TAKE CARE

Judges' Comments

The poems in this incendiary collection work at the seams of the ‘taking’ and ‘caring’ of its title. An aesthetics and etymology of care — giving and taking — centres around the act, language and enabling of rape. Bearing witness to a spectrum of violent acts that take place overtly, covertly and linguistically, TAKE CARE is furious, methodical and formally ambitious, testing the capacity of the poetic. Personal survival is contextualised alongside others’ survival, part of an expansive and inclusive collective testimony. 

For all the aggression they map — colonial, racial, gendered and sexual — Eunice Andrada’s poems linger with tenderness, finding the quiet triumph of reprieve and consolation amid an overarching refusal of unjust and brutalising forces. Beside the ethical and steady witness of these poems are the steely and exhilarating energies of resistance and repair.