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KONTRA
Brief Description
KONTRA enacts a poetics of clashing decadences, testing the tightrope between 'feminine' goodness and deviance, desire and refusal, reverence and repulsion. It casts a female gaze on the kontrabida—a Filipina soap opera villain stuck in a rise-and-fall cycle. The poet reimagines the kontrabida as a figure...
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KONTRA
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New collection by multiple award-winning Filipina-Australian poet Eunice Andrada.
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Description
KONTRA enacts a poetics of clashing decadences, testing the tightrope between 'feminine' goodness and deviance, desire and refusal, reverence and repulsion. It casts a female gaze on the kontrabida—a Filipina soap opera villain stuck in a rise-and-fall cycle. The poet reimagines the kontrabida as a figure driven not by revenge, but by wild desire. Oscillating in and out of character, Andrada navigates the tension between poet and persona. Alongside the shapeshifting, spectral force of the kontrabida, the poet invokes a chorus of voices to trace a lineage of opposition and the alternate futures it holds.
The collection is in the form of a narrative triptych. The opening section 'KONTRA' explores the power and fate of the oppositional figure. In 'OPER', two characters speak alongside each other to excise painful histories of domination and sexual assault; which moves us forward to the final section 'BIDA', to a more genuine, queer persona that is free from domination.
Praise for Eunice Andrada:
'Brilliant and devastating, TAKE CARE is no doubt one of the most important poetry releases in years, weaving complex themes with intelligence and innovation of form...A poet whose courage is necessary and whose words we all need.' — Ellen van Neerven
TAKE CARE is the live wire of poetry that does not spare us...each poem both a surrender and a severing, each page an urgent demand we do not look away from violence, from its banal to its most grotesque, and each word filled with as much purpose and energy as it is with tenderness and care.' — Sara Saleh
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781923106475
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing Co
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 October 2025
Country: Australia
Imprint: Giramondo Publishing Co
Illustration: Illustrations
DIMENSIONS
Width: 148.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 150g
Pages: 96
About the Author
Eunice Andrada is a poet and educator. Her first collection Flood Damages (Giramondo, 2018) won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for both the Victorian Premier's Award for Poetry and the Dame Mary Gilmore Award. Her second poetry collection TAKE CARE (2021) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, the Stella Prize, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and two NSW Premier's Literary Awards. KONTRA is her third poetry collection with Giramondo.
Also by Eunice Andrada
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TAKE CARE
Shortlisted for the 2022 Stella Prize Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2022: Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry & Multicultural NSW Award TAKE CARE explores what it means to survive within systems not designed for tenderness. Bound in personal testimony, the poems situate the act of rape within the machinery of imperialism, where human and non-human bodies, lands, and...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Flood Damages
Powerful first collection by acclaimed Filipina Australian performance poet In Flood Damages, Andrada explores themes associated with immigration and inheritance through the figure of a young Australian Filipina woman, whose family has been irreparably damaged by deportation, violence, and illness. The wounds inflicted by these events, both political and personal, are felt most keenly in and through her body: "your...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
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