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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."His words are constellations of memories; his heart beats across hemispheres and time; as though his resistance is charged by the Earth’s magnetic field; blacker the better holds the light." Anne-Marie Te Whiu