KONTRA is remarkable because it appears confessional and personal while in fact playing with a poetic speaking persona. That figure is the kontrabida, a provocateur, villainess figure from Filipino television dramas. Through the figure of the bida Andrada grapples with the complexities of Filipina feminine identities. The collection challenging readers assumptions about how contemporary poetry works, inviting us to remain at a distance from the writing, while at the same time allowing us to become intimate with many of its voices. The collection as a whole emphasizes setting, character, scene and action in ways we associate with prose narrative, and it does so through innovative, surprising poetic technique, form and voice. We find humor and playfulness, quiet but insistent. Andrada’s scenes are sometimes like teledrama sets – groups of women in a room, with life swirling around them, letting her play with the melodramatic figure of the bida without giving into melodrama. Her canny title also resonates in the poet’s sense of being out of step both with her Filipina heritage and her Australian identity. She’s always exploring the idea of selfhood made from contrary motions, migrations and creative forms.