen van Neerven is a writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. Hear van Neerven read from their poem, Oyster Shell Necklace, here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4qe_FVeEQc
Comfort Food is a poetry collection that will evoke your senses while reading as the poems draw heavily on imagery and sensory associations with food and culinary culture. They reference and draw on experiences within Australia and internationally, the poems moving seamlessly between these and sharing this common anchoring of food. The poems also speak of sovereignty, one of my favorites in the collection that examines this is Berries (“she is of the bear people / so she’s first to the berries / it is when original people are acknowledged / the room breathes easier for me”).
If this is a collection that you have enjoyed you may also want to check out van Neerven’s fiction, Heat and Light, which is high on my own TBR after reading this!
Comfort Food is a poetry collection that will evoke your senses while reading as the poems draw heavily on imagery and sensory associations with food and culinary culture. They reference and draw on experiences within Australia and internationally, the poems moving seamlessly between these and sharing this common anchoring of food. The poems also speak of sovereignty, one of my favorites in the collection that examines this is Berries (“she is of the bear people / so she’s first to the berries / it is when original people are acknowledged / the room breathes easier for me”).
If this is a collection that you have enjoyed you may also want to check out van Neerven’s fiction, Heat and Light, which is high on my own TBR after reading this!