Shortlist, 1999 The Age Book of the Year Award To love in a language prised from my wishbone. To sing a landscape where village girls once burst the moon with giggles. To dance through the fattest eye of a rice-grain. To do all these in peace and war is the wish embodied in Merlinda Bobis’ poetry. From her epic poem Cantata of the Warrior Woman: Daragang Magayon to lyric reflections on longing, and finally to an erotic dance-drama, Bobis traces the cartography of desire and its intimacy with death.