Ask No Questions

With a third of Australians born and around half with one parent born overseas; migration stories are a crucial part of our national experience. In her verse novel; Ask No Questions; Eva Collins writes spare affecting lines about her own experience as a teenager when her parents decided to emigrate from Poland to Australia. She captures the loss and gain; grief and celebration with great poignancy. Simply written but deeply moving; Ask No Questions is accessible poetry that is particularly suited for young adult readers.

A beautifully constructed and engaging work. Ask No Questions charts an emigrant's journey with great clarity; humour; pathos; and a disarming directness that will connect with readers of all ages; and inspire others to recount their own stories of leaving their homelands to begin life anew on distant shores. – Arnold Zable

Eva's poetry is spare. She uses neither filler nor fancy; but communicates directly in an almost William Carlos Williams style. However; the sum result is similar: a poetry that is unembellished and real; personal yet unabashedly other; grounded — often with wit — in the sometimes sad and always unrelenting factual basis of the past; and the ongoing present of what-is. Hers is an important voice. – Jordie Albiston.

Eva Collins has through this series of deft and crafted observations distilled the mid twentieth century experience of European migration to Australia. It is books such as this; combined with a growing Indigenous literature; that will shape Australia's deepest; richest and most lasting sense of itself into the future. You cannot tell such a story until you have learned to live in two places at once; and Ms Kovalski-Collins has achieved that magical act in Ask No Questions with brilliance; wit; directness and intelligence in her own distinctively sparkling verse. A joy to read; it is a book to be grateful for. – Kevin Brophy

I found Ask No Questions to be most enlightening; original and great reading and think this would be an invaluable educational resource. This is a very important memoir that makes up Australia's rich Migration story. – Hass Dellal