2024/184: Antiemetic for Homesickness — Romalyn Ante

and while your house grew with gifts -
a rooster crowing in a bayong,
a sack of corn, whiffs of ripe jackfruit, 

     a patient woke
     and accused me of stealing
     her job; 

[from 'The Shaman, the Servant: for my grandfather']

I first became aware of Ante's poetry via the Guardian's Poem of the Week column, and liked her interweaving of Filipino and British culture. Ante, who's from the Phillipines, has worked as an NHS nurse. This first collection of her work -- published in 2020, when things had become much worse -- is full of vignettes of NHS life. The women who've reminded her of her mother, the casual racism, the Filipino migrant community, the memories of a home to which she can never return ... 

There's a 'Boodle Fight of Words and Terminologies' at the end of the book, though this doesn't explain every unfamiliar word of phrase: there are also notes on some of the poems. (In some cases, the notes made me realise I had completely missed the point of a particular poem!)

Fulfils the ‘A Poetry Collection by a Non Caucasian Writer’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge. I bought this in paperback, and read it very slowly over about five months, sometimes rereading a poem two or three times. A slow, thoughtful, beautiful book to list as my last for 2024.