Whisper Songs

A timely and important collection of poems by the award-winning author of The White Girl and Blood. In this stunning collection Tony Birch invites the reader into a tender conversation with those he loves – and has loved – the most. He also challenges the past to speak up by interrogating the archive, including documents from his own family history, highlighting forcefully the ways in which the personal is also intensely political. Divided into three sections – Blood, Skin and Water – the poems in Whisper Songs address themes of loss (of people and place), the legacies of colonial history and violence, and the relationships between Country and memory. Whisper Songs reveals Birch at his lyrical and intimate best.

Tony Birch is the author of four novels, five short fiction collections, and two poetry books. In 2022 his book, Dark As Last Night was awarded the Christina Stead Literary Prize and the Steele Rudd Literary Award. The book was also shortlisted for the 2022 Prime Minister’ s Literary Award for fiction. His most recent book is the novel, Women and Children, (UQP 2023).

Introduction – Anne-Marie Te Whiu BLOOD Little Man Dragster Fading Light TKO Isabel Women Away Sacred Heart Finding You Outside Kyoto Matinee A Father Brushes His Daughter’ s Hair on the First Day of School ‘ Trouble Trouble Trouble’ : Probation File 29/1957 Stillborn Archie 4 am the Window Cathedral Leaving Whisper SKIN The Eight Truths of Khan The Silence Forebearer A Matter of Lives Waiting for a Train with Thelma Plum Hygiene for a Nation’ s Soul A Native Surgeon’ s Duties The Oath of a White Man Razor-wire Nation Race War Gallows – near La Trobe Street Tunnerminnerwait WATER How Water Works Black Ophelia Companions in Death Birrarung Billabong At the Creek The Arteries Swimming Whole Water Gunnamatta Beneath the Bridge Desecrate The Great Flood of 1971 Acknowledgements