Throat

by Ellen Van Neerven

not in Aus, mate
bad things don't happen here
our beaches are open
they are not places where bloodied mattresses burn

Throatis the explosive second poetry collection from award-winning Mununjali Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven. Exploring love, language and land, van Neerven flexes their distinctive muscles and shines a light on Australia's unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart. Van Neerven is unsparing in the interrogation of colonial impulse, and fiercely loyal to telling the stories that make us who we are.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Australia, Indigenous, LGBT, Nonfiction, School

138 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2020

About the author

Ellen van Neerven (they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land. van Neerven’s first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014), a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020) is the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize, and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards, and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award.

Reviews

[Michael Livingston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still feeling my way into reading poetry, but this is a beautiful and powerful collection that tackles big political questions as well as digging into more personal stuff. Van Neerven captures whole worlds in a phrase.

[Sheree | Keeping Up With The Penguins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Van Neerven’s poetry is at times sarcastic and satirical, at others simply searing, but always in the most deeply satisfying way. They never shy away from the political (“This country is a haunted house, governments still playing cat chasing marsupial mouse”) or the personal (“The Only Blak Queer In The World” is a heart-wrenching insight into the isolation of intersectionality, and the search for community and solace). "The cities that ate Australia" is particular perfection, as is "Politicians having long showers on stolen land". I devoured Throat in a single sitting, and I’m sure I will savour it again over many more.

An extended review available at Keeping Up With The Penguins.

[Madison Griffiths · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s difficult to write about trauma—the memory of it, the making of it—without positioning it as a consumable thing, something the reader wants, and something the reader is (or feels) entitled to. But, in Throat, the trauma Ellen van Neerven speaks of is entirely hers. When she writes of “a new coat of oppression”, she invites important questions, such as: what is it to ‘wear’ oppression, to find protection in it, to never be able to scrub it clean or lend it to someone else? And importantly, who sewed it? Throat is a modern, inventive collection of poems that tackles culture, class, pride, gender and sexuality, and how all facets of self inevitably bleed into one another. Ellen is an inimitable force, and Throat is necessary reading.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more than I did.
I'm just not keen on romantic angst and that's what seemed to feature heavily in my memory of this. There were one or two pieces that stood out more than others.
One to really read and make up your own mind about.
Maybe I need another sitting with it, in a different frame of mind. Just didn't resonant in this reading.
Edited to add - I did enjoy a poem (18Cs) which refers to s18C of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and another that uses a treaty format. The Snakes and Ladders list was another clever and original style. If my focus is more on those poems then my rating would be boosted higher.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved!!!!!!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Writing around trauma is easy when the commissions keep coming" (4).

Ellen Van Neerven is one of the most captivating local writers that I know of. Each word is intoxicating and generates reminders and reasoning against the discrimination of Queer and Bla(c)k communities.

Van Neerven is skilled at tangling the political underpinnings of this so called 'Australia' with words that remind you to melt and scream. I felt myself chilled by the discussions in this collection.

"my tongue hurts
from all the things I have said
all the things I haven't" (63)

As readers you are also reminded to consider your own biases and privilege. Towards the middle (61) of the collection, Van Neervan includes a discussion about allyship, a treaty between reader and author that questions allyship beyond just reading. This important energy is collected through the entire collection.

You are encouraged to think beyond your own privilege and position. Consider the ways that identities intersect and alter. Van Neervan stirs up thoat and interest, the kinds of discussions that sit at the back of your throat when you're deciding if you should speak out. I was awed by the collection.

"how about I show you the colours on the awnings of
your church, the posts of your university, the gates on your
homes. let me illuminate this cos you're in the dark" (7).

Some notable poems include:
Footnotes on a timeline (33)
Call a Spade a Space (39)
The Last Apology (46)
ecopotent (49)
Water on Water (72)
Bonsoy (76)
homoe (110)
Paper ships (126).

