Luisa Mitchell - Song of the Shadow of a Seed Book Launch

Join us at Fremantle Library for the launch of Luisa Mitchell's poetry collection, Song of the Shadow of a Seed, through Fremantle Press. For this event, fellow poets Barbara Hostalek, Daniel Hansen, Lakshmi Kanchi (SoulReserve) and the author’s father Peter Mitchell will be reading poems, with a conversation (including poems) from Luisa Mitchell and Ballardong editor Casey Mulder.

Nibbles and refreshments provided, and copies of the book will be available for purchase from New Edition Bookshop.

About Song of the Shadow of a Seed and the author:

Seeds are sacred. They are the minutiae of all life, along with Boodjar (Country), Beeliar (rivers), women, and all bodies and vessels that carry living things.

Mitchell’s debut collection is divided into different cycles around the life of a seed – elders, memory, language, hunger, burning, flowering, flight – and the poems within reflect the ways in which a seed, a person and a nation can contain the long history of what has been, as well as the promise of what is to come. These poems open conversations about connection to Country, the resilience of culture, and the complex articulation of identity as a First Nations descendant.

Inventive, moving and accessible, Mitchell’s work includes conversations-in-poetry with family members that weave connection and shared history into every line.

They are a call to listen, to learn, and to engage with the lived truths of Whadjuk Nyungar Country.

Luisa Mitchell (Shaw) is a storyteller and artist descended from Whadjuk Nyungar, English, Irish and Swedish peoples. Born and raised on Yawuru and Djugun country in Broome, she now lives on Whadjuk Boodja in Perth. Luisa produces community arts and truth-telling projects with other First Nations communities and co-founded the First Nations Write Nights with Casey Mulder at Centre for Stories. She was awarded the Best Emerging Poet Prize by Liquid Amber Press in 2022 and shortlisted for The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2023.