TAKE CARE
*Shortlisted for the 2022 Stella Prize*
*Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2022: Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry & Multicultural NSW Award*
TAKE CARE explores what it means to survive within systems not designed for tenderness. Bound in personal testimony, the poems situate the act of rape within the machinery of imperialism, where human and non-human bodies, lands, and waters are violated to uphold colonial powers. Andrada explores the magnitude of rape culture in the everyday: from justice systems that dehumanise survivors, to exploitative care industries that deny Filipina workers their agency, to nationalist monuments that erase the sexual violence of war.
Unsparing in their interrogation of the gendered, racialised labour of care, the poems flow to a radical, liberatory syntax. Physical and online terrain meld into a surreal ecosystem of speakers, creatures, and excavated histories. Brimming with incantatory power, Andrada’s verses move between breathless candour and seething restraint as they navigate memory and possibility. Piercing the heart of our cultural crisis, these poems are salves, offerings, and warnings.
Eunice Andrada is a Filipina poet and educator. She is the author of Flood Damages (Giramondo Publishing, 2018), which won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry. Born and raised in the Philippines, she now lives and writes on unceded Gadigal Land. TAKE CARE is her second collection of poetry.
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