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellen van Neerven’s second book of poetry, Throat (UQP 2020), with its arresting cover, is a stunning, at times quietly thoughtful and then bravely confrontational collection that explores language, history, country, love and belonging with tenderness, emotional honesty, vulnerability and courage. A thread throughout is Australia’s unreconciled past, as van Neerven examines gender, identity and sexuality and what it means to be blak and queer. At times beautifully poetic and lyrical, at times brutally honest and truthful, these poems encourage the reader to think about race, history, invasion, inclusivity, culture, gender, desire, loneliness and exclusion. The author is proudly Aboriginal, proudly queer, proudly an artist.
The anthology is divided into five sections: they haunt-walk in; Whiteness is always approaching; I can’t wait to meet my future genders; speaking outside; and take me to the back of my throat. Some are intimate and personal, some broad and expansive.
Some of my favourite lines:
‘Memories sometimes come backwards. They haunt-walk in.’
‘sovereignty was never ceded. why do we need to reference the invasion, we are continuing our ancestors’ talk. I can close my eyes and you are gone – that’s the power of Country.’
‘I’m looking for comfort now my protection has gone. I’ve grown up to a world that was uglier than the one I was promised.’
‘courage is telling them what you think of that play. that script they try and write us in will no longer contain us. bring me a new coat of oppression. this one’s wearing thin.’
‘I saw the colours of my own heart, and they were not the colours of isolation and fear.’
‘we heal hearts by crying/mourning our mothers/our heroes/the sky is black with geese’
‘What does it mean to be held/ in another/ tongue’
‘Stars broke/when they heard you died/dust fell at our feet’
‘They make us feel like we should be so grateful just to be here.’
Some of these poems are poignant, some angry and defiant, some melancholy and some show a sharp sense of wit and humour.
I especially love Vinegar, Bold and Beautiful, My Country, Funeral Plan (‘I am not aware of my power/you watch me build my weapon’), Call a Spade a Spade, Type, The Last Apology, White Excellence, Four Truths and a Treaty (the Treaty being between the reader and the author…fascinating), Questions of Home, Silenced Identity, Listen (‘tell our strong young women/talk up, bub/like your mother and grandmother are at the table’), Tap, I Grieve in Sleep, and Paper Ships.
An impressive collection by one of Australia’s most significant poets writing today.

[Roisin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speechless. Well worth a read- I think my favourite poems were: ‘Bonsoy’, ‘I grieve in my sleep’, ‘the queer heatwave’, ‘All that is loved (can be saved)’, and ‘Politicians taking long showers on stolen land’.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

beautiful piece of work. crucial messages. eye opening. a necessary read.

[Ngarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this poetry on Bundjalung land. The poetry is honest, intimate, philosophical, and at times raw. An important voice for this point in history, in this place.

[Richard Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A staggeringly powerful collection of pieces that ask us to confront the personal and the institutional, covering race, gender and even more intimate moments. 'Call a Spade a Spade' and 'Crushed' (with its dedication 'for Mum, a library woman') spoke strongly to me. Yet here is a collection that has poems on Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the 'intergenerational load' of our shared past, and intersectionality. It all fits together in a beautiful collage, one that's impossible to put down and demands to be picked up and read again.

[Declan Fry]

Some books leave you crushed.

Others, having staked out no small claim on your mental landscape, become, over the course of weeks and months, like old friends (you awake one day and there they are, occupying your mind and heart entirely). A few may even make you question the means and ends of writing, the sort of work that it is meant to do – or should be trying to.

Throat manages all three, often at the same time:

7. You feel insecure about how your writing might be read
under a white gaze.
6. You are told you may be offended by some of the other
stories in the collection.
5. You are the only Indigenous person they have approached
for the project.
4. Payment has not yet been guaranteed.
3. Editor calls the project a word in an ‘extinct indigenous
language’.
2. Lower case ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Aboriginal’ is used.
1. Editor mentions she went out with ‘one’ once, you remind
her of him.

