Eunice Andrada’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards acceptance speech for KONTRA
Eunice Andrada won the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry with her third collection, KONTRA. The ceremony was livestreamed by The Wheeler Centre. Watch Eunice’s acceptance speech and read the transcript below.
Thank you so much to the judges for recognising my craft with this award. Many of the poems in KONTRA are written from the voice of the kontrabida – a woman branded the ‘antagonist’; someone who always dies by the end of someone else’s story. I wrote the poems of KONTRA to imagine a Filipino woman who doesn’t die; someone who is free to live in her queerness, in her everyday acts of resistance. Someone who can move towards a future of her own making. But at its heart, KONTRA is a reflection on what it means to work with and within language as a Filipina writer.
Our stories are often made invisible, or worse, pushed to the side to instead platform others who have been writing about our lives and our bodies for far too long. I come from a lineage of women who could not write their story themselves because they were too busy raising children on their own as the matriarchs of their families. I am deeply grateful for the love and creativity and imagination with which they raised me. Because it takes so much creativity and imagination to figure out how to survive while raising a big family while having little material means.
I want to thank my mother Dinna, my grandmother, my legion of aunts, and my three sisters – to whom I dedicated this book – thank you. I also want to thank my publisher, Giramondo, and the entire team, for all the care and the work you’ve put into my books. Thank you to the poets in this category, I’m so honoured to be beside you. To the poet Gloria Demillo, who is with me tonight and has been with me since we were both 16, writing poems for poetry slams – thank you. And finally, thank you to the community of poets who have raised me up for many years, especially to my mentor, Merlinda Bobis, who guided me in the creation of KONTRA. I owe this award to all of you.
