Join us to celebrate the launch of KONTRA, the new book by the award-winning poet Eunice Andrada (author of TAKE CARE and Flood Damages), hailed as her ‘most assured and impressive collection yet: an exquisitely composed contra-lexicon, a paean to defiance’ (Bella Li).

Andrada will be in conversation at Sappho Books on Wednesday 22 October with writer, videopoet, educator, and cultural worker, Carielyn Tunion.

Released by Giramondo in October, KONTRA casts a female gaze on the kontrabida – a Filipina soap opera villain stuck in a rise-and-fall cycle – while invoking a chorus of voices to trace a lineage of opposition and the alternate futures it holds.

In her author note, Andrada writes, ‘this project engages the canon I grew up with – the kontrabida as she exists in Filipino media and her cultural equivalents across the world: women punished for wanting. It is also a reflection on what it means to work with and within language as a Filipina writer. A contribution, perhaps, to an ongoing lineage in the Filipina poetics of refusal.’

The launch will open at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Copies of Andrada’s books will be available for purchase on the night through Giramondo.

This event is free, but RSVP is essential as space is limited.

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Praise for KONTRA

‘Few poets can unsettle the contours of desire and power like Eunice Andrada. KONTRA embodies a vivid poetics of opposition, intimacy, dissent and their infinite possibilities. Andrada is an unparalleled voice that continues to enchant and defy – as kontrabida, as lover, as poet. This is a work of ferocious beauty.’ – Manisha Anjali

‘Eunice Andrada’s searing KONTRA summons the full force of ‘pure form’ – beauty, eloquence, rage and mourning in equal measure – to tell ‘a story that does not end’ in the name of female justice.’ – Kate Lilley

‘This is a book of continual rupturing and suturing — of historical narratives, of the desired and desiring self, and of the lyric — speaking always from and with a chorus of others. Through poetic forms stunning in their precision, Andrada’s restless kontrabidas move against empire and extinction, navigating the treacherous edges between past and present, the painter and her subject, first and last names.’ – Bella Li

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About Eunice Andrada

Eunice Andrada is a poet and educator. Her debut collection Flood Damages won the Anne Elder Award and was a finalist for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Dame Mary Gilmore Award. Her second poetry collection TAKE CARE was a finalist for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, Stella Prize, ALS Gold Medal, and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. KONTRA is her third collection released by Giramondo.

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About Carielyn Tunion

Carielyn Tunion/ᜃᜇᜒ/林嘉蓮 (she/they) is a writer, videopoet, educator, and cultural worker, with a background in film studies. She is interested in radical nostalgia, revolutionary romanticism, and the Tropical Gothic, and her work explores themes of memory, folklore, and yearning from a Filipino and Hong Kong diaspora perspective.

She is the recipient of the inaugural Antigone Kefala Memorial Prize and her personal essay, 'INGAT, SIS' was recently awarded Editor’s Choice in the RUSSH Magazine Literary Showcase. Their videopoems have screened at the Sydney Opera House, Mascara Literary Review, and the Emerging Writer’s Festival.

Carielyn’s ancestral roots are in the archipelago of the so-called Philippines and Kowloon, Hong Kong. She currently lives, studies, works and treads respectfully on unceded Burramattagal on Dharug country. www.carielyntunion.com

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