Throat is a collection that crosses boundaries: of gender, genre, culture, history. Throughout the work you catch yourself, half unconscious, half wondering, dazzled and spent and continually recovering. To paraphrase the title of the second part of the collection it is a work that is always approaching, haunt-walking in. You cannot wait to meet it yet feel that it has met you several times already – feisty, haunting, irresistibly tender.

Read on: https://overland.org.au/2020/06/i-was...

[⋊ · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this is poetry, then the cardboard instructions on a synthetic vegan imitation meat package are pasture-raised beef.

The advent of figureheads like Rupi Kaur has forged a particularly facetious reality in the landscape of modern poetry; anyone can be published, awarded, and praised for jotting down the first thoughts that come to mind on a topic deeply important to them, so long as they also represent an entire demographic of people while they do so in order to reach wider marketing targets. Mind you, these same thoughts are condensed into the eloquence of screaming into a pillow, and cannot be genuinely criticized by the average socially assimilated reader, lest the critique is misinterpreted as an endorsement of the transgressions the writer has lived through.

While I understand the author is attempting to convey their genuine lived experience in the form of literal passages and candid vulnerability, smug verbosity is not a substitute for soulfulness, even when things need to be described literally in order to prevent misinterpretation.

[Jeremiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

maybe more of a 2.5

I really wanted to enjoy this, it was one of my assigned university texts that I was really excited to read. I enjoyed the sentiments, the statements; what this poetry had to say, I enjoyed. I just really dislike the verse. It felt too literal, something about this witty contemporary style always makes me loose interest very quickly.
There were some poems I did quite like in the middle section.

[elbow ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd read:
still 5 stars. still don't really get it (but i hope i will soon).

1st read:
5 stars.
god. i'm going to have to reread this about 10 times before i can collect my thoughts on it.

[Indy Scarletti (paperindy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection of poetry. It made me stop, pause, consider, and step inside Ellen's shoes and their experience navigating this deeply fractured country as a blak queer person, both the pain and the joy that brings.

I particularly loved "Politicians having long showers on stolen land", but so many poems wove political observations and context with the personal. I really appreciated the notes section and want to learn more about the context some of the poems referred to, and return to them in new light.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Ellen releases in the future and the much needed perspective their voice brings to Australian literature.

[Killian MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good to read some queer Australian poetry! Their voice on being queer and indigenous gives me things to both relate to and remind me of. That I am a visitor here, that being white gives me much advantage in this world, that I don’t get a free pass because I’m queer.


‘You were my breakfast and death and I couldn’t do anything with or without you’

‘Bodies are vessels but mine does not float well’ from Body Flow

‘These Elders knew what it was like to hear their rights discussed by people outside of their group’ from The Only Blak Queer in the World

[Cian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another much dog-eared collection. Ellen's writing always contains delightful expressions of both the heavy and the light. I can't do the scope or intelligence of this collection justice. They capture and play with the layered experiences of being Indigenous and queer - from navigating the interpersonal politics of relationships and desire, to the commodification of our experiences, to the macro politics of treaty and sovereignty, and to intra-Black relating. Highly recommend reading!

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a force of emotion, heart, and life. A powerful, current voice.

A poetry collection, mixing up form, and covering First Nations experience of land and culture, gender and queerness, politics of the day and the past, colonialism, climate change fears, love, connection.

There is so much here, so much to ponder and absorb. Definitely one to return to, again and again.

[Rose Wh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really used to reading poetry so it was more on the 3.5 stars side purely based on enjoyment. some of the poetry wasn't to my taste at all but there were also a lot of politically incisive pieces. Dysphoria, snakes and ladders and paper ships left an impression me this time around. Hope to revisit some day

[Rosette Rouhana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating collection of poetry. I loved the way many of the poems were also visually well executed and created the sense of being presented with a piece of art. The themes that were explored throughout the book were brilliant, the Treaty and dialogue between the author, reader and the intention within that shared space blew me away.

