In recognition of the history and culture of this land, I acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional owners and custodians of lutriwita, their elders past, present and future.
Little Bones
in Red Clay
The new poetry collection from Helga Jermy, an intimate exploration of the emotional and physical landscapes of her new home
Meet the Poet
About Helga
Helga is an English/Estonian poet, now living on Tasmania’s northwest coast.
Her poems, which mainly focus on identity, place and occasional experimental form, have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rabbit, Australian Poetry anthologies and journals, Cordite Poetry Review, Island and Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry.
Her work has been shortlisted for the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize and UK Bridport Prize for poetry and flash fiction, plus longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize.
Reviews
I love, in these poems, that I am slipped between tree roots and fallen leaves as completely as into the canvases in a gallery, into jazz beats and into the warmths and poignancies of human touch. These poems' "little bones" are wrapped with regard, Helga's tender fascinations becoming fully our own.
Helga Jermy’s new collection, ‘Little bones in red clay’ is an embrace, encompassing her arrival in a new hemisphere, this island's history, landscape, the fauna and flora, the community and people she loves. The intensity of experience as wrens flit throughout comes full circle. It feels complete, the river flowing in words, the visceral challenges living on this threatened planet and her compassionate scrutiny.
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View the latest collections below, or click through to view Helga’s full range.
$25
Little bones in red clay is an unearthing: a small and personal quest to discover why we pursue the things we do – why we migrate, why art matters, how political dialogue sparks our veins, how love of landscape makes us tread carefully but awkwardly.
This collection of poems explores identity and place at the interface of global fragility, testing light and dark, and the persistence of play.
Being denied access to a place, by necessity you invent it.
In these poems, the author explores cultural identity and loss as the daughter of an Estonian dislocated from his family and country by post-war turmoil. Based on fractured truths, fairy tales and longings, this collection is a personal mosaic of a land and her place in it.
