Philomena van Rijswijk | Bread of the Lost


'Bread of the Lost' | poetry | ISBN 978 1 877010 248 | 102 pgs | Nov 2012 | $20.00 (within Australia)




This is a poetry of desire that shocks but leads to a personal freedom, from the innocence of childhood to the pluralism of womanhood. Van Rijswijk does not flinch from loss and pain in her poems, a kind of contemporary Adam and Eve. Rather, the erotic in her distinctive voice is intermingled with the bread of communion, bread of love, bread of life. Her poems are distinctly Australian with potent Asian touches, in which she also draws skilfully upon the classics and popular culture of the English-language world.

Javant Biarujia