Rashida Murphy reviews Song of the Shadow of the Seed

Luisa Mitchell dedicates her first collection of poetry to her grandmothers, ‘for [their] poetry, art and fire,’ and it is fitting that this collection so closely follows the familial and cultural bonds of her combined Nyungar and European heritage.

Mitchell’s work engages with memory and country, how the past is remembered and how it impacts on the present. There is an urgency in documenting the past, especially for a First Nations poet, and Mitchell honours her ancestors while acknowledging the burdens of the present. The poems reveal themselves over seven sections, taking the Seed as metaphor and analogy, as Elders, as Memory, as Language, as Hunger, as Burning, as Flower and as Flight.

Mitchell’s eye is clear and unflinching as she documents injustice, history, politics and conversations with family.

they say you are a poet now

or always have been –

your secrets small and cupped against your chest (p 17)

the massacre is livestreamed

the genocide is a reel

unroll the bloody truth

scroll down, you’ll see (p 61)

These are poems that inspire reflection and questions, poems that speak to the reality of living in times when atrocities blend and truth bends, when language assists memory in its own erasure, and when mothers throw flowers like hand grenades.

Song of the Shadow of a Seed is a conversation about privilege and loss, about memory and country, about community and acceptance, and in the poet’s own words ‘a love worth fighting for’. These poems are generous and expansive, and readers are invited in with grace and passion.

Rashida Murphy is a writer living in Boorloo. She is published by UWA Publishing, Spineless Wonders and Night Parrot Press. Her novelette, Old Ghosts, is forthcoming in August.