This week’s spotlight shines on the award-winning poetry collection by Jelena Dinić, In the Room with the She Wolf.

Following this week’s announcement that Jelena Dinić has won the Mary Gilmore Award, it seems fitting we resume our Poetry Spotlight series by focusing on her startling debut collection.

Post written by Polly Grant Butler

Interweaving the past and present, childhood and adulthood, Serbia and Australia, constraint and abandon; Jelena masterfully reveals the complexities and contradictions inherent within the migrant experience. Yet this complexity is expressed through a kind of simplicity; the poems skilfully show restraint while offering up raw, at times scathing, at times playful, images. Lines such as ‘People think if they speak louder / I understand better’ and ‘I cry in mother tongue / mostly in the library’ employ a minimalist style to convey a rich and complicated viewpoint.

Jelena Dinić came to Australia during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, and the poems in this collection seamlessly oscillate between these two settings. As Kate Llewellyn’s cover endorsement says:

‘A wonderful book that is a journey on many levels: from childhood to adulthood, from war-torn Serbia to domestic Australia, from one language to another.’

Though the collection ruminates on traditional poetry themes (mortality, time, love, death), the style and voice feel contemporary and fresh. There is a flippancy to Jelena’s tone, as well as a seriousness. There is sadness, too.

The poem I’ve chosen to highlight is the title poem of the collection. With its precise use of pararhyme and unexpected images, ‘In the Room with the She Wolf’ places the domestic present against a strong-willed past as opponent.

In the Room with the She Wolf 

From being crowned winner of the 2019 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award to receiving the prestigious Mary Gilmore Award in 2022, we are are so glad Jelena’s In the Room with the She Wolf is receiving the praise it deserves. 

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