Ellen van Neerven

When I contacted Ellen van Neerven in May to see if they would talk with me about Personal Score, I…

Both books remind me of the ‘emerging’ discipline of planetary health, which is the scientific naming of what our ancestors already know, which is that people and place’s wellbeing are connected. A healthy planet means fewer diseases.

Smith’s biggest achievement in Wade in the Water is her effort to stay true to all the different music she heard through writing the book and to reflect that in the sound of this book. The book is a gathering, and a chorus.

Desert Writing brings to readers stories of desert communities and the individuals who form part of them that are not often featured in literature or media. Train lines have been built, and airports made but the places aren’t any closer; these are remote places – far away from Australia’s heavily populated coastal cities, far from major centres; and far from the imagination of the mainstream population. This distance is what makes these places so interesting, their pasts and futures significant.’

We circle, we move, we leave and return. The grass isn’t still. Nor the water. Nothing is static. Country extends over borders.

It has only been four years since Mununjali Yugambeh poet Ellen van Neerven’s first volume, Comfort Food, appeared. While central to both collections are the experiences of young queer First Nations identity in settler Australia, Throat extends the work of Comfort Food from the retrospective of the four years that have passed since its writing. And, certainly much has happened.

‘I think Indigenous writers kind of need each other. I feel that more and more, that sense of camaraderie and community. We challenge each other to write better. It is sometimes hard when you’re perhaps the only black writer on a festival or you’re put into a situation where you have to represent a whole community. That’s why we take strength from each other.’ SRB editor Catriona Menzies-Pike speaks with Ellen van Neerven.