Two Tongues

(Paperback)

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From the 2023 David Unaipon Award winner comes this powerful, poignant poetry collection that celebrates and reclaims Indigenous voices and language. Written with a tender love for her Yugambeh language, Maria van Neerven reflects on the legacy of colonisation and racism, and the aftermath of intergenerational harm. At the same time, she shines a light on the importance of family and culture, celebrating the Indigenous women who guided and taught her - extraordinary women filled with resilience and strength. In this way, van Neerven reclaims the stories of her ancestors, giving a voice to those who weren't allowed one in the past. Two Tongues regathers what has been stolen to reassemble a life of compassion and - above all - love for family and Blak pride.

Author Bio

Maria van Neerven is a Mununjali Yugambeh woman from south-east Queensland. She is a retired library technician who loves reading and writing poetry. She has been published in The Lifted Brow- Blak Brow (2018) and In Our Hands (2022), a collection of poetry from Elders and knowledge keepers. Maria was one of the four inaugural winners of the Mascara Varuna Writers' and Editors' Residency for her poetry in 2023, and also a 2024 Next Chapter Fellow at The Wheeler Centre. She has performed her work on stages across Alice Springs, Brisbane and Tokyo. Two Tongues is her first poetry collection.