The author took us through many worlds, across time and space and the reflection of past, present and future brings to our attention our need for deeper awareness to the interconnectedness of our way of being in the world.

[Kassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both deeply personal and with a lot of deep truths that are essential to surviving life in the colony - some of the best poetry I've read all year full of gut punches and tender moments.

[Timothy James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and evocative.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a breathtaking collection, not a single word out of place. so thoughtful and considered and powerful

[Sally Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellen van Neerven goes from strength to strength with their writing, and especially so in this powerful and self-assured second poetry collection. Playful and witty, muscular and raw, van Neerven, a Mununjali Yugambeh author, interrogates colonisation in a way that demands our attention and indeed our signature to a Treaty between Reader and Author that felt as much like a pact as an invitation to commit to the truth of our colonial history.

[James Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellen van Neerven is a queer writer and editor of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage and Throat is their second collection of poetry, following Comfort Food and their first book, the fantastical story series Heat and Light, which does exactly what it says on the cover, radiating both like a warm river at sunset. Throat is another generous gift of magic-making.

Throat is separated into five sections. The first three address memory and growing up, whiteness and colonialism, and queerness, respectively. The fourth section, speaking out, is a series of poems that take their titles from words in the poem that opens the section, and honour female ancestors and women's work. The final section, take me to the back of my throat, seems to chart recovery from a break-up. But ultimately the poems in Throat resist this simple categorisation, and themes recur throughout. They are wonderfully fluid things, like the rivers and waterways that flow through the collection. Read more on my blog

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have so much love for the poet, and the poetry, which whispers, wryly observes, challenges, howls and confirms: continued resistance, continued survival.

On the sovereignty of, and continuing injustices dealt out to, our First Nations peoples (at p.5):

"sovereignty was never ceded. why do we need to reference
the invasion, we are continuing our ancestors' talk. I
can close my eyes and you are gone - that's the power of
Country....

can we be post-gravity too? post-cop-killers and
post-take-the-children-away? ....

courage is telling them what you think of that play. that
script they try and write us in will no longer contain us.
bring me a new coat of oppression. this one's wearing thin."

On divergent timelines, at page 40:
"sacred ground beating heart
ancient sound feeding art"

On violence against women, at page 47:
"no more women unheard behind the wall
no more women dead over unpaid fines
no more women dead by men
it must end"

On the treaty between poet and reader, at pages 61 - 62:
"English is the requisite language of this treaty but
ideally the agreement would be tabled in Yugambeh.

Here we recognise my sovereignty and agree that
I exist independently of the Australian Government
and I am capable of entering into agreements without
government intervention.

I'm not sure whom I'm entering into this
agreement with. Are you whitefella, blackfella or a
fella of another colour? Whose Country do you
belong to and whose do you occupy? What is our
relationship with each other? What are our
expectations of each other? ....

Who is the custodian of this book?
How do we co-exist on this page?
How can we re-imagine custodianship?
Is this an agreement or a series of
unanswered questions?

Are you willing to enter an agreement that is
incomplete and subject to change?"

On the poet, at page 86:
"Let's make this
the most exciting day.
We'll remember
my heart as a t-shirt
ripping under the arms."

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do have a tongue
that wants to speak
in the language of cultural desire

I want so much more

Which part of the
brain body throat
does language enter?

Tell me what happened at the opening

What does it mean to be held
in another
tongue

4.5 stars

[Ely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another outstanding collection for Ellen Van Neerven. I'm not sure if I enjoyed this as much as Comfort Food, but I also read this in an insomnia haze at 2am so I think I'll need to reread the both of them once I have the chance.

[Heather Taylor-Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional book of poetry that teaches culture and gender and acceptance through a natural patience, yet there's no denying there's urgency, too. Van Neerven's openness is a welcoming one, an inclusive one, an enviable one. If you're wondering what poetry to give the children so they don't grow into poetry-hating adults or, regrettably, bigots, it's this one.